Among Beatles connoisseurs, it’s fair game to claim anything from Rubber Soul to Abbey Road as one’s favorite album. But even within that span of the catalog, a hierarchy of acclaim exists, and that hierarchy has been rearranged over the decades. The ecstatic reception of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band lasted at least a decade. […] Continue Reading »
Like many American stories, the story of the National Parks begins with pillage, death, deep cultural misunderstanding, and venture capitalism. According to Ken Burns’ film series The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, we can date the idea back to 1851, with the “discovery” of Yosemite by a marauding armed battalion that entered the land “searching […] Continue Reading »
Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Special Effects, though viewers raised on more recent Hollywood spectacles would hardly find its mechanized and optically printed avian attackers convincing. Still, the picture as a whole has retained its eerie, ominous power over the last six decades, and a decent amount of the […] Continue Reading »
When Pink Floyd recorded “Money” in 1972, Roger Waters spliced into the opening moments the sounds of cash registers, tearing paper, and jingling coins. Half a century later, the German drummer Sina Doering and her band performed those sounds live, using a bowl of loose change, a toy register, a money counter, and a sheet […] Continue Reading »
Cast your mind back to the distant year 2021 and recall, if you will, its music, its fashions, the obsessions of its youth. This probably won’t be a difficult task, since in most respects — the dampening effects of the pandemic notwithstanding — none of those aspects of popular culture seem any different today. Yet […] Continue Reading »
Recall, if you will, the first time you read Book 2 of Homer’s Iliad. The section likely to have given you the most trouble — unless, of course, you’re blessed with an obsessive interest in ancient naval warfare — is the much-remarked-upon Catalogue of Ships, a rundown of not just the contingents of the Achaean […] Continue Reading »
Most people know that Mark Twain wrote about Jim and Huckleberry Finn navigating down the Mississippi. Less well known is that he occasionally dabbled in the burgeoning genre of science fiction. His 1898 short story “The Great Dark” is about a ship that sails across a drop of water on a microscope slide. His novel […] Continue Reading »
For generations of kids in the twentieth century, few pleasures were as intoxicating as a trip to the comic-book shop with the week’s allowance fresh in hand. Those of us who grew up in the nineties had any number of high-production-value paper superhero spectacles from major publishers on which to blow our money. Personally, I […] Continue Reading »
I’ve never quite understood why the phrase “revisionist history” became purely pejorative. Of course, it has its Orwellian dark side, but all knowledge has to be revised periodically, as we acquire new information and, ideally, discard old prejudices and narrow frames of reference. A failure to do so seems fundamentally regressive, not only in political […] Continue Reading »
The description “open-air museum” has often been applied, in various senses both positive and negative, to the country of Italy in general and the city of Rome in particular. Indeed, only the imagination of a truly blinkered (or unusually phone-addicted) tourist could fail to be cast back to antiquity upon entering its historic center, itself […] Continue Reading »
Like digging for fossils or panning for gold, the research process can be a tedious affair. But for any researcher, long days of searching and reading will eventually result in discovery. These are the moments scholars cherish. It’s the chance discovery, however rare, that makes the long hours and bleary late nights worthwhile. And some finds can […] Continue Reading »
A Manhattan without skyscrapers sounds difficult, if not impossible, to imagine today. But such a place really did exist, at least up until the turn of the twentieth century. While the title of the very first skyscraper ever built may go to the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, New York City caught up so aggressively […] Continue Reading »
It’s common to feel like we know our artists, writers, musicians, actors… we want so badly to touch their lives in some way, as their lives touch ours. This overwhelming desire is responsible for a huge market share of our mass media, from the most tasteless tabloid hit jobs to the most respectful longform essays. […] Continue Reading »
Open Culture readers may know John Green best for Crash Course, the YouTube channel that teaches everything you need to know about subjects like world history, U.S. history, big history, literature, and philosophy. Or at least it teaches everything a teenage student facing down the prospect of Advanced Placement subject exams needs to know. Such […] Continue Reading »
If you plan on shooting your own adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, bear in mind how much rests on your choice of leading man. In order to play Odysseus, an actor must summon a real gravitas, but also a still-smoldering vitality: here is a man who led the Greek army to defeat Troy, but still has […] Continue Reading »
