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Open Culture
Gustave Doré’s Haunting Illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy Inferno, Canto X: Many artists have attempted to illustrate Dante Alighieri’s epic poem the Divine...
15 hours ago
2

Gustave Doré’s Haunting Illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy

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15 hours ago
Inferno, Canto X: Many artists have attempted to illustrate Dante Alighieri’s epic poem the Divine Comedy, but none have made such an indelible stamp on our collective imagination as the Frenchman Gustave Doré. Doré was 23 years old in 1855, when he first decided to create a...
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Open Culture
Did Paul McCartney Really Die in 1966? How the Biggest Beatles Conspiracy Theory Spread No pop music can have inspired more scrutiny than that of the Beatles. Of course, intense and...
16 hours ago
2

Did Paul McCartney Really Die in 1966? How the Biggest Beatles Conspiracy Theory Spread

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16 hours ago
No pop music can have inspired more scrutiny than that of the Beatles. Of course, intense and sustained attention has been paid to every aspect of the band’s existence — and, in the case of Paul McCartney, his purported non-existence as well. The theory that he actually died in...
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Open Culture
The Ancient Roman Dodecahedron: The Mysterious Object That Has Baffled Archaeologists for Centuries There isn’t much place for dodecahedra in modern life, at least in those modern lives with  tabletop...
2 days ago
3

The Ancient Roman Dodecahedron: The Mysterious Object That Has Baffled Archaeologists for Centuries

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2 days ago
There isn’t much place for dodecahedra in modern life, at least in those modern lives with  tabletop role-playing. In the ancient Roman Empire, however, those shapes seem to have been practically household objects — not that we know what the household would have done with them....
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Open Culture
Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapted from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake In 1942, John Cage composed a short piece of music adapted from the text of James Joyce’s Finnegans...
2 days ago
2

Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapted from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

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2 days ago
In 1942, John Cage composed a short piece of music adapted from the text of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Titled “The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs,” the piece was originally commissioned and performed by amateur soprano and socialite Justine Fairbank, and while we don’t...
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Open Culture
21 Rules for Living from Miyamoto Musashi, Japan’s Samurai Philosopher (1584–1645) Browse the ever-vaster selection of self-help books, videos, podcasts, and social-media accounts on...
3 days ago
4

21 Rules for Living from Miyamoto Musashi, Japan’s Samurai Philosopher (1584–1645)

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3 days ago
Browse the ever-vaster selection of self-help books, videos, podcasts, and social-media accounts on offer today, and you’ll find no shortage of prescriptions for how to live. Much of what the gurus of the twenty-twenties have to say sounds awfully similar, and almost as much may...
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Open Culture
75 Post-Punk and Hardcore Concerts from the 1980s Have Been Digitized & Put Online: Fugazi, GWAR,... Between 1985 and 1988, a teenager by the name of Sohrab Habibion was attending punk and post-punk...
3 days ago
4

75 Post-Punk and Hardcore Concerts from the 1980s Have Been Digitized & Put Online: Fugazi, GWAR, Lemonheads, Dain Bramage (with Dave Grohl) & More

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3 days ago
Between 1985 and 1988, a teenager by the name of Sohrab Habibion was attending punk and post-punk shows around the Washington, DC area. What set him apart was the bulky video camera he’d bring to the show and let roll, documenting entire gigs in all their low-rez, lo-fi glory....
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Open Culture
Yuval Noah Harari Explains How to Protect Your Mind in the Age of AI You could say that we live in the age of artificial intelligence, although it feels truer about no...
4 days ago
6

Yuval Noah Harari Explains How to Protect Your Mind in the Age of AI

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4 days ago
You could say that we live in the age of artificial intelligence, although it feels truer about no aspect of our lives than it does of advertising. “If you want to sell something to people today, you call it AI,” says Yuval Noah Harari in the new Big Think video above, even if...
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Open Culture
The Oldest Unopened Bottle of Wine in the World (Circa 350 AD) Image by Immanuel Giel, via Wikimedia Commons It’s an old TV and movie trope: the man of wealth and...
4 days ago
4

The Oldest Unopened Bottle of Wine in the World (Circa 350 AD)

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4 days ago
Image by Immanuel Giel, via Wikimedia Commons It’s an old TV and movie trope: the man of wealth and taste, often but not always a supervillain, offers his distinguished guest a bottle of wine, his finest, an ancient vintage from one of the most venerable vineyards. We might...
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Open Culture
Discover the World’s Oldest Surviving Cookbook, De Re Coquinaria, from Ancient Rome Western scholarship has had “a bias against studying sensual experience,” writes Reina Gattuso at...
5 days ago
6

Discover the World’s Oldest Surviving Cookbook, De Re Coquinaria, from Ancient Rome

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5 days ago
Western scholarship has had “a bias against studying sensual experience,” writes Reina Gattuso at Atlas Obscura, “the relic of an Enlightenment-era hierarchy that considered taste, touch, and flavor taboo topics for sober academic inquiry.” This does not mean, however, that...
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Open Culture
Why Knights Fought Snails in Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts The snail may leave a trail of slime behind him, but a little slime will do a man no harm… whilst if...
5 days ago
7

Why Knights Fought Snails in Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts

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5 days ago
The snail may leave a trail of slime behind him, but a little slime will do a man no harm… whilst if you dance with dragons, you must expect to burn. - George R. R. Martin, The Mystery Knight As any Game of Thrones fan knows, being a knight has its downsides. It isn’t all […]
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Open Culture
Watch Joan Baez Endearingly Imitate Bob Dylan (1972) Joan Baez was already heralded as the “Queen of Folk” by the time Robert Zimmerman aka Bob Dylan...
a week ago
7

Watch Joan Baez Endearingly Imitate Bob Dylan (1972)

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a week ago
Joan Baez was already heralded as the “Queen of Folk” by the time Robert Zimmerman aka Bob Dylan arrived in New York City. Many things brought him to the burgeoning folk scene there, but Baez was the siren who called to a young Dylan through his television set long before he met...
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Open Culture
What Is Kabbalah? An Introduction to the Jewish Mystical Tradition Though the pop-cultural moment that gave rise to the association has passed, when many of us hear...
a week ago
8

What Is Kabbalah? An Introduction to the Jewish Mystical Tradition

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a week ago
Though the pop-cultural moment that gave rise to the association has passed, when many of us hear about Kabbalah, we still think of Madonna. Her study of that Jewish-mystic school of thought in the nineteen-nineties has been credited, at least in part, with the sonic...
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Open Culture
2,178 Occult Books Now Digitized & Put Online, Thanks to the Ritman Library and Da Vinci Code Author... In 2018 we brought you some exciting news. Thanks to a generous donation from Da Vinci Code author...
a week ago
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2,178 Occult Books Now Digitized & Put Online, Thanks to the Ritman Library and Da Vinci Code Author Dan Brown

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a week ago
In 2018 we brought you some exciting news. Thanks to a generous donation from Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown, Amsterdam’s Ritman Library—a sizable collection of pre-1900 books on alchemy, astrology, magic, and other occult subjects—has been digitizing thousands of its rare texts...
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Open Culture
The Stunt That Ended Buster Keaton’s Brilliant Career https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHoT_Qch7jE Buster Keaton’s penchant and skill for comedic stunts...
a week ago
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The Stunt That Ended Buster Keaton’s Brilliant Career

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a week ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHoT_Qch7jE Buster Keaton’s penchant and skill for comedic stunts made him one of the biggest stars of the silent-film era.  Nobody at the time imagined that he would still be engaging in dangerous-looking pratfalls 40 years later in his seventies,...
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Open Culture
Tim Burton Visits a Paris Video Store & Talks About His Favorite Movies Tim Burton grew up watching Japanese monster movies in Burbank, which must explain a good deal about...
a week ago
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Tim Burton Visits a Paris Video Store & Talks About His Favorite Movies

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a week ago
Tim Burton grew up watching Japanese monster movies in Burbank, which must explain a good deal about his artistic sensibility. It seems to be for that reason, in any case, that the new Konbini “Vidéo Club” episode above takes him first to the Asian cinema section of JM Vidéo, one...
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Open Culture
Behold the Very First Color Photograph (1861): Taken by Scottish Physicist & Poet James Clerk... Since its ancient origins as the camera obscura, the photographic camera has always mimicked the...
a week ago
8

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

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a week ago
Since its ancient origins as the camera obscura, the photographic camera has always mimicked the human eye, allowing light to enter an aperture, then projecting an image upside down. Renaissance artists relied on the camera obscura to sharpen their own visual perspectives. But it...
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Open Culture
The Only Time Prince & Miles Davis Jammed Together Onstage: Watch the New Year’s Eve, 1987 Concert A too-precious genre of internet meme depicts departed public figures who did not know each other in...
a week ago
8

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

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a week ago
A too-precious genre of internet meme depicts departed public figures who did not know each other in life meeting in heaven with hugs, high-fives, and wincingly earnest exchanges. These sentimental vignettes are almost too easy to parody, a kitschy version of the “what if” game,...
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Open Culture
How Ancient Greek Technology Was Used to Sculpt Mount Rushmore Designing their new republic, the Founding Fathers of the United States of America looked back to...
a week ago
8

How Ancient Greek Technology Was Used to Sculpt Mount Rushmore

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a week ago
Designing their new republic, the Founding Fathers of the United States of America looked back to reference points in classical antiquity. That instinct continued to shape American endeavors long thereafter, and not just political ones. Take the example of Mount Rushmore, one of...
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Open Culture
Why Ancient Romans Paid a Fortune for the Color Purple — More Than Even Silver Purple may not be one of the most popular colors in the apparel of our age, but if you want it — as...
a week ago
8

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

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a week ago
Purple may not be one of the most popular colors in the apparel of our age, but if you want it — as certain cultural figures have amply demonstrated — you can get as much of it as you like, even if you don’t belong to the aristocracy. That wasn’t the case in antiquity, as […]
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Open Culture
David Lynch’s Weird Espresso Maker Gets Taken for a Test Drive David Lynch loved his coffee. For decades, the filmmaker let coffee fuel his creativity, drinking...
a week ago
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David Lynch’s Weird Espresso Maker Gets Taken for a Test Drive

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a week ago
David Lynch loved his coffee. For decades, the filmmaker let coffee fuel his creativity, drinking five, six, even seven cups per day at Bob’s Big Boy. Famously, Lynch celebrated coffee in Twin Peaks (remember the line, “That’s a damn fine cup of coffee!”), and later directed a...
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Open Culture
One-in-70-Trillion: An Evolutionary Biologist Explains the Mind-Bending Probability of Our Existence At a 1998 conference on technology and life, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas...
2 weeks ago
11

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

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2 weeks ago
At a 1998 conference on technology and life, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams once proposed the notion of a sentient puddle. Imagine it “waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself...
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Open Culture
Memento Mori: How Smiling Skeletons Have Reminded Us to Live Fully Since Ancient Times The expression “YOLO” may now be just passé enough to require explanation. It stands, as only some...
2 weeks ago
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Memento Mori: How Smiling Skeletons Have Reminded Us to Live Fully Since Ancient Times

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2 weeks ago
The expression “YOLO” may now be just passé enough to require explanation. It stands, as only some of us would try to deny remembering, for “You only live once,” a sentiment that reflects an eternal truth. Some bodies of religious belief don’t strictly agree with it, of course,...
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Open Culture
A Page of Madness: The Lost, Avant Garde Masterpiece from Early Japanese Cinema (1926) It’s a sad fact that the vast majority of silent movies in Japan have been lost thanks to human...
2 weeks ago
11

A Page of Madness: The Lost, Avant Garde Masterpiece from Early Japanese Cinema (1926)

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2 weeks ago
It’s a sad fact that the vast majority of silent movies in Japan have been lost thanks to human carelessness, earthquakes and the grim efficiency of the United States Air Force. The first films of hugely important figures like Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, and Hiroshi Shimizu...
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Open Culture
The Spinal Tap Sequel Arrives Next Month: Watch the Trailer and a Scene with Elton John & Paul... This Is Spinal Tap came out more than 40 years ago. At the time, says director Rob Reiner in a...
2 weeks ago
13

The Spinal Tap Sequel Arrives Next Month: Watch the Trailer and a Scene with Elton John & Paul McCartney

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2 weeks ago
This Is Spinal Tap came out more than 40 years ago. At the time, says director Rob Reiner in a recent interview at San Diego Comic-Con, “nobody got it. I mean, they thought I’d made a movie about a real band that wasn’t very good, and why wouldn’t I make a movie about the Beatles...
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Open Culture
Watch Meshes of the Afternoon, the Experimental Short Voted the 16th Best Film of All Time It seems not to be documented whether the Santa Ana winds were blowing when Maya Deren and Alexander...
2 weeks ago
10

Watch Meshes of the Afternoon, the Experimental Short Voted the 16th Best Film of All Time

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2 weeks ago
It seems not to be documented whether the Santa Ana winds were blowing when Maya Deren and Alexander Hackenschmied shot Meshes of the Afternoon. But everything about the film itself suggests that they must have been, so vivid does its atmosphere of luxuriantly arid paranoia...
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Open Culture
Emma Willard, the First Female Mapmaker in America, Creates Pioneering Maps of Time to Teach... We all know Marshall McLuhan’s pithy, endlessly quotable line “the medium is the message,” but...
2 weeks ago
14

Emma Willard, the First Female Mapmaker in America, Creates Pioneering Maps of Time to Teach Students about Democracy (Circa 1851)

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2 weeks ago
We all know Marshall McLuhan’s pithy, endlessly quotable line “the medium is the message,” but rarely do we stop to ask which one comes first. The development of communication technologies may genuinely present us with a chicken or egg scenario. After all, only a culture that...
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Open Culture
When Medieval & Early Modern Europeans Cleansed with Poison: The Strange History of Antimony Cups... The history of medicine is, for the most part, a history of dubious cures. Some were even worse than...
2 weeks ago
10

When Medieval & Early Modern Europeans Cleansed with Poison: The Strange History of Antimony Cups and Pills

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2 weeks ago
The history of medicine is, for the most part, a history of dubious cures. Some were even worse than dubious: for example, the ingestion of antimony, which we now know to be a highly toxic metal. Though it may not occupy an exalted (or, for students in chemistry class,...
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Open Culture
A Live Studio Cover of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, Played from Start to Finish Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon is such a work of art that to split it up into nine tracks—like...
2 weeks ago
13

A Live Studio Cover of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, Played from Start to Finish

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2 weeks ago
Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon is such a work of art that to split it up into nine tracks—like classic rock radio has done for years—always sounds nonsensical. How can you just end “Breathe” on that final chord and not follow it with the analog drones of “On the Run”? How can...
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Open Culture
A Man Read 3,599 Books Over 60 Years, and Now His Family Has Shared the Entire List Online Dan Pelzer died earlier this year at the age of 92, leaving behind a handwritten list of all the...
2 weeks ago
11

A Man Read 3,599 Books Over 60 Years, and Now His Family Has Shared the Entire List Online

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2 weeks ago
Dan Pelzer died earlier this year at the age of 92, leaving behind a handwritten list of all the books he’d read since 1962. His family had it digitized, put it online, and now it’s gone viral, somewhat to the surprise of those of us who’d never heard of him before. But that, it...
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Open Culture
Watch Anémic Cinéma, Marcel Duchamp’s Whirling Avant-Garde Film (1926) Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) made some heady art. His whole goal was to “put art back in the service...
2 weeks ago
13

Watch Anémic Cinéma, Marcel Duchamp’s Whirling Avant-Garde Film (1926)

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2 weeks ago
Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) made some heady art. His whole goal was to “put art back in the service of the mind,” or to create what Jasper Johns once called the “field where language, thought and vision act on one another.” And that’s precisely what Duchamp’s 1926 avant-garde...
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Open Culture
Hundreds of Medieval Medical Manuscripts with Strange Cures Get Digitized & Put Online: From Leeches... If any discussion of medieval medicine gets going, it’s only a matter of time before someone brings...
3 weeks ago
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Hundreds of Medieval Medical Manuscripts with Strange Cures Get Digitized & Put Online: From Leeches to Crushed Weasel Testicles

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3 weeks ago
If any discussion of medieval medicine gets going, it’s only a matter of time before someone brings up leeches. And it turns out that the centrality of those squirming blood-suckers to the treatment of disease in the Middle Ages isn’t much overstated, at least judging by a look...
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Open Culture
Hear the Pieces Mozart Composed When He Was Only 5 Years Old A preternaturally talented, precocious child, barely out of toddlerhood, in powdered wig and...
3 weeks ago
16

Hear the Pieces Mozart Composed When He Was Only 5 Years Old

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3 weeks ago
A preternaturally talented, precocious child, barely out of toddlerhood, in powdered wig and knee-breeches, capering around the great houses of 18th century Europe between virtuoso performances on the harpsichord. A young boy who can play any piece anyone puts in front of him,...
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Open Culture
Curious Alice — The 1971 Anti-Drug Movie Based on Alice in Wonderland That Oddly Made Drugs Look... The Reagan presidency was probably the golden age of anti-drug messaging. America’s school kids were...
3 weeks ago
14

Curious Alice — The 1971 Anti-Drug Movie Based on Alice in Wonderland That Oddly Made Drugs Look Like Fun

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3 weeks ago
The Reagan presidency was probably the golden age of anti-drug messaging. America’s school kids were told that a brain was like an egg and drugs were like a frying pan. The First Lady told America’s school kids simply to “Just Say No.” The message was stupefyingly simple. Drugs,...
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Open Culture
An Introduction to Aleister Crowley, History’s Most Infamous Occultist “Do what thou wilt”: as the central principle of a worldview, it may not sound like much, but at...
3 weeks ago
13

An Introduction to Aleister Crowley, History’s Most Infamous Occultist

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3 weeks ago
“Do what thou wilt”: as the central principle of a worldview, it may not sound like much, but at least there are always a great many people ready and willing to hear it. So discovered Aleister Crowley, the early twentieth-century Occultist now remembered not just for his...
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Open Culture
Man as Industrial Palace: Watch an Animation of the Famous 1926 Lithograph That Depicts the Human... In 1926, Fritz Kahn, a German gynecologist and anatomy textbook author, produced a lithograph called...
3 weeks ago
20

Man as Industrial Palace: Watch an Animation of the Famous 1926 Lithograph That Depicts the Human Body as a Modern Factory

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3 weeks ago
In 1926, Fritz Kahn, a German gynecologist and anatomy textbook author, produced a lithograph called Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace) that depicted the human body as a factory, a chemical plant of sorts. Kahn’s body came complete with mechanical lungs, a...
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Open Culture
Isaac Asimov Predicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like in 2014 Image by Rochester Institute of Technology, via Wikimedia Commons When New York City hosted...
3 weeks ago
19

Isaac Asimov Predicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like in 2014

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3 weeks ago
Image by Rochester Institute of Technology, via Wikimedia Commons When New York City hosted The World’s Fair in 1964, Isaac Asimov, the prolific sci-fi author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, took the opportunity to wonder what the world would look like 50...
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Open Culture
Tom Lehrer, RIP: Hear All of His Witty, Satirical Songs in One Playlist Tom Lehrer died last weekend, more than four decades after rumors of his death had first gone into...
3 weeks ago
12

Tom Lehrer, RIP: Hear All of His Witty, Satirical Songs in One Playlist

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3 weeks ago
Tom Lehrer died last weekend, more than four decades after rumors of his death had first gone into circulation. He didn’t bother to contradict them, publicly claiming that he figured they would “cut down on the junk mail.” That quip proved not just that he was still alive, but...
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Open Culture
W.H. Auden’s 1941 Syllabus Asked Students to Read 32 Great Literary Works, Totaling 6,000 Pages Whether willed, involuntary, or a mix of both, the declining literacy of college students is by now...
3 weeks ago
12

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Syllabus Asked Students to Read 32 Great Literary Works, Totaling 6,000 Pages

