Watch Joan Baez Endearingly Imitate Bob Dylan (1972)

in Music | August 15th, 2025

Joan Baez was already her­ald­ed as the “Queen of Folk” by the time Robert Zim­mer­man aka Bob Dylan arrived in New York City. Many things brought him to the bur­geon­ing folk scene there, but Baez was the siren who called to a young Dylan through his tele­vi­sion set long before he met her. He was smit­ten. He would write much lat­er in Chron­i­cles, Vol. 1, that she had “A voice that drove out bad spir­its… she sang in a voice straight to God… Noth­ing she did didn’t work.”

And for a cou­ple of years they became col­lab­o­ra­tors, part­ners, lovers, and folk roy­al­ty. It was Baez who intro­duced a then-unknown Dylan to the crowds at the 1963 New­port Folk Fes­ti­val. But soon, for­tunes changed: Dylan became an unstop­pable cul­tur­al force and Baez would be on the receiv­ing end of sev­er­al betray­als, artis­tic and oth­er­wise.

An excerpt from an Earl Scrug­gs doc­u­men­tary, the cute video above, shot by David Hoff­man and post­ed on his YouTube chan­nel, shows Baez imi­tat­ing Dylan after she sings a verse of “It Ain’t Me Babe”. (She does this while hold­ing her baby and try­ing to get it to drink from a pitch­er, too.) A 16-year-old Ricky Skaggs—not look­ing any­thing like a teenager—accompanies her on gui­tar.

For one thing she does a crackin’ good Dylan impres­sion. The oth­er is watch­ing the emo­tion behind that impression—there’s a lot of his­to­ry there, a bit of sad­ness, a bit of nos­tal­gia, noth­ing bit­ter or mean, but evi­dence of a shared life togeth­er that once exist­ed.

By this time in 1972, Dylan’s voice had matured. The croon­er on Nashville Sky­line was a dif­fer­ent per­son from the man on Blonde on Blonde, all those rough cor­ners sand­ed off and the reg­is­ter deep­ened. Yet when any­one imi­tates Dylan, they head on back to those mid-‘60s albums, the “bray­ing beat­nik” as writer Rob Jones calls him. (Jones posits that Dylan has had eight par­tic­u­lar voic­es dur­ing his career.)

Remem­ber, as Slate’s Carl Wil­son points out, when Dylan first start­ed out, he was com­mend­ed for his voice, and was con­sid­ered  “one of the most com­pelling white blues singers ever record­ed,” by Robert Shel­ton, who wrote the copy on the back cov­er of Dylan’s 1962 debut album. He came from a tra­di­tion of both Woody Guthrie and Howl­in’ Wolf, and sev­er­al oth­er idio­syn­crat­ic singers who didn’t sound like Frank Sina­tra. (Although Dylan’s last few projects have been cov­ers from the Great Amer­i­can Song­book.)

Dylan him­self, in a 2015 award accep­tance speech, turned his ire towards crit­ics of his voice:

Crit­ics have been giv­ing me a hard time since Day One. Crit­ics say I can’t sing. I croak. Sound like a frog. Why don’t crit­ics say that same thing about Tom Waits? Crit­ics say my voice is shot. That I have no voice. [Why] don’t they say those things about Leonard Cohen? Why do I get spe­cial treat­ment? Crit­ics say I can’t car­ry a tune and I talk my way through a song. Real­ly? I’ve nev­er heard that said about Lou Reed. Why does he get to go scot-free? … Slur my words, got no dic­tion. Have you peo­ple ever lis­tened to Charley Pat­ton or Robert John­son, Mud­dy Waters? … “Why me, Lord?” I would say that to myself.

Fast for­ward to the present and Dylan’s voice shows the wear of years of per­form­ing and years of indul­gence. It’s grav­el­ly and phleg­mat­ic, smoky and whiskey-soaked, but Wil­son points out: “Even the rasp and burr of his late voice, sev­er­al keen lis­ten­ers have noticed, is very much like a more gen­uine copy of the old-blues­man tim­bre he pre­ten­tious­ly affect­ed as a young man. It’s almost like this is what he’s been aim­ing toward.”

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2018.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Com­pare the “It Ain’t Me Babe” Scene from A Com­plete Unknown to the Real Bob Dylan & Joan Baez Per­for­mance at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val

Joan Baez Live in 1965: Full Con­cert

Bob Dylan Explains Why Music Has Been Get­ting Worse

17-Year-Old Joan Baez Per­forms at Famous “Club 47” in Cam­bridge, MA (1958)

Bob Dylan’s Famous Tele­vised Press Con­fer­ence After He Went Elec­tric (1965)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.

