Saturday, April 5, 2025 from Open Culture
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...Friday, April 4, 2025 from Open Culture
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...Thursday, April 3, 2025 from Open Culture
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...Thursday, April 3, 2025 from Open Culture
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,...Thursday, April 3, 2025 from Open Culture
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...Wednesday, April 2, 2025 from Open Culture
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...Wednesday, April 2, 2025 from Open Culture
?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,...Tuesday, April 1, 2025 from Open Culture
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...Tuesday, April 1, 2025 from Open Culture
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...Monday, March 31, 2025 from Open Culture
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...Monday, March 31, 2025 from Open Culture
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...Friday, March 28, 2025 from Open Culture
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...Friday, March 28, 2025 from Open Culture
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...Thursday, March 27, 2025 from Open Culture
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...Thursday, March 27, 2025 from Open Culture
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...