Early in his collecting odyssey, animation historian, archivist, and educator Tommy José Stathes earned the honorific Cartoon Cryptozoologist from Cinebeasts, a “New York-based collective of film nerds, vidiots, and programmers investigating the furthest reaches of the moving ima … | Continue reading
But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long tim … | Continue reading
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 Profes … | Continue reading
However detailed they may be in other respects, many accounts of daily life centuries and centuries ago pass over the use of the toilet in silence. Even if they didn’t, they wouldn’t involve the kind of toilets we would recognize today, but rather chamber pots, outhouses, and oth … | Continue reading
From 1967 to 1969, Tom and Dick Smothers hosted The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, a politely edgy comedy show that tested the boundaries of mainstream television and the patience of CBS executives. Playing to a younger demographic, the show took positions against the Vietnam War … | Continue reading
Image by Zairon, via Wikimedia CommonsAmong the non-wine-related points of interest in the Loire Valley, the Château de Chambord stands tall — or rather, both tall and wide, being easily the largest château in the region. 'A Unesco World Heritage site with more than 400 rooms, in … | Continue reading
Some years ago, the Guardian’s Anne T. Donahue recommended, as an alternative Christmas movie, Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail from 1998. “Admittedly, You’ve Got Mail takes place from October to spring,” she writes, “but what matters most is that the movie’s most compelling scenes … | Continue reading
Image via The Bodleian Library If you were to ask a certain kind of Englishman what sets his homeland apart from the rest of the world, he might point to the strength of its traditions. And what holds true for England itself holds even truer for its most renowned institutions, es … | Continue reading
Perhaps at some point in the future,the poems in your tongue I composed,will be brought to your notice,and if so, to delight will I then be disposed. - Curt Bloch, Het Onderwater CabaretZines typically tend toward the ephemeral, owing to their small circulations, erratic publicat … | Continue reading
Ten years ago, we featured John Waters’ handmade Christmas cards, which he’s been making since he was a high-school student in 1964, long before William S. Burroughs deemed him the “Pope of Trash” (also the title of a retrospective exhibition at the Academy of Motion Pictures in … | Continue reading
After David Bowie died in 2016, we discovered that the musician had a knack for doing impressions of fellow celebrities. Could he sing a song in the style of Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Tom Waits, and Bruce Springsteen? Turns out, he could. And yes, he could do an Elvis impression too. T … | Continue reading
For Pretty Much Pop’s annual holiday episode, your hosts Mark Linsenmayer, Lawrence Ware, Sarahlyn Bruck, and Al Baker talk all things Muppets, but in particular the 1992 film The Muppet Christmas Carol, wherein Michael Caine gives us just as strong and serious a Scrooge as you m … | Continue reading
Note: With the recent passing of Shane Macgowan, we’re bringing back a post from 2018 and revisiting The Pogues’ song “Fairytale of New York.” The offbeat Christmas classic is currently #5 on the Billboard Singles Chart in the UK. Drugstore Cowboy, Barfly, Leaving Las Vegas, even … | Continue reading
Pantone has declared “Peach Fuzz” the Color of the Year. This selection, however, raises the question: How did Pantone become the global authority on color? Above, the Wall Street Journal describes how Pantone began as a commercial printing company during the 1950s. Then, in the … | Continue reading
The received image of the Aztecs, with their savage battles and frequent acts of human sacrifice, tends to imply a violence-saturated, death-obsessed culture. Given that, it will hardly come as a surprise to learn of an Aztec musical instrument discovered in the hands of a sacrif … | Continue reading
Since it came out this past November, Ridley Scott’s Napoleon has drawn a variety of critical reactions. Whatever else can be said about it, it certainly takes a different tack from past depictions of that particular French Emperor. It was, perhaps, Scott’s good luck not to have … | Continue reading
FYI: The University of Chicago Press has made available online — at no cost –five volumes of The History of Cartography. Or what Edward Rothstein, of The New York Times, called “the most ambitious overview of map making ever undertaken.” He continues: People come to know the worl … | Continue reading