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What Is Kabbalah? An Introduction to the Jewish Mystical Tradition

in Religion | August 15th, 2025

Though the pop-cul­tur­al moment that gave rise to the asso­ci­a­tion has passed, when many of us hear about Kab­bal­ah, we still think of Madon­na. Her study of that Jew­ish-mys­tic school of thought in the nine­teen-nineties has been cred­it­ed, at least in part, with the son­ic trans­for­ma­tion that led to her hit album Ray of Light.  A few years lat­er, when she record­ed the theme song for the 2002 James Bond movie Die Anoth­er Day, she man­aged to include in its music video such Kab­bal­is­tic imagery as the Hebrew let­ters lamed, aleph, and vav — which come, as Reli­gion for Break­fast cre­ator Andrew M. Hen­ry says in the video above, from one of the 72 names of God accord­ing to Jew­ish tra­di­tion.

But what, exact­ly, is Kab­bal­ah? That’s the ques­tion Hen­ry takes it upon him­self to answer, attempt­ing to sep­a­rate the real thing from the pop-cul­tur­al ephemera that’s come to sur­round it.

This entails first going back to the ear­li­est Kab­bal­ists, “Jew­ish teach­ers, the­olo­gians, and philoso­phers” among “the edu­cat­ed elite of medieval Europe, liv­ing in Spain and France, writ­ing new and inno­v­a­tive stud­ies on Jew­ish texts and con­cepts about mys­ti­cal con­tem­pla­tion of the divine realms, the nature of God, the pur­pose of human­i­ty, and the cre­ation of the uni­verse.” They searched, and their suc­ces­sors have con­tin­ued to search, for secret divine wis­dom orig­i­nal­ly vouch­safed to Moses at Mount Sinai.

The word kab­bal­ah can be trans­lat­ed as “that which has been received,” but that may make the enter­prise sound sim­pler than it is. Hen­ry frames Kab­bal­ah as a series of tra­di­tions “encom­pass­ing sev­er­al modes of read­ing, a library of texts, a series of con­cepts, and a range of prac­tices with­in Judaism that is con­cerned with mys­ti­cal con­tem­pla­tion.” But what­ev­er their dif­fer­ences, most Kab­bal­ists revere con­cepts like Ein Sof, “an infi­nite imper­son­al god or supreme enti­ty or supreme enti­ty that we can­not describe with our own human fac­ul­ties,” and vast works like the nov­el­is­tic Zohar, or “The Book of Radi­ance,” in which “even the search for mys­ti­cal knowl­edge becomes sex­u­al­ized”: an aspect that, giv­en the skill with which she’s craft­ed her provoca­tive pop-icon image, Madon­na could hard­ly fail to appre­ci­ate.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Tal­mud Is Final­ly Now Avail­able Online

Wal­ter Benjamin’s Philo­soph­i­cal Thought Pre­sent­ed by Two Exper­i­men­tal Films

The Ancient Greeks Who Con­vert­ed to Bud­dhism

The Ark Before Noah: Dis­cov­er the Ancient Flood Myths That Came Before the Bible

2,000-Year-Old Man­u­script of the Ten Com­mand­ments Gets Dig­i­tized: See/Download the “Nash Papyrus” in High Res­o­lu­tion

3,500 Occult Man­u­scripts Will Be Dig­i­tized & Made Freely Avail­able Online, Thanks to Da Vin­ci Code Author Dan Brown

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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2,178 Occult Books Now Digitized & Put Online, Thanks to the Ritman Library and Da Vinci Code Author Dan Brown

in Books, History, Libraries | August 14th, 2025

In 2018 we brought you some excit­ing news. Thanks to a gen­er­ous dona­tion from Da Vin­ci Code author Dan Brown, Amsterdam’s Rit­man Library—a siz­able col­lec­tion of pre-1900 books on alche­my, astrol­o­gy, mag­ic, and oth­er occult subjects—has been dig­i­tiz­ing thou­sands of its rare texts under a dig­i­tal edu­ca­tion project cheek­i­ly called “Her­met­i­cal­ly Open.” We are now pleased to report that the first 2,178 books from the Rit­man project have come avail­able in their online read­ing room.

Vis­i­tors should be aware that these books are writ­ten in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent Euro­pean lan­guages. Latin, the schol­ar­ly lan­guage of Europe through­out the Medieval and Ear­ly Mod­ern peri­ods, pre­dom­i­nates, and it’s a pecu­liar Latin at that, laden with jar­gon and alchem­i­cal ter­mi­nol­o­gy. Oth­er books appear in Ger­man, Dutch, and French. Read­ers of some or all of these lan­guages will of course have an eas­i­er time than mono­lin­gual Eng­lish speak­ers, but there is still much to offer those vis­i­tors as well.

In addi­tion to the plea­sure of pag­ing through an old rare book, even vir­tu­al­ly, Eng­lish speak­ers can quick­ly find a col­lec­tion of read­able books by click­ing on the “Place of Pub­li­ca­tion” search fil­ter and select­ing Cam­bridge or Lon­don, from which come such notable works as The Man-Mouse Takin in a Trap, and tortur’d to death for gnaw­ing the Mar­gins of Euge­nius Phi­lalethes, by Thomas Vaugh­an, pub­lished in 1650.

