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Explore Frank Lloyd Wright’s Iconic Houses Through...

Open Culture ·

2025/11/04

Look up the word architecture in the dictionary, and though you won’t actually find a picture of Frank Lloyd Wright, it may feel as if you should. Or at least it will feel that way if you’re looking in an American dictionary, given that Wright has been regarded as the personification of American architecture longer than […]

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The 1957 “Spaghetti-Grows-on-Trees” Hoax: One of TV’s...

Open Culture ·

2025/11/03

In 1957, the BBC program Panorama aired one of the first televised April Fools’ Day hoaxes. Above, you can watch a faux news report from Switzerland narrated by respected BBC journalist Richard Dimbleby. Here’s the basic premise: After a mild winter and the “virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil,” the residents of Ticoni (a Swiss […]

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Nikola Tesla Accurately Predicted the Rise of...

Open Culture ·

2025/11/03

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 philosopher Jaron Lanier and Wired editor Kevin Kelly), later entrepreneurs have hewn closer to […]

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Celebrate Halloween with Michael Jackson’s...

Open Culture ·

2025/10/31

Michael Jackson’s Thriller is the best-selling album of all time, and not by a particularly slim margin. The most recent figures have it registered at 51.3 million copies, as against the 31.2 million notched by the runner up, AC/DC’s Back in Black. But it would surely be a closer call without the title song’s celebrated music […]

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Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christopher...

Open Culture ·

2025/10/31

Of the many readings and adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic moody-broody poem “The Raven,” none is more fun than The Simpsons’, in which Lisa Simpson’s intro transitions into the reading voice of James Earl Jones and the slapstick interjections of Homer as Poe’s avatar and Bart as the titular bird. Jones’ solo reading of […]

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When Marcel Duchamp Drew a Mustache & Goatee on the...

Open Culture ·

2025/10/30

Apart from certain stretches of absence, Leonardo’s Mona Lisa has been on display at the Louvre for 228 years and counting. Though created by an Italian in Italy, the painting has long since been a part of French culture. At some point, the reverence for La Joconde, as the Mona Lisa is locally known, reached such an intensity […]

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Roger Waters Reflects on the Haunting Psychological...

Open Culture ·

2025/10/30

To many longtime fans, there are — at the very least — two Pink Floyds. The first is the rock band that in 1965 took the name the Pink Floyd Sound, an invention of its newest member Syd Barrett. A guitar-playing singer-songwriter, the young Barrett soon became the group’s guiding creative intelligence, albeit of a […]

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A Tour of a Utopian Home Designed by Frank Lloyd...

Open Culture ·

2025/10/29

American is a tricky word. It can refer to everyone and everything of or pertaining to all the countries of North America — and potentially South America as well — but it’s commonly used with specific regard to the United States. For Frank Lloyd Wright, linguistic as well as architectural perfectionist, this was an untenable […]

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Leck Mich Im Arsch (“Kiss My Ass”): Listen to...

Open Culture ·

2025/10/29

We all know the manchild Mozart of Milos Forman’s 1984 biopic Amadeus. As embodied by a manic, braying Thomas Hulce, the precocious and haunted composer supposedly loved nothing more than scandalizing, amusing, or exasperating friends and enemies alike with juvenile pranks and scatological humor. Surely a fiction, eh? Gross exaggeration, no? Undoubtedly Mozart comported himself […]

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Meet the Forgotten Female Artist Behind the World’s...

Open Culture ·

2025/10/28

As an exercise draw a composition of fear or sadness, or great sorrow, quite simply, do not bother about details now, but in a few lines tell your story. Then show it to any one of your friends, or family, or fellow students, and ask them if they can tell you what it is you […]

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How Saul Bass Designed the Strange Original Poster...

Open Culture ·

2025/10/28

With Halloween just days away, many of us are even now readying a scary movie or two to watch on the night itself. If you’re still undecided about your own Halloween viewing material, allow us to suggest The Shining, Stanley Kubrick’s “masterpiece of modern horror.” Those words come straight from the original poster hung up […]

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74 Ways Characters Die in Shakespeare’s Plays Shown...

Open Culture ·

2025/10/27

In the graduate department where I once taught freshmen and sophomores the rudiments of college English, it became common practice to include Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus on many an Intro to Lit syllabus, along with a viewing of Julie Taymor’s flamboyant film adaptation. The early work is thought to be Shakespeare’s first tragedy, cobbled together from popular […]

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Aldous Huxley to George Orwell: My Hellish Vision of...

Open Culture ·

2025/10/27

In 1949, George Orwell received a curious letter from his former high school French teacher. Orwell had just published his groundbreaking book Nineteen Eighty-Four, which received glowing reviews from just about every corner of the English-speaking world. His French teacher, as it happens, was none other than Aldous Huxley, who taught at Eton for a […]

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You Can Now See the Parthenon Without Scaffolding for...

Open Culture ·

2025/10/24

If you’ve made the journey to Athens, you probably took the time to visit its most popular tourist attraction, the Acropolis. On that monument-rich hill, you more than likely paid special attention to the Parthenon, the ancient temple dedicated to the city’s namesake, the goddess Athena Parthenos. But no matter how much time you spent […]

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The Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Death: 19 Theories...

Open Culture ·

2025/10/24

One of my very first acts as a new New Yorker many years ago was to make the journey across three boroughs to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. My purpose: a pilgrimage to Herman Melville’s grave. I came not to worship a hero, exactly, but—as Fordham University English professor Angela O’Donnell writes—“to see a friend.” […]

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How Did The World Get So Ugly?: Then Versus Now

Open Culture ·

2025/10/23

More than a few of us might be interested in the opportunity to spend a day in Victorian London. But very few of us indeed who’ve ever read, say, a Charles Dickens novel would ever elect to live there. “London’s little lanes are charming now,” says Sheehan Quirke, the host of the video above, while […]

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Explore 1,100 Works of Art by Georgia O’Keeffe:...

Open Culture ·

2025/10/23

Lake George Reflection (circa 1921) via Wikimedia Commons What comes to mind when you think of Georgia O’Keeffe? Bleached skulls in the desert? Aerial views of clouds, almost cartoonish in their puffiness? Voluptuous flowers (freighted with an erotic charge the artist may not have intended)? Probably not Polaroid prints of a dark haired pet chow sprawled on flagstones… […]

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The 135 Movies You Must See to Understand Cinema

Open Culture ·

2025/10/22

If you wish to become a cinephile worthy of the title, you must first pledge never to refuse to watch a film for any of the following reasons. First, that it is in a different language and subtitled; second, that it is too old; third, that it is too slow; fourth, that it is too […]

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Alejandro Jodorowsky Explains How Tarot Cards Can...

Open Culture ·

2025/10/22

The practice of cartomancy, or divination with cards, dates back several hundred years to at least 14th century Europe, perhaps by way of Turkey. But the specific form we know of, the tarot, likely emerged in the 17th century, and the deck we’re all most familiar with—the Rider-Waite Tarot—didn’t appear until 1909. Popular mainly with […]

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When a Salvador Dalí Sketch Was Stolen from Rikers...

Open Culture ·

2025/10/21

In 2003, a Salvador Dalí drawing was stolen from Rikers Island, one of the most formidable prisons in the United States. That the incident has never been used as the basis for a major motion picture seems inexplicable, at least until you learn the details. A screenwriter would have to adapt it as not a […]

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377 results