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3 weeks ago
Whether willed, involuntary, or a mix of both, the declining literacy of college students is by now so often lamented that reports of it should no longer come as a surprise. And yet, on some level, they still do: English majors in regional Kansas universities find the opening to...
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Open Culture
Archaeologists Discover a 2,400-Year-Old Skeleton Mosaic That Urges People to “Be Cheerful and Live... Image by Dosseman, via Wikimedia Commons In 2012, archaeologists discovered in Southern Turkey a...
3 weeks ago
18

Archaeologists Discover a 2,400-Year-Old Skeleton Mosaic That Urges People to “Be Cheerful and Live Your Life”

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3 weeks ago
Image by Dosseman, via Wikimedia Commons In 2012, archaeologists discovered in Southern Turkey a well-preserved mosaic featuring a skeleton savoring a loaf of bread and a pitcher of wine, surrounded by the Greek words “Be cheerful and live your life.” Dating back to the 3rd...
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Open Culture
How Disney Fought Fascism with Propaganda Cartoons During World War II & Averted Financial Collapse Today, the Walt Disney Company seems like one of those entities that’s “too big to fail” — but...
4 weeks ago
16

How Disney Fought Fascism with Propaganda Cartoons During World War II & Averted Financial Collapse

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4 weeks ago
Today, the Walt Disney Company seems like one of those entities that’s “too big to fail” — but during the Second World War, fail it nearly did. Like the big-thinking entertainer-businessman he was, Walt Disney himself had been re-investing the company’s profits into ever more...
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Open Culture
The Nazis’ 10 Control-Freak Rules for Jazz Performers: A Strange List from World War II Like the rock and roll revolution of the 1950s, which shocked staid white audiences with...
4 weeks ago
11

The Nazis’ 10 Control-Freak Rules for Jazz Performers: A Strange List from World War II

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4 weeks ago
Like the rock and roll revolution of the 1950s, which shocked staid white audiences with translations of black rhythm and blues, the popularity of jazz caused all kinds of racial panic and social anxiety in the early part of the twentieth century. Long before the rise of European...
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Open Culture
Plato, Aristotle & Other Greek Philosophers in Raphael’s Renaissance Masterpiece, The School of... Among the wonders to behold at the Vatican Museums are the larger-than-life forms of the titans of...
4 weeks ago
14

Plato, Aristotle & Other Greek Philosophers in Raphael’s Renaissance Masterpiece, The School of Athens

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4 weeks ago
Among the wonders to behold at the Vatican Museums are the larger-than-life forms of the titans of Greek philosophy. It’s widely known that at the center of Raphael’s fresco The School of Athens, which dominates one wall of the twelve Stanze di Raffaello in the Apostolic Palace,...
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Open Culture
Watch The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne: A Documentary on the Heavy Metal Pioneer (RIP) “This is supposed to be my farewell tour,” says Ozzy Osbourne in a clip included in the Biography...
a month ago
15

Watch The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne: A Documentary on the Heavy Metal Pioneer (RIP)

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a month ago
“This is supposed to be my farewell tour,” says Ozzy Osbourne in a clip included in the Biography television documentary above. He then gives the finger and adds, “We’ll see.” The year was 1993, and indeed, there turned out to have been much more to come for the former frontman...
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Open Culture
Salvador Dalí Goes to Hollywood & Creates a Wild Dream Sequence for Alfred Hitchcock Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel reportedly carried rocks in their pockets during the premiere of their...
a month ago
13

Salvador Dalí Goes to Hollywood & Creates a Wild Dream Sequence for Alfred Hitchcock

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a month ago
Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel reportedly carried rocks in their pockets during the premiere of their first film Un Chien Andalou, anticipating a violent reaction from the audience. It was a fair concern. The movie might be almost 90 years old but it still has the power to provoke...
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Open Culture
A New 20-Minute Supercut of David Letterman Slamming CBS: “You Can’t Spell CBS Without BS” The cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert—CBS insists it was purely a “financial...
a month ago
13

A New 20-Minute Supercut of David Letterman Slamming CBS: “You Can’t Spell CBS Without BS”

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a month ago
The cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert—CBS insists it was purely a “financial decision,” the result of declining ad revenue in late night television. Others see it as a different kind of “financial decision,” a decision by Paramount (the parent company of CBS) to...
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Open Culture
The Iconic Glass House Built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe—and the Lawsuit That Cast a Shadow Over It It’s tempting, in telling the story of the Edith Farnsworth House, to break out clichés like “People...
a month ago
13

The Iconic Glass House Built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe—and the Lawsuit That Cast a Shadow Over It

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a month ago
It’s tempting, in telling the story of the Edith Farnsworth House, to break out clichés like “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” For the residence in question is made predominantly of glass, or rather glass and steel, and its first owner turned out to have...
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Open Culture
The Life & Death of an Espresso Shot in Super Slow Motion Some YouTuber posted online a pretty nice clip of an espresso shot being pulled from a La Marzocco...
a month ago
15

The Life & Death of an Espresso Shot in Super Slow Motion

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a month ago
Some YouTuber posted online a pretty nice clip of an espresso shot being pulled from a La Marzocco FB80 espresso machine at 120 frames per second. They recommend muting the sound, then putting on your own music. I gave it a quick shot with the famous soundtrack for Kubrick’s...
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Open Culture
The Real Science Experiments That Inspired Frankenstein With the Halloween season mere months away, the time has come to start thinking about what...
a month ago
14

The Real Science Experiments That Inspired Frankenstein

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a month ago
With the Halloween season mere months away, the time has come to start thinking about what frightening reads to line up for ourselves this year. Some of us may reach for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, a story we all think we know. But a look into its...
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Open Culture
The Devilish History of the 1980s Parental Advisory Sticker: When Heavy Metal & Satanic Lyrics... Frank Zappa called them the “Mothers of Prevention,” the group of wives married to members of...
a month ago
17

The Devilish History of the 1980s Parental Advisory Sticker: When Heavy Metal & Satanic Lyrics Collided with the Religious Right

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a month ago
Frank Zappa called them the “Mothers of Prevention,” the group of wives married to members of Congress who decided in the mid-80s to go to war against rock lyrics and whip up some good ol’ conservative hysteria. We’ve talked about this time before on this site, especially as...
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Open Culture
Revisit One of the Most Polarizing Albums in Rock History: Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, Which... Fifty years ago this month, Lou Reed nearly destroyed his own career with one double album. Metal...
a month ago
16

Revisit One of the Most Polarizing Albums in Rock History: Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, Which Came Out 50 Years Ago

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a month ago
Fifty years ago this month, Lou Reed nearly destroyed his own career with one double album. Metal Machine Music sold 100,000 copies during the three weeks of summer 1975 between its release and its removal from the market. More than a few of the many buyers who promptly returned...
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Open Culture
How Jackie Chan Filmed the Best Fight Scene in Cinema History Though now in his seventies, Jackie Chan continues to appear on the big screen with regularity. For...
a month ago
19

How Jackie Chan Filmed the Best Fight Scene in Cinema History

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a month ago
Though now in his seventies, Jackie Chan continues to appear on the big screen with regularity. For most world-famous actors, that’s hardly notable, but it’s not as if Sir John Gielgud, say, had spent decades filming scenes of hand-to-hand combat and sustaining severe injuries in...
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Open Culture
The First Photograph Ever Taken (1826) In histories of early photography, Louis Daguerre faithfully appears as one of the fathers of the...
a month ago
17

The First Photograph Ever Taken (1826)

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a month ago
In histories of early photography, Louis Daguerre faithfully appears as one of the fathers of the medium. His patented process, the daguerreotype, in wide use for nearly twenty years in the early 19th century, produced so many of the images we associate with the period, including...
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Open Culture
The Story Told on the Famous Bayeux Tapestry Explained from Start to Finish They say that history is written by the victors, but that isn’t always true: sometimes it’s...
a month ago
17

The Story Told on the Famous Bayeux Tapestry Explained from Start to Finish

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a month ago
They say that history is written by the victors, but that isn’t always true: sometimes it’s embroidered by the victors. Such was the case with the Bayeux Tapestry, which commemorates the build-up to and successful execution of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Created not...
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Open Culture
A Behind-the-Scenes Tour of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert Back in 2008, Bob Boilen (host of All Songs Considered) and NPR music critic Stephen Thompson...
a month ago
17

A Behind-the-Scenes Tour of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert

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a month ago
Back in 2008, Bob Boilen (host of All Songs Considered) and NPR music critic Stephen Thompson attended a noisy concert where they struggled to hear Laura Gibson perform. Jokingly, Thompson suggested that Gibson perform at Boilen’s office desk instead. She did. And, with that, the...
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Open Culture
The Entire History of English in 22 Minutes When we speak English, we might say we’re speaking the language of Samuel Johnson, the man who wrote...
a month ago
16

The Entire History of English in 22 Minutes

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a month ago
When we speak English, we might say we’re speaking the language of Samuel Johnson, the man who wrote its first dictionary. Or we could say we’re speaking the language of Shakespeare, who coined more English terms than any other individual in history. It would make just as much...
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Open Culture
50+ Free Charlie Chaplin Films Online A few things to know about Charlie Chaplin. He starred in over 80 films, reeling off most during the...
a month ago
19

50+ Free Charlie Chaplin Films Online

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a month ago
A few things to know about Charlie Chaplin. He starred in over 80 films, reeling off most during the silent film era. In 1914 alone, he acted in 40 films, then another 15 in 1915. By the 1920s, Chaplin had emerged as the first larger-than-life movie star and director, if not the...
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Open Culture
How the Ancient Greeks Built Their Magnificent Temples: The Art of Ancient Engineering Doric, Ionic, Corinthian: these, as practically everyone who went through school in the West somehow...
a month ago
14

How the Ancient Greeks Built Their Magnificent Temples: The Art of Ancient Engineering

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a month ago
Doric, Ionic, Corinthian: these, as practically everyone who went through school in the West somehow remembers, are the three varieties of classical column. We may still recall them, more specifically, as representing the three ancient Greek architectural styles. But as...
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Open Culture
Albert Einstein Tells His Son That the Key to Learning & Happiness Is Losing Yourself in Creativity... As one particularly astute observer of human emotions might put it, it is a truth universally...
a month ago
22

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

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a month ago
As one particularly astute observer of human emotions might put it, it is a truth universally acknowledged that we can’t all be Albert Einstein. In fact, none of us can. That unique experience was denied even Einstein’s son Hans Albert, though he did go on to his own...
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Open Culture
Watch Queen’s Brilliant Live Aid Performance: It Happened 40 Years Ago Today (July 13, 1985) “The last people anyone expected to come out of that gig as being the memorable ones was Queen,”...
a month ago
29

Watch Queen’s Brilliant Live Aid Performance: It Happened 40 Years Ago Today (July 13, 1985)

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a month ago
“The last people anyone expected to come out of that gig as being the memorable ones was Queen,” said Bob Geldof in an interview, looking back at the band’s stunning 24 minute set at Live Aid on July 13, 1985. In front of 72,000 people in Wembley Stadium and millions watching...
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Open Culture
The World’s Oldest Cookbook: Discover 4,000-Year-Old Recipes from Ancient Babylon If asked about your favorite dish, you’d do well to name something exotic. Gone are the days when a...
a month ago
182

The World’s Oldest Cookbook: Discover 4,000-Year-Old Recipes from Ancient Babylon

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a month ago
If asked about your favorite dish, you’d do well to name something exotic. Gone are the days when a taste for the likes of Italian, Mexican, or Chinese cuisine could qualify you as an adventurous eater. Even expeditions to the very edges of the menus at Peruvian, Ethiopian, or...
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Open Culture
Tomorrow Never Knows: How The Beatles Invented the Future With Studio Magic, Tape Loops & LSD “Tomorrow Never Dies” couldn’t be made today, and not just because the Beatles already made it in...
a month ago
20

Tomorrow Never Knows: How The Beatles Invented the Future With Studio Magic, Tape Loops & LSD

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a month ago
“Tomorrow Never Dies” couldn’t be made today, and not just because the Beatles already made it in 1966. Marking perhaps the single biggest step in the group’s artistic evolution, that song is in every sense a product of its time. The use of psychedelic drugs like LSD was on the...
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Open Culture
Stephen King’s Top 10 All-Time Favorite Books Image by The USO, via Flickr Commons So you might think that if Stephen King – the guy who wrote...
a month ago
32

Stephen King’s Top 10 All-Time Favorite Books

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a month ago
Image by The USO, via Flickr Commons So you might think that if Stephen King – the guy who wrote such horror classics like Carrie and The Stand – were to rattle off his top ten favorite books, it would feature works by the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft or maybe J. […]
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Open Culture
The Invisible Horror of The Shining: How Music Makes Stanley Kubrick’s Iconic Film Even More... Inexplicable as it may sound to readers of this site, there are movie-lovers who claim not to enjoy...
a month ago
18

The Invisible Horror of The Shining: How Music Makes Stanley Kubrick’s Iconic Film Even More Terrifying

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a month ago
Inexplicable as it may sound to readers of this site, there are movie-lovers who claim not to enjoy the work of Stanley Kubrick. But even his most steadfast non-appreciators have to hand it to him for The Shining, his 1980 Stephen King adaptation widely considered one of the...
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Open Culture
A Rabbit Rides a Chariot Pulled by Geese in an Ancient Roman Mosaic (2nd century AD) If you head to the Louvre, make sure you visit the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Liberty Leading the...
a month ago
20

A Rabbit Rides a Chariot Pulled by Geese in an Ancient Roman Mosaic (2nd century AD)

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a month ago
If you head to the Louvre, make sure you visit the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Liberty Leading the People. But then swing by the Department of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities. There you might find (no guarantee!) a Roman mosaic featuring a rabbit riding a chariot pulled...
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Open Culture
Paradise Lost Explained: How John Milton Wrote His Epic Religious Poem from Satan’s Perspective “Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up...
a month ago
13

Paradise Lost Explained: How John Milton Wrote His Epic Religious Poem from Satan’s Perspective

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a month ago
“Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again,” Samuel Johnson wrote in the late eighteenth century. “None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read Milton for instruction,...
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Open Culture
Watch Animated Sheet Music for Miles Davis’ “So What,” Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” and Charlie... Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue changed jazz. It changed music, period. So I take it very seriously. But...
a month ago
19

Watch Animated Sheet Music for Miles Davis’ “So What,” Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” and Charlie Parker’s “Confirmation”

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a month ago
Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue changed jazz. It changed music, period. So I take it very seriously. But when I see the animated sheet music of the first cut, “So What,” I can’t help but think of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts cartoons, and their Vince Guaraldi compositions. I mean no...
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Open Culture
J. R. R. Tolkien Reads from The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings & Other Works If you wanted to hear the voice of your favorite writer in the nineteen-sixties — a time before...
a month ago
19

J. R. R. Tolkien Reads from The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings & Other Works

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a month ago
If you wanted to hear the voice of your favorite writer in the nineteen-sixties — a time before audiobooks, let alone podcasts — you consulted the catalog of Caedmon Records. That label specialized in LPs of literary eminences reading their own work. This may or may not be the...
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Open Culture
The Genius Urban Design of Amsterdam: Canals, Dams & Leaning Houses It’s common to hear it said that some particular city — usually one of the American metropolises...
a month ago
27

The Genius Urban Design of Amsterdam: Canals, Dams & Leaning Houses

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a month ago
It’s common to hear it said that some particular city — usually one of the American metropolises that sprang into existence over the past couple of centuries — “shouldn’t exist.” And indeed, as urban planner M. Nolan Gray writes in a recent blog post, “no city should exist.” On...
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Open Culture
Igor Stravinsky’s “Illegal” Arrangement of “The Star Spangled Banner” (1944) In 1939, Igor Stravinsky emigrated to the United States, first arriving in New York City, before...
a month ago
20

Igor Stravinsky’s “Illegal” Arrangement of “The Star Spangled Banner” (1944)

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a month ago
In 1939, Igor Stravinsky emigrated to the United States, first arriving in New York City, before settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he delivered the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard during the 1939–40 academic year. While living in Boston, the composer conducted...
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Open Culture
How Four Masters—Michelangelo, Donatello, Verrocchio & Bernini—Sculpted David More than a few visitors to Florence make a beeline to the Galleria dell’Accademia, and once inside,...
a month ago
27

How Four Masters—Michelangelo, Donatello, Verrocchio & Bernini—Sculpted David

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a month ago
More than a few visitors to Florence make a beeline to the Galleria dell’Accademia, and once inside, to Michelangelo’s David, the most famous sculpture in the world. But how many of them, one wonders, then take the time to view the three other Davids in that city alone? At the...
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Open Culture
Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intelligent Person Should Read Image via Wikimedia Commons A number of years ago, a Reddit user posed the question to Neil deGrasse...
a month ago
29

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intelligent Person Should Read

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a month ago
Image via Wikimedia Commons A number of years ago, a Reddit user posed the question to Neil deGrasse Tyson: “Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on the planet?” Below, you will find the book list offered up by the astrophysicist, director of the Hayden...
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Open Culture
The Only Painting van Gogh Ever Sold: Discover The Red Vineyard (1888) It may have crossed your mind, while beholding paintings of Vincent van Gogh, that you’d like to own...
a month ago
24

The Only Painting van Gogh Ever Sold: Discover The Red Vineyard (1888)

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a month ago
It may have crossed your mind, while beholding paintings of Vincent van Gogh, that you’d like to own one yourself someday. If so, you’ll have to get in line with more than a few billionaires, and even they may never see one go up on the auction block. This would probably come as...
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Open Culture
How 16th-Century Artist Joris Hoefnagel Made Insects Beautiful—and Changed Science Forever In English, most of the words we’d use to refer to insects sound off-putting at best and fearsome at...
a month ago
23

How 16th-Century Artist Joris Hoefnagel Made Insects Beautiful—and Changed Science Forever

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a month ago
In English, most of the words we’d use to refer to insects sound off-putting at best and fearsome at worst, at least to those without an entomological bent. Dutch, close a linguistic relation though it may be, offers a more endearing alternative in beestjes, which refers to all...
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Open Culture
Iconic Animator Chuck Jones Creates an Oscar-Winning Animation About the Virtues of Universal Health... While our country looks like it might be coming apart at the seams, it’s good to revisit, every once...
a month ago
46

Iconic Animator Chuck Jones Creates an Oscar-Winning Animation About the Virtues of Universal Health Care (1949)

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a month ago
While our country looks like it might be coming apart at the seams, it’s good to revisit, every once in a while, moments when it did work. And that’s not so that we can feel nostalgic about a lost time, but so that we can remind ourselves how, given the right conditions, things...
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Open Culture
A Visualization of the History of Technology: 1,889 Innovations Across Three Million Years “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” So holds the third and most...
a month ago
21

A Visualization of the History of Technology: 1,889 Innovations Across Three Million Years

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a month ago
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” So holds the third and most famous of the “three laws” originally articulated by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. Even when it was first published in the late nineteen-sixties, Clarke’s third law...
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Open Culture
Hear Newly Rediscovered Music by Erik Satie on the 100th Anniversary of His Death https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kuFyuH6tvOjqf-ugVZ1RXulJtFUqnDPz0Video can’t be loaded...
a month ago
26

Hear Newly Rediscovered Music by Erik Satie on the 100th Anniversary of His Death

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a month ago
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kuFyuH6tvOjqf-ugVZ1RXulJtFUqnDPz0Video can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Satie: Discoveries (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kuFyuH6tvOjqf-ugVZ1RXulJtFUqnDPz0) If asked to name our favorite French composer...
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Open Culture
Hear the World’s Oldest Instrument, the “Neanderthal Flute,” Dating Back Over 43,000 Years Several years ago, we brought you a transcription and a couple of audio interpretations of the...
a month ago
31

Hear the World’s Oldest Instrument, the “Neanderthal Flute,” Dating Back Over 43,000 Years

