
Take a New Virtual Reality Tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
You can go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art today, and in real life at that....

The Anti-Gluttony Door in Portugal’s Alcobaça Monastery Shamed Plump Monks to Start Fasting
Consider that you eat the sins of the people —inscription carved above the entrance to the Monastery...

David Lynch’s Projection Instructions for Mulholland Drive (2001)
David Lynch is known for being persnickety about delivering the correct viewing experience to his audience,...

Why Should You Read Toni Morrison’s Beloved? An Animated Video Makes the Case
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu2euaQGzDQ “Tell me,” said Beloved, smiling a wide happy smile. “Tell me your diamonds.” The unforgettable...

The CIA Has Declassified 2,780 Pages of UFO-Related Documents, and They’re Now Free to Download
Everybody knows that UFO stands for “unidentified flying object.” Coined by the United States Air Force...

How the Bicycle Helped Usher in the Women’s Rights Movement (Circa 1890)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPLJgkVsXpE The early history of the bicycle did not promise great things—or anything, really—for women at...

Should You Race Back to Theaters When It’s Safe? Pretty Much Pop: Culture Podcast (#77) on the Big Screen Experience
The pandemic has kept us out of the movie theaters, forcing new streaming practices so that...

A 16th-Century Astronomy Book Featured “Analog Computers” to Calculate the Shape of the Moon, the Position of the Sun, and More
If you want to learn how the planets move, you’ll almost certainly go to one place...

How to Talk with a Conspiracy Theorist (and Why People Believe Conspiracy Theories in the First Place): What the Experts Recommend
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpInOs1Fyno Why do people pledge allegiance to views that seem fundamentally hostile to reality? Maybe believers...

Social Psychologist Erich Fromm Diagnoses Why People Wear a Mask of Happiness in Modern Society (1977)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nCzsqKrkhE Modern man still is anxious and tempted to surrender his freedom to dictators of all...

Peanuts Plays Yes’ “Roundabout”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLMoLoGfjyQ Digital filmmaker Garren Lazar gives us a creative parody video and a badly-needed mental health...

A Look Inside William S. Burroughs’ Bunker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD57IkvzE50 When everybody had one or two vodkas and smoked a few joints, it was always...

How Lava Lamps Help Secure the Internet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cUUfMeOijg Try not to think too hard about the concept of randomness — and especially about...

Discover the First Illustrated Book Printed in English, William Caxton’s Mirror of the World (1481)
The printing history of early English books may not seem like the most fascinating subject in...
See Devo Perform Live for the Very First Time (Kent State University, 1973)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRyyNa9DAEQ Kent State University is known as the site of two important events in American culture:...

New Documentary Sisters with Transistors Tells the Story of Electronic Music’s Female Pioneers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22PRZO2HnJE “Technology is a tremendous liberator,” says Laurie Anderson in her voiceover narration for the new...

300 Rarely-Seen, Risqué Drawings by Andy Warhol Published in the New Book, Andy Warhol: Love, Sex, and Desire. Drawings (1950–1962)
It’s not the ingredients that sell the product. It’s how Warhol makes you feel about the...

Arnold Schwarzenegger Reflects on the Parallels Between Trumpism & Nazism, and How We Can Save Our Democracy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_P-0I6sAck He grew up in the ruins of World War II–the ruins created by the Nazism...

20 Lessons from the 20th Century About How to Defend Democracy from Authoritarianism: A Timely List from Yale Historian Timothy Snyder
Image by Rob Kall, via Flickr Commons Timothy Snyder, Housum Professor of History at Yale University,...

Mayhem Inside the Capitol: 40 Minutes of Footage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfiS8MsfSF4 Reporter Ryan Lizza writes: “I don’t think I fully understood what happened Wednesday until I...

Behold an Interactive Online Edition of Elizabeth Twining’s Illustrations of the Natural Orders of Plants (1868)
Of all the varied objects of creation there is, probably, no portion that affords so much...

Flair Magazine: The Short-Lived, Highly-Influential Magazine That Still Inspires Designers Today (1950)
All magazines are their editors, but Flair was more its editor than any magazine had been before...

Fonts in Use: Enter a Giant Archive of Typography, Featuring 12,618 Typefaces
Type selection is an intensive process that requires intimate knowledge of a brand’s values, audience, competition,...

Thelonious Monk’s List of 25 Tips for Musicians
Let’s provide the context, just like host Adam Neely and guest Brian Krock do in this...

An Animated Introduction to Baruch Spinoza: The “Philosopher’s Philosopher”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVEeXjPiw54 The so-called Enlightenment period encompasses a surprisingly diverse collection of thinkers, if not always in...

How to Draw the Buddha: Explore an Elegant Tibetan Manual from the 18th-Century
Some religions prohibit the depiction of their sacred personages. Tibetan Buddhism isn’t quite so strict, but...