The lan­guage is archaic—full of quirky spellings and uses of the “long s”—and the con­tent is bizarre. Those famil­iar with this type of writ­ing, whether through his­tor­i­cal study or the work of more recent inter­preters like Aleis­ter Crow­ley or Madame Blavatsky, will rec­og­nize the many for­mu­las: The trac­ing of mag­i­cal cor­re­spon­dences between flo­ra, fau­na, and astro­nom­i­cal phe­nom­e­na; the care­ful pars­ing of names; astrol­o­gy and lengthy lin­guis­tic ety­molo­gies; numero­log­i­cal dis­cours­es and philo­soph­i­cal poet­ry; ear­ly psy­chol­o­gy and per­son­al­i­ty typ­ing; cryp­tic, cod­ed mythol­o­gy and med­ical pro­ce­dures. Although we’ve grown accus­tomed through pop­u­lar media to think­ing of mag­i­cal books as cook­books, full of recipes and incan­ta­tions, the real­i­ty is far dif­fer­ent.

Encoun­ter­ing the vast and strange trea­sures in the online library, one thinks of the type of the magi­cian rep­re­sent­ed in Goethe’s Faust, holed up in his study,

Where even the wel­come day­light strains
But duski­ly through the paint­ed panes.
Hemmed in by many a top­pling heap
Of books worm-eat­en, gray with dust,
Which to the vault­ed ceil­ing creep

The library doesn’t only con­tain occult books. Like the weary schol­ar Faust, alchemists of old “stud­ied now Phi­los­o­phy / And Jurispru­dence, Med­i­cine,— / And even, alas! The­ol­o­gy.” Click on Cam­bridge as the place of pub­li­ca­tion and you’ll find the work above by Hen­ry More, “one of the cel­e­brat­ed ‘Cam­bridge Pla­ton­ists,’” the Lin­da Hall Library notes, “who flour­ished in mid-17th-cen­tu­ry and did their best to rec­on­cile Pla­to with Chris­tian­i­ty and the mechan­i­cal phi­los­o­phy that was begin­ning to make inroads into British nat­ur­al phi­los­o­phy.” Those who study Euro­pean intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry know well that More’s pres­ence in this col­lec­tion is no anom­aly. For a few hun­dred years, it was dif­fi­cult, if not impos­si­ble, to sep­a­rate the pur­suits of the­ol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy, med­i­cine, and sci­ence (or “nat­ur­al phi­los­o­phy”) from those of alche­my and astrol­o­gy. (Isaac New­ton is a famous exam­ple of a mathematician/scientist/alchemist/believer in strange apoc­a­lyp­tic pre­dic­tions.) Enter the Rit­man’s new dig­i­tal col­lec­tion of occult texts here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2018.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Big Archive of Occult Record­ings: His­toric Audio Lets You Hear Trances, Para­nor­mal Music, Glos­so­lalia & Oth­er Strange Sounds (1905–2007)

Dis­cov­er The Key of Hell, an Illus­trat­ed 18th-Cen­tu­ry Guide to Black Mag­ic (1775)

Isaac Newton’s Recipe for the Myth­i­cal ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ Is Being Dig­i­tized & Put Online (Along with His Oth­er Alche­my Man­u­scripts)

Aleis­ter Crow­ley Reads Occult Poet­ry in the Only Known Record­ings of His Voice (1920)

The Sur­re­al Paint­ings of the Occult Magi­cian, Writer & Moun­taineer, Aleis­ter Crow­ley

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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The Stunt That Ended Buster Keaton’s Brilliant Career

in Film, History | August 14th, 2025

Buster Keaton’s pen­chant and skill for comedic stunts made him one of the biggest stars of the silent-film era.  Nobody at the time imag­ined that he would still be engag­ing in dan­ger­ous-look­ing prat­falls 40 years lat­er in his sev­en­ties, espe­cial­ly since his career seemed to have come to an end in 1926. That was the year of his Civ­il War-set film The Gen­er­al, which, though now crit­i­cal­ly respect­ed, left con­tem­po­rary audi­ences cold. Flops are, per­haps, inevitable, but this one hap­pened to incor­po­rate into the pic­ture the most expen­sive shot in cin­e­ma his­to­ry to date. As a result, says the Ming video above, “Keaton was nev­er giv­en con­trol over his films again.”

Iron­i­cal­ly, unlike the cin­e­mat­ic images that had made him famous, the $42,000 shot in The Gen­er­al did not put its direc­tor-star in appar­ent mor­tal per­il, depict­ing only a rail­road bridge col­laps­ing while a train cross­es it. Though undoubt­ed­ly impres­sive, it would­n’t have been what peo­ple went to a Buster Keaton movie to see.

Here was a man will­ing, after all, to fly from the back of a mov­ing street­car, dan­gle off the edge of a water­fall, risk being crushed by an entire wall of a house, and even break his neck — though he did­n’t dis­cov­er that he’d done so until eleven years lat­er. Mak­ing these and all of Keaton’s oth­er famous stunts involved con­sid­er­able amounts of both cal­cu­lat­ed dan­ger and movie mag­ic.