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a month ago
Several years ago, we brought you a transcription and a couple of audio interpretations of the oldest known song in the world, discovered in the ancient Syrian city of Ugarit and dating back to the 14th century B.C.E.. Likely performed on an instrument resembling an ancient lyre,...
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Open Culture
Watch the Very First YouTube Video, “Me at the Zoo,” Now 20 Years Old Given the dominance YouTube has achieved over large swathes of world culture, we’d all expect to...
a month ago
20

Watch the Very First YouTube Video, “Me at the Zoo,” Now 20 Years Old

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a month ago
Given the dominance YouTube has achieved over large swathes of world culture, we’d all expect to remember the first video we watched there. Yet many or most of us don’t: rather, we simply realized, one day in the mid-to-late two-thousands, that we’d developed a daily YouTube...
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Open Culture
Hear Alan Watts’s 1960s Prediction That Automation Will Necessitate a Universal Basic Income One of the most propulsive forces in our social and economic lives is the rate at which emerging...
a month ago
27

Hear Alan Watts’s 1960s Prediction That Automation Will Necessitate a Universal Basic Income

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a month ago
One of the most propulsive forces in our social and economic lives is the rate at which emerging technology transforms every sphere of human labor. Despite the political leverage obtained by fearmongering about immigrants and foreigners, it’s the robots who are actually taking...
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Open Culture
Why Bob Dylan’s Unreleased “Blind Willie McTell” Is Now Considered a Masterpiece Most Dylanologists disagree about which is the single greatest song in Bob Dylan’s catalog, but few...
a month ago
23

Why Bob Dylan’s Unreleased “Blind Willie McTell” Is Now Considered a Masterpiece

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a month ago
Most Dylanologists disagree about which is the single greatest song in Bob Dylan’s catalog, but few would deny “Blind Willie McTell” a place high in the running. It may come as a surprise — or, to those with a certain idea of Dylan and his fan base, the exact opposite of a...
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Open Culture
The Very First Coloring Book, The Little Folks’ Painting Book (Circa 1879) Funny how not that long ago coloring books were considered the exclusive domain of children. How...
a month ago
32

The Very First Coloring Book, The Little Folks’ Painting Book (Circa 1879)

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a month ago
Funny how not that long ago coloring books were considered the exclusive domain of children. How times have changed. If you are the sort of adult who unwinds with a big box of Crayolas and pages of mandalas or outlines of Ryan Gosling, you owe a debt of gratitude to the...
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Open Culture
How Scientists Recreated Ancient Egypt’s Long-Lost Pigment, “Egyptian Blue” Photo courtesy of Washington State University. It’s become fashionable, in recent years, to observe...
a month ago
24

How Scientists Recreated Ancient Egypt’s Long-Lost Pigment, “Egyptian Blue”

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a month ago
Photo courtesy of Washington State University. It’s become fashionable, in recent years, to observe that we live in an increasingly beige-and-gray world from which all color is being drained. Whether or not that’s really the case, all of us still enjoy easy access to a range of...
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Open Culture
“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: An Ad for London’s First Cafe Printed Circa 1652 The story of coffee goes back to the 13th century, when it came out of Ethiopia, then spread to...
a month ago
30

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: An Ad for London’s First Cafe Printed Circa 1652

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a month ago
The story of coffee goes back to the 13th century, when it came out of Ethiopia, then spread to Egypt and Yemen. It reached the Middle East, Turkey, and Persia during the 16th century, and then Europe during the early 17th, though not without controversy. In Venice, some called...
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Open Culture
How Art Conservators Restore Old Paintings & Revive Their Original Colors We tend to imagine old paintings as having a muted, yellow-brown cast, and not without reason. Many...
2 months ago
20

How Art Conservators Restore Old Paintings & Revive Their Original Colors

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2 months ago
We tend to imagine old paintings as having a muted, yellow-brown cast, and not without reason. Many of the examples we’ve seen in life really do look that way, though usually not because the artist intended it. As Julian Baumgartner of Chicago’s Baumgartner Fine Art Restoration...
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Open Culture
The History of Electronic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001) Photo of Karlheinz Stockhausen by Kathinka Pasveer via Wikimedia Commons You may hear the phrase...
2 months ago
39

The History of Electronic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

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2 months ago
Photo of Karlheinz Stockhausen by Kathinka Pasveer via Wikimedia Commons You may hear the phrase “electronic music” and think of superstar dubstep DJs in funny helmets at beachside celebrity parties. Alternatively, you may think of the mercurial compositions of Karlheinz...
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Open Culture
When the Dutch Tried to Live in Concrete Spheres: An Introduction to the Bolwoningen in the... In the decades after the Second World War, many countries faced the challenge of rebuilding their...
2 months ago
23

When the Dutch Tried to Live in Concrete Spheres: An Introduction to the Bolwoningen in the Netherlands

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2 months ago
In the decades after the Second World War, many countries faced the challenge of rebuilding their housing and infrastructure while also having to accommodate a fast-arriving baby boom. The government of the Netherlands got more creative than most, putting money toward...
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Open Culture
Elementary School Kids Sing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” & Other Rock Hits: A Cult Classic Recorded... In 1976 and 1977 an inspired music teacher in the small school district of Langley Township, British...
2 months ago
37

Elementary School Kids Sing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” & Other Rock Hits: A Cult Classic Recorded in 1976

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2 months ago
In 1976 and 1977 an inspired music teacher in the small school district of Langley Township, British Columbia, a suburb of Vancouver, recorded his elementary school students singing popular songs in a school gym. Two vinyl records were produced over the two years, and families...
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Open Culture
Enter an Archive of 10,000+ Historical Children’s Books, All Digitized & Free to Read Online We can learn much about how a historical period viewed the abilities of its children by studying its...
2 months ago
28

Enter an Archive of 10,000+ Historical Children’s Books, All Digitized & Free to Read Online

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2 months ago
We can learn much about how a historical period viewed the abilities of its children by studying its children’s literature. Occupying a space somewhere between the purely didactic and the nonsensical, most children’s books published in the past few hundred years have attempted to...
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Open Culture
Hear the Letter of Gratitude That Albert Camus Wrote to His Teacher After Winning the Nobel Prize,... When Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize, he wrote a letter to one of his old schoolteachers. “I let...
2 months ago
39

Hear the Letter of Gratitude That Albert Camus Wrote to His Teacher After Winning the Nobel Prize, as Read by Footballer Ian Wright

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2 months ago
When Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize, he wrote a letter to one of his old schoolteachers. “I let the commotion around me these days subside a bit before speaking to you from the bottom of my heart,” the letter begins. “I have just been given far too great an honor, one I neither...
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Open Culture
Watch Bob Dylan Play “Mr. Tambourine Man” in Color at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival It was at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival that Bob Dylan famously “went electric,” alienating certain...
2 months ago
25

Watch Bob Dylan Play “Mr. Tambourine Man” in Color at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival

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2 months ago
It was at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival that Bob Dylan famously “went electric,” alienating certain adherents to the folk scene through which he’d come up, but also setting a precedent for the kind of quick-change musical adaptation that he’s kept up into his eighties. At the...
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Open Culture
Tibetan Musical Notation Is Beautiful Religions take the cast and hue of the cultures in which they find root. This was certainly true in...
2 months ago
23

Tibetan Musical Notation Is Beautiful

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2 months ago
Religions take the cast and hue of the cultures in which they find root. This was certainly true in Tibet when Buddhism arrived in the 7th century. It transformed and was transformed by the native religion of Bon. Of the many creative practices that arose from this synthesis,...
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Open Culture
A Grad Student Asks Carl Sagan If He Believes in God (1994) ?si=yeo1Xsu2ZLuCpQbC Most scientists are prepared to answer questions about their research from...
2 months ago
27

A Grad Student Asks Carl Sagan If He Believes in God (1994)

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2 months ago
?si=yeo1Xsu2ZLuCpQbC Most scientists are prepared to answer questions about their research from other members of their field; rather fewer have equipped themselves to answer questions from the general public about what Douglas Adams called life, the universe, and everything. Carl...
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Open Culture
A Free Yale Course on Medieval History: 700 Years in 22 Lectures In 22 lectures, Yale historian Paul Freedman takes you on a 700-year tour of medieval history....
2 months ago
24

A Free Yale Course on Medieval History: 700 Years in 22 Lectures

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2 months ago
In 22 lectures, Yale historian Paul Freedman takes you on a 700-year tour of medieval history. Moving from 284‑1000 AD, this free online course covers “the conversion of Europe to Christianity, the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Islam and the Arabs, the ‘Dark Ages,’...
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Open Culture
How Jackson Pollock Redefined Modern Art: An Introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sQ_cfZ8q9kVideo can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled:...
2 months ago
51

How Jackson Pollock Redefined Modern Art: An Introduction

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2 months ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sQ_cfZ8q9kVideo can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Jackson Pollock: the Myth of the Modern Artist (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sQ_cfZ8q9k) In his lifetime, Jackson Pollock had only one successful art show. It took place at the...
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Open Culture
The Soviet Union Creates a List of 38 Dangerous Rock Bands: Kiss, Pink Floyd, Talking Heads, Village... Image by Mario Casciano via Wikimedia Commons Music is dangerous and powerful, and can be, without...
2 months ago
21

The Soviet Union Creates a List of 38 Dangerous Rock Bands: Kiss, Pink Floyd, Talking Heads, Village People & More (1985)

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2 months ago
Image by Mario Casciano via Wikimedia Commons Music is dangerous and powerful, and can be, without intending to, a political weapon. All authoritarian regimes have understood this, including repressive elements in the U.S. throughout the Cold War. I remember having books handed...
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Open Culture
The Genius of Brian Wilson (RIP) and How He Turned “Good Vibrations” Into the Beach Boys’ Pocket... This week, Brian Wilson became the last of the Wilson brothers to shuffle off this mortal coil....
2 months ago
44

The Genius of Brian Wilson (RIP) and How He Turned “Good Vibrations” Into the Beach Boys’ Pocket Symphony

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2 months ago
This week, Brian Wilson became the last of the Wilson brothers to shuffle off this mortal coil. Dennis, the first of the Wilsons to go, died young in 1983 — but not before offering this memorable assessment of the family musical project: “Brian Wilson is the Beach Boys. He is the...
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Open Culture
An Architectural Tour of Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Iconic Desert Home and Studio By some estimations, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West home-studio complex took shape in 1941. But...
2 months ago
19

An Architectural Tour of Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Iconic Desert Home and Studio

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2 months ago
By some estimations, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West home-studio complex took shape in 1941. But even then, the Arizona Republic presciently noted that “it may be years before it is considered finished.” The Taliesin West you can see in the new Architectural Digest video above...
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Open Culture
Read the Original 32-Page Program for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) One of the very first feature-length sci-fi films ever made, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis took a daring...
2 months ago
27

Read the Original 32-Page Program for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927)

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2 months ago
One of the very first feature-length sci-fi films ever made, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis took a daring visual approach for its time, incorporating Bauhaus and Futurist influences in thrillingly designed sets and costumes. Lang’s visual language resonated strongly in later decades....
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Open Culture
Every Wes Anderson Movie, Explained by Wes Anderson That Wes Anderson is perhaps the most assiduous maker of short films today becomes clear when you...
2 months ago
20

Every Wes Anderson Movie, Explained by Wes Anderson

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2 months ago
That Wes Anderson is perhaps the most assiduous maker of short films today becomes clear when you look closely at his recent work. The four adaptations of “The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar” and three other Roald Dahl stories he made for Netflix were presented as a single...
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Open Culture
The History of the World in One Beautiful, 5‑Foot-Long Chart (1931) In the image above, we see an impressive pre-internet macro-infographic called a “Histomap.” Its...
2 months ago
24

The History of the World in One Beautiful, 5‑Foot-Long Chart (1931)

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2 months ago
In the image above, we see an impressive pre-internet macro-infographic called a “Histomap.” Its creator John B. Sparks (who later created “histomaps” of religion and evolution) published the graphic in 1931 with Rand McNally. The five-foot-long chart—purportedly covering 4,000...
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Open Culture
Marie Curie Invented Mobile X‑Ray Units to Help Save Wounded Soldiers in World War I A hundred years ago, Mobile X‑Ray Units were a brand new innovation, and a godsend for soldiers...
2 months ago
21

Marie Curie Invented Mobile X‑Ray Units to Help Save Wounded Soldiers in World War I

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2 months ago
A hundred years ago, Mobile X‑Ray Units were a brand new innovation, and a godsend for soldiers wounded on the front in WW1. Prior to the advent of this technology, field surgeons racing to save lives operated blindly, often causing even more injury as they groped for bullets and...
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Open Culture
How the BIC Cristal Ballpoint Pen Became the Most Successful Product in History If you want to see a tour de force of modern technology and design, there’s no need to visit a...
2 months ago
22

How the BIC Cristal Ballpoint Pen Became the Most Successful Product in History

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2 months ago
If you want to see a tour de force of modern technology and design, there’s no need to visit a Silicon Valley showroom. Just feel around your desk for a few moments, and sooner or later you’ll lay a hand on it: the BIC Cristal ballpoint pen, which is described in the Primal Space...
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Open Culture
The Dylatov Pass Incident: Has One of the Biggest Soviet Mysteries Been Solved? Most of us would go out of our way not to set foot anywhere near a place the local natives refer to...
2 months ago
20

The Dylatov Pass Incident: Has One of the Biggest Soviet Mysteries Been Solved?

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2 months ago
Most of us would go out of our way not to set foot anywhere near a place the local natives refer to as “Dead Mountain.” That didn’t stop the Dyatlov Hiking Group, who set out on a sixteen-day skiing expedition across the northern Urals in late January of 1959. Experienced and...
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Open Culture
Hear What Shakespeare Sounded Like in the Original Pronunciation What did Shakespeare’s English sound like to Shakespeare? To his audience? And how can we know such...
2 months ago
34

Hear What Shakespeare Sounded Like in the Original Pronunciation

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2 months ago
What did Shakespeare’s English sound like to Shakespeare? To his audience? And how can we know such a thing as the phonetic character of the language spoken 400 years ago? These questions and more are addressed in the video above, which profiles a very popular experiment at...
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Open Culture
An Introduction to George Orwell’s 1984 and How Power Manufactures Truth Soon after the first election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States, George...
2 months ago
31

An Introduction to George Orwell’s 1984 and How Power Manufactures Truth

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2 months ago
Soon after the first election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four became a bestseller again. Shooting to the top of the American charts, the novel that inspired the term “Orwellian” passed Danielle Steel’s latest opus, the...
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Open Culture
Talking Heads Release the First Official Video for “Psycho Killer”: Watch It Online On social media, the Talking Heads teased a major announcement on June 5th, leading fans to wonder...
2 months ago
35

Talking Heads Release the First Official Video for “Psycho Killer”: Watch It Online

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2 months ago
On social media, the Talking Heads teased a major announcement on June 5th, leading fans to wonder if a reunion—41 years after their last tour—might finally be in the offing. As one fan put it, “If this is a tour announcement, I am going to freak out!” Alas, we didn’t quite get...
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Open Culture
When the State Department Used Dizzy Gillespie and Jazz to Fight the Cold War (1956) It’s been said that the United States won the Cold War without firing a shot — a statement, as P. J....
2 months ago
19

When the State Department Used Dizzy Gillespie and Jazz to Fight the Cold War (1956)

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2 months ago
It’s been said that the United States won the Cold War without firing a shot — a statement, as P. J. O’Rourke once wrote, that doubtless surprised veterans of Korea and Vietnam. But it wouldn’t be entirely incorrect to call the long stare-down between the U.S. and the Soviet...
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Open Culture
William Faulkner Resigns From His Post Office Job With a Spectacular Letter (1924) Working a dull civil service job ill-suited to your talents does not make you a writer, but plenty...
2 months ago
19

William Faulkner Resigns From His Post Office Job With a Spectacular Letter (1924)

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2 months ago
Working a dull civil service job ill-suited to your talents does not make you a writer, but plenty of famous writers have worked such jobs. Nathaniel Hawthorne worked at a Boston customhouse for a year. His friend Herman Melville put in considerably more time—19 years—as a...
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Open Culture
The 100 Greatest Paintings of All Time: From Botticelli and Bosch to Bacon and Basquiat It would be a worthwhile exercise for any of us to sit down and attempt to draw up a list of our 100...
2 months ago
30

The 100 Greatest Paintings of All Time: From Botticelli and Bosch to Bacon and Basquiat

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2 months ago
It would be a worthwhile exercise for any of us to sit down and attempt to draw up a list of our 100 favorite paintings of all time. Naturally, those not professionally involved with art history may have some trouble quite hitting that number. Still, however many titles we can...
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Open Culture
Leonard Bernstein: The Greatest 5 Minutes in Music Education We’ve previously written about one of Leonard Bernstein’s major works, The Unanswered Question, the...
2 months ago
37

Leonard Bernstein: The Greatest 5 Minutes in Music Education

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2 months ago
We’ve previously written about one of Leonard Bernstein’s major works, The Unanswered Question, the staggering six-part lecture that the multi-disciplinary artist gave as part of his duties as Harvard’s Charles Eliot Norton Professor. Over 11 hours, Bernstein attempts to explain...
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Open Culture
How John Lennon Wrote the Beatles’ Best Song, “A Day in the Life” If you’re under 60, you probably heard the line “I read the news today, oh boy” before encountering...
2 months ago
36

How John Lennon Wrote the Beatles’ Best Song, “A Day in the Life”

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2 months ago
If you’re under 60, you probably heard the line “I read the news today, oh boy” before encountering the song it opens. Even after you discovered the work of the Beatles, it may have taken you some time to understand what, exactly, it was that John Lennon read in the news. The...
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Open Culture
Albert Einstein’s Grades: A Fascinating Look at His Report Cards Albert Einstein was a precocious child. At the age of twelve, he followed his own line of reasoning...
2 months ago
20

Albert Einstein’s Grades: A Fascinating Look at His Report Cards

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2 months ago
Albert Einstein was a precocious child. At the age of twelve, he followed his own line of reasoning to find a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. At thirteen he read Kant, just for the fun of it. And before he was fifteen he had taught himself differential and integral calculus....
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Open Culture
Wim Wenders’ New Short Film Reminds Europe of the Lessons of World War II World War II officially ended on September 2, 1945. It followed, by less than three weeks, an...
2 months ago
24

Wim Wenders’ New Short Film Reminds Europe of the Lessons of World War II

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2 months ago
World War II officially ended on September 2, 1945. It followed, by less than three weeks, an equally momentous event, at least in the eyes of cinephiles: the birth of Wim Wenders. Though soon to turn 80 years old, Wenders has remained both productive and capable of drawing great...
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Open Culture
Pablo Picasso’s Childhood Paintings: Precocious Works Painted Between the Ages of 8 and 15 It’s hard to imagine from this historical distance how upsetting Pablo Picasso’s 1907 modernist...
2 months ago
30

Pablo Picasso’s Childhood Paintings: Precocious Works Painted Between the Ages of 8 and 15

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2 months ago
It’s hard to imagine from this historical distance how upsetting Pablo Picasso’s 1907 modernist painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was to Parisian society at its debut. On its 100th anniversary, Guardian critic Jonathan Jones described it as “the rift, the break that divides past...
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Open Culture
Harvard Lets You Take 133 Free Online Courses: Explore Courses on Justice, American Government,... Image by Rizka, via Wikimedia Commons In South Korea, where I live, there may be no brand as...
2 months ago
30

Harvard Lets You Take 133 Free Online Courses: Explore Courses on Justice, American Government, Literature, Religion, CompSci & More

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2 months ago
Image by Rizka, via Wikimedia Commons In South Korea, where I live, there may be no brand as respected as Habodeu. Children dream of it; adults seemingly do anything to play up their own connections to it, however tenuous those connections may be. But what is Habodeu? An...
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Open Culture
Will Machines Ever Truly Think? Richard Feynman Contemplates the Future of Artificial Intelligence... Though its answer has grown more complicated in recent years, the question of whether computers will...
2 months ago
37

