Open Culture

Watch Manhatta, the First American Avant-Garde Film (1921) Every city needs its ideal observer. Moreover, a city needs an ideal observer for each of its eras, and ideally each of its eras will have an ideal observer in each major medium.

Watch Manhatta, the First American Avant-Garde Film (1921)

Franz Kafka Says the Insect in The Metamorphosis Should Never Be Drawn; and Vladimir Nabokov Draws It Anyway If you’ve read Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis in English, it’s likely that your translation referred to the transformed Gregor Samsa as a “cockroach,” “beetle,” or, more generally, a “gigantic insect...

Franz Kafka Says the Insect in The Metamorphosis Should Never Be Drawn; and Vladimir Nabokov Draws It Anyway

Buckminster Fuller’s Map of the World: The Innovation That Revolutionized Map Design (1943) In 2017, we brought you news of a world map purportedly more accurate than any to date, designed by Japanese architect and artist Hajime Narukawa. The map, called the AuthaGraph, updates a centuries-o...

Buckminster Fuller’s Map of the World: The Innovation That Revolutionized Map Design (1943)

Long Before Photoshop, the Soviets Mastered the Art of Erasing People from Photographs — and History Too Adobe Photoshop, the world's best-known piece of image-editing software, has long since transitioned from noun to verb: 'to Photoshop' has come to mean something like 'to alter a photograph, often wit...

Long Before Photoshop, the Soviets Mastered the Art of Erasing People from Photographs — and History Too

Like the Trump administration is doing today…

www.openculture.com/2017/08/long...

Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium: A Beautiful Digital Edition of the Poet’s Pressed Plants & Flowers Is Now Online So many writers have been gardeners and have written about gardens that it might be easier to make a list of those who didn’t. But even in this crowded company, Emily Dickinson stands out.

Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium: A Beautiful Digital Edition of the Poet’s Pressed Plants & Flowers Is Now Online

Hundreds of Medieval Medical Manuscripts with Strange Cures Get Digitized & Put Online: From Leeches to Crushed Weasel Testicles If any discussion of medieval medicine gets going, it's only a matter of time before someone brings up leeches.

Hundreds of Medieval Medical Manuscripts with Strange Cures Get Digitized & Put Online: From Leeches to Crushed Weasel Testicles

Economic gaslighting is coming to America.

Hundreds of Medieval Medical Manuscripts with Strange Cures Get Digitized & Put Online: From Leeches to Crushed Weasel Testicles If any discussion of medieval medicine gets going, it's only a matter of time before someone brings up leeches.

Hundreds of Medieval Medical Manuscripts with Strange Cures Get Digitized & Put Online: From Leeches to Crushed Weasel Testicles

Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium: A Beautiful Digital Edition of the Poet’s Pressed Plants & Flowers Is Now Online So many writers have been gardeners and have written about gardens that it might be easier to make a list of those who didn’t. But even in this crowded company, Emily Dickinson stands out.

Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium: A Beautiful Digital Edition of the Poet’s Pressed Plants & Flowers Is Now Online

Hear the Pieces Mozart Composed When He Was Only 5 Years Old Europe between virtuoso performances on the harpsichord. A young boy who can play any piece anyone puts in front of him, and compose symphonies extemporaneously with ease…. Few scenes better capture t...

Hear the Pieces Mozart Composed When He Was Only 5 Years Old

Curious Alice — The 1971 Anti-Drug Movie Based on Alice in Wonderland That Oddly Made Drugs Look Like Fun The Reagan presidency was probably the golden age of anti-drug messaging. America’s school kids were told that a brain was like an egg and drugs were like a frying pan. The First Lady told America’s s...

Curious Alice — The 1971 Anti-Drug Movie Based on Alice in Wonderland That Oddly Made Drugs Look Like Fun

Smithsonian removes Trump from impeachment exhibit in American history museum A temporary placard, on display since 2021, described the president's historic impeachments. Officials said the exhibit was restored to an earlier version following a review of legacy content.

Rewriting history: Smithsonian removes Trump, the only president impeached twice, from its exhibit about impeachment. "Only three presidents have seriously faced removal," the exhibit now says referring to Johnson, Nixon and Clinton @janaykingsberry.bsky.social www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...

The First-Ever Film Version of Lewis Carroll’s Tale, Alice in Wonderland (1903) Once lost, this 8-minute, very damaged, but very delightful silent version of Alice in Wonderland was restored several years ago by the British Film Institute. It is the first film adaptation of the 1...

The First-Ever Film Version of Lewis Carroll’s Tale, Alice in Wonderland (1903)

Buckminster Fuller’s Map of the World: The Innovation That Revolutionized Map Design (1943) In 2017, we brought you news of a world map purportedly more accurate than any to date, designed by Japanese architect and artist Hajime Narukawa. The map, called the AuthaGraph, updates a centuries-o...

Buckminster Fuller’s Map of the World: The Innovation That Revolutionized Map Design (1943)

Hear the Pieces Mozart Composed When He Was Only 5 Years Old Europe between virtuoso performances on the harpsichord. A young boy who can play any piece anyone puts in front of him, and compose symphonies extemporaneously with ease…. Few scenes better capture t...

