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Open Culture
Behold the Codex Gigas (aka “Devil’s Bible”), the Largest Medieval Manuscript in the World Bargain with the devil and you may wind up with a golden fiddle, supernatural guitar-playing...
8 months ago
96

Behold the Codex Gigas (aka “Devil’s Bible”), the Largest Medieval Manuscript in the World

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8 months ago
Bargain with the devil and you may wind up with a golden fiddle, supernatural guitar-playing ability, or a room full of gleaming alchemized straw. Whoops, we misattributed that last one. It’s actually Rumpelstiltskin’s doing, but the by-morning-or-else deadline that drives the...
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Open Culture
Binge-Watch Classic Television Programs Free: The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Lone Ranger, Dragnet, That... Earlier this week, we featured the 99-year-old Dick Van Dyke’s performance in Coldplay’s new music...
2 months ago
94

Binge-Watch Classic Television Programs Free: The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Lone Ranger, Dragnet, That Girl & More

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2 months ago
Earlier this week, we featured the 99-year-old Dick Van Dyke’s performance in Coldplay’s new music video, full of visual references to the sitcom that made him a household name in the early nineteen-sixties. And a household name he remains these six decades later, though one does...
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Open Culture
RIP David Sanborn: See Him Play Alongside Miles Davis, Randy Newman, Sun Ra, Leonard Cohen and... It’s late in the evening of Saturday, October 28th, 1989. You flip on the television and the...
9 months ago
87

RIP David Sanborn: See Him Play Alongside Miles Davis, Randy Newman, Sun Ra, Leonard Cohen and Others on His TV Show Night Music

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9 months ago
It’s late in the evening of Saturday, October 28th, 1989. You flip on the television and the saxophonist David Sanborn appears onscreen, instrument in hand, introducing the eclectic blues icon Taj Mahal, who in turn declares his intent to play a number with “rural humor” and...
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Open Culture
Francis Ford Coppola Picks His Favorite Criterion Movies & Gives Advice to Filmmakers Upon stepping into the hallowed Criterion Closet, stocked with hundreds of that cinephile video...
a month ago
86

Francis Ford Coppola Picks His Favorite Criterion Movies & Gives Advice to Filmmakers

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a month ago
Upon stepping into the hallowed Criterion Closet, stocked with hundreds of that cinephile video label’s finest releases, Francis Ford Coppola speaks of a director who “believed in a film he wanted to make, and used his entire fortune, because the financing system of the time...
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Open Culture
The New York Times Presents the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, Selected by 503 Novelists, Poets... For longtime readers of American book journalism, scrolling through the New York Times Book Review’s...
a month ago
85

The New York Times Presents the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, Selected by 503 Novelists, Poets & Critics

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a month ago
For longtime readers of American book journalism, scrolling through the New York Times Book Review’s just-published list of the 100 best books of the twenty-first century will summon dim memories of many a once-unignorable critical fuss. At one time or another over the past 25...
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Open Culture
Read the Uncompromising Letter That Steve Albini (RIP) Wrote to Nirvana Before Producing In Utero... Today, Steve Albini, the musician and producer of important albums by Nirvana, PJ Harvey, the Pixies...
9 months ago
83

Read the Uncompromising Letter That Steve Albini (RIP) Wrote to Nirvana Before Producing In Utero (1993)

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9 months ago
Today, Steve Albini, the musician and producer of important albums by Nirvana, PJ Harvey, the Pixies and many others, passed away in Chicago, at the all-too-early age of 61. In tribute, we’re bringing you this classic 2013 post from our archive.  Journeyman record producer Steve...
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Open Culture
Jerry Seinfeld Delivers Commencement Address at Duke University: You Will Need Humor to Get Through... This weekend, Jerry Seinfeld gave the commencement speech at Duke University and offered the...
9 months ago
83

Jerry Seinfeld Delivers Commencement Address at Duke University: You Will Need Humor to Get Through the Human Experience

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9 months ago
This weekend, Jerry Seinfeld gave the commencement speech at Duke University and offered the graduates his three keys to life: 1. bust your ass, 2. pay attention, and 3. fall in love. Then, 10 minutes later, he added essentially a fourth key to life: “Do not lose your sense of...
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Open Culture
Hear Leo Tolstoy Read From His Last Major Work in Four Languages, 1909 In years past, we’ve brought you rare recordings of Sigmund Freud and Jorge Luis Borges speaking in...
9 months ago
82

Hear Leo Tolstoy Read From His Last Major Work in Four Languages, 1909

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9 months ago
In years past, we’ve brought you rare recordings of Sigmund Freud and Jorge Luis Borges speaking in English. Today we present a remarkable series of recordings of the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy reading a passage from his book, Wise Thoughts for Every Day, in four...
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Open Culture
When the CIA Studied Psychic Techniques to Alter Human Consciousness & Unlock Time Travel: Discover... By now, it’s widely known that the Central Intelligence Agency ran a decades-long program of...
8 months ago
81

When the CIA Studied Psychic Techniques to Alter Human Consciousness & Unlock Time Travel: Discover “The Gateway Process”

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8 months ago
By now, it’s widely known that the Central Intelligence Agency ran a decades-long program of experiments involving LSD and other psychoactive drugs called MKUltra from the nineteen-fifties to the seventies. As one might suspect, that wasn’t the only research project into the...
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Open Culture
Benedict Cumberbatch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Letter of Advice to People Living in the Year 2088 There was a time when a company like Volkswagen could commission various luminaries to write letters...
a month ago
81

Benedict Cumberbatch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Letter of Advice to People Living in the Year 2088

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a month ago
There was a time when a company like Volkswagen could commission various luminaries to write letters to the future, then publish them in Time magazine as part of an ad campaign. In fact, that time wasn’t so very long ago: it was the year 1988, to be precise, when no less an...
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Open Culture
Philip K. Dick Theorizes The Matrix in 1977, Declares That We Live in “A Computer-Programmed... In 1963, Philip K. Dick won the coveted Hugo Award for his novel The Man in the High Castle, beating...
8 months ago
79

Philip K. Dick Theorizes The Matrix in 1977, Declares That We Live in “A Computer-Programmed Reality”

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8 months ago
In 1963, Philip K. Dick won the coveted Hugo Award for his novel The Man in the High Castle, beating out such sci-fi luminaries as Marion Zimmer Bradley and Arthur C. Clarke. Of the novel, The Guardian writes, “Nothing in the book is as it seems. Most characters are not what they...
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Open Culture
Hunter S. Thompson’s Harrowing, Chemical-Filled Daily Routine E. Jean Carroll’s 1993 memoir of Hunter S. Thompson opens like this: I have heard the biographers of...
9 months ago
79

Hunter S. Thompson’s Harrowing, Chemical-Filled Daily Routine

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9 months ago
E. Jean Carroll’s 1993 memoir of Hunter S. Thompson opens like this: I have heard the biographers of Harry S. Truman, Catherine the Great, etc., etc., say they would give anything if their subjects were alive so they could ask them some questions. I, on the other hand, would give...
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Open Culture
Read J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Letter From Father Christmas” To His Young Children (1925) J.R.R. Tolkien is best known for the sweeping fantasy landscapes of Lord of The Rings and The...
2 months ago
78

Read J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Letter From Father Christmas” To His Young Children (1925)

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2 months ago
J.R.R. Tolkien is best known for the sweeping fantasy landscapes of Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit. Apart from being a celebrated author, the Oxford University professor of Anglo-Saxon was also a devoted father who doted on his children. In 1920, a few short years after Tolkien...
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Open Culture
Explore the Newly-Launched Public Domain Image Archive with 10,000+ Free Historical Images We’ve often featured the work of the Public Domain Review here on Open Culture, and also various...
a month ago
75

Explore the Newly-Launched Public Domain Image Archive with 10,000+ Free Historical Images

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a month ago
We’ve often featured the work of the Public Domain Review here on Open Culture, and also various searchable copyright-free image databases that have arisen over the years. It makes sense that those two worlds would collide, and now they’ve done so in the form of the just-launched...
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Open Culture
The Amazing Engineering of Roman Baths Few depictions of ancient Roman life neglect to reference all the time ancient Romans spent at the...
8 months ago
71

The Amazing Engineering of Roman Baths

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8 months ago
Few depictions of ancient Roman life neglect to reference all the time ancient Romans spent at the baths. One gets the impression that their civilization was obsessed with cleanliness, in contrast to most of the societies found around the world at the time, but that turns out...
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Open Culture
Hear Edgar Allan Poe Stories Read by Iggy Pop, Jeff Buckley, Christopher Walken, Marianne Faithful &... In 1849, a little over 175 years ago, Edgar Allan Poe was found dead in a Baltimore gutter under...
8 months ago
71

Hear Edgar Allan Poe Stories Read by Iggy Pop, Jeff Buckley, Christopher Walken, Marianne Faithful & More

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8 months ago
In 1849, a little over 175 years ago, Edgar Allan Poe was found dead in a Baltimore gutter under mysterious circumstances very likely related to violent election fraud. It was an ignominious end to a life marked by hardship, alcoholism, and loss. After struggling for years as the...
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Open Culture
How Leonardo da Vinci Painted The Last Supper: A Deep Dive Into a Masterpiece When Leonardo da Vinci was 42 years old, he hadn’t yet completed any major publicly viewable work....
2 months ago
71

How Leonardo da Vinci Painted The Last Supper: A Deep Dive Into a Masterpiece

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2 months ago
When Leonardo da Vinci was 42 years old, he hadn’t yet completed any major publicly viewable work. Not that he’d been idle: in that same era, while working for the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, he “developed, organized, and directed productions for festival pageants, triumphal...
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Open Culture
What’s Under London? Discover London’s Forbidden Underworld When the words London and underground come together, the first thing that comes to most of our...
8 months ago
71

What’s Under London? Discover London’s Forbidden Underworld

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8 months ago
When the words London and underground come together, the first thing that comes to most of our minds, naturally, is the London Underground. But though it may enjoy the honorable distinction of the world’s first railway to run below the streets, the stalwart Tube is hardly the...
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Open Culture
99-Year-Old Dick Van Dyke Sings & Dances in a Touching New Coldplay Video, Directed by Spike Jonze There’s one thing right with our world, and it’s Dick Van Dyke. Appearing in a new Coldplay music...
2 months ago
70

99-Year-Old Dick Van Dyke Sings & Dances in a Touching New Coldplay Video, Directed by Spike Jonze

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2 months ago
There’s one thing right with our world, and it’s Dick Van Dyke. Appearing in a new Coldplay music video, Mr. Van Dyke dances barefoot and sings knowingly a little off-key—before reflecting on a century of life on this planet. What is love? Is he afraid of dying? What does luck...
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Open Culture
Aldous Huxley Explains How Man Became “the Victim of His Own Technology” (1961) Just a couple of days ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted out a video promoting, “the new iPad Pro: the...
9 months ago
69

Aldous Huxley Explains How Man Became “the Victim of His Own Technology” (1961)

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9 months ago
Just a couple of days ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted out a video promoting, “the new iPad Pro: the thinnest product we’ve ever created.” The response has been overwhelming, and overwhelmingly negative: for many viewers, the ad’s imagery of a hydraulic press crushing a heap of...
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Open Culture
Keith Moon, Drummer of The Who, Passes Out at 1973 Concert; 19-Year-Old Fan Takes Over In November 1973, Scot Halpin, a 19-year-old kid, scalped tickets to The Who concert in San...
6 months ago
69

Keith Moon, Drummer of The Who, Passes Out at 1973 Concert; 19-Year-Old Fan Takes Over

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6 months ago
In November 1973, Scot Halpin, a 19-year-old kid, scalped tickets to The Who concert in San Francisco, California. Little did he know that he’d wind up playing drums for the band that night — that his name would end up etched in the annals of rock ’n’ roll. The Who came to...
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Open Culture
Google Launches a New Course Called “AI Essentials”: Learn How to Use Generative AI Tools to... This week, Google announced the launch of Google AI Essentials, a new self-paced course designed to...
9 months ago
69

Google Launches a New Course Called “AI Essentials”: Learn How to Use Generative AI Tools to Increase Your Productivity

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9 months ago
This week, Google announced the launch of Google AI Essentials, a new self-paced course designed to help people learn AI skills that can boost their productivity. Taught by Google’s AI experts, and assuming no prior knowledge of programming, the course ventures to show students...
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Open Culture
Ray Bradbury Wrote the First Draft of Fahrenheit 451 on Coin-Operated Typewriters, for a Total of... Image by Alan Light, via Wikimedia Commons It sounds like a third grade math problem: “If Ray...
8 months ago
69

Ray Bradbury Wrote the First Draft of Fahrenheit 451 on Coin-Operated Typewriters, for a Total of $9.80

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8 months ago
Image by Alan Light, via Wikimedia Commons It sounds like a third grade math problem: “If Ray Bradbury wrote the first draft of Fahrenheit 451 (1953) on a coin-operated typewriter that charged 10 cents for every 30 minutes, and he spent a total of $9.80, how many hours did it...
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Open Culture
When Slavoj Žižek and Jordan Peterson Debated Capitalism Versus Marxism Karl Marx was a German philosopher-historian (with a few other pursuits besides) who wrote in...
7 months ago
69

When Slavoj Žižek and Jordan Peterson Debated Capitalism Versus Marxism

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7 months ago
Karl Marx was a German philosopher-historian (with a few other pursuits besides) who wrote in pursuit of an understanding of industrial society as he knew it in the nineteenth century and what its future evolution held in store. There are good reasons to read his work still...
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Open Culture
4 Franz Kafka Animations: Watch Creative Animated Shorts from Poland, Japan, Russia & Canada Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari thought of Kafka as an international writer, in solidarity with...
9 months ago
68

4 Franz Kafka Animations: Watch Creative Animated Shorts from Poland, Japan, Russia & Canada

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9 months ago
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari thought of Kafka as an international writer, in solidarity with minority groups worldwide. Other scholars have characterized his work—and Kafka himself wrote as much—as literature concerned with national identity. Academic debates, however, have...
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Open Culture
What’s Entering the Public Domain in 2025: Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Faulkner’s The Sound and... Each Public Domain Day seems to bring us a richer crop of copyright-liberated books, plays, films,...
a month ago
68

What’s Entering the Public Domain in 2025: Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Early Hitchcock Films, Tintin and Popeye Cartoons & More

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a month ago
Each Public Domain Day seems to bring us a richer crop of copyright-liberated books, plays, films, musical compositions, sound recordings, works of art, and other pieces of intellectual property. This year happens to be an especially notable one for connoisseurs of Belgian...
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Open Culture
When the Grateful Dead Played at the Egyptian Pyramids, in the Shadow of the Sphinx (1978) In September of 1978, the Grateful Dead traveled to Egypt and played three shows at the Great...
7 months ago
68

When the Grateful Dead Played at the Egyptian Pyramids, in the Shadow of the Sphinx (1978)

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7 months ago
In September of 1978, the Grateful Dead traveled to Egypt and played three shows at the Great Pyramid of Giza, with the Great Sphinx looking over their shoulders. It wasn’t the first time a rock band played in an ancient setting. Pink Floyd performed songs in the middle of the...
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Open Culture
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Explained in One of the Earliest Science Films Ever Made (1923) Albert Einstein developed his theory of special relativity in 1905, and then mentally mapped out his...
8 months ago
68

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Explained in One of the Earliest Science Films Ever Made (1923)

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8 months ago
Albert Einstein developed his theory of special relativity in 1905, and then mentally mapped out his theory of general relativity between 1907 and 1915. For years to come, the rest of the world would try to catch up with Einstein, trying to understand the gist, let alone the full...
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Open Culture
How Well Does Medieval Armor Actually Stand Up to Medieval Arrows?: A Historical Re-Creation Lets... The popular image of the medieval suit of armor looks formidable enough that any of us could be...
8 months ago
67

How Well Does Medieval Armor Actually Stand Up to Medieval Arrows?: A Historical Re-Creation Lets You See

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8 months ago
The popular image of the medieval suit of armor looks formidable enough that any of us could be forgiven for assuming that, with its steel-plated protection, we’d emerge from even the most harrowing battle without a scratch. Yet if we really found ourselves transported to, say,...
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Open Culture
Watch an Enthusiast Drive the First Car Ever Made, the 1885 Mercedes Benz In 1885, Karl Benz built what’s now considered the first modern automobile. According to the...
9 months ago
67

Watch an Enthusiast Drive the First Car Ever Made, the 1885 Mercedes Benz

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9 months ago
In 1885, Karl Benz built what’s now considered the first modern automobile. According to the Mercedes Benz website, the car featured a “compact high-speed single-cylinder four-stroke engine installed horizontally at the rear, a tubular steel frame … and three wire-spoked wheels....
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Open Culture
You Can Buy Historic Italian Houses for €1 — But What’s the Catch? From Abruzzo to Vergemoli, small Italian towns and villages have recently been making their historic...
7 months ago
67

You Can Buy Historic Italian Houses for €1 — But What’s the Catch?

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7 months ago
From Abruzzo to Vergemoli, small Italian towns and villages have recently been making their historic homes available for purchase for as low as €1. Given the picturesque nature of many of these places, such offers have proven practically irresistible to foreign buyers who’ve made...
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Open Culture
Medievalist Professor Answers Medieval Questions From Twitter: Why Is It called the “Middle” Ages?,... From Wired comes this: “Professor of English and Medieval Literature Dr. Dorsey Armstrong answers...
8 months ago
67

Medievalist Professor Answers Medieval Questions From Twitter: Why Is It called the “Middle” Ages?, What Did Medieval English Sound Like?, and More

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8 months ago
From Wired comes this: “Professor of English and Medieval Literature Dr. Dorsey Armstrong answers your questions about the Middle Ages from Twitter. Why is it called the “Middle” Ages? [What did medieval English sound like?] What activities did people do for fun? Why were animals...
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Open Culture
9‑Year-Old Edward Hopper Draws a Picture on the Back of His 3rd Grade Report Card In a 2017 press release, the Edward Hopper House announced that it would receive over 1,000...
9 months ago
66

9‑Year-Old Edward Hopper Draws a Picture on the Back of His 3rd Grade Report Card

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9 months ago
In a 2017 press release, the Edward Hopper House announced that it would receive over 1,000 artifacts and memorabilia documenting Edward Hopper’s family life and early years. The collection “consists of juvenilia and other materials from the formative years of Hopper’s life and...
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Open Culture
Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Hamburger Recipe Image via Wikimedia Commons In 2013, the food writer Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan stumbled across an article...
7 months ago
65

Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Hamburger Recipe

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7 months ago
Image via Wikimedia Commons In 2013, the food writer Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan stumbled across an article in the Boston Globe describing a trove of digitized documents from Ernest Hemingway’s home in Cuba that had been recently donated to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and...
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Open Culture
Why Medieval Bologna Was Full of Tall Towers, and What Happened to Them Image by Toni Pecoraro, via Wikimedia Commons Go to practically any major city today, and you’ll...
9 months ago
65

Why Medieval Bologna Was Full of Tall Towers, and What Happened to Them

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9 months ago
Image by Toni Pecoraro, via Wikimedia Commons Go to practically any major city today, and you’ll notice that the buildings in certain areas are much taller than in others. That may sound trivially true, but what’s less obvious is that the height of those buildings tends to...
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Open Culture
The Alphabet Explained: The Origin of Every Letter Think back, if you will, to the climactic scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which take...
6 months ago
64

The Alphabet Explained: The Origin of Every Letter

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6 months ago
Think back, if you will, to the climactic scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which take place in the hidden temple that contains the Holy Grail. His father having been shot by the dastardly Nazi-sympathizing immortality-seeker Walter Donovan, Indy has no choice but to...
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Open Culture
Meet Fanny, the First Female Rock Band to Top the Charts: “They Were Just Colossal and Wonderful,... When the Beatles upended popular music, thousands of wannabe beat groups were born all over the...
9 months ago
64

Meet Fanny, the First Female Rock Band to Top the Charts: “They Were Just Colossal and Wonderful, and Nobody’s Ever Mentioned Them”