Will Machines Ever Truly Think? Richard Feynman Contemplates the Future of Artificial Intelligence (1985)

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2 months ago
Though its answer has grown more complicated in recent years, the question of whether computers will ever truly think has been around for quite some time. Richard Feynman was being asked about it 40 years ago, as evidenced by the lecture clip above. As his fans would expect, he...
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Open Culture
Leonardo da Vinci’s Elegant Design for a Perpetual Motion Machine Is perpetual motion possible? In theory… I have no idea…. In practice, so far at least, the answer...
2 months ago
41

Leonardo da Vinci’s Elegant Design for a Perpetual Motion Machine

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2 months ago
Is perpetual motion possible? In theory… I have no idea…. In practice, so far at least, the answer has been a perpetual no. As Nicholas Barrial writes at Makery, “in order to succeed,” a perpetual motion machine “should be free of friction, run in a vacuum chamber and be totally...
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Open Culture
Ridley Scott’s Cinematic TV Commercials: An 80-Minute Compilation Spanning 1968–2023 “In the future, e‑mail will make the written word a thing of the past,” declares the narration of a...
2 months ago
28

Ridley Scott’s Cinematic TV Commercials: An 80-Minute Compilation Spanning 1968–2023

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2 months ago
“In the future, e‑mail will make the written word a thing of the past,” declares the narration of a 1999 television commercial for Orange, the French telecom giant. “In the future, we won’t have to travel; we’ll meet on video. In the future, we won’t need to play in the wind and...
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Open Culture
A Young Jim Henson Teaches You How to Make Puppets with Socks, Tennis Balls & Other Household Goods... By the time he filmed this video archived on Iowa Public Television’s YouTube channel, Jim Henson...
2 months ago
22

A Young Jim Henson Teaches You How to Make Puppets with Socks, Tennis Balls & Other Household Goods (1969)

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2 months ago
By the time he filmed this video archived on Iowa Public Television’s YouTube channel, Jim Henson was just about to strike gold with a new children’s show called Sesame Street. The year was 1969, and he already had 15 years of puppetry experience under his belt, from children’s...
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Open Culture
The World’s Oldest Homework: A Look at Babylonian Math Homework from 4,000 Years Ago Homework has lately become unfashionable, at least according to what I’ve heard from teachers in...
2 months ago
20

The World’s Oldest Homework: A Look at Babylonian Math Homework from 4,000 Years Ago

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2 months ago
Homework has lately become unfashionable, at least according to what I’ve heard from teachers in certain parts of the United States. That may complicate various fairly long-standing educational practices, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect an absolute drop in standards and...
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Open Culture
They Study Authoritarianism. And They’re Leaving the U.S.: Why Three Yale Professors Have Moved to... Three Yale professors—Timothy Snyder, Jason Stanley and Marci Shore–have spent their careers...
2 months ago
27

They Study Authoritarianism. And They’re Leaving the U.S.: Why Three Yale Professors Have Moved to U. Toronto

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2 months ago
Three Yale professors—Timothy Snyder, Jason Stanley and Marci Shore–have spent their careers studying fascism and authoritarianism. They know the signs of emerging authoritarianism when they see it. Now, they’re seeing those signs here in the United States, and they’re not...
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Open Culture
How Bob Dylan Kept Reinventing His Songwriting Process, Breathing New Life Into His Music On his 84th birthday this past Saturday, Bob Dylan played a show. That was in keeping with not only...
2 months ago
37

How Bob Dylan Kept Reinventing His Songwriting Process, Breathing New Life Into His Music

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2 months ago
On his 84th birthday this past Saturday, Bob Dylan played a show. That was in keeping with not only his still-serious touring schedule, but also his apparently irrepressible instinct to work: on music, on writing, on painting, on sculpture. Even his occasional tweeting draws an...
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Open Culture
George Orwell Reviews Salvador Dali’s Autobiography: “Dali is a Good Draughtsman and a Disgusting... Images or Orwell and Dali via Wikimedia Commons Should we hold artists to the same standards of...
2 months ago
43

George Orwell Reviews Salvador Dali’s Autobiography: “Dali is a Good Draughtsman and a Disgusting Human Being” (1944)

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2 months ago
Images or Orwell and Dali via Wikimedia Commons Should we hold artists to the same standards of human decency that we expect of everyone else? Should talented people be exempt from ordinary morality? Should artists of questionable character have their work consigned to the trash...
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Open Culture
A 3D Model Reveals What the Parthenon and Its Interior Looked Like 2,500 Years Ago Standing atop the Acropolis in Athens as it has for nearly 2,500 years now, the Parthenon remains an...
3 months ago
26

A 3D Model Reveals What the Parthenon and Its Interior Looked Like 2,500 Years Ago

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3 months ago
Standing atop the Acropolis in Athens as it has for nearly 2,500 years now, the Parthenon remains an impressive sight indeed. Not that those two and a half millennia have been kind to the place: one of the most famous ruins of the ancient world is still, after all, a ruin. But it...
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Open Culture
Leo Tolstoy’s Family Recipe for Mac and Cheese In 1874, Stepan Andreevich Bers published The Cookbook and gave it as a gift to his sister, countess...
3 months ago
34

Leo Tolstoy’s Family Recipe for Mac and Cheese

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3 months ago
In 1874, Stepan Andreevich Bers published The Cookbook and gave it as a gift to his sister, countess Sophia Andreevna Tolstaya, the wife of the great Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy. The book contained a collection of Tolstoy family recipes, the dishes they served to their family...
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Open Culture
The “Dark Relics” of Christianity: Preserved Skulls, Blood & Other Grim Artifacts Christianity often manifests in popular culture through celebrations like Christmas and Easter, or...
3 months ago
26

The “Dark Relics” of Christianity: Preserved Skulls, Blood & Other Grim Artifacts

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3 months ago
Christianity often manifests in popular culture through celebrations like Christmas and Easter, or icons like lambs and fish. Less often do you see it associated with vials of blood and disembodied heads. Yet as the new Hochelaga video above reveals, the most famed Christian...
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Open Culture
How Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd & Jethro Tull Financed the Making Monty Python and the Holy Grail Monty Python and the Holy Grail isn’t a big-budget spectacle, and nobody knew that better than the...
3 months ago
32

How Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd & Jethro Tull Financed the Making Monty Python and the Holy Grail

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3 months ago
Monty Python and the Holy Grail isn’t a big-budget spectacle, and nobody knew that better than the Pythons themselves. Necessity being the mother of invention, they turned the project’s financial constraints into one of its many sources of humor, fashioning memorable gags out of...
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Open Culture
60 Free Film Noir Movies You Can Watch Online, Including Classics by John Huston, Orson Welles &... During the 1940s and 50s, Hollywood entered a “noir” period, producing riveting films based on...
3 months ago
51

60 Free Film Noir Movies You Can Watch Online, Including Classics by John Huston, Orson Welles & Fritz Lang

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3 months ago
During the 1940s and 50s, Hollywood entered a “noir” period, producing riveting films based on hard-boiled fiction. These films were set in dark locations and shot in a black & white aesthetic that fit like a glove. Hardened men wore fedoras and forever smoked cigarettes. Women...
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Open Culture
60 Free Film Noir Movies You Can Watch Online, Including Classics by John Huston, Orson Welles &... During the 1940s and 50s, Hollywood entered a “noir” period, producing riveting films based on...
3 months ago
32

60 Free Film Noir Movies You Can Watch Online, Including Classics by John Huston, Orson Welles & Fritz Lang

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3 months ago
During the 1940s and 50s, Hollywood entered a “noir” period, producing riveting films based on hard-boiled fiction. These films were set in dark locations and shot in a black & white aesthetic that fit like a glove. Hardened men wore fedoras and forever smoked cigarettes. Women...
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Open Culture
How the First Rock Concert Ended in Mayhem (Cleveland, 1952) “America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is...
3 months ago
27

How the First Rock Concert Ended in Mayhem (Cleveland, 1952)

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3 months ago
“America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.” That observation tends to be attributed to Tennessee Williams, though it’s become somewhat detached from its source, so deeply does it resonate with a certain experience of...
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Open Culture
1980s Metalhead Kids Are Alright: Scientific Study Shows That They Became Well-Adjusted Adults In the 1980s, The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), an organization co-founded by Tipper Gore...
3 months ago
28

1980s Metalhead Kids Are Alright: Scientific Study Shows That They Became Well-Adjusted Adults

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3 months ago
In the 1980s, The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), an organization co-founded by Tipper Gore and the wives of several other Washington power brokers, launched a political campaign against pop music, hoping to put warning labels on records that promoted Sex, Violence, Drug...
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Open Culture
Watch Pablo Picasso’s Creative Process Unfold in Real-Time: Rare Footage Shows Him Creating Drawings... Pablo Picasso was born not long before the invention of the motion picture. With a different set of...
3 months ago
29

Watch Pablo Picasso’s Creative Process Unfold in Real-Time: Rare Footage Shows Him Creating Drawings of Faces, Bulls & Chickens

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3 months ago
Pablo Picasso was born not long before the invention of the motion picture. With a different set of inclinations, he might have become one of the most daring pioneers of that medium. Instead, as we know, he mastered and then practically reinvented the much older art form of...
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Open Culture
How Steven Soderbergh Directs a Scene & Makes It Great Steven Soderbergh was one of the earliest filmmakers to break out in what’s now called the...
3 months ago
35

How Steven Soderbergh Directs a Scene & Makes It Great

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3 months ago
Steven Soderbergh was one of the earliest filmmakers to break out in what’s now called the “Indiewood” movement of the nineteen-nineties. He was early enough, in fact, to have done so in the eighties, with the Palme d’Or-winning Sex, Lies, and Videotape. His subsequent films have...
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Open Culture
The World Record for the Shortest Math Article: 2 Words In 2004, John Conway and Alexander Soifer, both working on mathematics at Princeton University,...
3 months ago
35

The World Record for the Shortest Math Article: 2 Words

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3 months ago
In 2004, John Conway and Alexander Soifer, both working on mathematics at Princeton University, submitted to the American Mathematical Monthly what they believed was “a new world record in the number of words in a [math] paper.” Soifer explains: “On April 28, 2004 … I submitted...
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Open Culture
The PhD Theses of Richard Feynman, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein & Others, Explained with... Raise your children with a love of science, and there’s a decent chance they’ll grow up wanting to...
3 months ago
38

The PhD Theses of Richard Feynman, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein & Others, Explained with Illustrations

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3 months ago
Raise your children with a love of science, and there’s a decent chance they’ll grow up wanting to be like Richard Feynman, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, or any number of other famous scientists from history. Luckily for them, they won’t yet have learned that the pursuit of such...
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Open Culture
The Secret Link Between Jazz and Physics: How Einstein & Coltrane Shared Improvisation and Intuition... Scientists need hobbies. The grueling work of navigating complex theory and the politics of academia...
3 months ago
34

The Secret Link Between Jazz and Physics: How Einstein & Coltrane Shared Improvisation and Intuition in Common

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3 months ago
Scientists need hobbies. The grueling work of navigating complex theory and the politics of academia can get to a person, even one as laid back as Brown University professor and astrophysicist Stephon Alexander. So Alexander plays the saxophone, though at this point it may not be...
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Open Culture
How Civilizations Built on Top of Each Other: Discover What Lies Beneath Rome, Troy & Other Cities The idea of discovering a lost ancient city underground has long captured the human imagination. But...
3 months ago
23

How Civilizations Built on Top of Each Other: Discover What Lies Beneath Rome, Troy & Other Cities

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3 months ago
The idea of discovering a lost ancient city underground has long captured the human imagination. But why are the abandoned built environments of those fantasies always buried? The answer, in large part, is that such places do indeed exist under our feet, at least in certain parts...
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Open Culture
The Cleanest Recordings of 1920s Louis Armstrong Songs You Will Ever Hear On Youtube, jazz enthusiast Jonathan Holmes declares: “I can guarantee this is the cleanest sounding...
3 months ago
26

The Cleanest Recordings of 1920s Louis Armstrong Songs You Will Ever Hear

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3 months ago
On Youtube, jazz enthusiast Jonathan Holmes declares: “I can guarantee this is the cleanest sounding Louis Armstrong record you’ll ever hear! With the original transfer supplied by Nick Dellow, here is the mother record which was shipped by Okeh to Germany for their Odeon...
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Open Culture
How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Architecture Evolved Over 70 Years and Changed America In the new Architectural Digest video above, Michael Wyetzner talks about a fair few buildings we’ve...
3 months ago
30

How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Architecture Evolved Over 70 Years and Changed America

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3 months ago
In the new Architectural Digest video above, Michael Wyetzner talks about a fair few buildings we’ve featured over the years here on Open Culture: the Imperial Hotel, the Ennis House, Taliesin, Fallingwater. These are all, of course, the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, who still...
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Open Culture
David Bowie/Nirvana’s “The Man Who Sold The World” Played on the Gayageum, a Korean Instrument from... East meets West, and the Ancient, the Modern. That’s what happens every time Luna Lee plays one of...
3 months ago
28

David Bowie/Nirvana’s “The Man Who Sold The World” Played on the Gayageum, a Korean Instrument from the 6th Century

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3 months ago
East meets West, and the Ancient, the Modern. That’s what happens every time Luna Lee plays one of your favorites on the Gayageum, a Korean instrument that dates back to the 6th century. We’ve featured her work in years past (see the Relateds below). Above, watch one of her...
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Open Culture
How Our Depiction of Jesus Changed Over 2,000 Years and What He May Have Actually Looked Like Whether or not you believe Jesus Christ is the son of God, you probably envision him (or, if you...
3 months ago
22

How Our Depiction of Jesus Changed Over 2,000 Years and What He May Have Actually Looked Like

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3 months ago
Whether or not you believe Jesus Christ is the son of God, you probably envision him (or, if you prefer, Him) in much the same way as most everyone else does. The long hair and beard, the robe, the sandals, the beatific gaze: these traits have all manifested across two millennia...
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Open Culture
John Nash’s Super Short PhD Thesis: 26 Pages & Two Citations When John Nash wrote “Non-Cooperative Games,” his Ph.D. dissertation at Princeton in 1950, the text...
3 months ago
55

John Nash’s Super Short PhD Thesis: 26 Pages & Two Citations

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3 months ago
When John Nash wrote “Non-Cooperative Games,” his Ph.D. dissertation at Princeton in 1950, the text of his thesis (read it online) was brief. It ran only 26 pages. And more particularly, it was light on citations. Nash’s diss cited two texts: John von Neumann and Oskar...
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Open Culture
How a Student’s Phone Call Averted a Skyscraper Collapse: The Tale of the Citicorp Center The Citigroup Center in Midtown Manhattan is also known by its address, 601 Lexington Avenue, at...
3 months ago
33

How a Student’s Phone Call Averted a Skyscraper Collapse: The Tale of the Citicorp Center

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3 months ago
The Citigroup Center in Midtown Manhattan is also known by its address, 601 Lexington Avenue, at which it’s been standing for 47 years, longer than the median New Yorker has been alive. Though still a fairly handsome building, in a seventies-corporate sort of way, it now pops out...
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Open Culture
How Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton & Harold Lloyd Pulled Off Their Spectacular Stunts During Silent... It can be tempting to view the box office’s domination by visual-effects-laden Hollywood spectacle...
3 months ago
45

How Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton & Harold Lloyd Pulled Off Their Spectacular Stunts During Silent Film’s Golden Age

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3 months ago
It can be tempting to view the box office’s domination by visual-effects-laden Hollywood spectacle as a recent phenomenon. And indeed, there have been periods during which that wasn’t the case: the “New Hollywood” that began in the late nineteen sixties, for instance, when the...
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Open Culture
How a Papal Conclave Works, and Who Might Be the Next Pope On Tuesday, the cardinals locked themselves into the Sistine Chapel, officially beginning the...
3 months ago
50

How a Papal Conclave Works, and Who Might Be the Next Pope

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3 months ago
On Tuesday, the cardinals locked themselves into the Sistine Chapel, officially beginning the conclave to elect the 267th pope. First formalized by Pope Gregory X in 1274, the conclave (a word derived from the Latin words cum clave, meaning “with a key”) follows a highly scripted...
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Open Culture
Take a 3D Virtual Tour of the Sistine Chapel & Explore Michelangelo’s Masterpieces Up Close Today, 133 cardinals from around the world enter the conclave to determine the next pope, during...
3 months ago
37

Take a 3D Virtual Tour of the Sistine Chapel & Explore Michelangelo’s Masterpieces Up Close

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3 months ago
Today, 133 cardinals from around the world enter the conclave to determine the next pope, during which they’ll cast their votes in the Sistine Chapel. Despite being one of the most famous tourist attractions in Europe, the Sistine Chapel still serves as a venue for such important...
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Open Culture
George Orwell’s Rules for Making the Perfect Cup of Tea: A Short Animation Several years back, Colin Marshall highlighted George Orwell’s essay, “A Nice Cup of Tea,” which...
3 months ago
31

George Orwell’s Rules for Making the Perfect Cup of Tea: A Short Animation

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3 months ago
Several years back, Colin Marshall highlighted George Orwell’s essay, “A Nice Cup of Tea,” which first ran in the Evening Standard on January 12, 1946. In that article, Orwell weighed in on a subject the English take seriously–how to make the perfect cup of tea. (According to...
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Open Culture
A Japanese Zen Monk Explains What Zen Is Really About Despite developing in Asia, as the Chinese form of a religion originally brought over from India and...
3 months ago
26

A Japanese Zen Monk Explains What Zen Is Really About

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3 months ago
Despite developing in Asia, as the Chinese form of a religion originally brought over from India and later refined in Japan, Zen Buddhism has long appealed to Westerners as well. Some of that owes to the spare, elegant aesthetics with which popular culture associates it, and more...
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Open Culture
The Hobo Ethical Code of 1889: 15 Rules for Living a Self-Reliant, Honest & Compassionate Life Who wants to be a billionaire? A few years ago, Forbes published author Roberta Chinsky Matuson’s...
3 months ago
22

The Hobo Ethical Code of 1889: 15 Rules for Living a Self-Reliant, Honest & Compassionate Life

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3 months ago
Who wants to be a billionaire? A few years ago, Forbes published author Roberta Chinsky Matuson’s sensible advice to businesspeople seeking to shoot up that golden ladder. These lawful tips espoused such familiar virtues as hard work and community involvement, and as such, were...
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Open Culture
See Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in 3D in a New 108-Gigapixel Scan You may believe that you’ve had a close enough view of Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring....
3 months ago
17

See Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in 3D in a New 108-Gigapixel Scan

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3 months ago
You may believe that you’ve had a close enough view of Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. You may have gone to The Hague and seen the painting in person at the Mauritshuis. You may have zoomed into the ten billion-pixel scan we featured here on Open Culture in 2021....
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Open Culture
Hear the First Recording of the Human Voice (1860) When inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville sang a nursery rhyme into his phonoautogram in 1860,...
3 months ago
17

Hear the First Recording of the Human Voice (1860)

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3 months ago
When inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville sang a nursery rhyme into his phonoautogram in 1860, he had no plans to ever play back this recording. A precursor to the wax cylinder, the phonoautogram took inputs for the study of sound waves, but could not be turned into an...
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Open Culture
Was William Shakespeare’s Marriage Closer—and Less Estranged—Than We Thought?: A 17th-Century Letter... Image via Hereford Cathedral and Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust At this point, every aspect of William...
3 months ago
17

Was William Shakespeare’s Marriage Closer—and Less Estranged—Than We Thought?: A 17th-Century Letter Changes What We Know About the Bard’s Life.

