No historical figure better fits the definition of “Renaissance man” than Leonardo da Vinci, but that term has become so overused as to become misleading. We use it to express mild surprise that one person could use both their left and right hemispheres equally well.| Open Culture
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 […]| Open Culture
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… […]| Open Culture
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 […]| Open Culture
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 […]| Open Culture
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 […]| Open Culture
On Sunday morning, some audacious thieves stole priceless jewels from the Louvre Museum. The heist took only eight minutes from start to finish. At 9:30 a.m., the robbers parked a truck with a portable ladder in front of the Parisian museum. They ascended the ladder, cut through a second-floor window, entered the museum, smashed through […]| Open Culture
In the eighteenth century, the readers of Europe went mad for epistolary novels. France had, to name the most sensational examples, Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes, Rousseau’s Julie, and Laclos’ Les Liaisons dangereuses; Germany, Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werther and Hölderlin’s Hyperion. The English proved especially insatiable when it came to long-form stories composed entirely out of letters: […]| Open Culture
The names Leo Fender and Les Paul will be forever associated with the explosion of the electric guitar into popular culture. And rightly so. Without engineer Fender and musician and studio wiz Paul’s timeless designs, it’s hard to imagine what the most iconic instruments of decades of popular music would look like. They just might look like […]| Open Culture
The twenty-first century so far may seem light on major technological breakthroughs, at least when compared to the twentieth. An artificial intelligence boom (perhaps a bubble, perhaps not) has been taking place over the past few years, which at least gives us something to talk about. