Tuesday, September 26, 2023 from Open Culture
The Boy and the Heron, the latest feature from master animator Hayao Miyazaki, opened in Japan this past summer. In that it marks his latest emergence from his supposed “retirement,” we could label it not just as late Miyazaki, but...Tuesday, September 26, 2023 from Open Culture
Its name can be squeezed onto a tea towel, a decorative plate, a magnet, a mug, and other touristic souvenirs, but has the northern Welsh town of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoc been celebrated in song? Indeed...Tuesday, September 26, 2023 from Open Culture
Monday, September 25, 2023 from Open Culture
This month, more than a few TikTok-using women have asked the men in their lives how often they think about the Roman Empire. And to the astonishment of these women, more than a few of these men have responded that they think about it on...Monday, September 25, 2023 from Open Culture
Today it would be viewed as cultural appropriation writ large, but when Louis XIV ordered the construction of a 5-building pleasure pavilion inspired by the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing (a 7th Wonder of the World few French citizens had...Friday, September 22, 2023 from Open Culture
If asked to name the best-known tower in London, one could, perhaps, make a fair case for the likes of the Shard or the Gherkin. But whatever their current prominence on the skyline, those works of twenty-first-century starchitecture...Friday, September 22, 2023 from Open Culture
Before her literary fame, her stormy relationship with Ted Hughes and her crippling battles with depression, Sylvia Plath was an enthusiastic student at Smith College. “The world is splitting open at my feet like a ripe, juicy...Thursday, September 21, 2023 from Open Culture
In the small town of Cloquet, Minnesota stands a piece of urban utopia. It takes the surprising form of a gas station, albeit one designed by no less a visionary of American architecture than Frank Lloyd Wright. He originally conceived...Thursday, September 21, 2023 from Open Culture
In high school, the language I most fell in love with happened to be a dead one: Latin. Sure, it’s spoken at the Vatican, and when I first began to study the tongue of Virgil and Catullus, friends joked that I could only use it if I...Wednesday, September 20, 2023 from Open Culture
The distinctiveness of the accent heard in a place reflects that place’s isolation. It’s probably no coincidence that, as almost every place in the world has become less isolated, accents have become less distinctive. In...Wednesday, September 20, 2023 from Open Culture
As a general rule, you can gain a decent understanding of any part of the world by eating its regional specialties. This holds especially true in a country like China, with its great size and deep history. Travel to the southeastern...Tuesday, September 19, 2023 from Open Culture
The Leaning Tower of Pisa has stood, in its distinctive fashion, for six and a half centuries now. But it hasn’t always leaned at the same angle: to get the most dramatic view, the best time to go see it was the early...Tuesday, September 19, 2023 from Open Culture
What do Tiffany lamps have in common with Kleenex? A brand name so mighty, it’s become an umbrella term. Of course, Kleenex is still manufacturing tissues, whereas authentic lamps from Louis Comfort Tiffany’s New York studio were...Monday, September 18, 2023 from Open Culture
The photo above depicts Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, better known in the English-speaking world as Leo Tolstoy. It dates from 1908, when he had nearly all his work behind him: the major novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, of course, but...Monday, September 18, 2023 from Open Culture
?si=n8hyTDl7Wn6FLq3a Discovered amidst the wreckage of a sunken ship off the coast of Greece in 1901, the Antikythera Mechanism (previously featured here on Open Culture) is often considered the world’s oldest known analog...