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3 months ago
Image via Hereford Cathedral and Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust At this point, every aspect of William Shakespeare’s life has produced more speculation than any of us could digest in a lifetime. That goes for his professional life, of course, but also his even more scantily...
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Open Culture
How Eyes Evolved: A Fascinating Tour Through the Animal Kingdom Above, Lars Schmitz, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, guides us “through a giant tree of...
3 months ago
16

How Eyes Evolved: A Fascinating Tour Through the Animal Kingdom

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3 months ago
Above, Lars Schmitz, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, guides us “through a giant tree of life mapping the evolution of eyes in the animal kingdom: how they work, why they’ve taken the form they have, and the evolutionary advantages they’ve unlocked across species.” The...
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Open Culture
Stream Online Monty Python and the Holy Grail Free on Its 50th Anniversary This year, YouTube celebrated its twentieth anniversary, prompting younger users to wonder what life...
3 months ago
16

Stream Online Monty Python and the Holy Grail Free on Its 50th Anniversary

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3 months ago
This year, YouTube celebrated its twentieth anniversary, prompting younger users to wonder what life could have been like before it. The fiftieth anniversary of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which premiered in April of 1975, has inspired similar reflection among comedy...
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Open Culture
Marvin Gaye’s Classic Vocals on ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’: The A Cappella Version It’s hard to believe, but Marvin Gaye’s classic 1967 recording of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”...
3 months ago
12

Marvin Gaye’s Classic Vocals on ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’: The A Cappella Version

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3 months ago
It’s hard to believe, but Marvin Gaye’s classic 1967 recording of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” was originally rejected by his record label. The song, about a man’s grief over hearing rumors of his lover’s infidelity, was written by the legendary Motown Records producer...
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Open Culture
The Heavy-Metal Band Disturbed Covered Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” Ten Years Ago, and... “The Sound of Silence” Is the Most Metal Song of the Past Decade”: imagine that headline, and the...
3 months ago
29

The Heavy-Metal Band Disturbed Covered Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” Ten Years Ago, and It’s Still Topping the Charts

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3 months ago
“The Sound of Silence” Is the Most Metal Song of the Past Decade”: imagine that headline, and the contrarian culture piece practically writes itself. Not so long ago, Slate was notorious for publishing that kind of thing, but it seems they’ve now put that sensibility behind them...
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Open Culture
A Stylish 2,000-Year-Old Roman Shoe Found in a Well When the Romans pushed their way north into the German provinces, they built (circa 90 AD) the...
3 months ago
12

A Stylish 2,000-Year-Old Roman Shoe Found in a Well

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3 months ago
When the Romans pushed their way north into the German provinces, they built (circa 90 AD) the Saalburg, a fort that protected the boundary between the Roman Empire and the Germanic tribal territories. At its peak, 2,000 people lived in the fort and the attached village, and it...
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Open Culture
The Simple, Ingenious Design of the Ancient Roman Javelin: How the Romans Engineered a Remarkably... As Mike Tyson once put it, with characteristic straightforwardness, “Everybody has a plan until they...
3 months ago
17

The Simple, Ingenious Design of the Ancient Roman Javelin: How the Romans Engineered a Remarkably Effective Weapon

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3 months ago
As Mike Tyson once put it, with characteristic straightforwardness, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Back in the time of the Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire, all of Rome’s enemies must have had a plan until pila punched through their shields....
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Open Culture
Miles Davis’ Album On the Corner Tried to Woo Young Rock & Funk Fans: First Considered a Disaster,... Miles Davis didn’t put out any studio albums from 1973 until the middle of 1981. In explaining the...
4 months ago
47

Miles Davis’ Album On the Corner Tried to Woo Young Rock & Funk Fans: First Considered a Disaster, It’s Now Hailed as a Masterpiece

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4 months ago
Miles Davis didn’t put out any studio albums from 1973 until the middle of 1981. In explaining the reasons for this lacuna in his recording career, Milesologists can point to a variety of factors in the man’s professional and personal life. But one in particular looms large: the...
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Open Culture
Hōshi: A Short Documentary on the 1300-Year-Old Hotel Run by the Same Japanese Family for 46... Hōshi, a traditional Japanese inn in Komatsu, Japan, holds the distinction of being the second...
4 months ago
57

Hōshi: A Short Documentary on the 1300-Year-Old Hotel Run by the Same Japanese Family for 46 Generations

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4 months ago
Hōshi, a traditional Japanese inn in Komatsu, Japan, holds the distinction of being the second oldest hotel in the world—and “the oldest still running family business in the world.” Built in 718 AD, Hōshi has been operated by the same family for 46 consecutive generations. Count...
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Open Culture
The Roman Colosseum Deconstructed: 3D Animation Reveals the Hidden Technology That Powered Rome’s... Most tourists in Rome put the Colosseum at the top of their to-see list. (My own sister-in-law, soon...
4 months ago
52

The Roman Colosseum Deconstructed: 3D Animation Reveals the Hidden Technology That Powered Rome’s Great Arena

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4 months ago
Most tourists in Rome put the Colosseum at the top of their to-see list. (My own sister-in-law, soon to head out on her Italian honeymoon, plans to head to that storied ruin more or less straight from the airport.) Even those with no particular interest in ancient Roman...
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Open Culture
The 1924 Soviet Chess Match Where The Chess Pieces Were Real Soldiers and Horses Let’s time travel back to Leningrad (aka St. Petersburg) in 1924. That’s when an unconventional...
4 months ago
56

The 1924 Soviet Chess Match Where The Chess Pieces Were Real Soldiers and Horses

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4 months ago
Let’s time travel back to Leningrad (aka St. Petersburg) in 1924. That’s when an unconventional chess match was played by Peter Romanovsky and Ilya Rabinovich, two chess masters of the day. Apparently, they called in their moves over the telephone. And then real-life chess...
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Open Culture
How Zaha Hadid Revolutionized Architecture & Drew Inspiration from Russian Avant-Garde Art Zaha Hadid died in 2016, at the age of 65. She certainly wasn’t old, by the standards of our time,...
4 months ago
54

How Zaha Hadid Revolutionized Architecture & Drew Inspiration from Russian Avant-Garde Art

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4 months ago
Zaha Hadid died in 2016, at the age of 65. She certainly wasn’t old, by the standards of our time, though in most professions, her best working years would already have been behind her. She was, however, an architect, and by age 65, most architects are still very much in their...
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Open Culture
Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi–Walt Disney’s 1943 Film Shows How Fascists Are Made During World War II, Walt Disney entered into a contract with the US government to develop 32...
4 months ago
46

Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi–Walt Disney’s 1943 Film Shows How Fascists Are Made

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4 months ago
During World War II, Walt Disney entered into a contract with the US government to develop 32 animated shorts. Nearly bankrupted by Fantasia (1940), Disney needed to refill its coffers, and making American propaganda films didn’t seem like a bad way to do it. On numerous...
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Open Culture
The Extreme Life and Philosophy of Hunter S. Thompson: Gonzo Journalism and the American Condition Hunter S. Thompson has been gone for two decades now. When he went out, as the new Pursuit of Wonder...
4 months ago
57

The Extreme Life and Philosophy of Hunter S. Thompson: Gonzo Journalism and the American Condition

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4 months ago
Hunter S. Thompson has been gone for two decades now. When he went out, as the new Pursuit of Wonder video on his life and work reminds us, he did so in a highly American manner: with a gun, and at the moment of his own choosing. Even his longtime fans who respected something...
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Open Culture
James Joyce, With His Eyesight Failing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926) James Joyce had a terrible time with his eyes. When he was six years old he received his first set...
4 months ago
38

James Joyce, With His Eyesight Failing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926)

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4 months ago
James Joyce had a terrible time with his eyes. When he was six years old he received his first set of eyeglasses, and, when he was 25, he came down with his first case of iritis, a very painful and potentially blinding inflammation of the colored part of the eye, the iris. A...
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Open Culture
Carl Sagan Issues a Chilling Warning About the Decline of Scientific Thinking in America: Watch His... Until the end of his life, Carl Sagan (1934–1996) continued doing what he did all along —...
4 months ago
39

Carl Sagan Issues a Chilling Warning About the Decline of Scientific Thinking in America: Watch His Final Interview (1996)

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4 months ago
Until the end of his life, Carl Sagan (1934–1996) continued doing what he did all along — popularizing science and “enthusiastically conveying the wonders of the universe to millions of people on television and in books.” Whenever Sagan appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny...
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Open Culture
The Real Story of Easter: How We Got from the First Easter in the Bible to Bunnies, Eggs & Chocolate Popular culture has long since claimed Easter as an occasion for trickster rabbits, dyed-egg hunts,...
4 months ago
41

The Real Story of Easter: How We Got from the First Easter in the Bible to Bunnies, Eggs & Chocolate

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4 months ago
Popular culture has long since claimed Easter as an occasion for trickster rabbits, dyed-egg hunts, and marshmallow chicks of unnatural hues — none of which are actually in the Bible. Though that probably doesn’t surprise you, you may not be aware of just how far the modern...
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Open Culture
How to Evade Taxes in Ancient Rome: A 1,900-Year-Old Papyrus Reveals an Ancient Tax Evasion Scheme It was surely not a coincidence that the New York Times published its story on the trial of a...
4 months ago
39

How to Evade Taxes in Ancient Rome: A 1,900-Year-Old Papyrus Reveals an Ancient Tax Evasion Scheme

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4 months ago
It was surely not a coincidence that the New York Times published its story on the trial of a certain Gadalias and Saulos this past Monday, April 14th. The defendants, as their names suggest, did not live in modernity: the papyrus documenting their legal troubles dates to the...
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Open Culture
How to Enter a ‘Flow State’ on Command: Peak Performance Mind Hack Explained in 7 Minutes You can be forgiven for thinking the concept of “flow” was cooked up and popularized by yoga...
4 months ago
35

How to Enter a ‘Flow State’ on Command: Peak Performance Mind Hack Explained in 7 Minutes

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4 months ago
You can be forgiven for thinking the concept of “flow” was cooked up and popularized by yoga teachers. That word gets a lot of play when one is moving from Downward-Facing Dog on through Warrior One and Two. Actually, flow — the state of  “effortless effort” — was coined by...
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Open Culture
A Forgotten 16th-Century Manuscript Reveals the First Designs for Modern Rockets The Austrian military engineer Conrad Haas was a man ahead of his time — indeed, about 400 years...
4 months ago
42

A Forgotten 16th-Century Manuscript Reveals the First Designs for Modern Rockets

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4 months ago
The Austrian military engineer Conrad Haas was a man ahead of his time — indeed, about 400 years ahead, considering that he was working on rockets aimed for outer space back in the mid-sixteenth century. Needless to say, he never actually managed to launch anything into the upper...
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Open Culture
Why Most Ancient Civilizations Had No Word for the Color Blue In an old Zen story, two monks argue over whether a flag is waving or whether it’s the wind that...
4 months ago
58

Why Most Ancient Civilizations Had No Word for the Color Blue

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4 months ago
In an old Zen story, two monks argue over whether a flag is waving or whether it’s the wind that waves. Their teacher strikes them both dumb, saying, “It is your mind that moves.” The centuries-old koan illustrates a point Zen masters — and later philosophers, psychologists, and...
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Open Culture
The Ark Before Noah: Discover the Ancient Flood Myths That Came Before the Bible The Lord said to Noah, there’s going to be a floody, floody; then to get those children out of the...
4 months ago
33

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

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4 months ago
The Lord said to Noah, there’s going to be a floody, floody; then to get those children out of the muddy, muddy; then to build him an arky, arky. This much we heard while toasting marshmallows around the campfire, at least if we grew up in a certain modern Protestant tradition....
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Open Culture
William Faulkner’s Review of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (1952) Images via Wikimedia Commons In the mid-20th century, the two big dogs in the American literary...
4 months ago
50

William Faulkner’s Review of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

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4 months ago
Images via Wikimedia Commons In the mid-20th century, the two big dogs in the American literary scene were William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Both were internationally revered, both were masters of the novel and the short story, and both won Nobel Prizes. Born in Mississippi,...
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Open Culture
What the World Will Look Like in 250 Million Years: Mapping the Distant Future Most of us now accept the idea that all of Earth’s continents were once part of a single, enormous...
4 months ago
36

What the World Will Look Like in 250 Million Years: Mapping the Distant Future

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4 months ago
Most of us now accept the idea that all of Earth’s continents were once part of a single, enormous land mass. That wasn’t the case in the early nineteen-tens, when the geologist Alfred Wegener (1880–1930) first publicized his theory of not just the supercontinent Pangea, but also...
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Open Culture
What Was Smoot-Hawley, and Why Are We Doing It Again? Anyone? Anyone? When most Americans think of the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs, they think of economic disaster. But if you...
4 months ago
38

What Was Smoot-Hawley, and Why Are We Doing It Again? Anyone? Anyone?

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4 months ago
When most Americans think of the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs, they think of economic disaster. But if you ask why, most Americans may need a short refresher course. Below, you will find just that. Appearing on Derek Thompson’s Plain History podcast, Douglas Irwin (an economist and...
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Open Culture
How Chinese Characters Work: The Evolution of a Three-Millennia-Old Writing System Contrary to somewhat popular belief, Chinese characters aren’t just little pictures. In fact, most...
4 months ago
24

How Chinese Characters Work: The Evolution of a Three-Millennia-Old Writing System

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4 months ago
Contrary to somewhat popular belief, Chinese characters aren’t just little pictures. In fact, most of them aren’t pictures at all. The very oldest, whose evolution can be traced back to the “oracle bone” script of thirteenth century BC etched directly onto the remains of turtles...
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Open Culture
Hear the World’s Oldest Known Song, “Hurrian Hymn No. 6” Written 3,400 Years Ago Do you like old timey music? Splendid. You can’t get more old timey than Hurrian Hymn No. 6, which...
4 months ago
75

Hear the World’s Oldest Known Song, “Hurrian Hymn No. 6” Written 3,400 Years Ago

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4 months ago
Do you like old timey music? Splendid. You can’t get more old timey than Hurrian Hymn No. 6, which was discovered on a clay tablet in the ancient Syrian port city of Ugarit in the 1950s, and is over 3400 years old. Actually, you can — a similar tablet, which references a hymn...
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Open Culture
What Is Kafkaesque?: The Philosophy of Franz Kafka It’s difficult to imagine that there was ever a time without the word “Kafkaesque.” Yet the term...
4 months ago
51

What Is Kafkaesque?: The Philosophy of Franz Kafka

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4 months ago
It’s difficult to imagine that there was ever a time without the word “Kafkaesque.” Yet the term would have meant nothing at all to anyone alive at the same time as Franz Kafka — including, in all probability, Kafka himself. Born in Prague in 1883, he grew up under a stern,...
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Open Culture
Actor John Lithgow Reads 20 Lessons on Tyranny, Penned by Historian Timothy Snyder In 2017, historian Timothy Snyder wrote the concise book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the...
4 months ago
46

Actor John Lithgow Reads 20 Lessons on Tyranny, Penned by Historian Timothy Snyder

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4 months ago
In 2017, historian Timothy Snyder wrote the concise book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, which went on to become a New York Times bestseller. A historian of fascism (then at Yale, now at U. Toronto), Snyder wanted to offer Americans a useful guide for...
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Open Culture
The Medieval Manuscript That Features “Yoda”, Killer Snails, Savage Rabbits & More: Discover The... As much as you may enjoy a night in with a book, you might not look so eagerly forward to it if that...
4 months ago
28

The Medieval Manuscript That Features “Yoda”, Killer Snails, Savage Rabbits & More: Discover The Smithfield Decretals

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4 months ago
As much as you may enjoy a night in with a book, you might not look so eagerly forward to it if that book comprised 314 folios of 1,971 papal letters and other documents relating to ecclesiastical law, all from the thirteenth century. Indeed, even many specialists in the field...
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Open Culture
The Map of Mathematics: Animation Shows How All the Different Fields in Math Fit Together Back in December, you hopefully thoroughly immersed yourself in The Map of Physics, an animated...
4 months ago
28

The Map of Mathematics: Animation Shows How All the Different Fields in Math Fit Together

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4 months ago
Back in December, you hopefully thoroughly immersed yourself in The Map of Physics, an animated video–a visual aid for the modern age–that mapped out the field of physics, explaining all the connections between classical physics, quantum physics, and relativity. You can’t do...
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Open Culture
Isaac Asimov Describes How Artificial Intelligence Will Liberate Humans & Their Creativity in His... Artificial intelligence may be one of the major topics of our historical moment, but it can be...
4 months ago
32

Isaac Asimov Describes How Artificial Intelligence Will Liberate Humans & Their Creativity in His Last Major Interview (1992)

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4 months ago
Artificial intelligence may be one of the major topics of our historical moment, but it can be surprisingly tricky to define. In the more than 30-year-old interview clip above, Isaac Asimov describes artificial intelligence as “a phrase that we use for any device that does things...
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Open Culture
Watch Composer Wendy Carlos Demo an Original Moog Synthesizer (1989) She’s worked with Stanley Kubrick *and* “Weird Al” Yankovic, and helped Robert Moog in the...
4 months ago
35

Watch Composer Wendy Carlos Demo an Original Moog Synthesizer (1989)

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4 months ago
She’s worked with Stanley Kubrick *and* “Weird Al” Yankovic, and helped Robert Moog in the development of his eponymous synthesizer. Wendy Carlos is also one of the first high profile transgender artists–credited as Walter Carlos for Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange but having...
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Open Culture
Dante’s Inferno: A Visitor’s Guide to Hell In most places across the world, speak the name of Dante, and your listeners will think of Inferno....
4 months ago
51

Dante’s Inferno: A Visitor’s Guide to Hell

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4 months ago
In most places across the world, speak the name of Dante, and your listeners will think of Inferno. Since its first publication more than 700 years ago, its depiction of Hell has become influential enough to shape the perceptions of even those who don’t believe that such a place...
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Open Culture
Who Really Built the Egyptian Pyramids—And How Did They Do It? Although it’s certainly more plausible than hypotheses like ancient aliens or lizard people, the...
4 months ago
68

Who Really Built the Egyptian Pyramids—And How Did They Do It?