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9 months ago
When the Beatles upended popular music, thousands of wannabe beat groups were born all over the world, and many of them–for the first time ever, really–were all-female groups. This Amoeba Records article has a fairly exhaustive list of these girl bands, with names like The...
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Open Culture
RIP Paul Auster: Hear the Master of the Postmodern Page-Turner Discuss How He Became a Writer In the Louisiana Channel interview clip from 2017 above, the late Paul Auster tells the story of how...
9 months ago
64

RIP Paul Auster: Hear the Master of the Postmodern Page-Turner Discuss How He Became a Writer

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9 months ago
In the Louisiana Channel interview clip from 2017 above, the late Paul Auster tells the story of how he became a writer. Its first episode had appeared more than twenty years earlier, in a New Yorker piece titled “Why Write?”: “I was eight years old. At that moment in my life,...
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Open Culture
The First Recording of Allen Ginsberg Reading “Howl” (1956) Image by Michiel Hendryckx, via Wikimedia Commons Occasionally I slip into an ivory tower mentality...
9 months ago
64

The First Recording of Allen Ginsberg Reading “Howl” (1956)

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9 months ago
Image by Michiel Hendryckx, via Wikimedia Commons Occasionally I slip into an ivory tower mentality in which the idea of a banned book seems quaint—associated with silly scandals over the tame sex scenes in James Joyce or D.H. Lawrence. After all, I think, we live in an age when...
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Open Culture
An Architect Breaks Down the 5 Most Common Styles of College Campus Every now and again on social media, the observation circulates that Americans look back so fondly...
6 months ago
64

An Architect Breaks Down the 5 Most Common Styles of College Campus

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6 months ago
Every now and again on social media, the observation circulates that Americans look back so fondly on their college years because never again do they get to live in a well-designed walkable community. The organization of college campuses does much to shape that experience, but so...
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Open Culture
Watch Animations Showing How Humans Migrated Across the World Over the Past 60,000 Years Ex Africa semper aliquid novi. Attributed to various luminaries of antiquity, that saying (the...
9 months ago
63

Watch Animations Showing How Humans Migrated Across the World Over the Past 60,000 Years

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9 months ago
Ex Africa semper aliquid novi. Attributed to various luminaries of antiquity, that saying (the probable inspiration for Isak Dinesen’s poem “Ex Africa,” itself the probable inspiration for her memoir Out of Africa, which in turn was loosely adapted into Sydney Pollack’s...
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Open Culture
Moebius Gives 18 Wisdom-Filled Tips to Aspiring Artists Jean Giraud, aka Moebius, was a comic book artist who combined blinding speed with boundless...
5 months ago
62

Moebius Gives 18 Wisdom-Filled Tips to Aspiring Artists

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5 months ago
Jean Giraud, aka Moebius, was a comic book artist who combined blinding speed with boundless imagination. He shaped the look of Alien, Empire Strikes Back and The Fifth Element. He reimagined the Silver Surfer for Stan Lee. And he is an acknowledged influence on everyone from...
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Open Culture
How the Oldest Company in the World, Japan’s Temple-Builder Kongō Gumi, Has Survived Nearly 1,500... Image from New York Public Library, via Wikimedia Commons If you visit Osaka, you’ll be urged to see...
6 months ago
62

How the Oldest Company in the World, Japan’s Temple-Builder Kongō Gumi, Has Survived Nearly 1,500 Years

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6 months ago
Image from New York Public Library, via Wikimedia Commons If you visit Osaka, you’ll be urged to see two old buildings in particular: Osaka Castle and Shitennō-ji (above), Japan’s first Buddhist temple. In beholding both, you’ll behold the work of construction firm Kongō Gumi...
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Open Culture
Watch Hardware Wars, the Original Star Wars Parody, in HD (1978) This past May, YouTuber Jenny Nicholson set off waves of social-media discourse with “The...
7 months ago
62

Watch Hardware Wars, the Original Star Wars Parody, in HD (1978)

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7 months ago
This past May, YouTuber Jenny Nicholson set off waves of social-media discourse with “The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel,” a four-hour-long video critique of Disney’s hugely expensive, now-shuttered Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser in Orlando, Florida. Having gone...
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Open Culture
When a Drunken Charles Bukowski Walked Off the Prestigious French Talk Show Apostrophes (1978) Charles Bukowski didn’t do TV — or at least he didn’t do American TV. Like a Hollywood movie star...
8 months ago
61

When a Drunken Charles Bukowski Walked Off the Prestigious French Talk Show Apostrophes (1978)

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8 months ago
Charles Bukowski didn’t do TV — or at least he didn’t do American TV. Like a Hollywood movie star shooting a Japanese commercial, he did make an exception for a gig abroad. It happened in 1978, when the poet received an invitation from the popular French literary talk...
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Open Culture
Leonard Bernstein Introduces the Moog Synthesizer to the World in 1969, Playing an Electrified... When Wendy Carlos released Switched-On Bach in 1968, her “greatest hits” compilation of the Baroque...
9 months ago
60

Leonard Bernstein Introduces the Moog Synthesizer to the World in 1969, Playing an Electrified Version of Bach’s “Little Fugue in G”

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9 months ago
When Wendy Carlos released Switched-On Bach in 1968, her “greatest hits” compilation of the Baroque composer’s music, played entirely on the Moog analog synthesizer, the album became an immediate hit with both classical and pop audiences. Not only was it “acclaimed as real music...
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Open Culture
Watch the Opening Credits of an Imaginary 70s Cop Show Starring Samuel Beckett Samuel Beckett: avant-garde dramatist, brooding Nobel Prize winner, poet, and…gritty television...
5 months ago
60

Watch the Opening Credits of an Imaginary 70s Cop Show Starring Samuel Beckett

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5 months ago
Samuel Beckett: avant-garde dramatist, brooding Nobel Prize winner, poet, and…gritty television detective? Sadly, no, but he had the makings of a great one, at least as cut together by playwright Danny Thompson, cofounder of Chicago’s Theater Oobleck. Some 35 years after...
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Open Culture
Compare the “It Ain’t Me Babe” Scene from A Complete Unknown to the Real Bob Dylan & Joan Baez... A Complete Unknown, the new movie about Bob Dylan’s rise in the folk-music scene of the early...
a month ago
60

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

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a month ago
A Complete Unknown, the new movie about Bob Dylan’s rise in the folk-music scene of the early nineteen-sixties and subsequent electrified break with it, has been praised for not taking excessive liberties, at least by the standards of popular music biopics. Its conversion of a...
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Open Culture
Watch The Insects’ Christmas from 1913: A Stop Motion Film Starring a Cast of Dead Bugs Kind Reader, Will you do us the honor of accepting our holiday invitation? Carve five minutes from...
2 months ago
58

Watch The Insects’ Christmas from 1913: A Stop Motion Film Starring a Cast of Dead Bugs

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2 months ago
Kind Reader, Will you do us the honor of accepting our holiday invitation? Carve five minutes from your holiday schedule to spend time celebrating The Insects’ Christmas, above. In addition to offering brief respite from the chaos of consumerism and modern expectations, this...
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Open Culture
The Sinking of the Britannic: An Animated Introduction to the Titanic’s Forgotten Sister Ship We all know about the Titanic. Less often do we hear about the Britannic—the sister passenger liner...
2 months ago
57

The Sinking of the Britannic: An Animated Introduction to the Titanic’s Forgotten Sister Ship

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2 months ago
We all know about the Titanic. Less often do we hear about the Britannic—the sister passenger liner that the British turned into a hospital ship during World War I. Launched in 1914, two years after the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean, the Britannic featured a number of...
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Open Culture
How A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Its Beloved Soundtrack Album, Almost Never Happened A Charlie Brown Christmas uses a cast of amateur child voice actors, deals with the theme of...
a month ago
57

How A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Its Beloved Soundtrack Album, Almost Never Happened

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a month ago
A Charlie Brown Christmas uses a cast of amateur child voice actors, deals with the theme of seasonal depression, and culminates in the recitation of a Bible verse, all to a jazz score. It was not, safe to say, the special that CBS had expected, to say nothing of its sponsor, the...
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Open Culture
Hunter S. Thompson Remembers Jimmy Carter’s Captivating Bob Dylan Speech (1974) 51 years ago, Hunter S. Thompson wrote Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, which “is still...
a month ago
57

Hunter S. Thompson Remembers Jimmy Carter’s Captivating Bob Dylan Speech (1974)

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a month ago
51 years ago, Hunter S. Thompson wrote Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, which “is still considered a kind of bible of political reporting,” noted Matt Taibbi in a 40th anniversary edition of the book. Fear and Loathing ’72 entered the canon of American political...
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Open Culture
Mary Tyler Moore Accidentally Nails a Perfect Pool Shot on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1962) Let’s rewind the videotape and revisit a classic moment in The Dick Van Dyke Show. In the 1962...
2 months ago
55

Mary Tyler Moore Accidentally Nails a Perfect Pool Shot on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1962)

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2 months ago
Let’s rewind the videotape and revisit a classic moment in The Dick Van Dyke Show. In the 1962 episode called “Hustling the Hustler,” Mary Tyler Moore (as Laura Petrie) plays pool and sinks three balls in a single shot. The original plan was to splice in footage of a professional...
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Open Culture
How Medieval Islamic Engineering Brought Water to the Alhambra Between 711 and 1492, much of the Iberian Peninsula, including modern-day Spain, was under Muslim...
2 months ago
55

How Medieval Islamic Engineering Brought Water to the Alhambra

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2 months ago
Between 711 and 1492, much of the Iberian Peninsula, including modern-day Spain, was under Muslim rule. Not that it was easy to hold on to the place for that length of time: after the fall of Toledo in 1085, Al-Andalus, as the territory was called, continued to lose cities over...
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Open Culture
How Keith Jarrett Played on a Broken Piano & Turned a Potentially Disastrous Concert Into the... Nearly fifty years ago, the celebrated young pianist Keith Jarrett arrived in the West German city...
2 months ago
55

How Keith Jarrett Played on a Broken Piano & Turned a Potentially Disastrous Concert Into the Best-Selling Piano Album of All Time (1975)

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2 months ago
Nearly fifty years ago, the celebrated young pianist Keith Jarrett arrived in the West German city of Köln (better known in English as Cologne). Having just come off a 500-mile-long road trip from Switzerland, where he’d played a concert the previous day, he was left with barely...
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Open Culture
Solving a 2,500-Year-Old Puzzle: How a Cambridge Student Cracked an Ancient Sanskrit Code If you find yourself grappling with an intellectual problem that’s gone unsolved for millennia, try...
5 months ago
55

Solving a 2,500-Year-Old Puzzle: How a Cambridge Student Cracked an Ancient Sanskrit Code

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5 months ago
If you find yourself grappling with an intellectual problem that’s gone unsolved for millennia, try taking a few months off and spending them on activities like swimming and meditating. That very strategy worked for a Cambridge PhD student named Rishi Rajpopat, who, after a...
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Open Culture
Carl Jung Offers an Introduction to His Psychological Thought in a 3‑Hour Interview (1957) In the 1950s, it was fashionable to drop Freud’s name — often as not in pseudo-intellectual sex...
6 months ago
54

Carl Jung Offers an Introduction to His Psychological Thought in a 3‑Hour Interview (1957)

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6 months ago
In the 1950s, it was fashionable to drop Freud’s name — often as not in pseudo-intellectual sex jokes. Freud’s preoccupations had as much to do with his fame as the actual practice of psychotherapy, and it was assumed — and still is to a great degree — that Freud had “won” the...
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Open Culture
Stephen Fry Explains Why Artificial Intelligence Has a “70% Risk of Killing Us All” Apart from his comedic, dramatic, and literary endeavors, Stephen Fry is widely known for his avowed...
7 months ago
54

Stephen Fry Explains Why Artificial Intelligence Has a “70% Risk of Killing Us All”

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7 months ago
Apart from his comedic, dramatic, and literary endeavors, Stephen Fry is widely known for his avowed technophilia. He once wrote a column on that theme, “Dork Talk,” for the Guardian, in whose inaugural dispatch he laid out his credentials by claiming to have been the owner of...
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Open Culture
How the 13th-Century Sufi Poet Rumi Became One of the World’s Most Popular Writers The Middle East is hardly the world’s most harmonious region, and it only gets more fractious if you...
8 months ago
54

How the 13th-Century Sufi Poet Rumi Became One of the World’s Most Popular Writers

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8 months ago
The Middle East is hardly the world’s most harmonious region, and it only gets more fractious if you add in South Asia and the Mediterranean. But there’s one thing on which many residents of that wide geographical span can agree: Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī. One might at first...
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Open Culture
Watch a Japanese Artisan Hand-Craft a Cello in 6 Months Cellists unwilling to settle for any but the finest instrument must, sooner or later, make a...
8 months ago
54

Watch a Japanese Artisan Hand-Craft a Cello in 6 Months

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8 months ago
Cellists unwilling to settle for any but the finest instrument must, sooner or later, make a pilgrimage to Cremona — or rather, to the Cremonas. One is, of course, the city in Lombardy that was home to numerous pioneering master luthiers, up to and including Antonio Stradivari....
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Open Culture
Jimi Hendrix Unplugged: Two Great Recordings of Hendrix Playing Acoustic Guitar As a young guitar player, perhaps no one inspired me as much as Jimi Hendrix, though I never dreamed...
7 months ago
54

Jimi Hendrix Unplugged: Two Great Recordings of Hendrix Playing Acoustic Guitar

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7 months ago
As a young guitar player, perhaps no one inspired me as much as Jimi Hendrix, though I never dreamed I’d attain even a fraction of his skill. But what attracted me to him was his near-total lack of formality—he didn’t read music, wasn’t trained in any classical sense, played an...
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Open Culture
Buckminster Fuller’s Map of the World: The Innovation That Revolutionized Map Design (1943) In 2017, we brought you news of a world map purportedly more accurate than any to date, designed by...
6 months ago
54

Buckminster Fuller’s Map of the World: The Innovation That Revolutionized Map Design (1943)

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6 months ago
In 2017, we brought you news of a world map purportedly more accurate than any to date, designed by Japanese architect and artist Hajime Narukawa. The map, called the AuthaGraph, updates a centuries-old method of turning the globe into a flat surface by first converting it to a...
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Open Culture
George Orwell Reviews Mein Kampf: “He Envisages a Horrible Brainless Empire” (1940) Christopher Hitchens once wrote that there were three major issues of the twentieth century —...
6 months ago
53

George Orwell Reviews Mein Kampf: “He Envisages a Horrible Brainless Empire” (1940)

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6 months ago
Christopher Hitchens once wrote that there were three major issues of the twentieth century — imperialism, fascism, and Stalinism — and George Orwell proved to be right about all of them. Orwell displays his remarkable foresight in a fascinating book review, published in March...
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Open Culture
A Close Look at Beowulf-Era Helmets & Swords, Courtesy of the British Museum Even if a student assigned Beowulf is, at first, dismayed by its language, that same student may...
7 months ago
53

A Close Look at Beowulf-Era Helmets & Swords, Courtesy of the British Museum

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7 months ago
Even if a student assigned Beowulf is, at first, dismayed by its language, that same student may well be captivated by its setting. While that mythical but somehow both gloriously and dankly realistic realm of kings and dragons, mead halls and bog monsters may feel familiar to...
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Open Culture
The Original Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland Manuscript, Handwritten & Illustrated By Lewis Carroll... On a summer day in 1862, a tall, stammering Oxford University mathematician named Charles Lutwidge...
7 months ago
53

The Original Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland Manuscript, Handwritten & Illustrated By Lewis Carroll (1864)

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7 months ago
On a summer day in 1862, a tall, stammering Oxford University mathematician named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson took a boat trip up the River Thames, accompanied by a colleague and the three young daughters of university chancellor Henry Liddell. To stave off tedium during the...
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Open Culture
The Engineering of the Strandbeest: How the Magnificent Mechanical Creatures Have Technologically... Life evolves, but machines are invented: this dichotomy hardly conflicts with what most of us have...
2 months ago
53

The Engineering of the Strandbeest: How the Magnificent Mechanical Creatures Have Technologically Evolved

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2 months ago
Life evolves, but machines are invented: this dichotomy hardly conflicts with what most of us have learned about biology and technology. But certain specimens roaming around in the world can blur that line — and in the curious case of the Strandbeesten, they really are roaming...
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Open Culture
Private Snafu: The World War II Propaganda Cartoons Created by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc Private Snafu was the U.S. Army’s worst soldier. He was sloppy, lazy and prone to shooting off his...
4 months ago
53

Private Snafu: The World War II Propaganda Cartoons Created by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

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4 months ago
Private Snafu was the U.S. Army’s worst soldier. He was sloppy, lazy and prone to shooting off his mouth to Nazi agents. And he was hugely popular with his fellow GIs. Private Snafu was, of course, an animated cartoon character designed for the military recruits. He was an...
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Open Culture
Jimi Hendrix Opens for The Monkees on a 1967 Tour; Then Flips Off the Crowd and Quits It’s easy to dismiss The Monkees. Critics and listeners have been doing it since the sixties,...
6 months ago
52

Jimi Hendrix Opens for The Monkees on a 1967 Tour; Then Flips Off the Crowd and Quits

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6 months ago
It’s easy to dismiss The Monkees. Critics and listeners have been doing it since the sixties, although the band has also come in for its share of reappraisals, particularly for their psych-rock album Head. (That’s the soundtrack from the 1968 Jack Nicholson-directed art film of...
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Open Culture
An Illustrator Creates a Kindle for Charles Dickens, Placing 40 Miniature Classics within a Large... For a design class project, Rachel Walsh, a student at Cardiff School of Art and Design, set out to...
2 months ago
52

An Illustrator Creates a Kindle for Charles Dickens, Placing 40 Miniature Classics within a Large Portable Book

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2 months ago
For a design class project, Rachel Walsh, a student at Cardiff School of Art and Design, set out to explain the concept of a Kindle to Charles Dickens. Recognizing that Dickens, a 19th-century author, wouldn’t understand modern terms like ebooks, downloads or the internet, she...
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Open Culture
eanuts Creator Charles Schulz Shares with a 10-Year-Old Kid the True Meaning of Good Citizenship In 1970, when 10-year-old Joel Linton asked Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, “What do you...
4 months ago
52

eanuts Creator Charles Schulz Shares with a 10-Year-Old Kid the True Meaning of Good Citizenship

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4 months ago
In 1970, when 10-year-old Joel Linton asked Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, “What do you think makes a good citizen?” Schulz sent the youngster a short but pithy reply: Dear Joel: I think it is more difficult these days to define what makes a good citizen than it has ever...
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Open Culture
The Illustrated Version of “Alice’s Restaurant”: Watch Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving Counterculture... Alice’s Restaurant. It’s now a Thanksgiving classic, and something of a tradition around...
2 months ago
52

The Illustrated Version of “Alice’s Restaurant”: Watch Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving Counterculture Classic

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2 months ago
Alice’s Restaurant. It’s now a Thanksgiving classic, and something of a tradition around here. Recorded in 1967, the 18+ minute counterculture song recounts Arlo Guthrie’s real encounter with the law, starting on Thanksgiving Day 1965. As the long song unfolds, we hear all about...
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Open Culture
Johnny Cash & The Clash’s Joe Strummer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” (2002) In 1958, Merle Haggard saw Johnny Cash play in San Quentin, and went on to sing honest country songs...
4 months ago
51

Johnny Cash & The Clash’s Joe Strummer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” (2002)

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4 months ago
In 1958, Merle Haggard saw Johnny Cash play in San Quentin, and went on to sing honest country songs for country outlaws. In 1982, future Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello saw Joe Strummer play with The Clash in Chicago and went on to play angry righteous rock for...
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Open Culture
Nick Cave Narrates an Animated Film about the Cat Piano, the Twisted 18th Century Musical Instrument... What do you imagine when you hear the phrase “cat piano”? Some kind of whimsical furry beast with...
6 months ago
51

Nick Cave Narrates an Animated Film about the Cat Piano, the Twisted 18th Century Musical Instrument Designed to Treat Mental Illness

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6 months ago
What do you imagine when you hear the phrase “cat piano”? Some kind of whimsical furry beast with black and white keys for teeth, maybe? A relative of My Neighbor Totoro’s cat bus? Or maybe you picture a piano that contains several caged cats who shriek along an entire scale when...
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Open Culture
The Longest Drivable Distance in the World: Discover the Ultimate Road Trip No matter what country we live in, we’ve all fantasized about taking our own great American road...
5 months ago
51