Some of that movie mag­ic was con­ceived by Keaton him­self, the first film­mak­er, in Quentin Taran­ti­no’s words, to “use cin­e­ma itself to be the joke.” Few per­form­ers could have adapt­ed so well to the medi­um of silent film, with its realms of silent com­e­dy just wait­ing to be opened. And after sound had been around for a few decades, long­time movie­go­ers start­ed to feel like cin­e­ma had lost some of the visu­al exu­ber­ance that it once pos­sessed. By that time, luck­i­ly, Keaton had emerged from his long post-Gen­er­al peri­od of hard-drink­ing malaise, ready to appear not just in the movies again, but also on tele­vi­sion, delight­ing the gen­er­a­tions who remem­bered his ear­li­er work and fas­ci­nat­ing those too young to rec­og­nize him. Even today, when we find our­selves laugh­ing at a scene of elab­o­rate­ly orches­trat­ed phys­i­cal dan­ger, we are, in some sense, wit­ness­ing Keaton’s lega­cy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

30 Buster Keaton Films: “The Great­est of All Com­ic Actors,” “One of the Great­est Film­mak­ers of All Time”

Watch the Only Time Char­lie Chap­lin & Buster Keaton Per­formed Togeth­er On-Screen (1952)

Char­lie Chap­lin & Buster Keaton Go Toe to Toe (Almost) in a Hilar­i­ous Box­ing Scene Mash Up from Their Clas­sic Silent Films

A Super­cut of Buster Keaton’s Most Amaz­ing Stunts

101 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics

The Gen­er­al, “Per­haps the Great­est Film Ever Made,” and 20 Oth­er Buster Keaton Clas­sics Free Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Tim Burton Visits a Paris Video Store & Talks About His Favorite Movies

in Film | August 13th, 2025

Tim Bur­ton grew up watch­ing Japan­ese mon­ster movies in Bur­bank, which must explain a good deal about his artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ty. It seems to be for that rea­son, in any case, that the new Kon­bi­ni “Vidéo Club” episode above takes him first to the Asian cin­e­ma sec­tion of JM Vidéo, one of Paris’ last two DVD rental shops. Ear­ly and repeat­ed expo­sure to such kai­ju clas­sics as Hon­da Ishirō’s Godzil­la and The War of the Gar­gan­tuas may have instilled him with an affec­tion for poor Eng­lish dub­bing, but it did­n’t rob him of his abil­i­ty to appre­ci­ate more refined (if equal­ly vis­cer­al) exam­ples of Japan­ese film like Shindō Kane­to’s Oni­ba­ba and Kuroneko.

Bur­ton describes those pic­tures as dream­like, a qual­i­ty he goes on to praise in oth­er selec­tions from a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent eras and cul­tures. Even cinephiles who don’t share his par­tic­u­lar taste in view­ing mate­r­i­al — bound on one end, it seems, by The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc and The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari, and on the oth­er by I Was a Teenage Were­wolf and The Brain That Would­n’t Die, with the likes of Jason and the Arg­onauts and The Fly in between — have to admit that this indi­cates a deep under­stand­ing of cin­e­ma itself.

It may be the art form whose expe­ri­ence is most sim­i­lar to dream­ing, but only occa­sion­al­ly through­out its his­to­ry have par­tic­u­lar films attained the sta­tus of the tru­ly oneir­ic. One sus­pects that Bur­ton knows them all.

In fact, one of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry’s most notable addi­tions to the canon of the dream­like won the Palme d’Or with Bur­ton’s involve­ment. This video includes his brief rem­i­nis­cences of being on the jury at the 2010 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, where Apichat­pong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boon­mee Who Can Recall His Past Lives took the top prize. That same year saw the release of Bur­ton’s own Alice in Won­der­land, which he describes as “the most chaot­ic movie I’ve ever made.” In 2019, he direct­ed his sec­ond live-action Dis­ney adap­ta­tion Dum­bo, which, though hard­ly a pas­sion project, was­n’t with­out its auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal res­o­nances: “At that point, I kind of felt like Dum­bo,” he admits, “a weird crea­ture trapped at Dis­ney.” Per­haps that long on-and-off cor­po­rate asso­ci­a­tion final­ly hav­ing come to an end, or so he sug­gests, means he’ll now be freer than ever to draw from the depths of his own cin­e­mat­ic sub­con­scious­ness.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Tim Bur­ton: A Look Inside His Visu­al Imag­i­na­tion

Watch Vin­cent, Tim Burton’s Ani­mat­ed Trib­ute to Vin­cent Price & Edgar Allan Poe (1982)

Tim Burton’s Hansel and Gre­tel Shot on 16mm Film with Ama­teur Japan­ese Actors (1983)

David Cro­nen­berg Vis­its a Video Store & Talks About His Favorite Movies

Christo­pher Nolan Vis­its a Paris Video Store & Talks with Cil­lian Mur­phy About the Films That Influ­enced Him

Watch The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari, the Influ­en­tial Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Hor­ror Film (1920)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Behold the Very First Color Photograph (1861): Taken by Scottish Physicist & Poet James Clerk Maxwell

in Photography | August 13th, 2025

Since its ancient ori­gins as the cam­era obscu­ra, the pho­to­graph­ic cam­era has always mim­ic­ked the human eye, allow­ing light to enter an aper­ture, then pro­ject­ing an image upside down. Renais­sance artists relied on the cam­era obscu­ra to sharp­en their own visu­al per­spec­tives. But it wasn’t until photography—the abil­i­ty to repro­duce the obscu­ra’s images—that the rudi­men­ta­ry arti­fi­cial eye began evolv­ing the same com­plex struc­tures we rely on for our own visu­al acu­ity: lens­es for sharp­ness, vari­able aper­tures, shut­ter speeds, focus con­trols…. Only when it began to seem that pho­tog­ra­phy might vie with the oth­er fine arts did the devel­op­ment of cam­era tech­nol­o­gy take off. And it moved quick­ly.