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4 months ago
Although it’s certainly more plausible than hypotheses like ancient aliens or lizard people, the idea that slaves built the Egyptian pyramids is no more true. It derives from creative readings of Old Testament stories and technicolor Cecil B. Demille spectacles, and was a classic...
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Open Culture
How Italy Became the Most Divided Country in Europe: Understanding the Great Divide Between North &... Prada, Alfa Romeo, Pellegrino, Ferrari, Illy, Lamborghini, Gucci: these are a few Italian...
4 months ago
74

How Italy Became the Most Divided Country in Europe: Understanding the Great Divide Between North & South

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4 months ago
Prada, Alfa Romeo, Pellegrino, Ferrari, Illy, Lamborghini, Gucci: these are a few Italian corporations we all know, though we don’t necessarily know that they’re all from the north of Italy. The same is true, in fact, of most Italian brands that now enjoy global recognition, and...
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The Steps a President Would Take to Destroy His Nation, According to Grok Just out of curiosity, and apropos of nothing, we asked Grok (the AI chatbot created by Elon Musk)...
4 months ago
43

The Steps a President Would Take to Destroy His Nation, According to Grok

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4 months ago
Just out of curiosity, and apropos of nothing, we asked Grok (the AI chatbot created by Elon Musk) the following question: If a president of a superpower wanted to destroy his own country, what steps would he take? Here’s what Grok had to say: If a president of a superpower aimed...
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Open Culture
Why the Romans Stopped Reading Books Nobody reads books anymore. Whether or not that notion strikes you as true, you’ve probably heard it...
4 months ago
40

Why the Romans Stopped Reading Books

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4 months ago
Nobody reads books anymore. Whether or not that notion strikes you as true, you’ve probably heard it expressed fairly often in recent decades — just as you might have had you lived in the Roman Empire of late antiquity. During that time, as ancient-history YouTuber Garrett Ryan...
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Open Culture
Watch Jazz ‘Hot’, the Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Legend Django Reinhardt Here’s a remarkable short film of the great jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, violinist Stéphane...
4 months ago
62

Watch Jazz ‘Hot’, the Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Legend Django Reinhardt

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4 months ago
Here’s a remarkable short film of the great jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, violinist Stéphane Grappelli and their band the Quintette du Hot Club de France performing on a movie set in 1938. The film was hastily organized by the band’s British agent Lew Grade as a way to...
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Open Culture
In 1927, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis Created a Dystopian Vision of What the World Would Look Like in... Ultra-tall high-rises against dark skies. A huge distance between the rich and the poor. Robber...
4 months ago
40

In 1927, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis Created a Dystopian Vision of What the World Would Look Like in 2026–and It Hits Close to Home

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4 months ago
Ultra-tall high-rises against dark skies. A huge distance between the rich and the poor. Robber barons at the helm of large-scale industrial operations that turn man into machine. Machines that have become intelligent enough to displace man. These have all been standard elements...
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Open Culture
Watch Bob Dylan Make His Debut at the Newport Folk Festival in Colorized 1963 Footage ?si=l7KWVf9NZBUkPyM6 In July 1963, Bob Dylan made his first appearance at the Newport Folk Festival....
4 months ago
63

Watch Bob Dylan Make His Debut at the Newport Folk Festival in Colorized 1963 Footage

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4 months ago
?si=l7KWVf9NZBUkPyM6 In July 1963, Bob Dylan made his first appearance at the Newport Folk Festival. On opening night, he captivated a crowd of 13,000 with a performance of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” accompanied by Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, and Peter, Paul, and Mary. Then, the...
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Open Culture
The Only Illustrated Manuscript of Homer’s Iliad from Antiquity Despite its status as one of the most widely known and studied epic poems of all time, Homer’s Iliad...
4 months ago
45

The Only Illustrated Manuscript of Homer’s Iliad from Antiquity

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4 months ago
Despite its status as one of the most widely known and studied epic poems of all time, Homer’s Iliad has proven surprisingly resistant to adaptation. However much inspiration it has provided to modern-day novelists working in a variety of different traditions, it’s translated...
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Open Culture
The Great Gatsby: A Free Audio Book April 10th will mark the 100th anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic American novel, The...
4 months ago
30

The Great Gatsby: A Free Audio Book

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4 months ago
April 10th will mark the 100th anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic American novel, The Great Gatsby. As A.O. Scott notes in a recent tribute, when first published, The Great Gatsby got off to a slow start. Initially, “Reviewers shrugged. Sales were sluggish. The novel...
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Open Culture
Did the Tower of Babel Actually Exist?: A Look at the Archaeological Evidence For all the means of communication and exchange we’ve established between the cultures of the world,...
4 months ago
38

Did the Tower of Babel Actually Exist?: A Look at the Archaeological Evidence

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4 months ago
For all the means of communication and exchange we’ve established between the cultures of the world, no matter how distant they may be from one another, we still have no truly universal single human language. The reason could date back to antiquity, when we first attempted a...
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Open Culture
A Rare Smile Captured in a 19th Century Photograph Just look at this photo. Just look at this young girl’s smile. We know her name: O‑o-dee. And we...
4 months ago
64

A Rare Smile Captured in a 19th Century Photograph

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4 months ago
Just look at this photo. Just look at this young girl’s smile. We know her name: O‑o-dee. And we know that she was a member of the Kiowa tribe in the Oklahoma Territory. And we know that the photo was taken in 1894. But that smile is like a time machine. O‑o-dee might just as […]
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Open Culture
This Is What a Nuclear Strike Would Feel Like: The New York Times Creates a Precise Simulation Though certain generations may have grown up trained to take cover under their classroom desks in...
4 months ago
40

This Is What a Nuclear Strike Would Feel Like: The New York Times Creates a Precise Simulation

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4 months ago
Though certain generations may have grown up trained to take cover under their classroom desks in the case of a nuclear showdown between the United States and the Soviet Union, few of us today can believe that we’d stand much chance if we found ourselves anywhere near a detonated...
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Open Culture
Superman vs. the KKK: Hear the 1946 Superman Radio Show That Weakened the Klan Years ago, back in 2016, we featured a 1950 Superman poster that urged students to defend the...
4 months ago
64

Superman vs. the KKK: Hear the 1946 Superman Radio Show That Weakened the Klan

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4 months ago
Years ago, back in 2016, we featured a 1950 Superman poster that urged students to defend the American way and fight discrimination everywhere. Today, we present another chapter from Superman’s little-known history as a Civil Rights defender. The year is 1946. World War II has...
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Open Culture
The Best Photographer You’ve Never Heard Of: An Introduction to Tseng Kwong Chi Once, the United States was known for sending forth the world’s most complained-about international...
4 months ago
37

The Best Photographer You’ve Never Heard Of: An Introduction to Tseng Kwong Chi

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

4 months ago
Once, the United States was known for sending forth the world’s most complained-about international tourists; today, that dubious distinction arguably belongs to China. But it wasn’t so long ago that the Chinese tourist was a practically unheard-of phenomenon, especially in the...
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Open Culture
Man Ray’s Surrealist Cinema: Watch Four Pioneering Films From the 1920s Man Ray was one of the leading artists of the avant-garde of 1920s and 1930s Paris. A key figure in...
4 months ago
47

Man Ray’s Surrealist Cinema: Watch Four Pioneering Films From the 1920s

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4 months ago
Man Ray was one of the leading artists of the avant-garde of 1920s and 1930s Paris. A key figure in the Dada and Surrealist movements, his works spanned various media, including film. He was a leading exponent of the Cinéma Pur, or “Pure Cinema,” which rejected such “bourgeois”...
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Open Culture
When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Pastor, Theorized How Stupidity Enabled the Rise of the Nazis... Two days after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer...
4 months ago
37

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Pastor, Theorized How Stupidity Enabled the Rise of the Nazis (1942)

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4 months ago
Two days after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer took to the airwaves. Before his radio broadcast was cut off, he warned his countrymen that their führer could well be a verführer, or misleader. Bonhoeffer’s anti-Nazism lasted...
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Open Culture
Spike Jonze Creates a New Short Film (aka Commercial) for Apple ?si=UQ0XdCH-cVGe26AC With his iconic Super Bowl ad in 1984, Ridley Scott began a tradition of...
4 months ago
60

Spike Jonze Creates a New Short Film (aka Commercial) for Apple

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4 months ago
?si=UQ0XdCH-cVGe26AC With his iconic Super Bowl ad in 1984, Ridley Scott began a tradition of accomplished filmmakers creating advertisements for Apple. In the years since, we’ve seen David Fincher shoot an ad promoting the iPhone 3GS, Michel Gondry direct a spot showcasing the...
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Open Culture
When The Twilight Zone Imagined Fascism in America in a 1963 Episode Starring Dennis Hopper Watch through The Twilight Zone, and you’ll find yourself spotting no end of familiar faces: Julie...
5 months ago
55

When The Twilight Zone Imagined Fascism in America in a 1963 Episode Starring Dennis Hopper

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5 months ago
Watch through The Twilight Zone, and you’ll find yourself spotting no end of familiar faces: Julie Newmar, Burt Reynolds, Robert Redford, Elizabeth Montgomery, William Shatner, even Buster Keaton. The 1963 episode “He’s Alive” is at least doubly notable in that respect, featuring...
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Open Culture
NASA Visualizes the Ocean Currents in Motion: A Mesmerizing View of Earth’s Underwater Highways The mesmerizing video above lets you visualize the ocean currents around the world. Using data from...
5 months ago
47

NASA Visualizes the Ocean Currents in Motion: A Mesmerizing View of Earth’s Underwater Highways

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5 months ago
The mesmerizing video above lets you visualize the ocean currents around the world. Using data from spacecraft, buoys, and other measurements, the visualization shows the ocean in motion, with the currents creating Van Gogh-like swirls around the globe. According to NASA, “the...
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Open Culture
How Dave Brubeck’s Time Out Changed Jazz Music video essay maestro Polyphonic is back. What I dig about his videos is that he takes on some...
5 months ago
33

How Dave Brubeck’s Time Out Changed Jazz

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5 months ago
Music video essay maestro Polyphonic is back. What I dig about his videos is that he takes on some of the true warhorses of modern popular music and manages to find something new to say. Or at least he presents familiar stories in a new and modern way to an audience who may be...
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Open Culture
Every Hidden Detail of New York’s Classic Skyscrapers: The Chrysler, Empire State & Woolworth... Currently, the tallest buildings in New York City are One World Trade Center, Central Park Tower,...
5 months ago
45

Every Hidden Detail of New York’s Classic Skyscrapers: The Chrysler, Empire State & Woolworth Buildings

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5 months ago
Currently, the tallest buildings in New York City are One World Trade Center, Central Park Tower, and 111 West 57th Street. All of them were completed in the twenty-twenties, and all of them have attracted comment, sometimes admiring, sometimes bewildered. But none of them, fair...
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Open Culture
The Most Iconic Electronic Music Sample of Every Year (1990–2024) Hear a second or two of Vernon Burch’s “Get Up,” and you’re back in 1990; of “Balance and Rehearsal”...
5 months ago
54

The Most Iconic Electronic Music Sample of Every Year (1990–2024)

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5 months ago
Hear a second or two of Vernon Burch’s “Get Up,” and you’re back in 1990; of “Balance and Rehearsal” from the JBL sound-test album Session, and you’re back in 1999; of Eddie Johns’ “More Spell on You,” and you’re back in 2001. What, you don’t know any of those songs? Perhaps...
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Open Culture
Why There Isn’t a Bridge from Italy to Sicily – And Why the 2,000-Year-Old Dream of Building the... We’ve all heard of the great American road trip. If you’ve ever dreamt of taking a great Italian...
5 months ago
50

Why There Isn’t a Bridge from Italy to Sicily – And Why the 2,000-Year-Old Dream of Building the Bridge May Soon Be Realized

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5 months ago
We’ve all heard of the great American road trip. If you’ve ever dreamt of taking a great Italian road trip, you’ve surely come across this inevitable hitch in the plan: you can’t drive to Sicily. You can, of course, put your car on a ferry; you can even take a train that gets put...
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Open Culture
Watch Dziga Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Camera: The 8th Best Film Ever Made Of all the cinematic trailblazers to emerge during the early years of the Soviet Union – Sergei...
5 months ago
45

Watch Dziga Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Camera: The 8th Best Film Ever Made

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5 months ago
Of all the cinematic trailblazers to emerge during the early years of the Soviet Union – Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Lev Kuleshov – Dziga Vertov (né Denis Arkadievitch Kaufman, 1896–1954) was the most radical. Whereas Eisenstein – as seen in that film school standard...
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Open Culture
An Introduction to The Garden of Earthly Delights & Hieronymus Bosch’s Wildly Creative Vision Hieronymus Bosch’s masterpiece of grotesquerie, The Garden of Earthly Delights, contains a young...
5 months ago
43

An Introduction to The Garden of Earthly Delights & Hieronymus Bosch’s Wildly Creative Vision

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5 months ago
Hieronymus Bosch’s masterpiece of grotesquerie, The Garden of Earthly Delights, contains a young God, Adam and Eve, oversized fruits and musical instruments, owls, tortured sinners, something called a “tree man” whose body contains an entire tavern, a defecating avian devil...
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Open Culture
NYU Professor Answers Your Burning Questions About Authoritarianism From WIRED comes this: NYU professor and “authoritarianism scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat joins WIRED to...
5 months ago
41

NYU Professor Answers Your Burning Questions About Authoritarianism

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5 months ago
From WIRED comes this: NYU professor and “authoritarianism scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat joins WIRED to answer the internet’s burning questions about dictators and fascism. Why do people support dictators? How do dictators come to power? What’s the difference between a dictatorship, an...
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Open Culture
Watch Alfred Hitchcock’s Groundbreaking, Six-Minute Trailer for Psycho (1960) The early trailer for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho above describes the film as “the picture you MUST...
5 months ago
48

Watch Alfred Hitchcock’s Groundbreaking, Six-Minute Trailer for Psycho (1960)

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5 months ago
The early trailer for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho above describes the film as “the picture you MUST see from the beginning… or not at all!” That’s good advice, given how early in the film its first big twist arrives. But it was also a policy: “Every theatre manager, everywhere, has...
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Open Culture
A 6‑Hour Time-Stretched Version of Brian Eno’s Music For Airports: Meditate, Relax, Study Writing in his 1995 diary about his seminal ambient album Music for Airports, Eno remembered his...
5 months ago
42

A 6‑Hour Time-Stretched Version of Brian Eno’s Music For Airports: Meditate, Relax, Study

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5 months ago
Writing in his 1995 diary about his seminal ambient album Music for Airports, Eno remembered his initial thoughts going into it: “I want to make a kind of music that prepares you for dying–that doesn’t get all bright and cheerful and pretend you’re not a little apprehensive, but...
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Open Culture
A Tour of Ancient Rome’s Best Graffiti: “We Have Urinated in Our Beds … There Was No Chamber Pot” &... Apart from the likes of bravo and pizza, graffiti must be one of the first Italian words that...
5 months ago
30

A Tour of Ancient Rome’s Best Graffiti: “We Have Urinated in Our Beds … There Was No Chamber Pot” & More

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5 months ago
Apart from the likes of bravo and pizza, graffiti must be one of the first Italian words that English-speakers learn in everyday life. As for why the English word comes directly from the Italian, perhaps it has something to do with the history of writing on the walls — a history...
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Open Culture
A Boy and His Atom: Watch The World’s Smallest Stop-Motion Film What you’re watching above isn’t your ordinary film. No, this film — A Boy and His Atom – holds the...
5 months ago
44

A Boy and His Atom: Watch The World’s Smallest Stop-Motion Film

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5 months ago
What you’re watching above isn’t your ordinary film. No, this film — A Boy and His Atom – holds the Guinness World Record for being the World’s Smallest Stop-Motion Film. It’s literally a movie made with atoms, created by IBM nanophysicists who have “used a scanning tunneling...
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Open Culture
The Ancient Greeks Who Converted to Buddhism It would hardly be notable to make the acquaintance of a Greek Buddhist today. Despite having...
5 months ago
34

The Ancient Greeks Who Converted to Buddhism

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5 months ago
It would hardly be notable to make the acquaintance of a Greek Buddhist today. Despite having originated in Asia, that religion — or philosophy, or way of life, or whatever you prefer to call it — now has adherents all over the world. Modern-day Buddhists need not make an arduous...
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Open Culture
Puppets of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens & Edgar Allan Poe Star in 1957 Frank Capra Educational... Produced between 1956 and 1964 by AT&T, the Bell Telephone Science Hour TV specials anticipate the...
5 months ago
35

Puppets of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens & Edgar Allan Poe Star in 1957 Frank Capra Educational Film

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5 months ago
Produced between 1956 and 1964 by AT&T, the Bell Telephone Science Hour TV specials anticipate the literary zaniness of The Muppet Show and the scientific enthusiasm of Cosmos. The “ship of the imagination” in Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos reboot may in fact owe something to the...
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Open Culture
Watch the Only Time Charlie Chaplin & Buster Keaton Performed Together On-Screen (1952) Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton were the two biggest comedy stars of the silent era, but as it...
5 months ago
35

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

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5 months ago
Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton were the two biggest comedy stars of the silent era, but as it happened, they never shared the screen until well into the reign of sound. In fact, their collaboration didn’t come about until 1952, the same year that Singin’ in the Rain dramatized...
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Open Culture
When Salvador Dalí Created a Chilling Anti-Venereal Disease Poster During World War II As a New York City subway rider, I am constantly exposed to public health posters. More often than...
5 months ago
46

When Salvador Dalí Created a Chilling Anti-Venereal Disease Poster During World War II

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5 months ago
As a New York City subway rider, I am constantly exposed to public health posters. More often than not these feature a photo of a wholesome-looking teen whose sober expression is meant to convey hindsight regret at having taken up drugs, dropped out of school, or forgone condoms....
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Open Culture
Bob Dylan Explains Why Music Has Been Getting Worse One often hears that there’s no money to be made in music anymore. But then, there was no money to...
5 months ago
40

Bob Dylan Explains Why Music Has Been Getting Worse

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5 months ago
One often hears that there’s no money to be made in music anymore. But then, there was no money to be made in music when Bob Dylan started his career either—at least according to Bob Dylan. “If you could just support yourself, you were doin’ good,” he says in an interview clip...
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Open Culture
How the Moving Image Has Become the Medium of Record: Part 2 This piece picks up where Part 1 of Peter Kaufman’s article left off yesterday… The epistemological...
5 months ago
30

How the Moving Image Has Become the Medium of Record: Part 2

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5 months ago
This piece picks up where Part 1 of Peter Kaufman’s article left off yesterday… The epistemological nightmare we seem to be in, bombarded over our screens and speakers with so many moving-image messages per day, false and true, is at least in part due to the paralysis that we –...
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Open Culture
When Charlie Chaplin First Spoke Onscreen: How His Famous Great Dictator Speech Came About Charlie Chaplin came up in vaudeville, but it was silent film that made him the most famous man in...
5 months ago
30

When Charlie Chaplin First Spoke Onscreen: How His Famous Great Dictator Speech Came About

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5 months ago
Charlie Chaplin came up in vaudeville, but it was silent film that made him the most famous man in the world. His mastery of that form primed him to feel a degree of skepticism about sound when it came along: in 1931, he called the silent picture “a universal means of...
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Open Culture
How the Moving Image Has Become the Medium of Record: Part 1 Image via Wikimedia Commons How did we get to the point where we’ve come to believe so many lies...
5 months ago
33

How the Moving Image Has Become the Medium of Record: Part 1

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5 months ago
Image via Wikimedia Commons How did we get to the point where we’ve come to believe so many lies that 77 million Americans voted into the White House a criminal reality TV star from NBC, one groomed by a reality TV producer from CBS, who then appointed his Cabinet from Fox and X...
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Open Culture
Watch “The Birth of the Robot,” Len Lye’s Surreal 1935 Stop-Motion Animation Robots seem to have been much on the public mind back in the nineteen-thirties. Matt Novak at...
5 months ago
28

Watch “The Birth of the Robot,” Len Lye’s Surreal 1935 Stop-Motion Animation

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5 months ago
Robots seem to have been much on the public mind back in the nineteen-thirties. Matt Novak at Paleofuture gives the example of a moment in 1932 when “the world was awash in newspaper stories about a robot that had done the unthinkable: a mechanical man had shot its inventor.”...
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Open Culture
Why “The Girl from Ipanema“ ‘ Is a Richer & Weirder Song Than You Realized Say what you want about YouTube’s negative effects (endless soy faces, influencers, its devious and...
5 months ago
41

Why “The Girl from Ipanema“ ‘ Is a Richer & Weirder Song Than You Realized

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5 months ago
Say what you want about YouTube’s negative effects (endless soy faces, influencers, its devious and fascist-leaning algorithms) but it has offered to creators a space in which to indulge. And that’s one of the reasons I’ve been a fan of Adam Neely’s work. A jazz musician and a...
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Open Culture
A Tour of the Final Home Designed By Frank Lloyd Wright: The Circular Sun House Some remember the nineteen-nineties in America as the second coming of the nineteen-fifties....
5 months ago
50

A Tour of the Final Home Designed By Frank Lloyd Wright: The Circular Sun House

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5 months ago
Some remember the nineteen-nineties in America as the second coming of the nineteen-fifties. Whatever holes one can poke in that historical framing, it does feel strangely plausible inside Frank Lloyd Wright’s Circular Sun House. Though not actually built until 1967, it was...
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Open Culture
Watch the Sci-Fi Short Film “I’m Not a Robot”: Winner of a 2025 Academy Award Victoria Warmerdam, the writer and director of the short film, “I’m Not a Robot,” summarizes the...
5 months ago
52