The Longest Drivable Distance in the World: Discover the Ultimate Road Trip

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5 months ago
No matter what country we live in, we’ve all fantasized about taking our own great American road trip, considering a variety of the infinitely many possible routes. The most obvious would be driving between Los Angeles and New York, a distance of 2,800 miles that would take a bit...
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Open Culture
Revisit Episodes of Liquid Television, MTV’s 90s Showcase of Funny, Irreverent & Bizarre Animation MTV stands for Music Television, and when the network launched in 1981, its almost entirely music...
4 months ago
51

Revisit Episodes of Liquid Television, MTV’s 90s Showcase of Funny, Irreverent & Bizarre Animation

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4 months ago
MTV stands for Music Television, and when the network launched in 1981, its almost entirely music video-based programming was true to its name. Within a decade, however, its mandate had widened to the point that it had become the natural home for practically any exciting...
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Open Culture
Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Special Friendship: He Treated Me Not as a Freak, But as a Person... Sometimes it can seem as though the more we think we know a historical figure, the less we actually...
6 months ago
51

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Special Friendship: He Treated Me Not as a Freak, But as a Person Dealing with Great Difficulties

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6 months ago
Sometimes it can seem as though the more we think we know a historical figure, the less we actually do. Helen Keller? We’ve all seen (or think we’ve seen) some version of The Miracle Worker, right?—even if we haven’t actually read Keller’s autobiography. And Mark Twain? He can...
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Open Culture
Watch Tom Waits For No One, the Pioneering Animated Music Video from 1979 Tom Waits For No One, above, is surely the only film in history to have won an Oscar for Scientific...
7 months ago
51

Watch Tom Waits For No One, the Pioneering Animated Music Video from 1979

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7 months ago
Tom Waits For No One, above, is surely the only film in history to have won an Oscar for Scientific and Technical Achievement for its creator and a first place award at the Hollywood Erotic Film and Video Festival. Director John Lamb and his partner, Bruce Lyon also deserve...
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Open Culture
37 Hitchcock Cameo Appearances Over 50 Years: All in One Video Early in his career, Alfred Hitchcock began making small appearances in his own films. The cameos...
7 months ago
51

37 Hitchcock Cameo Appearances Over 50 Years: All in One Video

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7 months ago
Early in his career, Alfred Hitchcock began making small appearances in his own films. The cameos sometimes lasted just a few brief seconds, and sometimes a little while longer. Either way, they became a signature of Hitchcock’s filmmaking, and fans made a sport of seeing whether...
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Open Culture
Oh My God! Winston Churchill Received the First Ever Letter Containing “O.M.G.” (1917) Winston Churchill is one of those preposterously outsized historical figures who seemed to be in the...
8 months ago
51

Oh My God! Winston Churchill Received the First Ever Letter Containing “O.M.G.” (1917)

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8 months ago
Winston Churchill is one of those preposterously outsized historical figures who seemed to be in the middle of every major event. Even before, as Prime Minister, he steeled the resolve of his people and faced down the Third Reich juggernaut; even before he loudly warned of the...
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Open Culture
Bob Dylan Reads “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” On His Holiday Radio Show (2006) Allow me to name just a few of the people I want to hear hosting and curating radio shows—former Sex...
a month ago
51

Bob Dylan Reads “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” On His Holiday Radio Show (2006)

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a month ago
Allow me to name just a few of the people I want to hear hosting and curating radio shows—former Sex Pistols’ singer John Lydon, former Clash frontman Joe Strummer, former Woody Guthrie impersonator Bob Dylan.… Luckily for me, this ain’t just fantasy baseball; at various times,...
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Open Culture
Watch Fantasmagorie, the World’s First Animated Cartoon (1908) Trying to describe the plot of Fantasmagorie, the world’s first animated cartoon, is a folly akin to...
5 months ago
51

Watch Fantasmagorie, the World’s First Animated Cartoon (1908)

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5 months ago
Trying to describe the plot of Fantasmagorie, the world’s first animated cartoon, is a folly akin to putting last night’s dream into words: I was dressed as a clown and then I was in a theater, except I was also hiding under this lady’s hat, and the guy behind us was plucking out...
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Open Culture
Watch the Surrealist Glass Harmonica, the Only Animated Film Ever Banned by Soviet Censors (1968) The Soviet Union’s repressive state censorship went to absurd lengths to control what its citizens...
2 months ago
50

Watch the Surrealist Glass Harmonica, the Only Animated Film Ever Banned by Soviet Censors (1968)

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2 months ago
The Soviet Union’s repressive state censorship went to absurd lengths to control what its citizens read, viewed, and listened to, such as the almost comical removal of purged former comrades from photographs during Stalin’s reign. When it came to aesthetics, Stalinism mostly...
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Open Culture
Jimi Hendrix Arrives in London in 1966, Asks to Get Onstage with Cream, and Blows Eric Clapton Away:... Jimi Hendrix arrived on the London scene like a ton of bricks in 1966, smashing every British blues...
6 months ago
50

Jimi Hendrix Arrives in London in 1966, Asks to Get Onstage with Cream, and Blows Eric Clapton Away: “You Never Told Me He Was That F‑ing Good”

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6 months ago
Jimi Hendrix arrived on the London scene like a ton of bricks in 1966, smashing every British blues guitarist to pieces the instant they saw him play. As vocalist Terry Reid tells it, when Hendrix played his first showcase at the Bag O’Nails, arranged by Animals’ bassist Chas...
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Open Culture
World Religions Explained with Useful Charts: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity &... It doesn’t take an expert in the field to know that, around the world, there is much disagreement on...
8 months ago
50

World Religions Explained with Useful Charts: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity & More

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8 months ago
It doesn’t take an expert in the field to know that, around the world, there is much disagreement on the subject of religion. But as explained in the UsefulCharts video above by Matt Baker, whose PhD in Religious Studies makes him an expert in the field, every source does agree...
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Open Culture
The Long Game of Creativity: If You Haven’t Created a Masterpiece at 30, You’re Not a Failure Orson Welles directed the greatest movie ever made, Citizen Kane, at age 25, with only a limited...
6 months ago
50

The Long Game of Creativity: If You Haven’t Created a Masterpiece at 30, You’re Not a Failure

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6 months ago
Orson Welles directed the greatest movie ever made, Citizen Kane, at age 25, with only a limited knowledge of the medium. When Paul McCartney was 25, he, along with his fellow Beatles, released the era-defining album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. By age 29, Pablo Picasso...
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Open Culture
Marcus Aurelius’ 9 Rules for Living a Stoic Life: Presented by Ryan Holiday This week, the Guardian’s Zoe Williams profiled Ryan Holiday, a one-time public-relations whiz-kid...
3 months ago
50

Marcus Aurelius’ 9 Rules for Living a Stoic Life: Presented by Ryan Holiday

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3 months ago
This week, the Guardian’s Zoe Williams profiled Ryan Holiday, a one-time public-relations whiz-kid who’s reinvented himself over the past decade as a speaker for the dead: specifically Epictetus, Seneca, and above all Marcus Aurelius, the figureheads of the ancient school of...
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Open Culture
Watch Patti Smith Read from Virginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Surviving Recording of Woolf’s Voice In the video above, poet, artist, National Book Award winner, and “godmother of punk” Patti Smith...
8 months ago
50

Watch Patti Smith Read from Virginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Surviving Recording of Woolf’s Voice

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8 months ago
In the video above, poet, artist, National Book Award winner, and “godmother of punk” Patti Smith reads a selection from Virginia Woolf’s 1931 experimental novel The Waves, accompanied on piano and guitar by her daughter Jesse and son Jackson. The “reading” marked the opening of...
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Open Culture
Download 1,000+ Digitized Tapes of Sounds from Classic Hollywood Films & TV, Courtesy of the... Watch enough classic movies — especially classic movies from slightly downmarket studios — and...
5 months ago
50

Download 1,000+ Digitized Tapes of Sounds from Classic Hollywood Films & TV, Courtesy of the Internet Archive

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5 months ago
Watch enough classic movies — especially classic movies from slightly downmarket studios — and you’ll swear you’ve been hearing the very same sound effects over and over again. That’s because you have been hearing the very same sound effects over and over again: once recorded or...
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Open Culture
David Bowie Songs Reimagined as Pulp Fiction Book Covers: Space Oddity, Heroes, Life on Mars & More In the last year, screenwriter Todd Alcott’s hobby has blown up into a legit side career. This Etsy...
5 months ago
50

David Bowie Songs Reimagined as Pulp Fiction Book Covers: Space Oddity, Heroes, Life on Mars & More

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5 months ago
In the last year, screenwriter Todd Alcott’s hobby has blown up into a legit side career. This Etsy seller isn’t peddling kombucha SCOBYs, letter pressing new baby announcements, or repurposing old barns for use as cutting boards. No, Alcott’s crafty fortunes fall squarely at the...
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Open Culture
How Kodak Invented the Snapshot in the 1800s, Making It Possible for Everyone to Be a Photographer We still occasionally speak of “Kodak moments,” making conscious or unconscious reference to the...
4 months ago
49

How Kodak Invented the Snapshot in the 1800s, Making It Possible for Everyone to Be a Photographer

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4 months ago
We still occasionally speak of “Kodak moments,” making conscious or unconscious reference to the slogan of the Eastman Kodak Company in the nineteen-eighties. Even by that time, Kodak had already been a going concern for nearly a century, furnishing photographers around the world...
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Open Culture
Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” Performed by a Choir of 4,000 Singers Throughout the years, we’ve featured performances of Choir!Choir!Choir!–a large amateur choir from...
a month ago
49

Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” Performed by a Choir of 4,000 Singers

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a month ago
Throughout the years, we’ve featured performances of Choir!Choir!Choir!–a large amateur choir from Toronto that meets weekly and sings their hearts out. You’ve seen them sing Prince’s “When Doves Cry,” Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” (to honor Chris Cornell), and Patti Smith’s...
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Open Culture
Honoré de Balzac Writes About “The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee,” and His Epic Coffee Addiction 174 years after his death, Honoré de Balzac remains an extremely modern-sounding wag. Were he alive...
7 months ago
49

Honoré de Balzac Writes About “The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee,” and His Epic Coffee Addiction

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7 months ago
174 years after his death, Honoré de Balzac remains an extremely modern-sounding wag. Were he alive today, he’d no doubt be pounding out his provocative observations in a coffice, a café whose free wifi, lenient staff, and abundant electrical outlets make it a magnet for writers....
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Open Culture
Browse 64 Years of RadioShack Catalogs Free Online … and Revisit the History of American Consumer... “I bet RadioShack was great once,” writes former employee Jon Bois in a much-circulated 2014 piece...
5 months ago
49

Browse 64 Years of RadioShack Catalogs Free Online … and Revisit the History of American Consumer Electronics

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5 months ago
“I bet RadioShack was great once,” writes former employee Jon Bois in a much-circulated 2014 piece for SB Nation. “I can’t look through their decades-old catalogs and come away with any other impression. They sold giant walnut-wood speakers I’d kill to have today. They sold...
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Open Culture
Behold Gustave Doré’s Dramatic Illustrations of the Bible (1866) One occasionally hears it said that, thanks to the internet, all the books truly worth reading are...
7 months ago
49

Behold Gustave Doré’s Dramatic Illustrations of the Bible (1866)

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7 months ago
One occasionally hears it said that, thanks to the internet, all the books truly worth reading are free: Shakespeare, Don Quixote, the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, the Divine Comedy, the Bible. Can it be a coincidence that all of these works inspired illustrations by Gustave Doré?...
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Open Culture
How a Bach Canon Works. Brilliant. Brilliant. This moving manuscript depicts a single musical sequence played front to back and then...
8 months ago
49

How a Bach Canon Works. Brilliant.

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8 months ago
Brilliant. This moving manuscript depicts a single musical sequence played front to back and then back to front. Give the video a little time to unfold and enjoy.
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Open Culture
Buckminster Fuller Tells the World “Everything He Knows” in a 42-Hour Lecture Series (1975) History seems to have settled Buckminster Fuller’s reputation as a man ahead of his time. He...
7 months ago
49

Buckminster Fuller Tells the World “Everything He Knows” in a 42-Hour Lecture Series (1975)

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7 months ago
History seems to have settled Buckminster Fuller’s reputation as a man ahead of his time. He inspires short, witty popular videos like YouTuber Joe Scott’s “The Man Who Saw The Future,” and the ongoing legacy of the Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI), who note that “Fuller’s...
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Open Culture
The Rolling Stones Introduce Bluesman Howlin’ Wolf on US TV, One of the “Greatest Cultural Moments... Howlin’ Wolf may well have been the greatest blues singer of the 20th century. Certainly many people...
6 months ago
49

The Rolling Stones Introduce Bluesman Howlin’ Wolf on US TV, One of the “Greatest Cultural Moments of the 20th Century” (1965)

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6 months ago
Howlin’ Wolf may well have been the greatest blues singer of the 20th century. Certainly many people have said so, but there are other measurements than mere opinion, though it’s one I happen to share. The man born Chester Arthur Burnett also had a profound historical effect on...
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Open Culture
Patti Smith Reads Her Final Letter to Robert Mapplethorpe, Calling Him “the Most Beautiful Work of... If you go to hear Patti Smith in concert, you expect her to sing “Beneath the Southern Cross,”...
8 months ago
49

Patti Smith Reads Her Final Letter to Robert Mapplethorpe, Calling Him “the Most Beautiful Work of All”

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8 months ago
If you go to hear Patti Smith in concert, you expect her to sing “Beneath the Southern Cross,” “Because the Night,” and almost certainly “People Have the Power,” the hit single from Dream of Life. Like her 1975 debut Horses, that album had a cover photo by Robert...
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Open Culture
Watch The Idea, the First Animated Film to Deal with Big, Philosophical Ideas (1932) A vague sense of disquiet settled over Europe in the period between World War I and World War II. As...
5 months ago
49

Watch The Idea, the First Animated Film to Deal with Big, Philosophical Ideas (1932)

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5 months ago
A vague sense of disquiet settled over Europe in the period between World War I and World War II. As the slow burn of militant ultranationalism mingled with jingoist populism, authoritarian leaders and fascist factions found mounting support among a citizenry hungry for...
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Open Culture
The Junky’s Christmas: William S. Burrough’s Dark Claymation Christmas Film Produced by Francis Ford... Back in 1993, the Beat writer William S. Burroughs wrote and narrated a 21-minute claymation...
2 months ago
49

The Junky’s Christmas: William S. Burrough’s Dark Claymation Christmas Film Produced by Francis Ford Coppola (1993)

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2 months ago
Back in 1993, the Beat writer William S. Burroughs wrote and narrated a 21-minute claymation Christmas film oddly produced by Francis Ford Coppola. And, as you can well imagine, it’s not your normal happy Christmas flick. Nope, this film – The Junky’s Christmas – is all about...
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Open Culture
The “Nonsense” Botanical Illustrations of Victorian Artist-Poet Edward Lear (1871–77) Since the Victorian era, Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” has been, for generation upon...
7 months ago
49

The “Nonsense” Botanical Illustrations of Victorian Artist-Poet Edward Lear (1871–77)

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7 months ago
Since the Victorian era, Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” has been, for generation upon generation in the English-speaking world, the kind of poem that one simply knows, whether one remembers actually having read it or not. As with most such works that seep so...
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Open Culture
Hear Moby Dick Read in Its Entirety by Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, John Waters, Stephen Fry... Image of Moby Dick by David Austen. In 2013, Plymouth University kicked off Moby Dick The Big Read,...
4 months ago
48

Hear Moby Dick Read in Its Entirety by Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, John Waters, Stephen Fry & More

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4 months ago
Image of Moby Dick by David Austen. In 2013, Plymouth University kicked off Moby Dick The Big Read, promising a full audiobook of Herman Melville’s influential novel, with famous (and not so famous) voices taking on a chapter each. When we first wrote about it here, only six...
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Open Culture
Martin Mull (RIP) Satirically Interviews a Young Tom Waits on Fernwood 2 Night (1977) These days, references to seventies television increasingly require prefatory explanation. Who under...
7 months ago
48

Martin Mull (RIP) Satirically Interviews a Young Tom Waits on Fernwood 2 Night (1977)

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7 months ago
These days, references to seventies television increasingly require prefatory explanation. Who under the age of 60 recalls, for example, the cultural phenomenon that was Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, an absurdist satire so faithful to the soap-opera form it parodied that it aired...
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Open Culture
2000-Year-Old Bottle of White Wine Found in a Roman Burial Site Image via Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports Back in 2017, we featured the oldest unopened...
7 months ago
48

2000-Year-Old Bottle of White Wine Found in a Roman Burial Site

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7 months ago
Image via Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports Back in 2017, we featured the oldest unopened bottle of wine in the world here on Open Culture. Found in Speyer, Germany, in 1867, it dates from 350 AD, making it a venerable vintage indeed, but one recently outdone by a bottle...
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Open Culture
The First Professional Footage of Pink Floyd Gets Captured in a 1967 Documentary (and the Band Also... British filmmaker and novelist Peter Whitehead has been credited with inventing the music video with...
9 months ago
48

The First Professional Footage of Pink Floyd Gets Captured in a 1967 Documentary (and the Band Also Provides the Soundtrack)

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9 months ago
British filmmaker and novelist Peter Whitehead has been credited with inventing the music video with his promo films for the Rolling Stones in the mid-60s. According to Ali Catterall and Simon Wells, authors of Your Face Here, a study of “British Cult Film since the Sixties,”...
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Open Culture
The Roads of Ancient Rome Visualized in the Style of Modern Subway Maps Sasha Trubetskoy, formerly an undergrad at U. Chicago, has created a “subway-style diagram of the...
8 months ago
48

The Roads of Ancient Rome Visualized in the Style of Modern Subway Maps

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8 months ago
Sasha Trubetskoy, formerly an undergrad at U. Chicago, has created a “subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire of ca. 125 AD.” Drawing on Stanford’s ORBIS model, The Pelagios Project, and the Antonine Itinerary, Trubetskoy’s map combines well-known...
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Open Culture
Hear the Very First Adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 in a Radio Play Starring David Niven (1949) Since George Orwell published his landmark political fable 1984, each generation has found ample...
6 months ago
48

Hear the Very First Adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 in a Radio Play Starring David Niven (1949)

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6 months ago
Since George Orwell published his landmark political fable 1984, each generation has found ample reason to make reference to the grim near-future envisioned by the novel. Whether Orwell had some prophetic vision or was simply a very astute reader of the institutions of his...
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Open Culture
See Albert Camus’ Historic Lecture, “The Human Crisis,” Performed by Actor Viggo Mortensen Back in 2016, New York City staged a month-long festival celebrating Albert Camus’ historic visit to...
7 months ago
48

See Albert Camus’ Historic Lecture, “The Human Crisis,” Performed by Actor Viggo Mortensen

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7 months ago
Back in 2016, New York City staged a month-long festival celebrating Albert Camus’ historic visit to NYC in 1946. One event in the festival featured actor Viggo Mortensen giving a reading of Camus’ lecture,“La Crise de l’homme” (“The Human Crisis”) at Columbia University–the very...
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Open Culture
The Radical Artistic & Philosophical World of William Blake: A Short Introduction Over the years, we’ve featured the work of William Blake fairly often here on Open Culture: his own...
8 months ago
48

The Radical Artistic & Philosophical World of William Blake: A Short Introduction

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8 months ago
Over the years, we’ve featured the work of William Blake fairly often here on Open Culture: his own illuminated books; his illustrations for everything from the Divine Comedy to Mary Wollstonecraft’s Original Stories from Real Life to the Book of Job; pairs of Doc Martens made...
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Open Culture
The World’s First Medieval Electronic Instrument: The EP-1320 Lets You Play the Sounds of... At this time of the year, the Swedish island of Gotland puts on Medeltidsveckan, or “Medieval Week,”...
6 months ago
48

The World’s First Medieval Electronic Instrument: The EP-1320 Lets You Play the Sounds of Hurdy-Gurdies, Lutes, Gregorian Chants & More