Between the time of the first pho­to­graph in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce and 1861, pho­tog­ra­phy had advanced suf­fi­cient­ly that physi­cist James Clerk Maxwell—known for his “Maxwell’s Demon” thought experiment—produced the first col­or pho­to­graph that did not imme­di­ate­ly fade or require hand paint­ing (above).

The Scot­tish sci­en­tist chose to take a pic­ture of a tar­tan rib­bon, “cre­at­ed,” writes Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, “by pho­tograph­ing it three times through red, blue, and yel­low fil­ters, then recom­bin­ing the images into one col­or com­pos­ite.” Maxwell’s three-col­or method was intend­ed to mim­ic the way the eye process­es col­or, based on the­o­ries he had elab­o­rat­ed in an 1855 paper.


Maxwell’s many oth­er accom­plish­ments tend to over­shad­ow his col­or pho­tog­ra­phy (and his poet­ry!). Nonethe­less, the poly­math thinker ush­ered in a rev­o­lu­tion in pho­to­graph­ic repro­duc­tion, almost as an aside. “It’s easy to for­get,“ writes BBC pic­ture edi­tor, Phil Coomes, “that not long ago news agen­cies were trans­mit­ting their wire pho­tographs as colour sep­a­ra­tions, usu­al­ly cyan, magen­ta, and yellow—a process that relied on Clerk Maxwell’s dis­cov­ery. Indeed, even the lat­est dig­i­tal cam­era relies on the sep­a­ra­tion method to cap­ture light.” And yet, com­pared to the usu­al speed of pho­to­graph­ic advance­ment, the process took some time to ful­ly refine.

Maxwell cre­at­ed the image with the help of pho­tog­ra­ph­er Thomas Sut­ton, inven­tor of the sin­gle lens reflex cam­era, but his inter­est lay prin­ci­pal­ly in its demon­stra­tion of his col­or the­o­ry, not its appli­ca­tion to pho­tog­ra­phy in gen­er­al. Six­teen years lat­er, the repro­duc­tion of col­or had not advanced sig­nif­i­cant­ly, though a sub­trac­tive method allowed more sub­tle­ty of light and shade, as you can see in the 1877 exam­ple above by Louis Ducos du Hau­ron. Even so, these nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry images still can­not com­pete for vibran­cy and life­like­ness with hand-col­ored pho­tos from the peri­od. Despite appear­ing arti­fi­cial, hand-tint­ed images like these of 1860s Samu­rai Japan brought a star­tling imme­di­a­cy to their sub­jects in a way that ear­ly col­or pho­tog­ra­phy did not.


It wasn’t until the ear­ly 20th century—with the devel­op­ment of col­or process­es by Gabriel Lipp­man and the Sanger Shep­herd company—that col­or came into its own. Leo Tol­stoy appeared ear­ly in the cen­tu­ry in bril­liant full col­or pho­tos. Paris came alive in col­or images dur­ing WWI. And Sarah Angeli­na Acland, a pio­neer­ing Eng­lish pho­tog­ra­ph­er, took the image above in 1900 using the Sanger Shep­herd method. That process—patented, mar­ket­ed, and sold—thoroughly improved upon Maxwell’s results, but its basic oper­a­tion was near­ly the same: three images, red, green, and blue, com­bined into one.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

Hand-Col­ored 1860s Pho­tographs Reveal the Last Days of Samu­rai Japan

The First Col­or Por­trait of Leo Tol­stoy, and Oth­er Amaz­ing Col­or Pho­tos of Czarist Rus­sia (1908)

Venice in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images 125 Years Ago: The Rial­to Bridge, St. Mark’s Basil­i­ca, Doge’s Palace & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Only Time Prince & Miles Davis Jammed Together Onstage: Watch the New Year’s Eve, 1987 Concert

in Music, Uncategorized | August 12th, 2025

A too-pre­cious genre of inter­net meme depicts depart­ed pub­lic fig­ures who did not know each oth­er in life meet­ing in heav­en with hugs, high-fives, and winc­ing­ly earnest exchanges. These sen­ti­men­tal vignettes are almost too easy to par­o­dy, a kitschy ver­sion of the “what if” game, as in: what if two cre­ative genius­es could col­lab­o­rate in ways they nev­er did before they died?