Watch the Sci-Fi Short Film “I’m Not a Robot”: Winner of a 2025 Academy Award

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5 months ago
Victoria Warmerdam, the writer and director of the short film, “I’m Not a Robot,” summarizes the plot of her 22-minute film as follows: The film “tells the story of Lara, a music producer who spirals into an existential crisis after repeatedly failing a CAPTCHA test—leading her...
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Open Culture
Get 40% Off 3 Months of Coursera Plus & Access Unlimited Courses – Offer Ends March 9 Now through March 9, 2025, Coursera is offering 40% off a three-month subscription to Coursera Plus....
5 months ago
45

Get 40% Off 3 Months of Coursera Plus & Access Unlimited Courses – Offer Ends March 9

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5 months ago
Now through March 9, 2025, Coursera is offering 40% off a three-month subscription to Coursera Plus. This plan provides access to 7,000+ courses for one all-inclusive price, including programs from 350 universities (e.g., Duke and the University of Michigan) and companies like...
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Open Culture
The Classic 1972 Concert Film Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii Gets Restored & Will Soon Hit IMAX... Today, when we watch genre-defining concert films like Monterey Pop, Woodstock, Gimme Shelter, or...
5 months ago
42

The Classic 1972 Concert Film Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii Gets Restored & Will Soon Hit IMAX Theaters

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5 months ago
Today, when we watch genre-defining concert films like Monterey Pop, Woodstock, Gimme Shelter, or Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, we look upon the audience with nearly as much interest as we do the performers. But Pink Floyd never did things in quite the same way as...
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Open Culture
Historian Answers Burning Questions About The Renaissance Courtesy of Wired, historian Alexander Bevilacqua (Williams College) answers the internet’s burning...
5 months ago
43

Historian Answers Burning Questions About The Renaissance

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5 months ago
Courtesy of Wired, historian Alexander Bevilacqua (Williams College) answers the internet’s burning questions about the cultural rebirth that came to be known as The Renaissance. In 30+ minutes, Bevilacqua covers an array of questions, including: When did The Renaissance begin?...
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Open Culture
How Stephen King Foretold the Rise of Trump in a 1979 Novel Nobody opens a Stephen King novel expecting to see a reflection of the real world. Then again, as...
5 months ago
57

How Stephen King Foretold the Rise of Trump in a 1979 Novel

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5 months ago
Nobody opens a Stephen King novel expecting to see a reflection of the real world. Then again, as those who get hooked on his books can attest, never is his work ever wholly detached from reality. Time and time again, he delivers lurid visions of the macabre, grotesque, and...
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Open Culture
Carl Jung’s Hand-Drawn, Rarely-Seen Manuscript The Red Book Despite his one-time friend and mentor Sigmund Freud’s enormous impact on Western...
5 months ago
35

Carl Jung’s Hand-Drawn, Rarely-Seen Manuscript The Red Book

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5 months ago
Despite his one-time friend and mentor Sigmund Freud’s enormous impact on Western self-understanding, I would argue it is Carl Jung who is still most with us in our communal practices: from his focus on introversion and extroversion to his view of syncretic, intuitive forms of...
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Open Culture
How the Nazis Waged War on Modern Art: Inside the “Degenerate Art” Exhibition of 1937 Before his fateful entry into politics, Adolf Hitler wanted to be an artist. Even to the most...
5 months ago
40

How the Nazis Waged War on Modern Art: Inside the “Degenerate Art” Exhibition of 1937

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5 months ago
Before his fateful entry into politics, Adolf Hitler wanted to be an artist. Even to the most neutral imaginable observer, the known examples of the estimated 2,000 to 3,000 paintings and other works of art he produced in his early adulthood would hardly evidence astonishing...
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Open Culture
Andrei Tarkovsky’s Message to Young People: “Learn to Be Alone,” Enjoy Solitude I remember the first time I sat down and watched Andrei Tarkovsky’s lyrical, meandering sci-fi epic...
5 months ago
41

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Message to Young People: “Learn to Be Alone,” Enjoy Solitude

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5 months ago
I remember the first time I sat down and watched Andrei Tarkovsky’s lyrical, meandering sci-fi epic Stalker. It was a long time ago, before the advent of smartphones and tablets. I watched a beat-up VHS copy on a non-“smart” TV, and had no ability to pause every few minutes and...
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Open Culture
Where The Simpsons Began: Discover the Original Shorts That Appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show... When it first went on air in the late nineteen-eighties, Fox had to prove itself capable of playing...
5 months ago
29

Where The Simpsons Began: Discover the Original Shorts That Appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show (1987–1989)

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5 months ago
When it first went on air in the late nineteen-eighties, Fox had to prove itself capable of playing in a televisual league with the likes of NBC, CBS, and ABC. To that end, it began building its prime-time lineup with two original programs more thematically and aesthetically...
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Open Culture
The Story Of Menstruation: Watch Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946 From 1945 to 1951, Disney produced a series of educational films to be shown in American schools....
5 months ago
42

The Story Of Menstruation: Watch Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

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5 months ago
From 1945 to 1951, Disney produced a series of educational films to be shown in American schools. How to bathe an infant. How not to catch a cold. Why you shouldn’t drive fast. Disney covered these subjects in its educational shorts, and then eventually got to the touchy subject...
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Open Culture
The Experimental Movement That Created The Beatles’ Weirdest Song, “Revolution 9” As of this writing, the Beatles’ “Revolution 9″ has more than 13,800,000 plays on Spotify. This has...
5 months ago
36

The Experimental Movement That Created The Beatles’ Weirdest Song, “Revolution 9”

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5 months ago
As of this writing, the Beatles’ “Revolution 9″ has more than 13,800,000 plays on Spotify. This has no doubt generated decent revenue, even given the platform’s oft-lamented payout rates. But compare that number to the more than half-a-billion streams of “Blackbird,” also on the...
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Open Culture
Kate Bush, Annie Lennox and 1,000 Musicians Protest AI with a New Silent Album The good news is that an album has just been released by Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn of...
5 months ago
27

Kate Bush, Annie Lennox and 1,000 Musicians Protest AI with a New Silent Album

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5 months ago
The good news is that an album has just been released by Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn of Gorillaz, The Clash, Tori Amos, Hans Zimmer, Pet Shop Boys, Jamiroquai, and Yusuf (previously known as Cat Stevens), Billy Ocean, and many other musicians besides, most of them...
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Open Culture
Ella Fitzgerald Sings Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” (1969) In 1969, Ella Fitzgerald released Sunshine of Your Love, a live album recorded at the Venetian Room...
5 months ago
40

Ella Fitzgerald Sings Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” (1969)

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5 months ago
In 1969, Ella Fitzgerald released Sunshine of Your Love, a live album recorded at the Venetian Room in The Fairmont San Francisco. Recorded by music producer Norman Granz, the album featured contemporary pop songs that showcased Fitzgerald’s ability to transcend jazz standards....
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Open Culture
What Makes Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas One of the Most Fascinating Paintings in Art History Diego Velázquez painted Las Meninas almost 370 years ago, and it’s been under scrutiny ever since....
5 months ago
41

What Makes Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas One of the Most Fascinating Paintings in Art History

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5 months ago
Diego Velázquez painted Las Meninas almost 370 years ago, and it’s been under scrutiny ever since. If the public’s appetite to know more about it has diminished over time, that certainly isn’t reflected in the view count of the analysis from YouTube channel Rabbit Hole above,...
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Open Culture
When William Faulkner Set the World Record for Writing the Longest Sentence in Literature: Read the... Image by Carl Van Vechten, via Wikimedia Commons “How did Faulkner pull it off?” is a question many...
5 months ago
61

When William Faulkner Set the World Record for Writing the Longest Sentence in Literature: Read the 1,288-Word Sentence from Absalom, Absalom!

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5 months ago
Image by Carl Van Vechten, via Wikimedia Commons “How did Faulkner pull it off?” is a question many a fledgling writer has asked themselves while struggling through a period of apprenticeship like that novelist John Barth describes in his 1999 talk “My Faulkner.”...
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Open Culture
Jimi Hendrix Plays the Beatles: “Sgt. Pepper’s,” “Day Tripper,” and “Tomorrow Never Knows” Who invented rock and roll? Ask Chuck Berry, he’ll tell you. It was Chuck Berry. Or was it Bill...
5 months ago
35

Jimi Hendrix Plays the Beatles: “Sgt. Pepper’s,” “Day Tripper,” and “Tomorrow Never Knows”

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5 months ago
Who invented rock and roll? Ask Chuck Berry, he’ll tell you. It was Chuck Berry. Or was it Bill Haley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard? Muddy Waters? Robert Johnson? Maybe even Lead Belly? You didn’t, but if you asked me, I’d say that rock and roll, like country blues, came not...
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Open Culture
The 48 Laws of Power Explained in 30 Minutes: “Never Outshine the Master,” “Re-Create Yourself,” and... Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power has been a popular book since its first publication over a...
5 months ago
47

The 48 Laws of Power Explained in 30 Minutes: “Never Outshine the Master,” “Re-Create Yourself,” and More

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5 months ago
Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power has been a popular book since its first publication over a quarter-century ago. Judging by the discussion that continues among its fervent (and often proselytizing) fans, it’s easy to forget that its title isn’t How to Become Powerful....
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Open Culture
Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists the Best and Worst Sci-Fi Movies: The Blob, Back to the Future, 2001: A... Neil deGrasse Tyson may not be a film critic. But if you watch the video above from his Youtube...
5 months ago
43

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists the Best and Worst Sci-Fi Movies: The Blob, Back to the Future, 2001: A Space Odyssey & More

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5 months ago
Neil deGrasse Tyson may not be a film critic. But if you watch the video above from his Youtube channel StarTalk Plus, you’ll see that — to use one of his own favorite locutions — he loves him a good science fiction movie. Given his professional credentials as an astrophysicist...
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Open Culture
David Bowie Performs an Ethereal Acoustic Version of “Heroes,” with a Bottle Cap Strapped to His... Not long ago I stumbled upon this pretty wonderful video of David Bowie playing an acoustic version...
5 months ago
51

David Bowie Performs an Ethereal Acoustic Version of “Heroes,” with a Bottle Cap Strapped to His Shoe, Keeping the Beat (1996)

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5 months ago
Not long ago I stumbled upon this pretty wonderful video of David Bowie playing an acoustic version of “Heroes,” one of my favorite songs, and I thought I’d quickly share it today. Why wait? Appearing at Neil Young’s annual Bridge School Benefit concert in October 1996, Bowie...
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Open Culture
How Do You Use AI in Your Daily Life? Share the Applications That Have Made a Big Difference Image by Jernej Furman, via Wikimedia Commons It would be difficult to imagine the last couple of...
6 months ago
35

How Do You Use AI in Your Daily Life? Share the Applications That Have Made a Big Difference

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6 months ago
Image by Jernej Furman, via Wikimedia Commons It would be difficult to imagine the last couple of years without artificial intelligence, even if you don’t use it. Can you recall the last day without some AI-related news item or social-media post — or indeed, a time when the hype...
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Open Culture
A Behind-the-Scenes Tour of Saturday Night Live’s Iconic Studio To help celebrate SNL’s 50th anniversary, Architectural Digest has released a new video featuring...
6 months ago
41

A Behind-the-Scenes Tour of Saturday Night Live’s Iconic Studio

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6 months ago
To help celebrate SNL’s 50th anniversary, Architectural Digest has released a new video featuring Heidi Gardner, Chloe Fineman, and Ego Nwodim giving a tour of the Saturday Night Live set. The show has been broadcasting live from Studio 8H, located at 30 Rockefeller, since SNL...
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Open Culture
The Architectural History of the Louvre: 800 Years in Three Minutes Setting aside just one day for the Louvre is a classic first-time Paris visitor’s mistake. The place...
6 months ago
38

The Architectural History of the Louvre: 800 Years in Three Minutes

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6 months ago
Setting aside just one day for the Louvre is a classic first-time Paris visitor’s mistake. The place is simply too big to comprehend on one visit, or indeed on ten visits. To grow so vast has taken eight centuries, a process explained in under three minutes by the official video...
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Open Culture
Optical Poems by Oskar Fischinger: Discover the Avant-Garde Animator Despised by Hitler & Dissed by... At a time when much of animation was consumed with little anthropomorphized animals sporting white...
6 months ago
45

Optical Poems by Oskar Fischinger: Discover the Avant-Garde Animator Despised by Hitler & Dissed by Disney

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6 months ago
At a time when much of animation was consumed with little anthropomorphized animals sporting white gloves, Oskar Fischinger went in a completely different direction. His work is all about dancing geometric shapes and abstract forms spinning around a flat featureless background....
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Open Culture
Watch David Byrne Lead a Massive Choir in Singing David Bowie’s “Heroes” Throughout the years, we’ve featured performances of Choir!Choir!Choir!–a large amateur choir from...
6 months ago
71

Watch David Byrne Lead a Massive Choir in Singing David Bowie’s “Heroes”

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6 months 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 Leonard Cohen’s...
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Open Culture
Hear the Jazz-Funk Musical Adaptation of Dune by David Matthews (1977) Even if you’ve never read Frank Herbert’s Dune, you may well have encountered its adaptations to a...
6 months ago
49

Hear the Jazz-Funk Musical Adaptation of Dune by David Matthews (1977)

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6 months ago
Even if you’ve never read Frank Herbert’s Dune, you may well have encountered its adaptations to a variety of other media: comic books, video games, board games, television series, and of course films, David Lynch’s 1984 version and Denis Villeneuve’s two-parter earlier this...
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Open Culture
Why Are the Names of British Towns & Cities So Hard to Pronounce?: A Humorous But Informative Primer When they make their first transoceanic voyage, more than a few Americans choose to go to England,...
6 months ago
32

Why Are the Names of British Towns & Cities So Hard to Pronounce?: A Humorous But Informative Primer

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6 months ago
When they make their first transoceanic voyage, more than a few Americans choose to go to England, on the assumption that, whatever culture shock they might experience, at least none of the difficulties will be linguistic. Only when it’s too late do they discover the true meaning...
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Open Culture
When William S. Burroughs Appeared on Saturday Night Live: His First TV Appearance (1981) Though he never said so directly, we might expect that Situationist Guy Debord would have included...
6 months ago
47

When William S. Burroughs Appeared on Saturday Night Live: His First TV Appearance (1981)

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6 months ago
Though he never said so directly, we might expect that Situationist Guy Debord would have included Saturday Night Live in what he called the “Spectacle”—the mass media presentation of a totalizing reality, “the ruling order’s nonstop discourse about itself, its never-ending...
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Open Culture
Brian Eno Attempts to Figure Out What Art Does in a New Book Co-Written with Artist Bette A Brian Eno was thinking about the purpose of art a decade ago, as evidenced by his 2015 John Peel...
6 months ago
38

Brian Eno Attempts to Figure Out What Art Does in a New Book Co-Written with Artist Bette A

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6 months ago
Brian Eno was thinking about the purpose of art a decade ago, as evidenced by his 2015 John Peel Lecture (previously featured here on Open Culture). But he was also thinking about it three decades ago, as evidenced by A Year with Swollen Appendices, his diary of the year 1995...
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Open Culture
Watch the Historic First Episode of Saturday Night Live with Host George Carlin (1975) 50 years of Saturday Night Live. It all started here with this first episode, aired on October 11,...
6 months ago
32

Watch the Historic First Episode of Saturday Night Live with Host George Carlin (1975)

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6 months ago
50 years of Saturday Night Live. It all started here with this first episode, aired on October 11, 1975. George Carlin hosted the show. Billy Preston and Janis Ian served up the music. Jim Henson staged an elaborate puppet show. And “the Not Ready for Prime Time Players”...
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Open Culture
Inside SNL: Al Franken Reveals How Saturday Night Live Is Crafted Every Week As Saturday Night Live celebrates its 50th anniversary, Al Franken takes you inside the making of an...
6 months ago
41

Inside SNL: Al Franken Reveals How Saturday Night Live Is Crafted Every Week

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6 months ago
As Saturday Night Live celebrates its 50th anniversary, Al Franken takes you inside the making of an SNL episode. He should know a thing or two about the subject. Part of the original SNL writing team, Franken spent 15 years writing and performing for the show. (Anyone remember...
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Open Culture
Meet Jesse Welles, the Folk Singer Who Turns News into Folk Music, Writing Songs on Elections, Plane... At first glance, Jesse Welles resembles nothing so much as a time traveler from the year 1968....
6 months ago
55

Meet Jesse Welles, the Folk Singer Who Turns News into Folk Music, Writing Songs on Elections, Plane Crashes, Ozempic & More

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6 months ago
At first glance, Jesse Welles resembles nothing so much as a time traveler from the year 1968. That’s how I would open a profile about him, but The New York Times’ David Peisner takes a different approach, describing him recording a song in his home studio. “Welles, a...
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Open Culture
Flannery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand In a letter dated May 31, 1960, Flannery O’Connor, the author best known for her classic story, “A...
6 months ago
48

Flannery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand

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6 months ago
In a letter dated May 31, 1960, Flannery O’Connor, the author best known for her classic story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (listen to her read the story here) penned a letter to her friend, the playwright Maryat Lee. It begins rather abruptly, likely because it’s responding to...
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Open Culture
How the Fairlight CMI Synthesizer Revolutionized Music In the credits of Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required appears the disclaimer that “there is no...
6 months ago
40

How the Fairlight CMI Synthesizer Revolutionized Music

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6 months ago
In the credits of Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required appears the disclaimer that “there is no Fairlight on this record.” Cryptic though it may have appeared to most of that album’s many buyers, technology-minded musicians would’ve got it. In the half-decades since its introduction,...
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Open Culture
Jane Austen Used Pins to Edit Her Manuscripts: Before the Word Processor & White-Out Before the word processor, before White-Out, before Post-It Notes, there were straight pins. Or, at...
6 months ago
33

Jane Austen Used Pins to Edit Her Manuscripts: Before the Word Processor & White-Out

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6 months ago
Before the word processor, before White-Out, before Post-It Notes, there were straight pins. Or, at least that’s what Jane Austen used to make edits in one of her rare manuscripts. In 2011, Oxford’s Bodleian Library acquired the manuscript of Austen’s abandoned novel, The...
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Open Culture
What It Was Like to Get a Meal at a Medieval Tavern At least since The Canterbury Tales, the setting of the medieval tavern has held out the promise of...
6 months ago
38

What It Was Like to Get a Meal at a Medieval Tavern

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6 months ago
At least since The Canterbury Tales, the setting of the medieval tavern has held out the promise of adventure. For their customer base during the actual Middle Ages, however, they had more utilitarian virtues. “If you ever find yourself in the late medieval period, and you are in...
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Open Culture
Watch 10 Great German Expressionist Films: Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari & More In 1913, Germany, flush with a new nation’s patriotic zeal, looked like it might become the dominant...
6 months ago
39

Watch 10 Great German Expressionist Films: Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari & More

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6 months ago
In 1913, Germany, flush with a new nation’s patriotic zeal, looked like it might become the dominant nation of Europe and a real rival to that global superpower Great Britain. Then it hit the buzzsaw of World War I. After the German government collapsed in 1918 from the economic...
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Open Culture
Horrifying 1906 Illustrations of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: Discover the Art of Henrique Alvim... H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds has terrified and fascinated readers and writers for decades since its...
6 months ago
58

Horrifying 1906 Illustrations of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: Discover the Art of Henrique Alvim Corrêa

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6 months ago
H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds has terrified and fascinated readers and writers for decades since its 1898 publication and has inspired numerous adaptations. The most notorious use of Wells’ book was by Orson Welles, whom the author called “my little namesake,” and whose 1938 War...
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Open Culture
Tracing English Back to Its Oldest Known Ancestor: An Introduction to Proto-Indo-European People understand evolution in all sorts of different ways. We’ve all heard a variety of folk...
6 months ago
32