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6 months ago
At this time of the year, the Swedish island of Gotland puts on Medeltidsveckan, or “Medieval Week,” the country’s largest historical festival. According to its official About page, it offers its visitors the chance to “watch knights on horseback, drink something cold, take a...
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Open Culture
A Simple, Down-to-Earth Christmas Card from the Great Depression (1933) The Smithsonian sets the scene for this Christmas card sent in 1933, a few years into the Great...
2 months ago
48

A Simple, Down-to-Earth Christmas Card from the Great Depression (1933)

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2 months ago
The Smithsonian sets the scene for this Christmas card sent in 1933, a few years into the Great Depression. They write: Despite the glum economic situation, the Pinero family used a brown paper bag to fashion an inexpensive holiday greeting card. They penned a clever rhyme and...
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Open Culture
How Choose Your Own Adventure Books Became Beloved Among Generations of Readers We’ve all read plenty of literature written in the first person, and plenty of literature written in...
7 months ago
48

How Choose Your Own Adventure Books Became Beloved Among Generations of Readers

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7 months ago
We’ve all read plenty of literature written in the first person, and plenty of literature written in the third person. The second person, with its main subject of neither “I” nor “he” or “she” but “you,” is considerably harder to come by, and the writers who take it up tend to be...
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Open Culture
Famous Architects Dress as Their Famous New York City Buildings (1931) On January 13, 1931, the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects held a ball at the Hotel Astor in New York...
a month ago
48

Famous Architects Dress as Their Famous New York City Buildings (1931)

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a month ago
On January 13, 1931, the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects held a ball at the Hotel Astor in New York City. According to an advertisement for the event, anyone who paid $15 per ticket (big money during the Depression) could see a “hilarious modern art exhibition” and things...
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Open Culture
T. S. Eliot’s Classic Modernist Poem The Waste Land Gets Adapted into Comic-Book Form The phrase “April is the cruelest month” was first printed more than 100 years ago, and it’s been in...
4 months ago
47

T. S. Eliot’s Classic Modernist Poem The Waste Land Gets Adapted into Comic-Book Form

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4 months ago
The phrase “April is the cruelest month” was first printed more than 100 years ago, and it’s been in common circulation almost as long. One can easily know it without having the faintest idea of its source, let alone its meaning. This is not, of course, to call T. S. Eliot’s The...
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Open Culture
Ancient Egyptian Pyramids May Have Been Built with Water: A New Study Explore the Use of Hydraulic... Image by Charles Sharp, via Wikimedia Commons The compelling but less-than-straightforward question...
6 months ago
47

Ancient Egyptian Pyramids May Have Been Built with Water: A New Study Explore the Use of Hydraulic Lifts

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6 months ago
Image by Charles Sharp, via Wikimedia Commons The compelling but less-than-straightforward question of how the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids has inspired all manner of theory and speculation, grounded to varying degrees in physical reality. Sheer manpower must have played...
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Open Culture
Archaeologists Discover an Ancient Roman Sandal with Nails Used for Tread A recreation of the military sandals. (Photo: Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation)...
6 months ago
47

Archaeologists Discover an Ancient Roman Sandal with Nails Used for Tread

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6 months ago
A recreation of the military sandals. (Photo: Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation) Whether you’re putting together a stage play, a film, or a television series, if the story is set in ancient Rome, you know you’re going to have to get a lot of sandals on order. This...
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Open Culture
Ray Bradbury Explains Why Literature is the Safety Valve of Civilization (in Which Case We Need More... Ray Bradbury had it all thought out. Behind his captivating works of science fiction, there were...
6 months ago
47

Ray Bradbury Explains Why Literature is the Safety Valve of Civilization (in Which Case We Need More Literature!)

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6 months ago
Ray Bradbury had it all thought out. Behind his captivating works of science fiction, there were subtle theories about what literature was meant to do. The retro clip above takes you back to the 1970s and it shows Bradbury giving a rather intriguing take on the role of literature...
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Open Culture
How Rome Began: The History As Told by Ancient Historians Much attention has been paid to the fall of the Roman Empire, by everyone from august historians...
7 months ago
47

How Rome Began: The History As Told by Ancient Historians

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7 months ago
Much attention has been paid to the fall of the Roman Empire, by everyone from august historians like Edward Gibbon to modern-day observers wringing their hands over the fate of the United States of America. But as every Rome enthusiast knows, that long collapse constitutes just...
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Open Culture
The Doctor Who Theme Reimagined as a Jacques Brel-esque Jazz Tune ?si=tyjBCsSNLIAgh7SM Written by Ron Grainer, and then famously arranged and recorded by Delia...
4 months ago
47

The Doctor Who Theme Reimagined as a Jacques Brel-esque Jazz Tune

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4 months ago
?si=tyjBCsSNLIAgh7SM Written by Ron Grainer, and then famously arranged and recorded by Delia Derbyshire in 1963, the Doctor Who theme song has been adapted and covered many times, and even referenced by Pink Floyd. In the hands of comedian Bill Bailey, the song comes out a...
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Open Culture
David Bowie’s 100 Must Read Books Image by Avro, via Wikimedia Commons In 2013, the curators of the touring museum exhibit “David...
5 months ago
47

David Bowie’s 100 Must Read Books

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5 months ago
Image by Avro, via Wikimedia Commons In 2013, the curators of the touring museum exhibit “David Bowie Is” released a list of David Bowie’s 100 favorite reads, providing us with deeper insights into his literary tastes. Covering fiction and non-fiction, the list spans six decades,...
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Open Culture
Behold the First American Board Game, Travellers’ Tour Through the United States (1822) Asked to name a classic American board game, most of us would first think of Monopoly, whose imagery...
5 months ago
47

Behold the First American Board Game, Travellers’ Tour Through the United States (1822)

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5 months ago
Asked to name a classic American board game, most of us would first think of Monopoly, whose imagery and verbiage — Park Place, Rich Uncle Pennybags, “Do not pass go” — has worked its way deep into the culture since Parker Brothers brought it to market in 1935. Despite that, it...
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Open Culture
When Kris Kristofferson (RIP) Stood by Sinéad O’Connor at the Height of Her Controversy One would have imagined Sinéad O’Connor impervious to any reaction from a hostile audience, no...
4 months ago
46

When Kris Kristofferson (RIP) Stood by Sinéad O’Connor at the Height of Her Controversy

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4 months ago
One would have imagined Sinéad O’Connor impervious to any reaction from a hostile audience, no matter how vitriolic. But even for a public figure as outspoken and unapologetic as her, it could all get to be a bit much at times. Take the 1992 concert Columbia Records put on for...
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Open Culture
Orson Welles Narrates Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner in an Experimental Film Featuring the... Around here we subscribe to the theory that there’s no such thing as too much Orson Welles. In years...
5 months ago
46

Orson Welles Narrates Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner in an Experimental Film Featuring the Art of Gustave Doré

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5 months ago
Around here we subscribe to the theory that there’s no such thing as too much Orson Welles. In years past, we gave you Welles narrating Plato’s Cave Allegory and Kafka’s “Before the Law,” and, before that, the Welles-narrated parable Freedom River, and the list goes on. Now, we...
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Open Culture
How Filmmakers Make Cameras Disappear: Mirrors in Movies If you’ve never tried your hand at filmmaking, you might assume that its hardest visual challenges...
4 months ago
46

How Filmmakers Make Cameras Disappear: Mirrors in Movies

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4 months ago
If you’ve never tried your hand at filmmaking, you might assume that its hardest visual challenges are the creation of effects-laden spectacles: starships duking it out in space, monsters stomping through major cities, animals speaking and dancing like Broadway stars, that sort...
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Open Culture
Umberto Eco’s List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism Creative Commons image by Rob Bogaerts, via the National Archives in Holland One of the key...
3 months ago
46

Umberto Eco’s List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism

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3 months ago
Creative Commons image by Rob Bogaerts, via the National Archives in Holland One of the key questions facing both journalists and loyal oppositions these days is how do we stay honest as euphemisms and trivializations take over the discourse? Can we use words like “fascism,” for...
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Open Culture
Hear the Song Written on a Sinner’s Buttock in Hieronymus Bosch’s Painting The Garden of Earthly... There’s something unusually exciting about finding a hidden or discreetly placed element in a...
9 months ago
46

Hear the Song Written on a Sinner’s Buttock in Hieronymus Bosch’s Painting The Garden of Earthly Delights

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9 months ago
There’s something unusually exciting about finding a hidden or discreetly placed element in a well-known painting. I can only imagine the thrill of the physician who first noticed the curious presence of a human brain in Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam: God, his retinue of...
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Open Culture
Gustave Doré’s Macabre Illustrations of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884) One of the busiest, most in-demand artists of the 19th century, Gustave Doré made his name...
8 months ago
46

Gustave Doré’s Macabre Illustrations of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

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8 months ago
One of the busiest, most in-demand artists of the 19th century, Gustave Doré made his name illustrating works by such authors as Rabelais, Balzac, Milton, and Dante. In the 1860s, he created one of the most memorable and popular illustrated editions of Cervantes’ Don Quixote,...
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Open Culture
Martin Scorsese Plays Vincent Van Gogh in a Short, Surreal Film by Akira Kurosawa The idea of the auteur director has been a controversial one at times given the sheer number of...
7 months ago
46

Martin Scorsese Plays Vincent Van Gogh in a Short, Surreal Film by Akira Kurosawa

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7 months ago
The idea of the auteur director has been a controversial one at times given the sheer number of people required at every stage to produce a film. But it hangs together for me when you look at the films of say, Martin Scorsese or Akira Kurosawa, both directors with very...
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Open Culture
Harvard Removes the Human Skin Binding from a Book in Its Collection Since 1934 In June of 2014, Harvard University’s Houghton Library put up a blog post titled “Caveat Lecter,”...
8 months ago
46

Harvard Removes the Human Skin Binding from a Book in Its Collection Since 1934

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8 months ago
In June of 2014, Harvard University’s Houghton Library put up a blog post titled “Caveat Lecter,” announcing “good news for fans of anthropodermic bibliopegy, bibliomaniacs, and cannibals alike.” The occasion was the scientific determination that a book in the Houghton’s...
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Open Culture
Roger Federer’s Dartmouth Commencement Address: “Effortless Is a Myth” & Other Life Lessons from... In 2006, David Foster Wallace published a piece in the New York Times Magazine headlined “Roger...
8 months ago
46

Roger Federer’s Dartmouth Commencement Address: “Effortless Is a Myth” & Other Life Lessons from Tennis

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8 months ago
In 2006, David Foster Wallace published a piece in the New York Times Magazine headlined “Roger Federer as Religious Experience.” Even then, he could declare Federer, “at 25, the best tennis player currently alive. Maybe the best ever.” Much had already been written about “his...
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Open Culture
Every Frame a Painting Returns to YouTube & Explores Why the Sustained Two-Shot Vanished from Movies Video essayists don’t normally retire; in most cases, they just drift into inactivity. Hence the...
5 months ago
46

Every Frame a Painting Returns to YouTube & Explores Why the Sustained Two-Shot Vanished from Movies

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5 months ago
Video essayists don’t normally retire; in most cases, they just drift into inactivity. Hence the surprise and even dismay of the internet’s cinephiles when Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos declared the end of their respected channel Every Frame a Painting in 2016. We here at Open...
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Open Culture
A Digital Archive Features Hundreds of Audio Cassette Tape Designs, from the 1960s to the 1990s Audio cassette tapes first appeared on the market in the early nineteen-sixties, but it would take...
5 months ago
46

A Digital Archive Features Hundreds of Audio Cassette Tape Designs, from the 1960s to the 1990s

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5 months ago
Audio cassette tapes first appeared on the market in the early nineteen-sixties, but it would take about a decade before they came to dominate it. And when they did, they’d changed the lives of many a music-lover by having made it possible not just to listen to their albums of...
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Open Culture
How Editing Saved Ferris Bueller’s Day Off & Made It a Classic “In our salad days, we are ripe for a particular movie that will linger, deathlessly, long after the...
6 months ago
46

How Editing Saved Ferris Bueller’s Day Off & Made It a Classic

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6 months ago
“In our salad days, we are ripe for a particular movie that will linger, deathlessly, long after the greenness has gone,” writes the New Yorker’s Anthony Lane in a recent piece on movies in the eighties. “When a friend turned to me after the first twenty minutes of Ferris...
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Open Culture
Thousands of Pablo Picasso’s Works Now Available in a New Digital Archive If you want to immerse yourself in the world of Pablo Picasso, you might start at the Museo Picasso...
7 months ago
45

Thousands of Pablo Picasso’s Works Now Available in a New Digital Archive

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7 months ago
If you want to immerse yourself in the world of Pablo Picasso, you might start at the Museo Picasso Málaga, located in the artist’s Spanish birthplace. But to understand how his work developed throughout his life, you’ll have to get out of Spain — which is just what Picasso did...
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Open Culture
How Magician David Copperfield Made the Statue of Liberty Disappear (1983) In April, 1983, 50 million television viewers watched the illusionist David Copperfield make the...
3 months ago
45

How Magician David Copperfield Made the Statue of Liberty Disappear (1983)

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3 months ago
In April, 1983, 50 million television viewers watched the illusionist David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear, straight into thin air. If you’re north of 50, you perhaps remember the spectacle. How did he do it? 40 years later, the YouTube channel Mind Blown Magic...
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Open Culture
Spin the 17th-Century Death Roulette Wheel & Find Out What Would Have Killed You in 1665 A common historical misconception holds that, up until a few centuries ago, everyone died when they...
4 months ago
45

Spin the 17th-Century Death Roulette Wheel & Find Out What Would Have Killed You in 1665

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4 months ago
A common historical misconception holds that, up until a few centuries ago, everyone died when they were about 40. In fact, even in antiquity, one could well make it to what would be considered an advanced age today — assuming one survived the great mortal peril of childhood, and...
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Open Culture
Eno: The New “Generative Documentary” on Brian Eno That’s Never the Same Movie Twice Brian Eno once wrote that “it’s possible that our grandchildren will look at us in wonder and say,...
7 months ago
45

Eno: The New “Generative Documentary” on Brian Eno That’s Never the Same Movie Twice

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7 months ago
Brian Eno once wrote that “it’s possible that our grandchildren will look at us in wonder and say, ‘You mean you used to listen to to exactly the same thing over and over again?’ ” That speculation comes from an essay on what he calls “generative music,” which is automatically...
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Open Culture
Monty Python’s Michael Palin Presents His Favorite Painting, J. M. W. Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed Of all the English comedians to have attained worldwide fame over the past half-century, Sir Michael...
9 months ago
45

Monty Python’s Michael Palin Presents His Favorite Painting, J. M. W. Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed

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9 months ago
Of all the English comedians to have attained worldwide fame over the past half-century, Sir Michael Palin may be the most English of them all. It thus comes as no surprise that the National Gallery would ring him up and invite him to make a video about his favorite painting, nor...
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Open Culture
How a 16th-Century Explorer’s Sailing Ship Worked: An Animated Video Takes You on a Comprehensive... These days, it feels as if you can’t go very long at all before scrolling past another announcement...
5 months ago
45

How a 16th-Century Explorer’s Sailing Ship Worked: An Animated Video Takes You on a Comprehensive Tour

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5 months ago
These days, it feels as if you can’t go very long at all before scrolling past another announcement about some new technological development (realized or scheduled) related to space exploration. Some react to this by wondering what could possibly be out there in the universe to...
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Open Culture
Jean-Paul Sartre Rejects the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964: “It Was Monstrous!” In a 2013 blog post, the great Ursula K. Le Guin quotes a London Times Literary Supplement column by...
6 months ago
45

Jean-Paul Sartre Rejects the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964: “It Was Monstrous!”

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6 months ago
In a 2013 blog post, the great Ursula K. Le Guin quotes a London Times Literary Supplement column by a “J.C.,” who satirically proposes the “Jean-Paul Sartre Prize for Prize Refusal.” “Writers all over Europe and America are turning down awards in the hope of being nominated for...
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Open Culture
Hear Edgar Allan Poe’s Horror Stories Read by Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, James Earl Jones,... Here on Halloween of 2024, we have a greater variety of scary stories — and arguably, a much scarier...
3 months ago
45

Hear Edgar Allan Poe’s Horror Stories Read by Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, James Earl Jones, William S. Burroughs & Others

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3 months ago
Here on Halloween of 2024, we have a greater variety of scary stories — and arguably, a much scarier variety of scarier stories — to choose from than ever before. But whatever their relevance to the specific lives we may live and the specific dreads we may feel today, how many...
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Open Culture
Explore an Online Archive of 2,100+ Rare Illustrations from Charles Dickens’ Novels As Christmastime approaches, few novelists come to mind as readily as Charles Dickens. This owes...
2 months ago
45

Explore an Online Archive of 2,100+ Rare Illustrations from Charles Dickens’ Novels

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2 months ago
As Christmastime approaches, few novelists come to mind as readily as Charles Dickens. This owes mainly, of course, to A Christmas Carol, and even more so to its many adaptations, most of which draw inspiration from not just its text but also its illustrations. That 1843 novella...
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Open Culture
How Las Vegas’ Sphere Actually Works: A Looks Inside the New $2.3 Billion Arena If the United States of America is the Roman empire of our time, surely it must have an equivalent...
8 months ago
45

How Las Vegas’ Sphere Actually Works: A Looks Inside the New $2.3 Billion Arena

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8 months ago
If the United States of America is the Roman empire of our time, surely it must have an equivalent of the Colosseum. A year ago, you could’ve heard a wide variety of speculations as to what structure that could possibly be. Today, many of us would simply respond with “the...
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Open Culture
Michio Kaku Demystifies the God Equation: The Key to Understanding Everything It speaks to the importance of discoveries in physics over the past few generations that even the...
5 months ago
44

Michio Kaku Demystifies the God Equation: The Key to Understanding Everything

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5 months ago
It speaks to the importance of discoveries in physics over the past few generations that even the disinterested layman has heard of the field’s central challenge. In brief, there exist two separate systems: general relativity, which describes the physics of space, time, and...
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Open Culture
Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Rise of Artificial Intelligence & Questions What Will Happen to... We now live in the midst of an artificial-intelligence boom, but it’s hardly the first of its kind....
2 months ago
44

Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Rise of Artificial Intelligence & Questions What Will Happen to Humanity (1978)

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2 months ago
We now live in the midst of an artificial-intelligence boom, but it’s hardly the first of its kind. In fact, the field has been subject to a boom-and-bust cycle since at least the early nineteen-fifties. Eventually, those busts — which occurred when realizable AI technology...
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Open Culture
How the Hugely Acclaimed Shōgun TV Series Makes Translation Interesting Many of us grew up seeing hardback copies of Shōgun on various domestic bookshelves. Whether their...
5 months ago
44

How the Hugely Acclaimed Shōgun TV Series Makes Translation Interesting

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5 months ago
Many of us grew up seeing hardback copies of Shōgun on various domestic bookshelves. Whether their owners ever actually got through James Clavell’s famously hefty novel of seventeenth-century Japan is open to question, but they may well have seen the first television adaptation,...
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Open Culture
Hear the Evolution of the London Accent Over 660 Years: From 1346 to 2006 Read a novel by Charles Dickens, and you’ll still today feel transported back to the London of the...
6 months ago
44

Hear the Evolution of the London Accent Over 660 Years: From 1346 to 2006

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6 months ago
Read a novel by Charles Dickens, and you’ll still today feel transported back to the London of the eighteen-twenties. Some of that experience owes to his lavishly reportorial descriptive skills, but even more to his way with dialogue. Dickens faithfully captured the vocabulary of...
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Open Culture
Sex and Alcohol in Medieval Times: A Look into the Pleasures of the Middle Ages Playing video games, road-tripping across America, binge-listening to podcasts, chatting with...
7 months ago
44

Sex and Alcohol in Medieval Times: A Look into the Pleasures of the Middle Ages

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7 months ago
Playing video games, road-tripping across America, binge-listening to podcasts, chatting with artificial intelligence: these are a few of our modern pleasures not just unknown to, but unimaginable by, humanity in the Middle Ages. Yet medieval people were, after all, people, and...
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Open Culture
Medieval Cats Behaving Badly: Kitties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Century Manuscripts “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” –Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808–90) When...
9 months ago
44

Medieval Cats Behaving Badly: Kitties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Century Manuscripts