From Kurzgesagt comes the history of our planet in one hour. They write: “Earth is 4.5 billion years old — which is approximately the same amount of time it took us to create this video. We’ve scaled the complete timeline of our Earth’s life into our first animated movie! Every s … | Continue reading
Many first-time visitors to the Louvre experience a letdown to discover how small the Mona Lisa is -just 21” x 30”. Meanwhile, over in Amsterdam, visitors have been flocking to the Rijksmuseum, eager to lay eyes on the two smallest formal works in the museum’s collection. Measuri … | Continue reading
When A Charlie Brown Christmas first aired 58 years ago, few had any confidence that it would be a hit. Its story and animation, bare-bones even by the standards of mid-nineteen-sixties television, made a positive impression on neither CBS’ executives nor on many of the special’s … | Continue reading
Threads is on the rise. After getting released in over 100 countries (including the US and UK) earlier this year, Meta has just made Threads available in the EU. And that’s where we’re now sharing our daily posts, along with other objects of cultural interest. If you sign up, ple … | Continue reading
Cast your mind, if you will, to the city of Ceuta. If you’ve never heard of it, or can’t quite recall its location, you can easily find out by searching for it on your map application of choice. Back in the twelfth century, however, you might have had to consult an image of the k … | Continue reading
It was something of a Christmas ritual at Hunter S. Thompson’s Colorado cabin, Owl Farm. Every year, his secretary Deborah Fuller would take down the Christmas tree and leave it on the front porch rather than dispose of it entirely. That’s because Hunter, more often than not, wan … | Continue reading
?si=ZY3lYv-cyq-9hJWa Netflix once delivered movies not by streaming them over the internet, but by literally delivering them: on DVDs, that is, shipped through the postal service. This tends to come as a surprise to the service’s many users under the age of about 35, or in countr … | Continue reading
It’s time to forget nearly everything you know about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer…at least as established by the 1964 Rankin/Bass stop motion animated television special. You can hang onto the source of Rudolph’s shame and eventual triumph — the glowing red nose that got him bo … | Continue reading
Jesus Christ: as soon as you hear those words, assuming they’re not being used exclamatorily, you see a face. In almost all cases, that face is bearded and framed by long brown hair. Usually it has strong, somewhat sharp features and an expression of benevolence, patience, faint … | Continue reading
Last year, the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound magazine conducted its once-a-decade poll to determine the greatest films of all time. As usual, the results were divided into two sections: one for the critics’ votes, and the other for the filmmakers’. The latter put Stanl … | Continue reading
If you really want to impress your family, friends, and social-media following with your next voyage abroad, consider booking a trip to Thule. But where, exactly, is it? It could be Iceland or Greenland within the Orkney archipelago of northern Scotland; it could be the Estonian … | Continue reading
In December 1931, having just embarked on a 40-stop lecture tour of the United States, Winston Churchill was running late to dine with financier Bernard Baruch on New York City’s Upper East Side. He hadn’t bothered to bring Baruch’s address, operating under the incorrect assumpti … | Continue reading
?si=ua0n7JebOzIPV0zM The Beatles or the Stones? We’ve been debating that question for the past 60 years. Above, the London-based company Dog & Rabbit continues the conversation with a clever video that animates Beatles and Stones album covers. From there, all kinds of high jinks … | Continue reading
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep-OnsDieFQOuch! | Continue reading
On Friday, Glen Hansard & Lisa O’Neill performed “Fairytale of New York” at Shane MacGowan’s funeral, giving the Pogues’ frontman quite the send-off. The moving performance took place before a packed church in Nenagh, a country town in Ireland. And it all ends, perhaps fittingly, … | Continue reading
What history nerd doesn’t thrill to Thomas Edison speaking to us from beyond the grave in a 50th anniversary repeat of his groundbreaking 1877 spoken word recording of (those hoping for loftier stuff should dial it down now) Mary Had a Little Lamb? The original represents the fir … | Continue reading