Tracing English Back to Its Oldest Known Ancestor: An Introduction to Proto-Indo-European

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6 months ago
People understand evolution in all sorts of different ways. We’ve all heard a variety of folk explanations of that all-important phenomenon, from “survival of the fittest” to “humans come from monkeys,” that run the spectrum from broadly correct to badly mangled. One less often...
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Open Culture
Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Who Was the Greatest Scientific Mind in History Neil deGrasse Tyson has spent his career talking up not just science itself, but also its...
6 months ago
57

Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Who Was the Greatest Scientific Mind in History

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6 months ago
Neil deGrasse Tyson has spent his career talking up not just science itself, but also its practitioners. If asked to name the greatest scientist of all time, one might expect him to need a minute to think about it — or even to find himself unable to choose. But that’s hardly...
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Open Culture
Hear an AI Chatbot, Masquerading as a Clueless Grandmother, Waste the Time of an Internet Scam... And now for a good use of AI. The UK-based telecom company O2 has developed a chatbot (“named...
6 months ago
45

Hear an AI Chatbot, Masquerading as a Clueless Grandmother, Waste the Time of an Internet Scam Artist

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6 months ago
And now for a good use of AI. The UK-based telecom company O2 has developed a chatbot (“named Daisy”) that performs a noble task. Impersonating an elderly grandmother, the chatbot engages with internet fraudsters and then systematically frustrates them and wastes their time. As...
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Open Culture
Warner Bros. Lets You Watch 31 Films Free Online: David Byrne’s True Stories, Christopher Guest’s... It’s Friday, which means that tonight, many of us will sit down to watch a movie with our family,...
6 months ago
74

Warner Bros. Lets You Watch 31 Films Free Online: David Byrne’s True Stories, Christopher Guest’s Waiting for Guffman, Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep & More

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6 months ago
It’s Friday, which means that tonight, many of us will sit down to watch a movie with our family, our friends, our significant other, or — for some cinephiles, best of all — by ourselves. If you haven’t yet lined up any home-cinematic experience in particular, consider taking a...
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Open Culture
See Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Visualized in Colorfully Animated Scores Music is often described as the most abstract of all the arts, and arguably the least visual as...
6 months ago
47

See Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Visualized in Colorfully Animated Scores

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6 months ago
Music is often described as the most abstract of all the arts, and arguably the least visual as well. But these qualities, which seem so basic to the nature of the form, have been challenged for at least three centuries, not least by composers themselves. Take Antonio Vivaldi,...
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Open Culture
Behold Harry Clarke’s Hallucinatory Illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s Story Collection, Tales of... As you’ve probably noticed if you’re a regular reader of this site, we’re big fans of book...
6 months ago
45

Behold Harry Clarke’s Hallucinatory Illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s Story Collection, Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1923)

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6 months ago
As you’ve probably noticed if you’re a regular reader of this site, we’re big fans of book illustration, particularly that from the form’s golden age—the late 18th and 19th century—before photography took over as the dominant visual medium. But while photographs largely...
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Open Culture
How Japanese Masters Turn Sand Into Swords: The Art of Traditional Sword Making from Start to Finish We made sand think: this phrase is used from time to time to evoke the particular technological...
6 months ago
44

How Japanese Masters Turn Sand Into Swords: The Art of Traditional Sword Making from Start to Finish

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6 months ago
We made sand think: this phrase is used from time to time to evoke the particular technological wonders of our age, especially since artificial intelligence seems to be back on the slate of possibilities. While there would be no Silicon Valley without silica sand, semiconductors...
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Open Culture
When Charlie Chaplin Entered a Chaplin Look-Alike Contest & Came in 20th Place Charlie Chaplin started appearing in his first films in 1914—40 films, to be precise—and, by 1915,...
6 months ago
59

When Charlie Chaplin Entered a Chaplin Look-Alike Contest & Came in 20th Place

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6 months ago
Charlie Chaplin started appearing in his first films in 1914—40 films, to be precise—and, by 1915, the United States had a major case of “Chaplinitis.” Chaplin mustaches were suddenly popping up everywhere–as were Chaplin imitators and Chaplin look-alike contests. A young Bob...
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Open Culture
How Wearing Ridiculously Long Pointed Shoes Became a Medieval Fashion Trend We can all remember seeing images of medieval Europeans wearing pointy shoes, but most of us have...
6 months ago
41

How Wearing Ridiculously Long Pointed Shoes Became a Medieval Fashion Trend

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6 months ago
We can all remember seeing images of medieval Europeans wearing pointy shoes, but most of us have paid scant attention to the shoes themselves. That may be for the best, since the more we dwell on one fact of life in the Middle Ages or another, the more we imagine how...
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Open Culture
Carl Sagan Predicts the Decline of America: Unable to Know “What’s True,” We Will Slide, “Without... Image by Kenneth Zirkel, via Wikimedia Commons There have been many theories of how human history...
6 months ago
38

Carl Sagan Predicts the Decline of America: Unable to Know “What’s True,” We Will Slide, “Without Noticing, Back into Superstition & Darkness” (1995)

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6 months ago
Image by Kenneth Zirkel, via Wikimedia Commons There have been many theories of how human history works. Some, like German thinker G.W.F. Hegel, have thought of progress as inevitable. Others have embraced a more static view, full of “Great Men” and an immutable natural...
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Open Culture
Has SpaceX Done Anything NASA Hasn’t? Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains His “Feud” with Elon Musk One would count neither Elon Musk nor Neil deGrasse Tyson among the most reserved public figures of...
6 months ago
43

Has SpaceX Done Anything NASA Hasn’t? Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains His “Feud” with Elon Musk

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

6 months ago
One would count neither Elon Musk nor Neil deGrasse Tyson among the most reserved public figures of the twenty-first century. Given the efforts Musk has been making to push into the business of outer space, which has long been Tyson’s intellectual domain, it’s only natural that...
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Open Culture
Watch the First 2+ Hours of MTV’s Inaugural Broadcast (August 1, 1981) Not everyone on August 1, 1981 had a VCR at their disposal, and not everybody stayed up until...
6 months ago
36

Watch the First 2+ Hours of MTV’s Inaugural Broadcast (August 1, 1981)

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

6 months ago
Not everyone on August 1, 1981 had a VCR at their disposal, and not everybody stayed up until midnight. But fortunately at least one person did, in order to tape the first two hours of a new cable channel called MTV: Music Television. Did they know it would be historic? MTV...
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Open Culture
The Nature of Human Stupidity Explained by The 48 Laws of Power Author Robert Greene It’s practically guaranteed that we now have more stupid people on the planet than ever before. Of...
6 months ago
37

The Nature of Human Stupidity Explained by The 48 Laws of Power Author Robert Greene

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

6 months ago
It’s practically guaranteed that we now have more stupid people on the planet than ever before. Of course, we might be tempted to think; just look at how many of them disagree with my politics. But this unprecedented stupidity is primarily, if not entirely, a function of an...
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Open Culture
Jean-Luc Godard Shoots Marianne Faithfull (RIP) Singing “As Tears Go By” in 1966 Note: Yesterday, Marianne Faithfull passed away at age 78. In her memory, we’re bringing back a...
6 months ago
31

Jean-Luc Godard Shoots Marianne Faithfull (RIP) Singing “As Tears Go By” in 1966

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

6 months ago
Note: Yesterday, Marianne Faithfull passed away at age 78. In her memory, we’re bringing back a favorite from deep in our archive. It originally appeared on our site in June 2012. When you want to learn a thing or two about Jean-Luc Godard, you turn to New Yorker film critic...
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Open Culture
Google Unveils a Digital Marketing & E‑Commerce Certificate: 7 Courses Will Help Prepare Students... Several years ago, Google launched a series of Career Certificates that will “prepare learners for...
6 months ago
37

Google Unveils a Digital Marketing & E‑Commerce Certificate: 7 Courses Will Help Prepare Students for an Entry-Level Job in 6 Months

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

6 months ago
Several years ago, Google launched a series of Career Certificates that will “prepare learners for an entry-level role in under six months.” Their first certificates focused on Project Management, Data Analytics, User Experience (UX) Design, IT Support and IT Automation. And they...
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Open Culture
Explore a Digitized Edition of the Voynich Manuscript, “the World’s Most Mysterious Book” A 600-year-old manuscript—written in a script no one has ever decoded, filled with cryptic...
6 months ago
48

Explore a Digitized Edition of the Voynich Manuscript, “the World’s Most Mysterious Book”

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

6 months ago
A 600-year-old manuscript—written in a script no one has ever decoded, filled with cryptic illustrations, its origins remaining to this day a mystery…. It’s not as satisfying a plot, say, of a National Treasure or Dan Brown thriller, certainly not as action-packed as...
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Open Culture
How Robert Frost Wrote One of His Most Famous Poems, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” Several generations of American students have now had the experience of being told by an English...
6 months ago
39

How Robert Frost Wrote One of His Most Famous Poems, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

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

6 months ago
Several generations of American students have now had the experience of being told by an English teacher that they’d been reading Robert Frost all wrong, even if they’d never read him at all. Most, at least, had seen his lines “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the...
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Open Culture
Mahatma Gandhi’s List of the Seven Social Sins; or Tips on How to Avoid Living the Bad Life Image via Wikimedia Commons In 590 AD, Pope Gregory I unveiled a list of the Seven Deadly Sins –...
6 months ago
44

Mahatma Gandhi’s List of the Seven Social Sins; or Tips on How to Avoid Living the Bad Life

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

6 months ago
Image via Wikimedia Commons In 590 AD, Pope Gregory I unveiled a list of the Seven Deadly Sins – lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride – as a way to keep the flock from straying into the thorny fields of ungodliness. These days, though, for all but the most devout,...
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Open Culture
How Frank Lloyd Wright Became Frank Lloyd Wright: A Video Introduction Frank Lloyd Wright is unlikely to be displaced as the archetype of the genius architect anytime...
6 months ago
37

How Frank Lloyd Wright Became Frank Lloyd Wright: A Video Introduction

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

6 months ago
Frank Lloyd Wright is unlikely to be displaced as the archetype of the genius architect anytime soon, at least in America, but even he had to start somewhere. At nine years old, as architecture YouTuber Stewart Hicks explains in the video above, Wright received a set of blocks...
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Open Culture
When Neapolitans Used to Eat Pasta with Their Bare Hands: Watch Footage from 1903 Even if you don’t speak Italian, you can make a decent guess at the meaning of the word...
6 months ago
39

When Neapolitans Used to Eat Pasta with Their Bare Hands: Watch Footage from 1903

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

6 months ago
Even if you don’t speak Italian, you can make a decent guess at the meaning of the word mangiamaccheroni. The tricky bit is that maccheroni refers not to the pasta English-speakers today call macaroni, tubular and cut into small curved sections, but to pasta in general. Or at...
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Open Culture
Benedict Cumberbatch Reads a Letter to a Man Blow-Drying His Balls at the Gym We have featured Benedict Cumberbatch reading letters by Kurt Vonnegut, Alan Turing, Albert Camus,...
6 months ago
42

Benedict Cumberbatch Reads a Letter to a Man Blow-Drying His Balls at the Gym

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

6 months ago
We have featured Benedict Cumberbatch reading letters by Kurt Vonnegut, Alan Turing, Albert Camus, and Nick Cave, along with passages from Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Melville’s Moby Dick. It’s all pretty heady stuff. And now it’s time for something completely different. Above, we...
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Open Culture
How Erik Satie’s ‘Furniture Music’ Was Designed to Be Ignored and Paved the Way for Ambient Music Imagine how many times someone born in the eighteen-sixties could ever expect to hear music. The...
6 months ago
44

How Erik Satie’s ‘Furniture Music’ Was Designed to Be Ignored and Paved the Way for Ambient Music

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

6 months ago
Imagine how many times someone born in the eighteen-sixties could ever expect to hear music. The number would vary, of course, depending on the individual’s class and family inclinations. Suffice it to say that each chance would have been more precious than those of us in the...
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Open Culture
A 1933 Profile of Frida Kahlo: “Wife of the Master Mural Painter Gleefully Dabbles in Works of Art” Walter Keane—supposed painter of “Big Eyed Children” and subject of a 2014 Tim Burton film—made a...
6 months ago
61

A 1933 Profile of Frida Kahlo: “Wife of the Master Mural Painter Gleefully Dabbles in Works of Art”

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

6 months ago
Walter Keane—supposed painter of “Big Eyed Children” and subject of a 2014 Tim Burton film—made a killing, attaining almost Thomas Kinkade-like status in the middlebrow art market of the 1950s and 60s. As it turns out, his wife, Margaret was in fact the artist, “painting 16 hours...
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Open Culture
Noam Chomsky Defines What It Means to Be a Truly Educated Person There may be no more contentious an issue at the level of local U.S. government than education. All...
7 months ago
48

Noam Chomsky Defines What It Means to Be a Truly Educated Person

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

7 months ago
There may be no more contentious an issue at the level of local U.S. government than education. All of the socioeconomic and cultural fault lines communities would rather paper over become fully exposed in debates over funding, curriculum, districting, etc. But we rarely hear...
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Open Culture
Where Do You Put the Camera? Every Frame a Painting Presents Insights from Famous Directors Whether or not we believe in auteurhood, we each have our own mental image of what a film director...
7 months ago
36

Where Do You Put the Camera? Every Frame a Painting Presents Insights from Famous Directors

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

7 months ago
Whether or not we believe in auteurhood, we each have our own mental image of what a film director does. But if we’ve never actually seen one at work, we’re liable not to understand what the actual experience of directing feels like: making decision after decision after decision,...
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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...
7 months ago
53

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

7 months 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
Revisit Pop-Up Video: The VH1 Series That Reinvented Music Videos & Pop Culture In the eighties, people lamented the attention-span-shortening “MTV-ization” of visual culture. By...
7 months ago
34

Revisit Pop-Up Video: The VH1 Series That Reinvented Music Videos & Pop Culture

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

7 months ago
In the eighties, people lamented the attention-span-shortening “MTV-ization” of visual culture. By the mid-nineties, networks were trying to figure out how to get viewers to sit through music videos at all. A solution arrived in the form of Pop-Up Video, a program pitched by...
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Open Culture
The Oldest Beer Receipt (Circa 2050 BC) Above, we have the Alulu Beer Receipt. Written in cuneiform on an old clay tablet, the...
7 months ago
48

The Oldest Beer Receipt (Circa 2050 BC)

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

7 months ago
Above, we have the Alulu Beer Receipt. Written in cuneiform on an old clay tablet, the 4,000-year-old receipt documents a transaction. A brewer, named Alulu, delivered “the best” beer to a recipient named Ur-Amma, who apparently also served as the scribe. The Mesopotamians drank...
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Open Culture
Watch 950 Weather Reports Presented by David Lynch, Straight from His Los Angeles Home Los Angeles is hardly a city known for its varied weather, but if one lives there long enough, one...
7 months ago
46

Watch 950 Weather Reports Presented by David Lynch, Straight from His Los Angeles Home

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

7 months ago
Los Angeles is hardly a city known for its varied weather, but if one lives there long enough, one does become highly attuned to its many subtleties. (Granted, some of the local phenomena involved, like the notorious Santa Ana winds, can produce far-from-subtle effects.) The late...
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Open Culture
Watch an Avant-Garde Bauhaus Ballet in Brilliant Color, First Staged in 1922 We credit the Bauhaus school, founded by German architect Walter Gropius in 1919, for the aesthetic...
7 months ago
48

Watch an Avant-Garde Bauhaus Ballet in Brilliant Color, First Staged in 1922

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

7 months ago
We credit the Bauhaus school, founded by German architect Walter Gropius in 1919, for the aesthetic principles that have guided so much modern design and architecture in the 20th and 21st centuries. The school’s relationships with artists like Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Laszlo...
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Open Culture
The Story of How Quentin Tarantino Became a Filmmaker and Created Pulp Fiction, as Told by Quentin... For a film, explained a young Quentin Tarantino in one interview, “the real test of time isn’t the...
7 months ago
52

The Story of How Quentin Tarantino Became a Filmmaker and Created Pulp Fiction, as Told by Quentin Tarantino

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

7 months ago
For a film, explained a young Quentin Tarantino in one interview, “the real test of time isn’t the Friday that it opens. It’s how the film is thought of thirty years from now.” It just so happens that Pulp Fiction, which made Tarantino the most celebrated director in America...
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Open Culture
Download a 417-Megapixel Panorama of the Andromeda Galaxy—A Decade-Long NASA Project in the Making Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have created a majestic 417-megapixel panorama of the...
7 months ago
42

Download a 417-Megapixel Panorama of the Andromeda Galaxy—A Decade-Long NASA Project in the Making

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

7 months ago
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have created a majestic 417-megapixel panorama of the Andromeda galaxy, located some 2.5 million light-years away from our planet. Taking more than a decade to complete, the photomosaic captures 200 million stars, which is only a...
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Open Culture
Why David Lynch’s Dune Went Wrong: A Comparison with Denis Villeneuve’s Hit Adaptation Denis Villeneuve’s recent film adaptation of Dune is generally considered to be superior to the late...
7 months ago
48

Why David Lynch’s Dune Went Wrong: A Comparison with Denis Villeneuve’s Hit Adaptation

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

7 months ago
Denis Villeneuve’s recent film adaptation of Dune is generally considered to be superior to the late David Lynch’s, from 1984 — though even according to many of Lynch’s fans, it could hardly have been worse. In a 1996 piece for Premiere magazine, David Foster Wallace described...
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Open Culture
Fred Armisen & Bill Hader’s Comedic Take on the History of Simon and Garfunkel During their days filming Documentary Now!, a mockumentary series that aired on IFC, Fred Armisen...
7 months ago
53

Fred Armisen & Bill Hader’s Comedic Take on the History of Simon and Garfunkel

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

7 months ago
During their days filming Documentary Now!, a mockumentary series that aired on IFC, Fred Armisen and Bill Hader teamed up and created a fictionalized “history” of Simon and Garfunkel, telling the “real” story behind the making of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Mrs....
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Open Culture
The Creative Genius of David Lynch (RIP): Discover His Films, Music Videos, Cartoons, Commercials,... Image by Sasha Kargaltsev via Wikimedia Commons As every cinephile has by now heard, and lamented,...
7 months ago
51

The Creative Genius of David Lynch (RIP): Discover His Films, Music Videos, Cartoons, Commercials, Paintings, Photography & More

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

7 months ago
Image by Sasha Kargaltsev via Wikimedia Commons As every cinephile has by now heard, and lamented, we’ve just lost a great American filmmaker. From Eraserhead to Blue Velvet to Mulholland Drive to Inland Empire, David Lynch’s features will surely continue to bewilder and inspire...
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Open Culture
Freddie Mercury & David Bowie’s Isolated Vocals for Queen’s “Under Pressure” (1981) In the summer of 1981, the British band Queen was recording tracks for their tenth studio album, Hot...
7 months ago
51

Freddie Mercury & David Bowie’s Isolated Vocals for Queen’s “Under Pressure” (1981)

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

7 months ago
In the summer of 1981, the British band Queen was recording tracks for their tenth studio album, Hot Space, at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland. As it happened, David Bowie had scheduled time at the same studio to record the title song for the movie Cat People. Before...
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Open Culture
Watch Design for Disaster, a 1962 Film That Shows Why Los Angeles Is Always at Risk of Devastating... “This is fire season in Los Angeles,” Joan Didion once wrote, relating how every year “the Santa Ana...
7 months ago
52

Watch Design for Disaster, a 1962 Film That Shows Why Los Angeles Is Always at Risk of Devastating Fires

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

7 months ago
“This is fire season in Los Angeles,” Joan Didion once wrote, relating how every year “the Santa Ana winds start blowing down through the passes, and the relative humidity drops to figures like seven or six or three per cent, and the bougainvillea starts rattling in the driveway,...
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