Hear the Pieces Mozart Composed When He Was Only 5 Years Old

Curious Alice — The 1971 Anti-Drug Movie Based on Alice in Wonderland That Oddly Made Drugs Look Like Fun The Reagan presidency was probably the golden age of anti-drug messaging. America’s school kids were told that a brain was like an egg and drugs were like a frying pan. The First Lady told America’s s...

Curious Alice — The 1971 Anti-Drug Movie Based on Alice in Wonderland That Oddly Made Drugs Look Like Fun

Man as Industrial Palace: Watch an Animation of the Famous 1926 Lithograph That Depicts the Human Body as a Modern Factory In 1926, Fritz Kahn, a German gynecologist and anatomy textbook author, produced a lithograph called Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace) that depicted the human body as a factory...

Man as Industrial Palace: Watch an Animation of the Famous 1926 Lithograph That Depicts the Human Body as a Modern Factory

An Introduction to Aleister Crowley, History’s Most Infamous Occultist So discovered Aleister Crowley, the early twentieth-century Occultist now remembered not just for his unconventional religious practices, but also for his knack for gathering cults around himself.

An Introduction to Aleister Crowley, History’s Most Infamous Occultist

Franz Kafka Says the Insect in The Metamorphosis Should Never Be Drawn; and Vladimir Nabokov Draws It Anyway If you’ve read Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis in English, it’s likely that your translation referred to the transformed Gregor Samsa as a “cockroach,” “beetle,” or, more generally, a “gigantic insect...

Franz Kafka Says the Insect in The Metamorphosis Should Never Be Drawn; and Vladimir Nabokov Draws It Anyway

The First-Ever Film Version of Lewis Carroll’s Tale, Alice in Wonderland (1903) Once lost, this 8-minute, very damaged, but very delightful silent version of Alice in Wonderland was restored several years ago by the British Film Institute. It is the first film adaptation of the 1...

The First-Ever Film Version of Lewis Carroll’s Tale, Alice in Wonderland (1903)

Watch Manhatta, the First American Avant-Garde Film (1921) Every city needs its ideal observer. Moreover, a city needs an ideal observer for each of its eras, and ideally each of its eras will have an ideal observer in each major medium.

Watch Manhatta, the First American Avant-Garde Film (1921)

The Real Science Experiments That Inspired Frankenstein With the Halloween season mere months away, the time has come to start thinking about what frightening reads to line up for ourselves this year. Some of us may reach for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; o...

The Real Science Experiments That Inspired Frankenstein

Man as Industrial Palace: Watch an Animation of the Famous 1926 Lithograph That Depicts the Human Body as a Modern Factory In 1926, Fritz Kahn, a German gynecologist and anatomy textbook author, produced a lithograph called Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace) that depicted the human body as a factory...

Man as Industrial Palace: Watch an Animation of the Famous 1926 Lithograph That Depicts the Human Body as a Modern Factory

An Introduction to Aleister Crowley, History’s Most Infamous Occultist So discovered Aleister Crowley, the early twentieth-century Occultist now remembered not just for his unconventional religious practices, but also for his knack for gathering cults around himself.

An Introduction to Aleister Crowley, History’s Most Infamous Occultist

Tom Lehrer, RIP: Hear All of His Witty, Satirical Songs in One Playlist Tom Lehrer died last weekend, more than four decades after rumors of his death had first gone into circulation. He didn't bother to contradict them, publicly claiming that he figured they would 'cut d...

Tom Lehrer, RIP: Hear All of His Witty, Satirical Songs in One Playlist

Isaac Asimov Predicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like in 2014 Image by Rochester Institute of Technology, via Wikimedia Commons When New York City hosted The World's Fair in 1964, Isaac Asimov, the prolific sci-fi author and professor of biochemistry at Boston U...

Isaac Asimov Predicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like in 2014

Mark Twain Plays With Electricity in Nikola Tesla’s Lab (Photo, 1894) You'll get a charge out this picture taken long ago. It captures Mark Twain, a literary giant of the 19th century, tinkering in the laboratory of the great inventor, Nikola Tesla.

Mark Twain Plays With Electricity in Nikola Tesla’s Lab (Photo, 1894)

Tom Lehrer, RIP: Hear All of His Witty, Satirical Songs in One Playlist Tom Lehrer died last weekend, more than four decades after rumors of his death had first gone into circulation. He didn't bother to contradict them, publicly claiming that he figured they would 'cut d...

Tom Lehrer, RIP: Hear All of His Witty, Satirical Songs in One Playlist

Isaac Asimov Predicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like in 2014 Image by Rochester Institute of Technology, via Wikimedia Commons When New York City hosted The World's Fair in 1964, Isaac Asimov, the prolific sci-fi author and professor of biochemistry at Boston U...

Isaac Asimov Predicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like in 2014

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Syllabus Asked Students to Read 32 Great Literary Works, Totaling 6,000 Pages Whether willed, involuntary, or a mix of both, the declining literacy of college students is by now so often lamented that reports of it should no longer come as a surprise. And yet, on some level, th...

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Syllabus Asked Students to Read 32 Great Literary Works, Totaling 6,000 Pages