What if John Lennon had formed a band with Eric Clap­ton—as Lennon him­self had once pro­posed? Or what if a Jimi Hendrix/Miles Davis col­lab­o­ra­tion had come off, as Hen­drix envi­sioned the year before his death? More than just fan­ta­sy base­ball, the exer­cise lets us spec­u­late about how musi­cians who influ­enced each oth­er might evolve if giv­en the chance to jam indef­i­nite­ly.

When it comes to Miles, there are few who haven’t been influ­enced by the jazz great, whether they know it or not. Prince Rogers Nel­son knew it well. The son of a jazz pianist, Prince grew up with Miles’ music. Although he “grav­i­tat­ed to the worlds of rock, pop, and R&B,” writes pianist Ron Dro­tos, Prince “seems to have seen jazz as a way to express him­self in a broad­er way than he could through more com­mer­cial styles alone.”

Prince was so inter­est­ed in explor­ing jazz—and Davis’ par­tic­u­lar form of jazz—in the 80s that he formed a band anony­mous­ly, called Mad­house (actu­al­ly just him and horn play­er Eric Leeds), and released two albums of fusion instru­men­tals. The influ­ence went both ways. “Miles con­sid­ered Prince to have the poten­tial to become anoth­er Duke Elling­ton and even mod­eled his own 1980s music part­ly on Prince’s style,” with 1986’s Tutu stand­ing out as an exam­ple. What if the two musi­cians had worked togeth­er? Can you imag­ine it?

They did not—to our knowl­edge, although Prince’s vault is vast—collaborate on an album, but they did cre­ate one stu­dio track togeth­er, “Can I Play With U?” And the two vir­tu­oso com­posers and musi­cians jammed togeth­er onstage, once, at Pais­ley Park, on New Year’s Eve, 1987. The con­cert was a ben­e­fit for the Min­neso­ta Coali­tion for the Home­less and the last time Prince per­formed the Sign O’ the Times stage show. At the tail end of the con­cert, Davis steps onstage for “an ice-cold appear­ance,” Okay­play­er notes. “As a com­pan­ion to the release of a deluxe edi­tion” of the album, “the late icon’s estate has relin­quished the full two-hour-plus set.”

Watch the con­cert at the top (trust me, don’t just skip ahead to see Davis at 1:43:50). Just above, you can see an hour­long “pre-show” taped with Maya Rudolph, “life­long Prince devo­tee,” Emmy-win­ning come­di­an, and daugh­ter of Min­nie Riper­ton. Oth­er guests include Prince’s long­time side­man and col­lab­o­ra­tor on his jazz project, Eric Leeds. “If you’re here, then you’re cool, like me,” Rudolph jokes, “and you know a lot about Prince.” Or maybe you don’t. Let Rudolph and her guests fill you in, and imag­ine Prince and Davis mak­ing celes­tial jazz-funk for­ev­er, between high-fives, in the Great Beyond.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1969 Telegram, Jimi Hen­drix Invites Paul McCart­ney to Join a Super Group with Miles Davis

John Lennon Writes Eric Clap­ton an 8‑Page Let­ter Ask­ing Him to Join the Plas­tic Ono Band for a World Tour on a Cruise Ship

When Miles Davis Dis­cov­ered and Then Chan­neled the Musi­cal Spir­it of Jimi Hen­drix

The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grate­ful Dead (1970)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How Ancient Greek Technology Was Used to Sculpt Mount Rushmore

in History, Technology | August 12th, 2025

Design­ing their new repub­lic, the Found­ing Fathers of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca looked back to ref­er­ence points in clas­si­cal antiq­ui­ty. That instinct con­tin­ued to shape Amer­i­can endeav­ors long there­after, and not just polit­i­cal ones. Take the exam­ple of Mount Rush­more, one of the coun­try’s most pop­u­lar tourist attrac­tions. Orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived in the ear­ly nine­teen-twen­ties as a moun­tain sculp­ture of Amer­i­ca’s wild-west heroes, a means of rais­ing the sta­tus of the fledg­ling state of South Dako­ta, it was soon changed into a stone trib­ute to four pres­i­dents: Found­ing Fathers George Wash­ing­ton and Thomas Jef­fer­son as well as Abra­ham Lin­coln and Theodore Roo­sevelt.

Mount Rush­more’s sculp­tor Gut­zon Bor­glum sug­gest­ed the switch from region­al fig­ures to nation­al ones, and it would­n’t be the last good idea he would bring to the table. As explained in the Pri­mal Space video above, he also fig­ured out how to repli­cate his ini­tial sculp­ture of the four pres­i­dents, made at one-twelfth-scale, on a 500-foot-tall cliff edge.

Build­ing all the nec­es­sary infra­struc­ture on and around the moun­tain con­sti­tut­ed a major project in and of itself. But when the work­ers got into their har­ness­es, how would they know where to direct their jack­ham­mers into the rock? To guide them, Bor­glum adapt­ed a mechan­i­cal tech­nique used by ancient Greeks to copy stat­ues, a “point­ing machine” that could “mea­sure spe­cif­ic points on a sculp­ture rel­a­tive to a ref­er­ence point,” mak­ing a three-dimen­sion­al shape trans­fer­able from one sculp­ture to anoth­er.