Wonder Woman 1984 in Context – Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #76
The holiday film release season has now passed, having issued only one real blockbuster, which is...

The 25th Amendment: An Introduction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJlOb7n_iCI Read along with the text of the 25th Amendment online here. And get some background...

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam Has Digitized 709,000 Works of Art, Including Famous Works by Rembrandt and Vermeer
Art may seem inessential to those who make the big decisions in times of crisis. But...

How Tibetan Monks Use Meditation to Raise Their Peripheral Body Temperature 16-17 Degrees
Tibetan monks in remote regions of the Himalayas have long claimed near miraculous powers through yogic...

Animation Pioneer Lotte Reiniger Adapts Mozart’s The Magic Flute into an All-Silhouette Short Film (1935)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4uUchB429M When Lotte Reiniger began making animation in the late 1910s, her work looked like nothing...

When Iggy Pop Published an Essay, “Caesar Lives,” in an Academic Journal about His Love for Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1995)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpkADOTWSNg Purveyors of the shocking, primal idiocy of pure rock and roll can in many cases...

Discover J.R.R. Tolkien’s Little-Known and Hand-Illustrated Children’s Book, Mr. Bliss
His were usually humorous stories, full of magic, and very often, they contained a connection to...

Rome’s Colosseum Will Get a New Retractable Floor by 2023 — Just as It Had in Ancient Times
Rome wasn’t built in a day. But one of its most renowned attractions could be returned...

Discover Tokyo’s Museum Dedicated to Parasites: A Unique and Disturbing Institution
Photo by Guilhem Vellut Weary as we are of hearing about not just the coronavirus but...

Coursera Offers $100 Off of Coursera Plus (Until January 10), Giving You Unlimited Access to Courses & Certificates
FYI: Between now and January 10, Coursera is offering a $100 discount on its annual subscription...

Dial-a-Poem: The Groundbreaking Phone Service That Let People Hear Poems Read by Patti Smith, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg & More (1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nuzYpuPQCI Thanks for allowing me to be a poet. A noble effort, doomed, but the only...

Did Beethoven Use a Broken Metronome When Composing His String Quartets? Scientists & Musicians Try to Solve the Centuries-Old Mystery
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwnouGHMc7o When it comes to classical composers, Beethoven was pretty metal. But was he writing some...

What’s Entering the Public Domain in 2021: The Great Gatsby & Mrs. Dalloway, Music by Irving Berlin & Duke Ellington, Comedies by Buster Keaton, and More
“The year 1925 was a golden moment in literary history,” writes the BBC’s Jane Ciabattari. “Ernest...

Antonio Gramsci Writes a Column, “I Hate New Year’s Day” (January 1, 1916)
I want every morning to be a new year’s for me. Every day I want to...

Studio Ghibli Makes 1,178 Images Free to Download from My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away & Other Beloved Animated Films
Studio Ghibli make lush and captivating animated films. So, on occasion, do other studios, but of...

When Queen’s Freddie Mercury Teamed Up with Opera Superstar Montserrat Caballé in 1988: A Meeting of Two Powerful Voices
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1fiOJDXA-E Combining pop music with opera was always the height of pretension. But where would we...

The Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants: Discover the 1977 Illustrated Guide Created by Harvard’s Groundbreaking Ethnobotanist Richard Evan Schultes
I mean, the idea that you would give a psychedelic—in this case, magic mushrooms or the...

Technology Arbitrage: Amazon is Selling Airpods Pro Headphones for $50 Less Than Apple
Psst. Amazon currently has AirPods Pro headphones for $199, while Apple has them listed for $249....

The Essential Bradbury: The 25 Finest Stories by the Beloved Writer
The late Ray Bradbury wrote a dizzying number of short stories over a career that spanned...

Archaeologists Discover an Ancient Roman Snack Bar in the Ruins of Pompeii
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abspZyhQDm0 Have you ever wondered what generations hundreds or thousands of years hence will make of...

How Martin Luther King Jr. Got C’s in Public Speaking–Before Becoming a Straight-A Student & a World Class Orator
How many Americans have never heard the name of Martin Luther King Jr.? And indeed, gone...

15 Posts That Resonated with (and Restored) Open Culture Readers in 2020: What a Year It Has Been
So, it’s been a year. For those of us in parts of the world where the...

Why Has The Great British Baking Show Conquered America? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #75 w/ Stephen Carlile (from Broadway’s The Lion King)
What explains the immense quarantine-time popularity in America of this quaint British reality cooking show? What...

Listen to James Baldwin’s Record Collection in a 478-track, 32-Hour Spotify Playlist
Photo via Wikimedia Commons Each writer’s process is a personal relationship between them and the page—and...