Open Culture
Nikola Tesla Accurately Predicted the Rise of Wireless Technology & the Smartphone in 1926
Certain cult historical figures have served as prescient avatars for the techno-visionaries of the...
3rd Nov 2025
Certain cult historical figures have served as prescient avatars for the techno-visionaries of the digital age. Where the altruistic utopian designs of Buckminster Fuller provided an ideal for the first wave of Silicon Valley pioneers (a group including computer scientist and...
Open Culture
Remembering Jane Goodall (RIP): Watch Jane, the Acclaimed National Geographic Documentary
Jane Goodall, the revered conservationist, passed away today at age 91. In her honor, we’re...
1st Oct 2025
Jane Goodall, the revered conservationist, passed away today at age 91. In her honor, we’re featuring above a National Geographic documentary called Jane. Directed by Brett Morgen, the film draws “from over 100 hours of never-before-seen footage that has been tucked away in the...
Open Culture
What Makes Picasso’s Guernica a Great Painting?: Explore the Anti-Fascist Mural That Became a...
A painting is not thought out and settled in advance. While it is being done, it changes as one’s...
1st Sep 2025
A painting is not thought out and settled in advance. While it is being done, it changes as one’s thoughts change. And when it’s finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it. — Pablo Picasso In a famous story about Guernica, Pablo...
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...
1st Aug 2025
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...
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...
1st Jul 2025
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...
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...
2nd Jun 2025
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...
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...
1st May 2025
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...
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...
1st Apr 2025
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...
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....
3rd Mar 2025
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...
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...
3rd Feb 2025
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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