Bor­glum designed a large-scale point­ing machine that could be installed atop the moun­tain and posi­tioned to show work­ers where and how deep to drill. Though the sys­tem worked well, the team could only make progress so fast: after four­teen years, Mount Rush­more remained incom­plete when Bor­glum’s death and World War II put a stop to it alto­geth­er. Yet enough had been fin­ished to give it the icon­ic appear­ance that has made it rec­og­niz­able the world over, if not always by name. When I recent­ly gave a talk about Amer­i­can his­to­ry to some young stu­dents in South Korea, where I live, one of them iden­ti­fied a pho­to of Mount Rush­more as Mount Olym­pus — and, in a civ­i­liza­tion­al sense, maybe she was on to some­thing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold Ancient Egypt­ian, Greek & Roman Sculp­tures in Their Orig­i­nal Col­or

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Restores the Orig­i­nal Col­ors to Ancient Stat­ues

How Ancient Greek Stat­ues Real­ly Looked: Research Reveals Their Bold, Bright Col­ors and Pat­terns

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

How Mon­u­ment Val­ley Became the Most Icon­ic Land­scape of the Amer­i­can West

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Why Ancient Romans Paid a Fortune for the Color Purple — More Than Even Silver

in Fashion, History | August 11th, 2025

Pur­ple may not be one of the most pop­u­lar col­ors in the appar­el of our age, but if you want it — as cer­tain cul­tur­al fig­ures have amply demon­strat­ed — you can get as much of it as you like, even if you don’t belong to the aris­toc­ra­cy. That was­n’t the case in antiq­ui­ty, as explained by ancient-his­to­ry YouTu­ber Gar­rett Ryan in the new video from his chan­nel Told in Stone above. Back then, long before the inven­tion of syn­thet­ic dyes, human­i­ty had to get all its col­ors from nature, and some of those nat­ur­al sources were more abun­dant and acces­si­ble than oth­ers. To pro­duce splen­did “Tyr­i­an pur­ple” required the mucus of sea snails, and not just any sea snails: only three species, col­lec­tive­ly referred to as murex, would do.

This par­tic­u­lar pur­ple, as Ryan explains, “was vir­tu­al­ly immune to wash­ing and weath­er­ing,” unlike the veg­etable dyes com­mon­ly used in antiq­ui­ty, and per­haps that strength inspired the leg­end that it was dis­cov­ered by Her­cules him­self.

Though its recipe has nev­er quite been repli­cat­ed in moder­ni­ty, it seems to have required a near­ly Her­culean labor to exe­cute, with each batch of ten thou­sand snails pro­duc­ing a sin­gle gram of dye. Even ancient Roman sen­a­tors got just one pur­ple stripe each on their togas; full pur­ple was reserved for tri­umph­ing gen­er­als and emper­ors. In some ages, under emper­ors like Nero, pur­ple — at least in its most lux­u­ri­ant shades — was for­bid­den to the com­mon peo­ple.

Not that most of them could have afford­ed it any­way, in Rome or oth­er ancient civ­i­liza­tions. “In clas­si­cal Athens, a pur­ple cloak cost three minas, or 300 drach­mas, when a fam­i­ly of four could live com­fort­ably for a year on 200,” Ryan explains. “The finest pur­ple cloth was worth its weight in sil­ver, and an espe­cial­ly rich gar­ment could cost two tal­ents: 12,000 drach­mas.” Dur­ing the reign of Augus­tus, when impe­r­i­al legionar­ies earned 900 ses­ter­tii a year, “a cloak of sec­ond-rate pur­ple” might sell for 10,000. Cal­cu­lat­ing from Dio­cle­tian’s Price Edict, you could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly trade a few pounds of pur­ple silk for 75,000 pints of beer, 7,500 “suc­cu­lent sow udders,” 750 pheas­ants, “a sin­gle first-class male lion,” and 150 law­suits: the mak­ings of quite a high time in Ancient Rome.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Ancient Greeks & Romans Made Beau­ti­ful Pur­ple Dye from Snail Glands

Behold Ancient Egypt­ian, Greek & Roman Sculp­tures in Their Orig­i­nal Col­or

Dis­cov­er Harvard’s Col­lec­tion of 2,500 Pig­ments: Pre­serv­ing the World’s Rare, Won­der­ful Col­ors

Why Most Ancient Civ­i­liza­tions Had No Word for the Col­or Blue

Prince Gets an Offi­cial Pur­ple Pan­tone Col­or

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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David Lynch’s Weird Espresso Maker Gets Taken for a Test Drive

in Film, Food & Drink | August 11th, 2025

David Lynch loved his cof­fee. For decades, the film­mak­er let cof­fee fuel his cre­ativ­i­ty, drink­ing five, six, even sev­en cups per day at Bob’s Big Boy. Famous­ly, Lynch cel­e­brat­ed cof­fee in Twin Peaks (remem­ber the line, “That’s a damn fine cup of cof­fee!”), and lat­er direct­ed a whole mini-sea­son of Twin Peaks in the form of Japan­ese cof­fee com­mer­cials. Then, in 2006, the direc­tor launched his own line of organ­ic cof­fee, sold at Whole Foods.

