Josh Jones

Experienced digital content strategist and editor

Open Culture •

Albert Einstein Tells His Son That the Key to Learning & Happiness Is Losing Yourself in Creativity (or “Finding Flow”)

As one par­tic­u­lar­ly astute observ­er of human emo­tions might put it, it is a truth uni­ver­sal­ly acknowl­edged that we can’t all be Albert Ein­stein. In fact, none of us can. That unique expe­ri­ence was denied even to Einstein’s son Hans Albert, though he did go on to his own dis­tin­guished career as an engi­neer and pro­fes­sor of hydraulics.
Open Culture •

How the World’s First Anti-Vax Movement Started with the First Vaccine for Smallpox in 1796, and Spread Fears of People Getting Turned into Half-Cow Babies

For well over a cen­tu­ry peo­ple have queued up to get vac­ci­nat­ed against polio, small­pox, measles, mumps, rubel­la, the flu or oth­er epi­dem­ic dis­eases. And they have done so because they were man­dat­ed by schools, work­places, armed forces, and oth­er insti­tu­tions com­mit­ted to using sci­ence to fight dis­ease.
Open Culture •

A Creative Animation Documents What Happened When a 1970s Self-Help Seminar Turned Into a Nightmare (NSFW)

Corporate lead­er­ship train­ings and self-help sem­i­nars can often serve to break peo­ple down rather than build them up. The cult-like men­tal­i­ty one finds in such envi­rons should not sur­prise us: 1 in 5 busi­ness lead­ers have “psy­cho­path­ic ten­den­cies”; many self-help gurus actu­al­ly do become — or start out as — nar­cis­sis­tic cult lead­ers.
Open Culture •

Benedict Cumberbatch Reads Nick Cave’s Beautiful Letter About Grief

We would rather not grieve. Because we avoid it, death can leave us numb, and we may not know how to talk about it with­out turn­ing loss into a les­son. “Even when it’s expect­ed, death or loss still comes as a sur­prise,” writes psy­chother­a­pist Megan Devine in her book on griev­ing, It’s OK That You’re Not OK. And in grief, it can so hap­pen that “oth­er­wise intel­li­gent peo­ple have start­ed spout­ing slo­gans and plat­i­tudes, try­ing to cheer you up. Try­ing to take away your pain.”
Open Culture •

How Walking Fosters Creativity: Stanford Researchers Confirm What Philosophers and Writers Have Always Known

A cer­tain Zen proverb goes some­thing like this: “A five year old can under­stand it, but an 80 year old can­not do it.” The sub­ject of this rid­dle-like say­ing has been described as being absorbed in the moment, free from rou­tine men­tal habits. In many East­ern med­i­ta­tive tra­di­tions, one can achieve such a state by walk­ing just as well as by sit­ting still—and many a poet and teacher has pre­ferred the ambu­la­to­ry method.
Open Culture •

The Neuroscience & Psychology of Procrastination, and How to Overcome It

Pro­cras­ti­na­tion is a skill, an art, a slight-of-hand tech­nique. I’m pro­cras­ti­nat­ing right now, but you’d nev­er know it. How many tabs do I have open in my mul­ti­ple brows­er win­dows? Pick a num­ber, any num­ber. How many tasks have I put off today? How many dreams have I deferred? I’ll nev­er tell. The unskilled pro­cras­ti­na­tors stick out, they’re easy to spot. They talk a lot about what they’re not doing.
Open Culture •

Behold All 42 Maps from Jules Verne’s Extraordinary Voyages, the Author’s 54-Volume Collection of “Geographical Fictions”

Jules Verne’s tales of adventure take his characters around the world, through the deepest seas, even into the center of the Earth—on journeys, that is, difficult or impossible in the 19th century. Verne himself, however, spent most his life in France, writing of places he had not seen. In one apocryphal story, the young Jules Verne is caught trying to sneak aboard a ship bound for the Indies and promises his father he will henceforth travel “only in his imagination.”
Open Culture •

How Information Overload Robs Us of Our Creativity: What the Scientific Research Shows

Everyone used to read Samuel Johnson. Now it seems hardly anyone does. That’s a shame. Johnson understood the human mind, its sadly amusing frailties and its double-blind alleys. He understood the nature of that mysterious act we casually refer to as “creativity." It is not the kind of thing one lucks into or masters after a seminar or lecture series. It requires discipline and a mind free of distraction.
Flashbak •

Candid Photos from the Set of 1961's The Misfits: John Huston's Tragic Film of "Bleak Perfection" Starring Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable and Written by Arthur Miller

There are films that are legendary for their greatness; films that are legendary for tragic events outside the frame—sad facts we read about with prurient interest decades later; and films that are, somehow, despite all odds, both great and grimly tragic at the same time. John Huston’s 1961 The Misfits, written by Arthur Miller and starring his soon-to-be ex-wife Marilyn Monroe, must top the last list in most critics’ estimation.
Open Culture •

The Archive of Healing Is Now Online: UCLA’s Digital Database Provides Access to Thousands of Traditional & Alternative Healing Methods

Folk medicine is, or should be, antithetical to capitalism, meaning it should not be possible to trademark, copyright, or otherwise own and sell plants and natural remedies to which everyone has access. The entire reason such practices developed over the course of millennia was to help communities of close affiliation survive and thrive, not to foster market competition between companies and individuals. The impulse to profit from suffering has distorted what we think of as healing, such that a
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