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Was William Shakespeare’s Marriage Closer—and Less...

Open Culture ·

2025/05/02

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 documented personal life. As far as his marriage is concerned, […]

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How Eyes Evolved: A Fascinating Tour Through the...

Open Culture ·

2025/05/02

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 video comes courtesy of Wired. It’s 36 minutes and downright fascinating. […]

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Stream Online Monty Python and the Holy Grail Free on...

Open Culture ·

2025/05/01

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 enthusiasts. It can be difficult, at this point, to imagine oneself back in […]

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Marvin Gaye’s Classic Vocals on ‘I Heard It Through...

Open Culture ·

2025/05/01

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 Norman Whitfield and singer Barrett Strong. Smokey Robinson and the Miracles first […]

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The Heavy-Metal Band Disturbed Covered Simon &...

Open Culture ·

2025/04/30

“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 — or at least mostly behind them. “If […]

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

Open Culture ·

2025/04/30

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 remained active until around 260 AD. Sometime during […]

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The Simple, Ingenious Design of the Ancient Roman...

Open Culture ·

2025/04/29

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. A kind of javelin with a wooden […]

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Tom Jones Performs “Long Time Gone” with Crosby,...

Open Culture ·

2025/04/29

Welsh crooner Tom Jones made an unlikely comeback in the late 80s, covering Prince’s “Kiss” with Art of Noise. Then in the mid-90s, he showed up on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air to sing the mid-60s hit “It’s Not Unusual” for superfan Carlton Banks. This was a time of 60s comebacks all around, but […]

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The Greatest Art Heist in History: How the Mona Lisa...

Open Culture ·

2025/04/28

If you happen to go to the Louvre to have a look at Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, you’ll find that you can’t get especially close to it. That owes in part to the ever-present crowd of cellphone photographers, and more so to the painting’s having been installed behind a wooden barrier and encased in […]

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When Queen’s Freddie Mercury Performed with Opera...

Open Culture ·

2025/04/28

Combining pop music with opera was always the height of pretension. But where would we be without the pretentious? As Brian Eno observed in his 1995 diary, “My assumptions about culture as a place where you can take psychological risks without incurring physical penalties make me think that pretending is the most important thing we […]

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Superman vs. the KKK: Hear the 1946 Superman Radio...

Open Culture ·

2025/03/28

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 come to an end. And now membership in the Ku Klux […]

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This Is What a Nuclear Strike Would Feel Like: A...

Open Culture ·

2025/03/28

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 missile. Still, the probable effects of […]

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The Best Photographer You’ve Never Heard Of: An...

Open Culture ·

2025/03/27

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 West. That’s an important contextual element to understand when considering the work of photographer […]

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Man Ray’s Surrealist Cinema: Watch Four Pioneering...

Open Culture ·

2025/03/27

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” conceits as character, setting, and plot. Today […]

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When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Pastor, Theorized...

Open Culture ·

2025/03/26

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 until the end of his life in 1945, when he was executed by […]

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Spike Jonze Creates a New Short Film (aka Commercial)...

Open Culture ·

2025/03/26

?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 iPhone’s cinematic features, and Spike Jonze craft a memorable ad for the HomePod. […]

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When The Twilight Zone Imagined Fascism in America in...

Open Culture ·

2025/03/25

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 as it does a young (but in acting sensibility, almost fully formed) Dennis […]

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NASA Visualizes the Ocean Currents in Motion: A...

Open Culture ·

2025/03/25

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 ocean has been [historically] difficult to model. Scientists struggled in years past to […]

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How Dave Brubeck’s Time Out Changed Jazz

Open Culture ·

2025/03/24

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 hearing […]

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Every Hidden Detail of New York’s Classic...

Open Culture ·

2025/03/24

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 to say, yet exude the romance of the Woolworth Building, […]

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377 results