When the film­mak­er died this past Jan­u­ary, he left behind no short­age of cof­fee paraphernalia—ranging from a high-end La Mar­zoc­co espres­so machine to some run-of-the-mill devices. Take, for exam­ple, a fair­ly ordi­nary “Mr. Cof­fee” cof­fee mak­er that sold at auc­tion for $4,550. Or a 1970s elec­tric espres­so mak­er made of met­al and orange plas­tic. Above, the cof­fee con­nois­seur James Hoff­mann takes the orange machine for a test dri­ve. (He paid near­ly $2,000 for it, after all.) As for the ver­dict — no spoil­ers here. You’ll have to see for your­self.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

When David Lynch Direct­ed a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

How to Make Cof­fee in the Bialet­ti Moka Pot: The “Ulti­mate Techique”

The Birth of Espres­so: How the Cof­fee Shots The Fuel Our Mod­ern Life Were Invent­ed

An Espres­so Mak­er Made in Le Corbusier’s Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­tur­al Style: Raw Con­crete on the Out­side, High-End Parts on the Inside

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One-in-70-Trillion: An Evolutionary Biologist Explains the Mind-Bending Probability of Our Existence

in Biology, Science | August 8th, 2025

At a 1998 con­fer­ence on tech­nol­o­gy and life, The Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy author Dou­glas Adams once pro­posed the notion of a sen­tient pud­dle. Imag­ine it “wak­ing up one morn­ing and think­ing, ‘This is an inter­est­ing world I find myself in — an inter­est­ing hole I find myself in — fits me rather neat­ly, does­n’t it? In fact, it fits me stag­ger­ing­ly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ ” No mat­ter how much intel­li­gence it may some­how have attained, this pud­dle does­n’t real­ize that its shape was dic­tat­ed by its envi­ron­ment, not the oth­er way around. Nor does it seem to real­ize on just how many fac­tors its very exis­tence is con­tin­gent; to its mind, this is a pud­dle’s world, and the rest of us are just liv­ing in it.

Of course, the rest of us are in just the same sit­u­a­tion. In the 70-minute Big Think video above, evo­lu­tion­ary devel­op­men­tal biol­o­gist Sean B. Car­roll puts our pres­ence on Earth in per­spec­tive, begin­ning with the var­i­ous fac­tors that hap­pened to con­verge to make com­plex life pos­si­ble on this plan­et at all. “A huge num­ber of things had to go right for our species to exist, and for each of us indi­vid­u­al­ly to exist,” he says, and that’s true on “the cos­mo­log­i­cal scale, the geo­log­i­cal scale, and the bio­log­i­cal scale.”

One impor­tant event is the aster­oid impact that “reset” life on Earth 66 mil­lion years ago, which trig­gered a grad­ual cool­ing of the plan­et, and anoth­er was the tec­ton­ic move­ment that pushed togeth­er what we now know as Asia and the Indi­an sub­con­ti­nent. A result of these and oth­er unlike­ly occur­rences was the “bios­phere” in which we and all oth­er extant species live today.

What about you and me in par­tic­u­lar? Nei­ther of us, as Car­roll tells it here and in his book A Series of For­tu­nate Events: Chance and the Mak­ing of the Plan­et, Life, and You, should feel that our place was guar­an­teed. In human repro­duc­tion, when two par­ents get togeth­er and “that one lucky sperm makes it and com­bines with that one egg at that moment, that’s about a one-in-70-tril­lion event, genet­i­cal­ly speak­ing.” This can be dif­fi­cult to inter­nal­ize, since our own exis­tence is all we’ve ever known, in the man­ner of Adams’ sen­tient pud­dle. Even “as the sun ris­es in the sky and the air heats up and as, grad­u­al­ly, the pud­dle gets small­er and small­er,” it con­tin­ues “fran­ti­cal­ly hang­ing on to the notion that every­thing’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it.” There’s a les­son for human­i­ty in that sto­ry, and one that has­n’t become any less urgent in the past 27 years.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er “Jour­ney of the Uni­verse,” a Mul­ti­me­dia Project That Explores Humanity’s Place in the Epic His­to­ry of the Cos­mos

The His­to­ry of the Earth (All 4.5 Bil­lion Years) in 1 Hour: A Mil­lion Years Cov­ered Every Sec­ond

Big His­to­ry: David Chris­t­ian Cov­ers 13.7 Bil­lion Years of His­to­ry in 18 Min­utes

An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Com­man­der Chris Had­field: The Viral Book Trail­er

Who’s Out There?: Orson Welles Nar­rates a Doc­u­men­tary Ask­ing Whether There’s Extrater­res­tri­al Life in the Uni­verse (1975)

Carl Sagan Presents a Mini-Course on Earth, Mars & What’s Beyond Our Solar Sys­tem: For Kids and Adults (1977)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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