Among Beatles connoisseurs, it’s fair game to claim anything from Rubber Soul to Abbey Road as one’s favorite album. But even within that span of the catalog, a hierarchy of acclaim exists, and that hierarchy has been rearranged over the decades. The ecstatic reception of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band lasted at least a decade. […] 
Like many American stories, the story of the National Parks begins with pillage, death, deep cultural misunderstanding, and venture capitalism. According to Ken Burns’ film series The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, we can date the idea back to 1851, with the “discovery” of Yosemite by a marauding armed battalion that entered the land “searching […] 
Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Special Effects, though viewers raised on more recent Hollywood spectacles would hardly find its mechanized and optically printed avian attackers convincing. Still, the picture as a whole has retained its eerie, ominous power over the last six decades, and a decent amount of the […] 
When Pink Floyd recorded “Money” in 1972, Roger Waters spliced into the opening moments the sounds of cash registers, tearing paper, and jingling coins. Half a century later, the German drummer Sina Doering and her band performed those sounds live, using a bowl of loose change, a toy register, a money counter, and a sheet […] 
Cast your mind back to the distant year 2021 and recall, if you will, its music, its fashions, the obsessions of its youth. This probably won’t be a difficult task, since in most respects — the dampening effects of the pandemic notwithstanding — none of those aspects of popular culture seem any different today. Yet […] 
Recall, if you will, the first time you read Book 2 of Homer’s Iliad. The section likely to have given you the most trouble — unless, of course, you’re blessed with an obsessive interest in ancient naval warfare — is the much-remarked-upon Catalogue of Ships, a rundown of not just the contingents of the Achaean […] 
Most people know that Mark Twain wrote about Jim and Huckleberry Finn navigating down the Mississippi. Less well known is that he occasionally dabbled in the burgeoning genre of science fiction. His 1898 short story “The Great Dark” is about a ship that sails across a drop of water on a microscope slide. His novel […] 
For generations of kids in the twentieth century, few pleasures were as intoxicating as a trip to the comic-book shop with the week’s allowance fresh in hand. Those of us who grew up in the nineties had any number of high-production-value paper superhero spectacles from major publishers on which to blow our money. Personally, I […] 
I’ve never quite understood why the phrase “revisionist history” became purely pejorative. Of course, it has its Orwellian dark side, but all knowledge has to be revised periodically, as we acquire new information and, ideally, discard old prejudices and narrow frames of reference. A failure to do so seems fundamentally regressive, not only in political […] 
The description “open-air museum” has often been applied, in various senses both positive and negative, to the country of Italy in general and the city of Rome in particular. Indeed, only the imagination of a truly blinkered (or unusually phone-addicted) tourist could fail to be cast back to antiquity upon entering its historic center, itself […] 
Like digging for fossils or panning for gold, the research process can be a tedious affair. But for any researcher, long days of searching and reading will eventually result in discovery. These are the moments scholars cherish. It’s the chance discovery, however rare, that makes the long hours and bleary late nights worthwhile. And some finds can […] 
A Manhattan without skyscrapers sounds difficult, if not impossible, to imagine today. But such a place really did exist, at least up until the turn of the twentieth century. While the title of the very first skyscraper ever built may go to the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, New York City caught up so aggressively […] 
It’s common to feel like we know our artists, writers, musicians, actors… we want so badly to touch their lives in some way, as their lives touch ours. This overwhelming desire is responsible for a huge market share of our mass media, from the most tasteless tabloid hit jobs to the most respectful longform essays. […] 
Open Culture readers may know John Green best for Crash Course, the YouTube channel that teaches everything you need to know about subjects like world history, U.S. history, big history, literature, and philosophy. Or at least it teaches everything a teenage student facing down the prospect of Advanced Placement subject exams needs to know. Such […] 
If you plan on shooting your own adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, bear in mind how much rests on your choice of leading man. In order to play Odysseus, an actor must summon a real gravitas, but also a still-smoldering vitality: here is a man who led the Greek army to defeat Troy, but still has […]