Rework: Beck and Others Remix the Music of Philip Glass for the Iconic Composer’s 75th Birthday

Half a century of music innovation, reimagined.

As he approached his 75th birthday, beloved avant-garde composer Philip Glass, a champion of transformation as creative authorship, reached out to Beck and asked him to enlist some of his favorite contemporary musicians in remixing Glass’s most iconic pieces. The result, out today, is Rework: Philip Glass Remixed — a spellbinding two-disc collection curated by Beck and featuring remixes by a dozen celebrated artists, including Amon Tobin (“Warda’s Whorehouse Inside Out Version”), Tyondai Braxton (“Rubric”), Memory Tapes (“Floe ’87”), and Beck himself (“NYC: 73-78″).

My indisputable favorites: Johann Johannsson’s remix of “Protest” and Peter Broderick’s “Island”.

Beck has kindly offered up his contribution to the album, a 20-minute masterwork woven of snippets from more than 20 Glass tracks, on SoundCloud:

Rework comes out on vinyl next month. You can hear the entire album on NPR’s First Listen.

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The Science of Why We Blush, Animated

What adrenaline-responsive blood vessels have to do with the social signaling of remorse.

Earlier this month, The Where, the Why, and the How, that wonderful illustrated compendium of scientific mysteries, shed light on the science of why we blush. Just a couple of days later, the creative duo behind AsapSCIENCE — who have previously illuminated such enigmas as the science of lucid dreaming, how music enchants the brain, the neurobiology of orgasms, and the science of procrastination — brought their signature style of sketchnote science storytelling to the same question. Blushing, in fact, has perplexed scientists since Charles Darwin, who famously studied human emotional expressions and called blushing “the most peculiar and most human of all expressions,” and theories as to its exact evolutionary purpose remain unreconciled.

For more on the science behind the body’s peculiar involuntary conducts, see Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond.

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Happy Birthday, Chrysler Building Spire: The Story of an Epic Architectural Rivalry

How an architect’s private rivalry resulted in one of New York City’s most iconic public images.

The story of New York’s iconic Chrysler Building is the story of one of history’s greatest, most ruthless architectural rivalries — one ultimately resolved when the building’s famous spear was surreptitiously erected to claim victory on October 16, 1929. This excerpt from the PBS documentary New York tells the riveting tale of the epic one-upmanship that precipitated the now-legendary structure:

In the spring of 1929, the race into the skies reached fever pitch when the automobile magnate Walter Chrysler unveiled plans for a massive new skyscraper on the corner of 42nd street and Lexington Avenue, with instruction to the architect, William van Alen, to make it the tallest in the world. Van Alen had scarcely broken ground when his one-time partner and now bitter enemy, H. Craig Severance, set to work on a rival structure eighty block to the south, for the Bank of Manhattan Company on Wall Street, and the race was on. Month after month, the two builders vied for preeminence, each altering his plans again and again in mid-construction to stay ahead of the other. On clear days, workers in each of the two tall towers could track the progress of their rivals four miles away.

[…]

On October 16, 1929, the 185-foot-long spire, assembled in secret in the building’s tower, emerged from its chrome cocoon and was bolted triumphantly into place. The gleaming silvery spike raised the Chrysler Building’s overall height to 1,048 feet, 121 feet taller than its downtown rival.

The Chrysler Building in 1932

Height comparison of buildings in New York City

Images via Wikimedia Commons

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The Surprising Science of Why It’s Dark at Night, Animated

The glowing edge of space, or how the expansion of the universe is affecting the visible spectrum.

We’ve already seen how mankind conquered the night, but why is the sky dark after nightfall in the first place? The real reason, like most of science, is far less obvious than it seems, and far more expansive. Count on the fine folks of MinutePhysics — who have previously explained why the color pink doesn’t exist and why the past is different from the future — and their signature hand-drawn animation to illuminate the answer. And if Richard Feynman didn’t give you enough pause in demonstrating that the fire in your fireplace is actually the light and heat of the sun, how about knowing that the glow of the sky you see today isn’t starlight but leftover light from the Big Bang? Now that’s a moment of cosmic awe.

All of our evidence seems to indicate that space has no edge, but the universe itself does — not a spatial edge, but a temporal one.

For a less scientific but no less delightful take on the subject, see Edward Gorey’s characteristically irreverent and altogether fantastic Why We Have Day and Night.

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