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9 months ago
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” –Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808–90) When Emir O. Filipovic, a medievalist at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, visited the State Archives of Dubrovnik, he stumbled upon something that will hardly surprise...
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Open Culture
Behold the Oldest Written Text in the World: The Kish Tablet, Circa 3500 BC Image by José-Manuel Benito, via Wikimedia Commons Some refer to the written Chinese language as...
3 months ago
44

Behold the Oldest Written Text in the World: The Kish Tablet, Circa 3500 BC

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3 months ago
Image by José-Manuel Benito, via Wikimedia Commons Some refer to the written Chinese language as ideographic: that is, structured according to a system in which each symbol represents a particular idea or concept, whether abstract or concrete. That’s true of certain Chinese...
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Open Culture
Tracking Pianist Yuja Wang’s Heartbeats During Her Marathon Rachmaninoff Performance The Carnegie Hall YouTube Channel sets the scene: On January 28, 2023, pianist Yuja Wang joined The...
8 months ago
44

Tracking Pianist Yuja Wang’s Heartbeats During Her Marathon Rachmaninoff Performance

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8 months ago
The Carnegie Hall YouTube Channel sets the scene: On January 28, 2023, pianist Yuja Wang joined The Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin at Carnegie Hall for a once-in-a-lifetime, all-Rachmaninoff marathon that featured the composer’s four piano concertos...
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Open Culture
“Tsundoku,” the Japanese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the... There are some words out there that are brilliantly evocative and at the same time impossible to...
7 months ago
44

“Tsundoku,” the Japanese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the English Language

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7 months ago
There are some words out there that are brilliantly evocative and at the same time impossible to fully translate. Yiddish has the word shlimazl, which basically means a perpetually unlucky person. German has the word Backpfeifengesicht, which roughly means a face that is badly in...
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Open Culture
Watch 70+ Classic Literary Films Free Online: The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Gulliver’s Travels, Jane... The term gaslight has gained so much traction in popular discourse so recently that you’d swear it...
3 months ago
44

Watch 70+ Classic Literary Films Free Online: The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Gulliver’s Travels, Jane Eyre, and More

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3 months ago
The term gaslight has gained so much traction in popular discourse so recently that you’d swear it was coined around 2010. In fact, that particular usage goes at least as far back as 1938, when British novelist and playwright Patrick Hamilton wrote a stage thriller about a...
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Open Culture
When Samuel Beckett Drove Young André the Giant to School Are your idle moments spent inventing imaginary conversations between strange bedfellows? The sort...
6 months ago
44

When Samuel Beckett Drove Young André the Giant to School

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6 months ago
Are your idle moments spent inventing imaginary conversations between strange bedfellows? The sort of conversation that might transpire in a pickup truck belonging to Samuel Beckett, say, were the Irish playwright to chauffeur the child André Rene Roussimoff—aka pro wrestler...
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Open Culture
High-Tech Analysis of Ancient Scroll Reveals Plato’s Burial Site and Final Hours Even if you can name only one ancient Greek, you can name Plato. You can also probably say at least...
9 months ago
44

High-Tech Analysis of Ancient Scroll Reveals Plato’s Burial Site and Final Hours

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9 months ago
Even if you can name only one ancient Greek, you can name Plato. You can also probably say at least a little about him, if only some of the things humanity has known since antiquity. Until recently, of course, that qualification would have been redundant. But now, thanks to an...
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Open Culture
Laurie Anderson’s Mind-Blowing Performance of C. P. Cavafy’s Poems “Waiting for the Barbarians” &... In the video above, Laurie Anderson describes C. P. Cavafy’s poem “Waiting for the Barbarians” as...
a month ago
44

Laurie Anderson’s Mind-Blowing Performance of C. P. Cavafy’s Poems “Waiting for the Barbarians” & “Ithaca”

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a month ago
In the video above, Laurie Anderson describes C. P. Cavafy’s poem “Waiting for the Barbarians” as being “set in ancient Rome.” That’s a reasonable interpretation, given that it contains an emperor, senators, and orators, though Cavafy himself said that none of them are...
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Open Culture
Built to Last: How Ancient Roman Bridges Can Still Withstand the Weight of Modern Cars & Trucks A foreign traveler road-tripping across Europe might well feel a wave of trepidation before driving...
4 months ago
44

Built to Last: How Ancient Roman Bridges Can Still Withstand the Weight of Modern Cars & Trucks

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4 months ago
A foreign traveler road-tripping across Europe might well feel a wave of trepidation before driving a fully loaded modern automobile over a more than 2,000-year-old bridge. But it might also be balanced out by the understanding that such a structure has, by definition, stood the...
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Open Culture
Read 20 Short Stories From Nobel Prize-Winning Writer Alice Munro (RIP) Free Online Note: Back in 2013, when Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature, we published a post...
9 months ago
44

Read 20 Short Stories From Nobel Prize-Winning Writer Alice Munro (RIP) Free Online

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9 months ago
Note: Back in 2013, when Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature, we published a post featuring 20 short stories written by Munro. Today, with the sad news that Alice Munro has passed away, at the age of 92, we’re bringing the original post (from October 10, 2013) back to...
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Open Culture
Take The Near Impossible Literacy Test Louisiana Used to Suppress the Black Vote (1964) In William Faulkner’s 1938 novel The Unvanquished, the implacable Colonel Sartoris takes drastic...
4 months ago
44

Take The Near Impossible Literacy Test Louisiana Used to Suppress the Black Vote (1964)

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4 months ago
In William Faulkner’s 1938 novel The Unvanquished, the implacable Colonel Sartoris takes drastic action to stop the election of a black Republican candidate to office after the Civil War, destroying the ballots of black voters and shooting two Northern carpetbaggers. While such...
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Open Culture
How the Ancient Greeks & Romans Made Beautiful Purple Dye from Snail Glands Much has been written about the loss of color in the twenty-first century. Our environments offered...
8 months ago
43

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

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8 months ago
Much has been written about the loss of color in the twenty-first century. Our environments offered practically every color known to man not so very long ago — and in certain eras, granted, it got to be a bit much. But now, everything seems to have retreated to a narrow palette...
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Open Culture
Sci-Fi Author J.G. Ballard Predicts the Rise of Social Media (1977) Say you were a fan of Steven Spielberg’s moving coming-of-age drama Empire of the Sun, set in a...
8 months ago
43

Sci-Fi Author J.G. Ballard Predicts the Rise of Social Media (1977)

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8 months ago
Say you were a fan of Steven Spielberg’s moving coming-of-age drama Empire of the Sun, set in a Japanese internment camp during World War II and starring a young Christian Bale. Say you read the autobiographical novel on which that film is based, written by one J.G. Ballard. Say...
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Open Culture
Behold a Creative Animation of the Bayeux Tapestry In previous centuries, unless you were a member of the nobility, a wealthy religious order, or a...
5 months ago
43

Behold a Creative Animation of the Bayeux Tapestry

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5 months ago
In previous centuries, unless you were a member of the nobility, a wealthy religious order, or a merchant guild, your chances of spending any significant amount of time with a Medieval tapestry were slim. Though “much production was relatively coarse, intended for decorative...
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Open Culture
The Amazing Recording History of The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” The most streamed Beatles song isn’t “She Loves You,” “Hey Jude,” or “All You Need Is Love.” It...
4 months ago
43

The Amazing Recording History of The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun”

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4 months ago
The most streamed Beatles song isn’t “She Loves You,” “Hey Jude,” or “All You Need Is Love.” It isn’t even “Yesterday.” If you were about to guess “Something,” you’re on the right track, at least as far as the source album and songwriter. In fact, it’s George Harrison’s other...
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Open Culture
The 11 Censored Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Cartoons That Haven’t Been Aired Since 1968 For decades and decades, Warner Bros.’ Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons have served as a...
5 months ago
43

The 11 Censored Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Cartoons That Haven’t Been Aired Since 1968

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5 months ago
For decades and decades, Warner Bros.’ Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons have served as a kind of default children’s entertainment. Originally conceived for theatrical exhibition in the nineteen-thirties, they were animated to a standard that held its own against the...
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Open Culture
Download Issues of “Weird Tales” (1923–1954): The Pioneering Pulp Horror Magazine Features Original... We live in an era of genre. Browse through TV shows of the last decade to see what I mean: Horror,...
8 months ago
43

Download Issues of “Weird Tales” (1923–1954): The Pioneering Pulp Horror Magazine Features Original Stories by Lovecraft, Bradbury & Many More

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8 months ago
We live in an era of genre. Browse through TV shows of the last decade to see what I mean: Horror, sci-fi, fantasy, superheroes, futuristic dystopias…. Take a casual glance at the burgeoning global film franchises or merchandising empires. Where in earlier decades, horror and...
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Open Culture
The Cramps Play a Mental Health Hospital in Napa, California in 1978: The Punkest of Punk Concerts “We’re The Cramps, and we’re from New York City, and we drove 3,000 miles to play for you...
7 months ago
43

The Cramps Play a Mental Health Hospital in Napa, California in 1978: The Punkest of Punk Concerts

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7 months ago
“We’re The Cramps, and we’re from New York City, and we drove 3,000 miles to play for you people.” So begins one of the oddest but also the punkest of punk rock concerts in history, as The Cramps play for a crowd at a state mental hospital in Napa, California. The date was June...
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Open Culture
The Origins of Anime: Watch Early Japanese Animations (1917 to 1931) Japanese animation, AKA anime, might be filled with large-eyed maidens, way cool robots, and...
10 months ago
43

The Origins of Anime: Watch Early Japanese Animations (1917 to 1931)

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10 months ago
Japanese animation, AKA anime, might be filled with large-eyed maidens, way cool robots, and large-eyed, way cool maiden/robot hybrids, but it often shows a level of daring, complexity and creativity not typically found in American mainstream animation. And the form has spawned...
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Open Culture
Pink Floyd Plays in Venice on a Massive Floating Stage in 1989; Forces the Mayor & City Council to... When Roger Waters left Pink Floyd after 1983’s The Final Cut, the remaining members had good reason...
10 months ago
43

Pink Floyd Plays in Venice on a Massive Floating Stage in 1989; Forces the Mayor & City Council to Resign

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10 months ago
When Roger Waters left Pink Floyd after 1983’s The Final Cut, the remaining members had good reason to assume the band was truly, as Waters proclaimed, “a spent force.” After releasing solo projects in the next few years, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright soon...
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Open Culture
Bertrand Russell’s Ten Commandments for Living Virtuously (1930) Image by J. F. Horrabin, via Wikimedia Commons Bertrand Russell may have lived his long life...
3 months ago
42

Bertrand Russell’s Ten Commandments for Living Virtuously (1930)

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3 months ago
Image by J. F. Horrabin, via Wikimedia Commons Bertrand Russell may have lived his long life concerned with big topics in logic, mathematics, politics, and society, but that didn’t keep him from thinking seriously about how to handle his own day-to-day relationships. That hardly...
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Open Culture
Twin Peaks Actually Explained: A 4‑Hour Video Essay Demystifies It All I don’t know about you, but my YouTube algorithms can act like a nagging friend, suggesting a video...
4 months ago
42

Twin Peaks Actually Explained: A 4‑Hour Video Essay Demystifies It All

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4 months ago
I don’t know about you, but my YouTube algorithms can act like a nagging friend, suggesting a video for days until I finally give in. Such was the case with this video essay with the tantalizing title: “Twin Peaks ACTUALLY EXPLAINED (No, Really)”. First of all, before, during,...
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Open Culture
The Greatest Shot in Television: Science Historian James Burke Had One Chance to Nail This Scene …... The 80-second clip above captures a rocket launch, something of which we’ve all seen footage at one...
4 months ago
42

The Greatest Shot in Television: Science Historian James Burke Had One Chance to Nail This Scene … and Nailed It

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4 months ago
The 80-second clip above captures a rocket launch, something of which we’ve all seen footage at one time or another. What makes its viewers call it “the greatest shot in television” still today, 45 years after it first aired, may take more than one viewing to notice. In it,...
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Open Culture
Ken Burns’ New Documentary on Leonardo da Vinci Streaming Online (in the US) for a Limited Time A quick heads up: The filmmaker Ken Burns has just released his new documentary on Leonardo da...
2 months ago
42

Ken Burns’ New Documentary on Leonardo da Vinci Streaming Online (in the US) for a Limited Time

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2 months ago
A quick heads up: The filmmaker Ken Burns has just released his new documentary on Leonardo da Vinci. Running nearly four hours, the film offers what The New York Times calls a “thorough and engrossing biography” of the 15th-century polymath. Currently airing on PBS, the film can...
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Open Culture
Hear Flannery O’Connor Read “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (1959) Flannery O’Connor was a Southern writer who, as Joyce Carol Oates once said, had less in common with...
10 months ago
42

Hear Flannery O’Connor Read “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (1959)

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10 months ago
Flannery O’Connor was a Southern writer who, as Joyce Carol Oates once said, had less in common with Faulkner than with Kafka and Kierkegaard. Isolated by poor health and consumed by her fervent Catholic faith, O’Connor created works of moral fiction that, according to Oates,...
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Open Culture
How a Steady Supply of Coffee Helped the Union Win the U.S. Civil War Americans doing “e‑mail jobs” and working in the “laptop class” tend to make much of the quantity of...
7 months ago
42

How a Steady Supply of Coffee Helped the Union Win the U.S. Civil War

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7 months ago
Americans doing “e‑mail jobs” and working in the “laptop class” tend to make much of the quantity of coffee they require to keep going, or even to get started. In that sense alone, they have something in common with Civil War soldiers. “Union soldiers were given 36 pounds of...
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Open Culture
Ancient Greek Armor Gets Tested in an 11-Hour Battle Simulation Inspired by the Iliad By Greek law, every male citizen over the age of eighteen must spend from nine months to a year in...
8 months ago
41

Ancient Greek Armor Gets Tested in an 11-Hour Battle Simulation Inspired by the Iliad

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8 months ago
By Greek law, every male citizen over the age of eighteen must spend from nine months to a year in the Hellenic Armed Forces. As in every country with such a policy of mandatory conscription, this is surely not a prospect relished by most conscripts-to-be. But then, it can’t be...
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Open Culture
Death: A Free Online Philosophy Course from Yale Helps You Grapple with the Inescapable It pays to think intelligently about the inevitable. And this course taught by Yale professor Shelly...
5 months ago
41

Death: A Free Online Philosophy Course from Yale Helps You Grapple with the Inescapable

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5 months ago
It pays to think intelligently about the inevitable. And this course taught by Yale professor Shelly Kagan does just that, taking a rich, philosophical look at death. Here’s how the course description reads: There is one thing I can be sure of: I am going to die. But what am I to...
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Open Culture
How 2001: A Space Odyssey Became “the Hardest Film Kubrick Ever Made” Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey has been praised in all manner of terms since it came out...
5 months ago
41

How 2001: A Space Odyssey Became “the Hardest Film Kubrick Ever Made”

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5 months ago
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey has been praised in all manner of terms since it came out more than half a century ago. An early advertising campaign, tapping into the enthusiasm of the contemporary counterculture, called it “the ultimate trip”; in the equivalently trendy...
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Open Culture
The Evolution of Cinema: Watch Nearly 140 Years of Film History Unfold in 80 Minutes The video above from YouTuber Alex Day includes clips from about 500 movies, and you’ve almost...
4 months ago
41

The Evolution of Cinema: Watch Nearly 140 Years of Film History Unfold in 80 Minutes

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4 months ago
The video above from YouTuber Alex Day includes clips from about 500 movies, and you’ve almost certainly seen more than a few of them. Battleship Potemkin, Dumbo, Rear Window, Dr. No, The Godfather, E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Top Gun, Braveheart, Gladiator, Inception: we’re not...
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Open Culture
Orson Welles Narrates an Animated Parable About How Xenophobia & Greed Will Put America Into Decline... More than 50 years and 10 presidential administrations have passed since Orson Welles narrated...
4 months ago
41

Orson Welles Narrates an Animated Parable About How Xenophobia & Greed Will Put America Into Decline (1971)

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4 months ago
More than 50 years and 10 presidential administrations have passed since Orson Welles narrated Freedom River. And while it shows signs of age, the animated film, a parable about the role of immigration, race, and wealth in America, still resonates today. Actually, given the...
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Open Culture
Watch the Sex Pistols’ Christmas Party for Kids–Which Happened to Be Their Final Gig in the UK... I’m not sure the Sex Pistols had “available for children’s parties” on their press release, but on a...
2 months ago
41

Watch the Sex Pistols’ Christmas Party for Kids–Which Happened to Be Their Final Gig in the UK (1977)

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2 months ago
I’m not sure the Sex Pistols had “available for children’s parties” on their press release, but on a cold and grim Christmas in 1977, that’s exactly what happened. While many Britons were settling in for a warm yuletide, the Pistols decided to host a party/benefit for the...
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Open Culture
The Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants: Explore the 1977 Illustrated Guide Created by Harvard’s... I mean, the idea that you would give a psychedelic—in this case, magic mushrooms or the chemical...
2 months ago
41

The Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants: Explore the 1977 Illustrated Guide Created by Harvard’s Groundbreaking Ethnobotanist Richard Evan Schultes

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2 months ago
I mean, the idea that you would give a psychedelic—in this case, magic mushrooms or the chemical called psilocybin that’s derived from magic mushrooms—to people dying of cancer, people with terminal diagnoses, to help them deal with their — what’s called existential distress. And...
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Open Culture
Isaac Newton Creates a List of His 57 Sins (Circa 1662) Sir Isaac Newton, arguably the most important and influential scientist in history, discovered the...
2 months ago
41

Isaac Newton Creates a List of His 57 Sins (Circa 1662)

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2 months ago
Sir Isaac Newton, arguably the most important and influential scientist in history, discovered the laws of motion and the universal force of gravity. For the first time ever, the rules of the universe could be described with the supremely rational language of mathematics....
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Open Culture
Wes Anderson Directs & Stars in an Ad Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Montblanc’s Signature Pen One hardly has to be an expert on the films of Wes Anderson to imagine that the man writes with a...
9 months ago
41

Wes Anderson Directs & Stars in an Ad Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Montblanc’s Signature Pen

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9 months ago
One hardly has to be an expert on the films of Wes Anderson to imagine that the man writes with a fountain pen. Maybe back in the early nineteen-nineties, when he was shooting the black-and-white short that would become Bottle Rocket on the streets of Austin, he had to settle for...
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Open Culture
14 Self-Portraits by Pablo Picasso Show the Evolution of His Style: See Self-Portraits Moving from... 15 years old (1896) It’s possible to look at Pablo Picasso’s many formal experiments and periodic...
2 months ago
41

14 Self-Portraits by Pablo Picasso Show the Evolution of His Style: See Self-Portraits Moving from Ages 15 to 90

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2 months ago
15 years old (1896) It’s possible to look at Pablo Picasso’s many formal experiments and periodic shifts of style as a kind of self-portraiture, an exercise in shifting consciousness and trying on of new aesthetic identities. The Spanish modernist made a career of sweeping...
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Open Culture
Artist Draws 9 Portraits on LSD During 1950s Research Experiment During the 1950s, a researcher gave an artist two 50-microgram doses of LSD (each dose separated by...
9 months ago
40

Artist Draws 9 Portraits on LSD During 1950s Research Experiment

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9 months ago
During the 1950s, a researcher gave an artist two 50-microgram doses of LSD (each dose separated by about an hour), and then the artist was encouraged to draw pictures of the doctor who administered the drugs. Nine portraits were drawn over the space of eight hours. We still...
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Open Culture
Get Unlimited Access to Courses & Certificates: Coursera Is Offering 40% (or $159) Off of Coursera... A heads up on a deal: Between today and June 23, 2024, Coursera is offering a 40% discount on its...
8 months ago
40

Get Unlimited Access to Courses & Certificates: Coursera Is Offering 40% (or $159) Off of Coursera Plus Until June 23

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8 months ago
A heads up on a deal: Between today and June 23, 2024, Coursera is offering a 40% discount on its annual subscription plan called “Coursera Plus.” Normally priced at $399, Coursera Plus (now available for $239.40) gives you access to 7,000+ courses for one all-inclusive...
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Open Culture
How Marcel Duchamp Signed a Urinal in 1917 & Redefined Art Marcel Duchamp didn’t sign his name on a urinal for lack of ability to create “real” art. In fact,...
5 months ago
40