Before electronic amplification, instrument makers and musicians had to find newer and better ways to make themselves heard among ensembles and orchestras and above the din of crowds. Many of the acoustic instruments we’re familiar with today—guitars, cellos, violas, etc.—are the … | Continue reading
On the evening of January 12, 1971, CBS viewers across the United States sat down to a brand new sitcom preceded by a highly unusual disclaimer. The program they were about to see, it declared, “seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on our frailties, prejudices, and concerns. By ma … | Continue reading
You’re busy. You don’t have much time to figure out the deal with Large Language Models (aka LLMs). But you have some curiosity. Enter Andrej Karpathy and his presentation, “A Busy Person’s Introduction to Large Language Models.” It’s a one-hour tutorial that explains “the core t … | Continue reading
Not quite a century ago, Shanghai was known as 'the Paris of the East.' (Or it became one of the cities to enjoy that reputation, at any rate.) Today, you can catch a high-speed train in Shanghai and, just an hour later, arrive in a place that has made a much more literal bid for … | Continue reading
New Yorkers have a variety of sayings about how they want nothing to do with nature, just as nature wants nothing to do with them. As a counterpoint, one might adduce Central Park, whose 843 acres of trees, grass, and water have occupied the middle of Manhattan for a century and … | Continue reading
Image via Wikimedia Commons The Lascaux Caves enjoyed a quiet existence for some 17,000 years. Then came the summer of 1940, when four teens investigated what seemed to be a fox’s den on a hill near Montignac, hoping it might lead to an underground passageway of local legend. Onc … | Continue reading
Even if you’ve never traveled the seas, you’ve surely known at least a few rivers in your time. And though you must be conscious of the fact that all of those rivers run, ultimately, to the sea, you may not have spent much time contemplating it. Now, thanks to the work of mapmake … | Continue reading
We’re taking you on a wistful trip down memory lane. Above, Shane MacGowan and Sinéad O’Connor perform “Haunted” on the British music show, The White Room. Originally recorded in 1986 with Cait O’Riordan on vocals, “Haunted” got a second lease on life in 1995 when MacGowan and O’ … | Continue reading
“For most of the last two thousand years, the Bible has been virtually the only history book used in Western civilization,” writes Isaac Asimov in his Guide to the Bible. “Even today, it remains the most popular, and its view of ancient history is still more widely and commonly k … | Continue reading
Shane MacGowan died yesterday, less than a month shy of his 66th birthday — and thus less than a month shy of Christmas, which happened to be the same day. Though coincidental, that association has made perfect sense since 1987, when the Pogues, the Celtic punk band fronted by Ma … | Continue reading
Worried that holiday entertaining may put you in danger of overspending? Preserve your bank account and those joyful festive feelings by serving your friends onion sandwiches. We assure you, they come with the utmost of culinary pedigrees. Esteemed chef and cookbook author Jacque … | Continue reading
What happens when Ulysses Owens Jr–a Jazz musician and jazz educator at Juilliard–hears Nirvana’s “In Bloom” for the first time (minus the drum parts), and then attempts to drum along? What is he listening for? How does he immediately craft an appropriate drum part? And how does … | Continue reading
Thirteen years ago here on Open Culture, we first featured Rome Reborn 2.2, a digital 3D model of the ancient metropolis at the height of its glory in the fourth century. And that rebirth has continued apace ever since, and just last week bore the fruit of Rome Reborn 4.0, throug … | Continue reading
Every piece of technology has a precedent. Most have several different types of precedents. You’ve probably used (and may well own) an eBook reader, for instance, but what would have afforded you a selection of reading material two or three centuries ago? If you were a Jacobean E … | Continue reading
In the fall of 1998, pop music changed forever — or at least it seems that way today, a quarter-century later. The epochal event in question was the release of Cher’s comeback hit “Believe,” of whose jaggedly fractured vocal glissando no listener had heard the likes of before. “T … | Continue reading