How Marcel Duchamp Signed a Urinal in 1917 & Redefined Art

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5 months ago
Marcel Duchamp didn’t sign his name on a urinal for lack of ability to create “real” art. In fact, as explained by gallerist-Youtuber James Payne in the new Great Art Explained video above, Duchamp’s grandfather was an artist, as were three of his siblings; he himself attained...
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Open Culture
A New 3D Scan, Created from 25,000 High-Resolution Images, Reveals the Remarkably Well-Preserved... Photos on this page courtesy of the Falklands Maritime Heritage  Few who hear the story of the...
3 months ago
40

A New 3D Scan, Created from 25,000 High-Resolution Images, Reveals the Remarkably Well-Preserved Wreck of Shackleton’s Endurance

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3 months ago
Photos on this page courtesy of the Falklands Maritime Heritage  Few who hear the story of the Endurance could avoid reflecting on the aptness of the ship’s name. A year after setting out on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1914, it got stuck in a mass of drifting ice...
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Open Culture
Hannah Arendt Explains the Rise of Totalitarian Regimes–and the Strategies Needed to Combat Them “Adolf Eichmann went to the gallows with great dignity,” wrote the political philosopher Hannah...
9 months ago
40

Hannah Arendt Explains the Rise of Totalitarian Regimes–and the Strategies Needed to Combat Them

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9 months ago
“Adolf Eichmann went to the gallows with great dignity,” wrote the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, describing the scene leading up to the prominent Holocaust-organizer’s execution. After drinking half a bottle of wine, turning down the offer of religious assistance, and even...
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Open Culture
Coursera Offers $120 Off of Coursera Plus (Until September 30), Giving You Unlimited Access to... A quick reminder: As the new school year gets underway, millions of students are heading back to...
5 months ago
40

Coursera Offers $120 Off of Coursera Plus (Until September 30), Giving You Unlimited Access to Courses & Certificates

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5 months ago
A quick reminder: As the new school year gets underway, millions of students are heading back to classrooms. And you can too. From now until September 30, 2024, Coursera is offering a 30% discount on its annual subscription plan called “Coursera Plus.” Normally priced at $399,...
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Open Culture
The Fake Buildings of New York: What Happens Inside Their Mysterious Walls You can’t go on a walk with a serious enthusiast of New York history without hearing the stories...
4 months ago
40

The Fake Buildings of New York: What Happens Inside Their Mysterious Walls

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4 months ago
You can’t go on a walk with a serious enthusiast of New York history without hearing the stories behind at least a few notable, beautiful, or downright strange buildings. Yet most longtime New Yorkers, famed for tuning out their surroundings to better strive for their goals of...
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Open Culture
Download 1,600+ Publications from the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Books, Guides, Magazines & More Many of us in these past few generations first heard of the Metropolitan Museum of Art while reading...
3 months ago
40

Download 1,600+ Publications from the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Books, Guides, Magazines & More

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3 months ago
Many of us in these past few generations first heard of the Metropolitan Museum of Art while reading E. L. Konigsburg’s novel From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. More than a few of us also fantasized about running away to live in that vast cultural institution...
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Open Culture
Andy Warhol Hosts Frank Zappa on His Cable TV Show, and Later Recalls, “I Hated Him More Than Ever”... Had Andy Warhol lived to see the internet–especially social networking–he would have loved it,...
7 months ago
40

Andy Warhol Hosts Frank Zappa on His Cable TV Show, and Later Recalls, “I Hated Him More Than Ever” After the Show

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7 months ago
Had Andy Warhol lived to see the internet–especially social networking–he would have loved it, though it may not have loved him. Though Warhol did see the very beginnings of the PC revolution, and made computer art near the end of his life on a Commodore Amiga 1000, he was mostly...
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Open Culture
Is Andrew Huberman Ruining Your Morning Coffee Routine? Andrew Huberman–the host of the influential Huberman Lab podcast–has gotten a lot of mileage out of...
5 months ago
40

Is Andrew Huberman Ruining Your Morning Coffee Routine?

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5 months ago
Andrew Huberman–the host of the influential Huberman Lab podcast–has gotten a lot of mileage out of his recommended morning routine. His routine emphasizes the importance of getting sunlight within 30–60 minutes of waking; also engaging in light physical activity; hydrating well;...
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Open Culture
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Puts 490,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use Update: The Metropolitan Museum of Art has put online 492,000 high-resolution images of artistic...
3 months ago
40

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Puts 490,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

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3 months ago
Update: The Metropolitan Museum of Art has put online 492,000 high-resolution images of artistic works. Even better, the museum has placed the vast majority of these images into the public domain, meaning they can be downloaded directly from the museum’s website for...
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Open Culture
Discover Paul Éluard and Max Ernst’s Still-Bizarre Proto-Surrealist Book Les Malheurs des immortels... When the names of French poet Paul Éluard and German artist Max Ernst arise, one subject always...
3 months ago
40

Discover Paul Éluard and Max Ernst’s Still-Bizarre Proto-Surrealist Book Les Malheurs des immortels (1922)

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3 months ago
When the names of French poet Paul Éluard and German artist Max Ernst arise, one subject always follows: that of their years-long ménage à trois — or rather, “marriage à trois,” as a New York Times article by Annette Grant once put it. It started in 1921, Grant writes, when the...
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Open Culture
The Steampunk Clocks of 19th-Century Paris: Discover the Ingenious System That Revolutionized... A middle-class Parisian living around the turn of the twentieth century would have to budget for...
6 months ago
40

The Steampunk Clocks of 19th-Century Paris: Discover the Ingenious System That Revolutionized Timekeeping in the 1880s

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6 months ago
A middle-class Parisian living around the turn of the twentieth century would have to budget for services like not just water or gas, but also time. Though electric clocks had been demonstrated, they were still a high-tech rarity; installing one in the home would have been...
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Open Culture
The Ingenious Engineering of Leonardo da Vinci’s Self-Supporting Bridge, Explained The video above from Sabins Civil Engineering promises to reveal “the MAGIC behind Da Vinci’s Self...
2 months ago
40

The Ingenious Engineering of Leonardo da Vinci’s Self-Supporting Bridge, Explained

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2 months ago
The video above from Sabins Civil Engineering promises to reveal “the MAGIC behind Da Vinci’s Self Supporting Bridge.” That sounds like a typical example of YouTube hyperbole, though on first glance, it isn’t at all obvious how the fragile-looking structure can stay up, much less...
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Open Culture
Neuroscience Shows That Viewing Art in Museums Engages the Brain More Than Reproductions We may appreciate living in an era that doesn’t require us to travel across the world to know what a...
4 months ago
40

Neuroscience Shows That Viewing Art in Museums Engages the Brain More Than Reproductions

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4 months ago
We may appreciate living in an era that doesn’t require us to travel across the world to know what a particular work of art looks like. At the same time, we may instinctively understand that regarding a work of art in its original form feels different than regarding even the most...
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Open Culture
How Audrey Hepburn Risked Death to Help the Dutch Resistance in World War II Audrey Hepburn may not have had the most prolific Hollywood career, but a fair few of her characters...
5 months ago
39

How Audrey Hepburn Risked Death to Help the Dutch Resistance in World War II

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5 months ago
Audrey Hepburn may not have had the most prolific Hollywood career, but a fair few of her characters still feel today like roles she was born to play. Perhaps the same could have been true of the part of Anne Frank, had she not refused to take it up. When Anne’s father Otto Frank...
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Open Culture
“The Virtues of Coffee” Explained in 1690 Ad: The Cure for Lethargy, Scurvy, Dropsy, Gout & More According to many historians, the English Enlightenment may never have happened were it not for...
9 months ago
39

“The Virtues of Coffee” Explained in 1690 Ad: The Cure for Lethargy, Scurvy, Dropsy, Gout & More

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9 months ago
According to many historians, the English Enlightenment may never have happened were it not for coffeehouses, the public sphere where poets, critics, philosophers, legal minds, and other intellectual gadflies regularly met to chatter about the pressing concerns of the day. And...
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Open Culture
Free: Download Over 33,000 Sounds from the BBC Sound Effects Archive There may be a few young people in Britain today who recognize the name Ludwig Koch, but in the...
4 months ago
39

Free: Download Over 33,000 Sounds from the BBC Sound Effects Archive

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4 months ago
There may be a few young people in Britain today who recognize the name Ludwig Koch, but in the nineteen-forties, he constituted something of a cultural phenomenon unto himself. He “started recording sounds and voices in the 1880s when he was still a child” in his native Germany,...
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Open Culture
The Story of Francis Ford Coppola’s Four-Decade-Struggle to Make Megalopolis This past summer, out came a trailer for Megalopolis, the movie Francis Ford Coppola has spent half...
4 months ago
39

The Story of Francis Ford Coppola’s Four-Decade-Struggle to Make Megalopolis

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4 months ago
This past summer, out came a trailer for Megalopolis, the movie Francis Ford Coppola has spent half of his life trying to make. It took the bold approach of opening with quotes from reviews of his previous pictures, and not positive ones: when it was first released, Rex Reed...
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Open Culture
Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa Now Appears on Japanese Banknotes If you’ve lived or traveled in Japan, you know full well how much of daily life in that...
7 months ago
39

Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa Now Appears on Japanese Banknotes

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7 months ago
If you’ve lived or traveled in Japan, you know full well how much of daily life in that cash-intensive society involves the use of thousand-yen bills. Once considered the equivalent of the American ten-spot, the yen’s lately having fallen to its lowest value in decades means that...
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Open Culture
Artificial Intelligence & Drones Uncover 303 New Nazca Lines in Peru If you visit one tourist site in Peru, it will almost certainly be the ruined Incan city of Machu...
4 months ago
39

Artificial Intelligence & Drones Uncover 303 New Nazca Lines in Peru

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4 months ago
If you visit one tourist site in Peru, it will almost certainly be the ruined Incan city of Machu Picchu. If you visit another, it’ll probably be the Nazca Desert, home to many large-scale geoglyphs made by pre-Inca peoples between 500 BC and 500 AD. Many of these “Nazca lines”...
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Open Culture
John Coltrane Draws a Picture Illustrating the Mathematics of Music Physicist and saxophonist Stephon Alexander has argued in his many public lectures and his book The...
2 months ago
39

John Coltrane Draws a Picture Illustrating the Mathematics of Music

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2 months ago
Physicist and saxophonist Stephon Alexander has argued in his many public lectures and his book The Jazz of Physics that Albert Einstein and John Coltrane had quite a lot in common. Alexander in particular draws our attention to the so-called “Coltrane circle,” which resembles...
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Open Culture
Enter a Huge Archive of Amazing Stories, the World’s First Science Fiction Magazine, Launched in... If you haven’t heard of Hugo Gernsback, you’ve surely heard of the Hugo Award. Next to the Nebula,...
8 months ago
39

Enter a Huge Archive of Amazing Stories, the World’s First Science Fiction Magazine, Launched in 1926

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8 months ago
If you haven’t heard of Hugo Gernsback, you’ve surely heard of the Hugo Award. Next to the Nebula, it’s the most prestigious of science fiction prizes, bringing together in its ranks of winners such venerable authors as Ursula K. Le Guin, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Neil...
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Open Culture
How Carl Jung Inspired the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous There may be as many doors into Alcoholics Anonymous in the 21st century as there are people who...
8 months ago
39

How Carl Jung Inspired the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous

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8 months ago
There may be as many doors into Alcoholics Anonymous in the 21st century as there are people who walk through them—from every world religion to no religion. The “international mutual-aid fellowship” has had “a significant and long-term effect on the culture of the United States,”...
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Open Culture
What Would Happen If a Nuclear Bomb Hit a Major City Today: A Visualization of the Destruction One of the many memorable details in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop...
10 months ago
38

What Would Happen If a Nuclear Bomb Hit a Major City Today: A Visualization of the Destruction

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10 months ago
One of the many memorable details in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, placed prominently in a shot of George C. Scott in the war room, is a binder with a spine labeled “WORLD TARGETS IN MEGADEATHS.” A megadeath, writes Eric...
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Open Culture
Radio Caroline, the Pirate Radio Ship That Rocked the British Music World (1965) Nowadays musicians can reach hundreds, thousands, sometimes millions of listeners with a few,...
a month ago
38

Radio Caroline, the Pirate Radio Ship That Rocked the British Music World (1965)

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a month ago
Nowadays musicians can reach hundreds, thousands, sometimes millions of listeners with a few, usually free, online services and a minimal grasp of technology. That’s not to say there aren’t still economic barriers aplenty for the struggling artist, but true independence is not an...
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Open Culture
What is Electronic Music?: Pioneering Electronic Musician Daphne Oram Explains (1969) Survey the British public about the most important institution to arise in their country after World...
6 months ago
38

What is Electronic Music?: Pioneering Electronic Musician Daphne Oram Explains (1969)

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6 months ago
Survey the British public about the most important institution to arise in their country after World War II, and a lot of respondents are going to say the National Health Service. But keep asking around, and you’ll sooner or later encounter a few serious electronic-music...
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Open Culture
Bukowski Reads Bukowski: Watch a 1975 Documentary Featuring Charles Bukowski at the Height of His... In 1973, Richard Davies directed Bukowski, a documentary that TV Guide described as a “cinema-verite...
9 months ago
38

Bukowski Reads Bukowski: Watch a 1975 Documentary Featuring Charles Bukowski at the Height of His Powers

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9 months ago
In 1973, Richard Davies directed Bukowski, a documentary that TV Guide described as a “cinema-verite portrait of Los Angeles poet Charles Bukowski.” The film finds Bukowski, then 53 years old, “enjoying his first major success,” and “the camera captures his reminiscences … as he...
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Open Culture
David Lynch Releases on YouTube Interview Project: 121 Stories of Real America Recorded on a... Take a sufficiently long road trip across America, and you’re bound to encounter something or...
4 months ago
38

David Lynch Releases on YouTube Interview Project: 121 Stories of Real America Recorded on a 20,000-Mile Road Trip

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4 months ago
Take a sufficiently long road trip across America, and you’re bound to encounter something or someone Lynchian. Whether or not that idea lay behind Interview Project, the undertaking had the endorsement of David Lynch himself. Not coincidentally, it was conceived by his son...
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Open Culture
The Hand: An Anti-Totalitarian Animation, Banned for Two Decades & Now Considered One of the... For obvious reasons, most art produced under oppressive regimes comes off as painstakingly...
3 months ago
38

The Hand: An Anti-Totalitarian Animation, Banned for Two Decades & Now Considered One of the Greatest Animations (1965)

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3 months ago
For obvious reasons, most art produced under oppressive regimes comes off as painstakingly inoffensive. For equally obvious reasons, the rare works that criticize the regime tend to do so rather obliquely. This wasn’t so much the case with The Hand, the most famous short by Czech...
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Open Culture
A Bicycle Trip: Watch an Animation of The World’s First LSD Trip in 1943 On August 16, 1943, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann was synthesizing a new compound called lysergic...
9 months ago
38

A Bicycle Trip: Watch an Animation of The World’s First LSD Trip in 1943

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9 months ago
On August 16, 1943, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann was synthesizing a new compound called lysergic acid diethylamide-25 when he got a couple of drops on his finger. The chemical, later known worldwide as LSD, absorbed into his system, and, soon after, he experienced an intense...
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Open Culture
The Writer Who Directed, The Director Who Wrote: Every Frame a Painting Explores the Genius of Billy... When the acclaimed cinema video-essay channel Every Frame a Painting made its comeback this past...
4 months ago
38

The Writer Who Directed, The Director Who Wrote: Every Frame a Painting Explores the Genius of Billy Wilder

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4 months ago
When the acclaimed cinema video-essay channel Every Frame a Painting made its comeback this past summer, its creators Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos took a close look at the “sustained two-shot,” which captures a stretch of dialogue between two characters without the interference of...
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Open Culture
Behold The Drawings of Franz Kafka (1907–1917) Runner 1907–1908 UK-born, Chicago-based artist Philip Hartigan has posted a brief video piece...
9 months ago
38

Behold The Drawings of Franz Kafka (1907–1917)

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9 months ago
Runner 1907–1908 UK-born, Chicago-based artist Philip Hartigan has posted a brief video piece about Franz Kafka’s drawings. Kafka, of course, wrote a body of work, mostly never published during his lifetime, that captured the absurdity and the loneliness of the newly emerging...
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Open Culture
The Longest Construction Projects in History: Why Sagrada Família, the Milan Duomo, Greek Temples &... Public-transit projects are the religious building endeavors of twenty-first century America, less...
a month ago
38

The Longest Construction Projects in History: Why Sagrada Família, the Milan Duomo, Greek Temples & Other Famous Structures Took Generations to Complete

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a month ago
Public-transit projects are the religious building endeavors of twenty-first century America, less because they’re motivated by the belief in any particular deity than by how much time and money they now require to complete. Take New York’s Second Avenue subway, whose less than...
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Open Culture
The Story Behind the Making of the Iconic Surrealist Photograph, Dalí Atomicus (1948) With his cane, his famous waxed mustache, and his habit of taking unusual animals for walks,...
2 months ago
38

The Story Behind the Making of the Iconic Surrealist Photograph, Dalí Atomicus (1948)

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2 months ago
With his cane, his famous waxed mustache, and his habit of taking unusual animals for walks, Salvador Dalí would appear to have cultivated his own photographability. But taking a picture of the man who stood as a living definition of popular surrealism wasn’t a task to be...
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Open Culture
James Earl Jones (RIP) Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” Note: With the sad passing of James Earl Jones, at age 93, we’re bringing back a post from our...
5 months ago
38

James Earl Jones (RIP) Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

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5 months ago
Note: With the sad passing of James Earl Jones, at age 93, we’re bringing back a post from our archive–one featuring Jones reading two great American poets, Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman. These readings first appeared on our site in 2014. For all its many flaws the original...
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Open Culture
Inside the Beautiful Home Frank Lloyd Wright Designed for His Son (1952) Being Frank Lloyd Wright’s son surely came with its downsides. But one of the upsides — assuming you...
10 months ago
38

Inside the Beautiful Home Frank Lloyd Wright Designed for His Son (1952)

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10 months ago
Being Frank Lloyd Wright’s son surely came with its downsides. But one of the upsides — assuming you could stay in the mercurial master’s good graces — was the possibility of his designing a house for you. Such was the fortune of his fourth child David Samuel Wright, a Phoenix...
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Open Culture
How Art Gets Stolen: What Happened to Egon Schiele’s Painting Boats Mirrored in the Water After Its... George Clooney may be better regarded as an actor than as a director, but his occasional work in the...
5 months ago
38

How Art Gets Stolen: What Happened to Egon Schiele’s Painting Boats Mirrored in the Water After Its Theft by the Nazis

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5 months ago
George Clooney may be better regarded as an actor than as a director, but his occasional work in the latter capacity reveals an admirable interest in lesser-dramatized chapters of American history. His films have found their material in everything from the early years of the NFL...
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Open Culture
16th-Century Japanese Historians Describe the Oddness of Meeting the First Europeans They Ever Saw Go to Japan today, and the country will present you with plenty of opportunities to buy pan, tabako,...
8 months ago
38

16th-Century Japanese Historians Describe the Oddness of Meeting the First Europeans They Ever Saw

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8 months ago
Go to Japan today, and the country will present you with plenty of opportunities to buy pan, tabako, and tempura. These products themselves — bread, cigarettes, and deep-fried seafood or vegetables — will be familiar enough. Even the words that refer to them may have a...
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Open Culture
The Olympics in the 2020s Versus 1912: See Side-by-Side Comparisons of the Athletes’ Performance... The Olympic Games have their origins in antiquity, but their modern revival has also been going on...
6 months ago
38

The Olympics in the 2020s Versus 1912: See Side-by-Side Comparisons of the Athletes’ Performance Then & Now

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6 months ago
The Olympic Games have their origins in antiquity, but their modern revival has also been going on longer than any of us has been here. Even the fifth Summer Olympics, which took place in Stockholm in 1912, has passed out of living memory. But thanks to the technology of the...
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Open Culture
Explore Burj Al Babas, Turkey’s Abandoned Town of 587 Disney-Style Castles Burj Al Babas might have been constructed expressly to attract the attention of the internet....
3 months ago
38

Explore Burj Al Babas, Turkey’s Abandoned Town of 587 Disney-Style Castles

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3 months ago
Burj Al Babas might have been constructed expressly to attract the attention of the internet. “Sitting near the Black Sea, the town is full of half-finished, fully abandoned mini castles — 587 of them to be exact,” write Architectural Digest’s Katherine McLaughlin and Jessica...
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Open Culture
A Short Visual History of America, According to the Irreverent Comic Artist R. Crumb As a founder of the “underground comix” movement in the 1960s, R. Crumb is either revered as a...
3 months ago
38

A Short Visual History of America, According to the Irreverent Comic Artist R. Crumb

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3 months ago
As a founder of the “underground comix” movement in the 1960s, R. Crumb is either revered as a pioneering satirist of American culture and its excesses or reviled as a juvenile purveyor of painfully outmoded sexist and racist stereotypes. Crumb doesn’t apologize. He keeps...
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Open Culture
The Complete History of the Music Video: From the 1890s to Today If you want to understand the history of music videos, you must consider a lot of things that are...
a month ago
37

The Complete History of the Music Video: From the 1890s to Today

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a month ago
If you want to understand the history of music videos, you must consider a lot of things that are not obviously music videos. The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” the first selection of MTV’s inaugural broadcast, must surely count as a music video — but then, it was...
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Open Culture
Soviet Inventor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Early Electronic Instrument That Could Be... You know the sound of the theremin, that weird, warbly whine that signals mystery, danger, and...
6 months ago
37

Soviet Inventor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Early Electronic Instrument That Could Be Played Without Being Touched (1954)

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6 months ago
You know the sound of the theremin, that weird, warbly whine that signals mystery, danger, and otherworldly portent in many classic sci-fi films. It has the distinction of being not only the very first electronic instrument but also the only instrument in history one plays...
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Open Culture
How the 18th-Century French Media Stoked a Werewolf Panic If you’ve studied French (or, indeed, been French) in the past couple of decades, you may well have...
8 months ago
37

How the 18th-Century French Media Stoked a Werewolf Panic

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8 months ago
If you’ve studied French (or, indeed, been French) in the past couple of decades, you may well have played the card game Les Loups-garous de Thiercelieux. Known in English as The Werewolves of Millers Hollow, it casts its players as hunters, thieves, seers, and other types of...
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Open Culture
Thomas Edison’s Recordings of Leo Tolstoy: Hear the Voice of the Great Russian Novelist Born 196 years ago, Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy’s life (1828–1910) spanned a period of immense...
4 months ago
37

Thomas Edison’s Recordings of Leo Tolstoy: Hear the Voice of the Great Russian Novelist

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4 months ago
Born 196 years ago, Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy’s life (1828–1910) spanned a period of immense social, political, and technological change, paralleled in his own life by his radical shift from hedonistic nobleman to theologian, anarchist, and vegetarian pacifist. Though he did...
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Open Culture
Public.Work: A Smoothly Searchable Archive of 100,000+ “Copyright-Free” Images We live in an age, we’re often told, when our ability to conjure up an image is limited only by our...
6 months ago
37

Public.Work: A Smoothly Searchable Archive of 100,000+ “Copyright-Free” Images

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6 months ago
We live in an age, we’re often told, when our ability to conjure up an image is limited only by our imagination. These days, this notion tends to refer to artificial intelligence-powered systems that generate visual material from text prompts, like DALL‑E and the many others that...
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Open Culture
An Oscar-Winning Animation of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” Painted on 29,000 Frames... Ernest Hemingway’s romantic adventure of man and marlin, The Old Man and the Sea, has perhaps spent...
6 months ago
37

An Oscar-Winning Animation of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” Painted on 29,000 Frames of Glass

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6 months ago
Ernest Hemingway’s romantic adventure of man and marlin, The Old Man and the Sea, has perhaps spent more time on high school freshman English reading lists than any other work of fiction, which might lead one to think of the novel as young adult fiction. But beyond the book’s...
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Open Culture
Hear 2.5 Hours of the Classical Music in Haruki Murakami’s Novels: Liszt, Beethoven, Janáček, and... Haruki Murakami’s hit novel 1Q84 features a memorable scene in a taxicab on a gridlocked freeway...
3 months ago
37

Hear 2.5 Hours of the Classical Music in Haruki Murakami’s Novels: Liszt, Beethoven, Janáček, and More

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3 months ago
Haruki Murakami’s hit novel 1Q84 features a memorable scene in a taxicab on a gridlocked freeway whose radio is playing Leoš Janáček’s Sinfonietta. “It is, as the book suggests, truly the worst possible music for a traffic jam,” writes Sam Anderson in a New York Times Magazine...
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Open Culture
George Harrison Explains Why Everyone Should Play the Ukulele George Harrison loved the ukulele, and really, what’s not to love? For its dainty size, the uke can...
4 months ago
37

George Harrison Explains Why Everyone Should Play the Ukulele

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4 months ago
George Harrison loved the ukulele, and really, what’s not to love? For its dainty size, the uke can make a powerfully cheerful sound, and it’s an instrument both beginners and expert players can learn and easily carry around. As Harrison’s old friend Joe Brown remarked, “You can...
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Open Culture
André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto Turns 100 This Year People don’t seem to write a lot of manifestos these days. Or if they do write manifestos, they...
9 months ago
37

André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto Turns 100 This Year

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9 months ago
People don’t seem to write a lot of manifestos these days. Or if they do write manifestos, they don’t make the impact that they would have a century ago. In fact, this year marks the hundredth anniversary of the Manifeste du surréalisme, or Surrealist Manifesto, one of the most...
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Open Culture
Explore the World’s First 3D Replica of St. Peter’s Basilica, Made with AI In the trailer below for the world’s first 3D replica of St. Peter’s Basilica, Yves Ubelmann speaks...
3 months ago
37

Explore the World’s First 3D Replica of St. Peter’s Basilica, Made with AI

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3 months ago
In the trailer below for the world’s first 3D replica of St. Peter’s Basilica, Yves Ubelmann speaks of using “AI for Good,” which isn’t just an ideal, but also the name of a lab at Microsoft. Microsoft and Ubelman’s digital-preservation company Iconem were two of the participants...
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Open Culture
Hear the Isolated Vocals of Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush in “Don’t Give Up”: The Power of Perseverance Just by chance, could you use a song about perseverance and overcoming adversity? Something to give...
3 months ago
36

Hear the Isolated Vocals of Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush in “Don’t Give Up”: The Power of Perseverance

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3 months ago
Just by chance, could you use a song about perseverance and overcoming adversity? Something to give you a little encouragement and reassurance? Then we submit to you “Don’t Give Up,” featuring the isolated vocals of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush. When he released the song on his...
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Open Culture
What It Takes to Pass “the Knowledge,” the “Insanely Hard” Exam to Become a London Taxicab Driver Anyone who’s followed the late Michael Apted’s Up documentaries knows that becoming a London cab...
6 months ago
36

What It Takes to Pass “the Knowledge,” the “Insanely Hard” Exam to Become a London Taxicab Driver

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6 months ago
Anyone who’s followed the late Michael Apted’s Up documentaries knows that becoming a London cab driver is no mean feat. Tony Walker, one of the series’ most memorable participants, was selected at the age of seven from an East End primary school, already distinguished as a...
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Open Culture
Kurt Vonnegut’s Lost Board Game Is Finally for Sale Kurt Vonnegut’s life was not without its ironies. Fighting in World War II, that descendant of a...
4 months ago
36

Kurt Vonnegut’s Lost Board Game Is Finally for Sale

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4 months ago
Kurt Vonnegut’s life was not without its ironies. Fighting in World War II, that descendant of a long line of German immigrants in the United States found himself imprisoned in Dresden just when it was devastated by Allied firebombing. To understand the relevance of this...
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Open Culture
Watch The Cure Perform a Three-Hour Concert in London, Celebrating the Release of Their New Album httpv://www.youtube.com/live/_aWDlaxvEZo Last Friday, The Cure celebrated the release of their new...
3 months ago
36

Watch The Cure Perform a Three-Hour Concert in London, Celebrating the Release of Their New Album

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3 months ago
httpv://www.youtube.com/live/_aWDlaxvEZo Last Friday, The Cure celebrated the release of their new album, Songs of a Lost World, with a three-hour set at the Troxy in London. The band kicked off the show by performing all eight tracks from the album, before then playing another...
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Open Culture
A 6‑Step Guide to Zen Buddhism, Presented by Psychiatrist-Zen Master Robert Waldinger Robert Waldinger works as a part-time professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, but he also...
9 months ago
36

A 6‑Step Guide to Zen Buddhism, Presented by Psychiatrist-Zen Master Robert Waldinger

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9 months ago
Robert Waldinger works as a part-time professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, but he also describes himself as a “Zen master.” This may strike some listeners as a presumptuous claim, but he has indeed been officially accepted as a rōshi in two different Zen lineages in...
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Open Culture
The First Animation That Hayao Miyazaki Directed on His Own: Watch Footage from the Pilot of Yuki’s... Hayao Miyazaki began his career as an animator in 1963, getting in the door at Toei Animation not...
6 months ago
36

The First Animation That Hayao Miyazaki Directed on His Own: Watch Footage from the Pilot of Yuki’s Sun (1972)

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6 months ago
Hayao Miyazaki began his career as an animator in 1963, getting in the door at Toei Animation not long before the company ceased to hire regularly. Miyazaki’s equally retirement-resistant contemporary Tetsuya Chiba, already well on his way to fame as a mangaka, or comic artist,...
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Open Culture
An Introduction to the Astonishing Book of Kells, the Iconic Illuminated Manuscript Whatever set of religious or cultural traditions you come from, you’ve probably seen a Celtic cross...
3 months ago
36

An Introduction to the Astonishing Book of Kells, the Iconic Illuminated Manuscript

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3 months ago
Whatever set of religious or cultural traditions you come from, you’ve probably seen a Celtic cross before. Unlike a conventional cross, it has a circular ring, or “nimbus,” where its arms and stem intersect. The sole addition of that element gives it a highly distinctive look,...
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Open Culture
Stephen King Names His Five Favorite Works by Stephen King Stephen King has no doubt forgotten writing more books than most of us will ever publish. But even...
8 months ago
36

Stephen King Names His Five Favorite Works by Stephen King

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8 months ago
Stephen King has no doubt forgotten writing more books than most of us will ever publish. But even now, in his prolific “late career,” if you ask him to name his own most favored works, he can do it without hesitation. Stephen Colbert tried that out a few years ago on The Late...
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Open Culture
Steven Spielberg Calls Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange “the First Punk Rock Movie Ever Made” Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick are two of the first directors whose names young cinephiles get...
10 months ago
36

Steven Spielberg Calls Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange “the First Punk Rock Movie Ever Made”

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10 months ago
Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick are two of the first directors whose names young cinephiles get to know. They’re also names between which quite a few of those young cinephiles draw a battle line: you may have enjoyed films by both of these auteurs, but ultimately, you’re...
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Open Culture
The Scene That Reveals the Beauty of Classic Hollywood Cinema 1939 is widely considered the greatest year in Hollywood history. Back then, writes 1939: The Year...
a month ago
36

The Scene That Reveals the Beauty of Classic Hollywood Cinema

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a month ago
1939 is widely considered the greatest year in Hollywood history. Back then, writes 1939: The Year in Movies author Tom Flannery, the so-called “Big Eight” major American studios “had a combined 590 actors, 114 directors and 340 writers under contract, each of whom worked an...
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Open Culture
How Car Chase Scenes Have Evolved Over 100 Years: The Technology Behind Bullitt, The French... For many a classic action-movie enthusiast, no car chase will ever top the one in Bullitt. The...
3 months ago
36

How Car Chase Scenes Have Evolved Over 100 Years: The Technology Behind Bullitt, The French Connection, Driver, and Other Action Movies

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3 months ago
For many a classic action-movie enthusiast, no car chase will ever top the one in Bullitt. The narrator of the Insider video above describes it as “the scene that set the standard for all modern car chases,” one made “iconic partly because of the characters, but also because of...
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Open Culture
The Mushroom Color Atlas: An Interactive Web Site Lets You Explore the Incredible Spectrum of Colors... Enter the Mushroom Color Atlas, and you can discover the “beautiful and subtle colors derived from...
3 months ago
35

The Mushroom Color Atlas: An Interactive Web Site Lets You Explore the Incredible Spectrum of Colors Created from Fungi

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3 months ago
Enter the Mushroom Color Atlas, and you can discover the “beautiful and subtle colors derived from dyeing with mushrooms.” Featuring 825 colors, each associated with different types of mushrooms, the interactive atlas lets you appreciate the broad spectrum of colors latent in the...
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Open Culture
How Rasputin Inspired the “Fictitious Persons” Disclaimer Commonly Seen in Movies “This is a work of fiction,” declares the disclaimer we’ve all noticed during the end credits of...
2 months ago
35

How Rasputin Inspired the “Fictitious Persons” Disclaimer Commonly Seen in Movies

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2 months ago
“This is a work of fiction,” declares the disclaimer we’ve all noticed during the end credits of movies. “Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.” In most cases, this may seem so trivial that it hardly merits a mention, but the...
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Open Culture
The Internet Archive Rescues MTV News’ Web Site, Making 460,000+ of Its Pages Searchable Again Image via Internet Archive Last month, MTV News’ web site went missing. Or at least almost all of it...
7 months ago
35

The Internet Archive Rescues MTV News’ Web Site, Making 460,000+ of Its Pages Searchable Again

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7 months ago
Image via Internet Archive Last month, MTV News’ web site went missing. Or at least almost all of it did, including an archive of stories going back to 1997. To some of us, and especially to those of us old enough to have grown up watching MTV on actual television, that won’t...
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Open Culture
The Final Days of Leo Tolstoy Captured in Rare Footage from 1910 114 years ago today (November 20, 1910), Leo Tolstoy—the author who gave us two major Russian...
3 months ago
35

The Final Days of Leo Tolstoy Captured in Rare Footage from 1910

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3 months ago
114 years ago today (November 20, 1910), Leo Tolstoy—the author who gave us two major Russian classics Anna Karenina and War & Peace—died at Astapovo, a small, remote train station in the heart of Russia. Pneumonia was the official cause. His death came just weeks after Tolstoy,...
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Open Culture
The World’s First Mobile Phone Shown in 1922 Vintage Film A number of years ago, British Pathé uncovered some striking footage from 1922 showing two women...
5 months ago
35

The World’s First Mobile Phone Shown in 1922 Vintage Film

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5 months ago
A number of years ago, British Pathé uncovered some striking footage from 1922 showing two women experimenting with the first mobile phone. A spokesman for the archive said: ”It’s amazing that 90 years ago mobile phone technology and music … was not only being thought of but...
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Open Culture
Face to Face with Carl Jung: ‘Man Cannot Stand a Meaningless Life’ (1959) Carl Gustav Jung, founder of analytic psychology and explorer of the collective unconscious, was...
7 months ago
35

Face to Face with Carl Jung: ‘Man Cannot Stand a Meaningless Life’ (1959)

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7 months ago
Carl Gustav Jung, founder of analytic psychology and explorer of the collective unconscious, was born on July 26, 1875 in the village of Kesswil, in the Thurgau canton of Switzerland. Above, we present a fascinating 39-minute interview of Jung by John Freeman for the BBC program...
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Open Culture
Discover the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual: A Timeless Guide to Subverting Any Organization... I’ve always admired people who can successfully navigate what I refer to as “Kafka’s Castle,” a term...
3 months ago
35

Discover the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual: A Timeless Guide to Subverting Any Organization with “Purposeful Stupidity” (1944)

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3 months ago
I’ve always admired people who can successfully navigate what I refer to as “Kafka’s Castle,” a term of dread for the many government and corporate agencies that have an inordinate amount of power over our permanent records, and that seem as inscrutable and chillingly absurd as...
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Open Culture
Mythology Expert Reviews Depictions of Greek & Roman Myths in Popular Movies and TV Shows It’s safe to say that we no longer believe in the gods of the ancient world — or rather, that most...
3 months ago
35

Mythology Expert Reviews Depictions of Greek & Roman Myths in Popular Movies and TV Shows

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3 months ago
It’s safe to say that we no longer believe in the gods of the ancient world — or rather, that most of us no longer believe in their literal existence, but some of us have faith in their box-office potential. This two-part video series from Vanity Fair examines a variety of movies...
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Open Culture
Richard Feynman Enthusiastically Explains How to Think Like a Physicist in His Series Fun to Imagine... “It’s interesting that some people find science so easy, and others find it kind of dull and...
2 months ago
35

Richard Feynman Enthusiastically Explains How to Think Like a Physicist in His Series Fun to Imagine (1983)

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2 months ago
“It’s interesting that some people find science so easy, and others find it kind of dull and difficult,” says Richard Feynman at the beginning of his 1983 BBC series Fun to Imagine. “One of the things that makes it very difficult is that it takes a lot of imagination. It’s very...
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Open Culture
Why the Tavern Scene in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds Is a Master Class in Filmmaking Ideally, a viewer should be able to identify the work of a particular auteur from any one scene that...
a month ago
35

Why the Tavern Scene in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds Is a Master Class in Filmmaking

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a month ago
Ideally, a viewer should be able to identify the work of a particular auteur from any one scene that the auteur has directed. In reality, it’s not always possible to do so, even in the work of filmmakers with highly idiosyncratic styles. But in the case of Quentin Tarantino, it...
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Open Culture
Nirvana Before They Were Nirvana: Watch Their 1988 Performance Recorded in a Radio Shack Here’s a strange home video of Nirvana when they were unknown, playing inside a Radio Shack in the...
a month ago
35

Nirvana Before They Were Nirvana: Watch Their 1988 Performance Recorded in a Radio Shack

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a month ago
Here’s a strange home video of Nirvana when they were unknown, playing inside a Radio Shack in the band’s hometown of Aberdeen, Washington. The video was recorded on the evening of January 24, 1988, after the store had closed. In those days the group went by the name of Ted Ed...
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Open Culture
Free: 356 Issues of Galaxy, the Groundbreaking 1950s Science Fiction Magazine Along with Astounding Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Galaxy...
3 months ago
35

Free: 356 Issues of Galaxy, the Groundbreaking 1950s Science Fiction Magazine

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3 months ago
Along with Astounding Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Galaxy Magazine was one of the most important science fiction digests in 1950s America. Ray Bradbury wrote for it–including an early version of his masterpiece Fahrenheit 451–as did Robert A....
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Open Culture
An Introduction to The Babylonian Map of the World–the Oldest Known Map of the World Taking a first glance at the Babylonian Map of the World, few of us could recognize it for what it...
6 months ago
35

An Introduction to The Babylonian Map of the World–the Oldest Known Map of the World

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6 months ago
Taking a first glance at the Babylonian Map of the World, few of us could recognize it for what it is. But then again, few of us are anything like the British Museum Middle East department curator Irving Finkel, whose vast knowledge (and ability to share it compellingly) have...
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Open Culture
How Marcel Marceau Used Mime to Save Children During the Holocaust In 1972, Jerry Lewis made the ill-considered decision to write, direct, and star in a film about a...
a month ago
35

How Marcel Marceau Used Mime to Save Children During the Holocaust

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a month ago
In 1972, Jerry Lewis made the ill-considered decision to write, direct, and star in a film about a German clown in Auschwitz. The result was so awful that he never allowed its release, and it quickly acquired the reputation—along with disasters like George Lucas’ Star Wars...
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Open Culture
Andy Warhol’s One Minute of Professional Wrestling Fame (1985) Andy Warhol did for art what the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) did for wrestling. He made it a...
4 months ago
35

Andy Warhol’s One Minute of Professional Wrestling Fame (1985)

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4 months ago
Andy Warhol did for art what the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) did for wrestling. He made it a spectacle. He made it something the “everyman” could enjoy. He infused it with celebrity. And, some would say, he cheapened it too. Looking back, it makes perfect sense that Warhol...
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Open Culture
The Wisdom of Alan Watts in 4 Mind-Expanding Animations Perhaps no single person did more to popularize Zen Buddhism in the West than Alan Watts. In a...
4 months ago
35

The Wisdom of Alan Watts in 4 Mind-Expanding Animations

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4 months ago
Perhaps no single person did more to popularize Zen Buddhism in the West than Alan Watts. In a sense, Watts prepared U.S. culture for more traditionally Zen teachers like Soto priest Suzuki Roshi, whose lineage continues today, but Watts did not consider himself a Zen Buddhist....
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Open Culture
Join Us on Bluesky. We Will Have Fun Together There’s an eXodus taking place, and millions are finding a new home on Bluesky. In recent days, the...
3 months ago
35

Join Us on Bluesky. We Will Have Fun Together

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3 months ago
There’s an eXodus taking place, and millions are finding a new home on Bluesky. In recent days, the decentralized social media platform has been gaining 10,000 new users every 10–15 minutes, or about 1 million new users per day. Open Culture is already there, sharing the cultural...
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Open Culture
The Night When Luciano Pavarotti & James Brown Sang “It’s a Man’s World” Together (2002) Luciano Pavarotti and James Brown are remembered as larger-than-life performers with an almost...
4 months ago
35

The Night When Luciano Pavarotti & James Brown Sang “It’s a Man’s World” Together (2002)

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4 months ago
Luciano Pavarotti and James Brown are remembered as larger-than-life performers with an almost mythical-seeming presence and distinctiveness. But it wasn’t so very long ago that both of them were active — and even active onstage together. In the video above, the King of the High...
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Open Culture
Meet Madame Inès Decourcelle, One of the Very First Female Taxi Drivers in Paris (Circa 1908) If you can read this, you almost certainly know the French word for a professional automobile...
7 months ago
35

Meet Madame Inès Decourcelle, One of the Very First Female Taxi Drivers in Paris (Circa 1908)

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7 months ago
If you can read this, you almost certainly know the French word for a professional automobile driver. That’s because we use the same word in English: chauffeur. French nouns, unlike English ones, come in masculine and feminine varieties, and that -eur ending unmistakably...
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Open Culture
Oscar-Winning Director Frank Capra Made an Educational Science Film Warning of Climate Change in... In 2015, we highlighted for you The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays, a largely-forgotten 1957...
7 months ago
34

Oscar-Winning Director Frank Capra Made an Educational Science Film Warning of Climate Change in 1958

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7 months ago
In 2015, we highlighted for you The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays, a largely-forgotten 1957 educational science film. The production is notable partly because it was shot by Frank Capra, the influential director who had won not one, not two, but three Oscars for best director....
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Open Culture
The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse: Rick Beato Explains Earlier this month, a North Carolina man was charged with generating songs using an...
5 months ago
34

The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse: Rick Beato Explains

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5 months ago
Earlier this month, a North Carolina man was charged with generating songs using an artificial-intelligence system and configuring bots to stream them automatically, thus racking up some $10 million in illegal royalties. Though that amount no doubt startles many of us, in this...
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Open Culture
The First “Selfie” In History Taken by Robert Cornelius, a Philadelphia Chemist, in 1839 In 2013, the Oxford Dictionaries announced that “selfie” had been deemed their Word of The Year. The...
6 months ago
34

The First “Selfie” In History Taken by Robert Cornelius, a Philadelphia Chemist, in 1839

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6 months ago
In 2013, the Oxford Dictionaries announced that “selfie” had been deemed their Word of The Year. The term, whose first recorded use as an Instagram hashtag occurred on January 27, 2011, was actually invented in 2002, when an Australian chap posted a picture of himself on an...
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Open Culture
Watch Philosophy Lectures That Became a Hit During COVID by Professor Michael Sugrue (RIP): From... If we ask which philosophy professor has made the greatest impact in this decade, there’s a solid...
9 months ago
34

Watch Philosophy Lectures That Became a Hit During COVID by Professor Michael Sugrue (RIP): From Plato and Marcus Aurelius to Critical Theory

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9 months ago
If we ask which philosophy professor has made the greatest impact in this decade, there’s a solid case to be made for the late Michael Sugrue. Yet in the nearly four-decade-long career that followed his studies at the University of Chicago under Allan Bloom (author of The Closing...
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Open Culture
Download 131,000 Historic Maps from the Huge David Rumsey Map Collection The world has changed dramatically over the past 500 years, albeit not quite as dramatically as how...
9 months ago
34

Download 131,000 Historic Maps from the Huge David Rumsey Map Collection

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9 months ago
The world has changed dramatically over the past 500 years, albeit not quite as dramatically as how we see the world. That’s just what’s on display at the David Rumsey Map Collection, whose more than 131,000 historical maps and related images are available to browse (or download)...
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Open Culture
Isaac Asimov Predicts the Future of Online Education in 1988–and It’s Now Coming True “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” Though that line probably originated...
9 months ago
34

Isaac Asimov Predicts the Future of Online Education in 1988–and It’s Now Coming True

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9 months ago
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” Though that line probably originated with  a Canadian novelist called Grant Allen, it’s long been popularly attributed to his more colorful nineteenth-century contemporary Mark Twain. It isn’t hard to understand why it...
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Open Culture
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Creative Process: A Look Inside the Books & Techniques That Allowed His Art... The story of Jean-Michel Basquiat has its unfortunate aspects: not just his premature death, but...
2 months ago
34

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Creative Process: A Look Inside the Books & Techniques That Allowed His Art to Flow

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2 months ago
The story of Jean-Michel Basquiat has its unfortunate aspects: not just his premature death, but also the aggressive marketing of his work and persona in the years leading up to it. He became a vogue artist of the eighties in part because he could be taken as an unfiltered voice...
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Open Culture
Why You Do Your Best Thinking In The Shower: Creativity & the “Incubation Period” Image via Wikimedia Commons “The great Tao fades away.” So begins one translation of the Tao Te...
7 months ago
34

Why You Do Your Best Thinking In The Shower: Creativity & the “Incubation Period”

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7 months ago
Image via Wikimedia Commons “The great Tao fades away.” So begins one translation of the Tao Te Ching’s 18th Chapter. The sentence captures the frustration that comes with a lost epiphany. Whether it’s a profound realization when you just wake up, or moment of clarity in the...
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Open Culture
Discover Hannah Arendt’s Syllabus for Her 1974 Course on “Thinking” If you’ve read one work of Hannah Arendt’s, it’s probably Eichmann in Jerusalem, her account of the...
2 months ago
34

Discover Hannah Arendt’s Syllabus for Her 1974 Course on “Thinking”

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2 months ago
If you’ve read one work of Hannah Arendt’s, it’s probably Eichmann in Jerusalem, her account of the trial of the eponymous Nazi official — and the source of her much-quoted phrase “the banality of evil.” That book came out in 1963, at which time Arendt still had a dozen...
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Open Culture
Hear Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast from 1938: The Original Tale of Mysterious... A month ago, drones were spotted near Morris County, New Jersey. Since then, reports of further...
2 months ago
34

Hear Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast from 1938: The Original Tale of Mysterious Objects Flying Over New Jersey

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2 months ago
A month ago, drones were spotted near Morris County, New Jersey. Since then, reports of further sightings in various locations in the region have been lodged on a daily basis, and anxieties about the origin and purpose of these unidentified flying objects have grown apace. “We...
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Open Culture
Hear the Evolution of Electronic Music: A Sonic Journey from 1929 to 2019 It’s easy to get the impression that enthusiasts of electronic music listen to nothing else. (Not...
2 months ago
34

Hear the Evolution of Electronic Music: A Sonic Journey from 1929 to 2019

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2 months ago
It’s easy to get the impression that enthusiasts of electronic music listen to nothing else. (Not that it isn’t true for some of them, who tend to relegate themselves to smaller subgenres: consult Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music for a map of the sonic territory.) And it’s...
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Open Culture
James Joyce Picked Drunken Fights, Then Hid Behind Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway seemed to feud with most of the prominent male artists of his time, from Wallace...
8 months ago
34

James Joyce Picked Drunken Fights, Then Hid Behind Ernest Hemingway

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8 months ago
Ernest Hemingway seemed to feud with most of the prominent male artists of his time, from Wallace Stevens and T.S. Eliot to F. Scott Fitzgerald. He had a “very strange relationship” with Orson Welles—the two came to blows at least once—and he reportedly slapped Max Eastman in the...
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Open Culture
Beautiful 19th Century Maps of Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise & More Even the least religious among us speak, at least on occasion, of the circles of hell. When we do...
2 months ago
34

Beautiful 19th Century Maps of Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise & More

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2 months ago
Even the least religious among us speak, at least on occasion, of the circles of hell. When we do so, we may or may not be thinking of where the concept originated: Dante’s Divina Commedia, or Divine Comedy. We each imagine the circles in our own way — usually filling them with...
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Open Culture
Watch the Original Nosferatu, the Classic German Expressionist Vampire Film, Before the New Remake... F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, far and away the most influential early vampire movie, came out 102 years...
3 months ago
34

Watch the Original Nosferatu, the Classic German Expressionist Vampire Film, Before the New Remake Arrives This December

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3 months ago
F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, far and away the most influential early vampire movie, came out 102 years ago. For about ten of those years, Robert Eggers has been trying to remake it. He wouldn’t be the first: Werner Herzog cast Klaus Kinski as the blood-sucking aristocrat at the...
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Open Culture
Watch the Earliest-Known Charles Dickens Film: The Death of Poor Joe A little over a decade ago, a curator at the British Film Institute (BFI) discovered the oldest...
8 months ago
33

Watch the Earliest-Known Charles Dickens Film: The Death of Poor Joe

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8 months ago
A little over a decade ago, a curator at the British Film Institute (BFI) discovered the oldest surviving film featuring a Charles Dickens character, “The Death of Poor Joe.” The silent film, directed by George Albert Smith in 1900, brings to life Dickens’ character Jo, the...
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Open Culture
J. G. Ballard Demystifies Surrealist Paintings by Dalí, Magritte, de Chirico & More Before his signature works like The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash, and High-Rise, J. G. Ballard...
6 months ago
33

J. G. Ballard Demystifies Surrealist Paintings by Dalí, Magritte, de Chirico & More

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6 months ago
Before his signature works like The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash, and High-Rise, J. G. Ballard published three apocalyptic novels, The Drowned World, The Burning World, and The Crystal World. Each of those books offers a different vision of large-scale environmental disaster, and...
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Open Culture
Bertrand Russell’s Message to People Living in the Year 2959: “Love is Wise, Hatred is Foolish” Bertrand Russell, the great British philosopher and social critic, appeared on the BBC program...
a month ago
33

Bertrand Russell’s Message to People Living in the Year 2959: “Love is Wise, Hatred is Foolish”

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a month ago
Bertrand Russell, the great British philosopher and social critic, appeared on the BBC program Face-to-Face in 1959 and was asked a closing question: What would you tell a generation living 1,000 years from now about the life you’ve lived and the lessons you’ve learned? His...
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Open Culture
Simone de Beauvoir Explains “Why I’m a Feminist” in a Rare TV Interview (1975) In Simone de Beauvoir’s 1945 novel The Blood of Others, the narrator, Jean Blomart, reports on his...
7 months ago
33

Simone de Beauvoir Explains “Why I’m a Feminist” in a Rare TV Interview (1975)

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7 months ago
In Simone de Beauvoir’s 1945 novel The Blood of Others, the narrator, Jean Blomart, reports on his childhood friend Marcel’s reaction to the word “revolution”: It was senseless to try to change anything in the world or in life; things were bad enough even if one did not meddle...
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Open Culture
10,000+ Free Online Certificates & Badges: A Resource for Lifelong Learners For those looking to boost their skills or explore new fields without breaking the bank, Class...
a month ago
33

10,000+ Free Online Certificates & Badges: A Resource for Lifelong Learners

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a month ago
For those looking to boost their skills or explore new fields without breaking the bank, Class Central has done the heavy lifting. Known as a search engine for online courses, Class Central has compiled what might be the largest collection of free online certificates and badges...
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Open Culture
The Medieval Masterpiece, the Book of Kells, Is Now Digitized and Available Online If you know nothing else about medieval European illuminated manuscripts, you surely know the Book...
4 months ago
33

The Medieval Masterpiece, the Book of Kells, Is Now Digitized and Available Online

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4 months ago
If you know nothing else about medieval European illuminated manuscripts, you surely know the Book of Kells. “One of Ireland’s greatest cultural treasures” comments Medievalists.net, “it is set apart from other manuscripts of the same period by the quality of its artwork and the...
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Open Culture
What Ancient Greek Music Sounded Like: Listen to a Reconstruction That’s “100% Accurate” Between 750 BC and 400 BC, the Ancient Greeks composed songs meant to be accompanied by the lyre,...
2 months ago
33

What Ancient Greek Music Sounded Like: Listen to a Reconstruction That’s “100% Accurate”

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2 months ago
Between 750 BC and 400 BC, the Ancient Greeks composed songs meant to be accompanied by the lyre, reed-pipes, and various percussion instruments. More than 2,000 years later, modern scholars have finally figured out how to reconstruct and perform these songs with (it’s claimed)...
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Open Culture
Richard Feynman Creates a Simple Method for Telling Science From Pseudoscience (1966) Photo by Tamiko Thiel via Wikimedia Commons How can we know whether a claim someone makes is...
6 months ago
32

Richard Feynman Creates a Simple Method for Telling Science From Pseudoscience (1966)

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6 months ago
Photo by Tamiko Thiel via Wikimedia Commons How can we know whether a claim someone makes is scientific or not? The question is of the utmost consequence, as we are surrounded on all sides by claims that sound credible, that use the language of science—and often do so in attempts...
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Open Culture
How Upside-Down Models Revolutionized Architecture, Making Possible St. Paul’s Cathedral, Sagrada... For 142 years now, Sagrada Família has been growing toward the sky. Or at least that’s what it seems...
3 months ago
32

How Upside-Down Models Revolutionized Architecture, Making Possible St. Paul’s Cathedral, Sagrada Família & More

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3 months ago
For 142 years now, Sagrada Família has been growing toward the sky. Or at least that’s what it seems to be doing, as its ongoing construction realizes ever more fully a host of forms that look and feel not quite of this earth. It makes a kind of sense to learn that, in designing...
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Open Culture
Coursera Offers $200 Off of Coursera Plus (Until January 27), Giving You Unlimited Access to Courses... A new deal to start a new year: Coursera is offering a $200 discount on its annual subscription plan...
a month ago
32

Coursera Offers $200 Off of Coursera Plus (Until January 27), Giving You Unlimited Access to Courses & Certificates

from Open Culture [alt+shift+b] in history

a month ago
A new deal to start a new year: Coursera is offering a $200 discount on its annual subscription plan called “Coursera Plus.” Normally priced at $399, Coursera Plus (now available for $199) gives you access to 90% of Coursera’s courses, Guided Projects, Specializations, and...
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Open Culture
The Story of Lee Miller: From the Cover of Vogue to Hitler’s Bathtub In late-twenties Manhattan, a nineteen-year-old woman named Elizabeth “Lee” Miller stepped off the...
7 months ago
32

The Story of Lee Miller: From the Cover of Vogue to Hitler’s Bathtub

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7 months ago
In late-twenties Manhattan, a nineteen-year-old woman named Elizabeth “Lee” Miller stepped off the curb and into the path of a car. She was pulled back to safety by none other than the magnate Condé Nast, founder of the eponymous publishing company. Not long thereafter, Miller,...
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Open Culture
Behold James Sowerby’s Strikingly Illustrated New Elucidation of Colours (1809) James Sowerby was an artist dedicated to the natural world. It thus comes as no surprise that he was...
7 months ago
32

Behold James Sowerby’s Strikingly Illustrated New Elucidation of Colours (1809)

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7 months ago
James Sowerby was an artist dedicated to the natural world. It thus comes as no surprise that he was also enormously interested in color, especially given the era in which he lived. Born in 1757, he made his professional start as a painter of flowers: a viable career path in...
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Open Culture
The Romans Stashed Hallucinogenic Seeds in a Vial Made From an Animal Bone What’s popular in the metropolis sooner or later makes its way out into the provinces. This...
8 months ago
32

The Romans Stashed Hallucinogenic Seeds in a Vial Made From an Animal Bone

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8 months ago
What’s popular in the metropolis sooner or later makes its way out into the provinces. This phenomenon has become more difficult to notice in recent years, not because it’s slowed down, but because it’s sped way up, owing to near-instantaneous cultural diffusion on the internet....
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Open Culture
Scientists Discover that Ancient Egyptians Drank Hallucinogenic Cocktails from 2,300 Year-Old Mug Bes mug by USF Institute for Digital Exploration (IDEx) on Sketchfab If ZZ Top have a favorite...
2 months ago
32

Scientists Discover that Ancient Egyptians Drank Hallucinogenic Cocktails from 2,300 Year-Old Mug

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2 months ago
Bes mug by USF Institute for Digital Exploration (IDEx) on Sketchfab If ZZ Top have a favorite ancient Egyptian deity, that deity is surely Bes, whom the New York Times’ Alexander Nazaryan quotes curator and scholar Branko van Oppen de Ruiter as calling “a beer drinker and a...
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Open Culture
Behold a Digital Restoration of 655 Plates of Roses & Lilies by Pierre-Joseph Redouté: The Greatest... Pierre-Joseph Redouté made his name by painting flowers, an achievement impossible without a...
3 months ago
32

Behold a Digital Restoration of 655 Plates of Roses & Lilies by Pierre-Joseph Redouté: The Greatest Botanical Illustrator of All Time

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3 months ago
Pierre-Joseph Redouté made his name by painting flowers, an achievement impossible without a meticulousness that exceeds all bounds of normality. He published his three-volume collection Les Roses and his eight-volume collection Les Liliacées between 1802 and 1824, and a glance...
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Open Culture
The Evolution of Hokusai’s Great Wave: A Study of 113 Known Copies of the Iconic Woodblock Print The most widely known work by the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japanese artist Hokusai,...
8 months ago
32

The Evolution of Hokusai’s Great Wave: A Study of 113 Known Copies of the Iconic Woodblock Print

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8 months ago
The most widely known work by the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japanese artist Hokusai, 神奈川沖浪裏, is usually translated into English as The Great Wave off Kanagawa. That version of the title reflects the iconic scene depicted in the image well enough, though I can’t help but...
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Open Culture
Learn Data Analytics & AI with Google, and Fast-Track Your Career ?si=azZbGLEr_9EFWypL We’re living in the age of data and artificial intelligence (AI). Every second,...
4 months ago
32

Learn Data Analytics & AI with Google, and Fast-Track Your Career

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4 months ago
?si=azZbGLEr_9EFWypL We’re living in the age of data and artificial intelligence (AI). Every second, vast amounts of data are being generated, processed, and analyzed. And increasingly AI plays a central role in how that data gets managed. For companies, governments, and...
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Open Culture
Watch the Performance of a Mozart Composition That Had Been Lost for Centuries For most musicians, a long-lost song written in their teenage years would be of interest only to...
4 months ago
32

Watch the Performance of a Mozart Composition That Had Been Lost for Centuries

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4 months ago
For most musicians, a long-lost song written in their teenage years would be of interest only to serious fans — and even then, probably more for biographical reasons than as a standalone piece of work. But that’s hardly the case for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was composing...
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Open Culture
Coursera Offers 30% Off of Coursera Plus (Until September 30), Giving You Unlimited Access to... As the new school year gets underway, millions of students are heading back to classrooms. And you...
5 months ago
32

Coursera Offers 30% Off of Coursera Plus (Until September 30), Giving You Unlimited Access to Courses & Certificates

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5 months ago
As the new school year gets underway, millions of students are heading back to classrooms. And you can too. From now until September 30, 2024, Coursera is offering a 30% discount on its annual subscription plan called “Coursera Plus.” Normally priced at $399, Coursera Plus...
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Open Culture
George Orwell’s Political Views, Explained in His Own Words Among modern-day liberals and conservatives alike, George Orwell enjoys practically sainted status....
9 months ago
32

George Orwell’s Political Views, Explained in His Own Words

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9 months ago
Among modern-day liberals and conservatives alike, George Orwell enjoys practically sainted status. And indeed, throughout his body of work, including but certainly not limited to his oft-assigned novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, one can find numerous implicitly or...
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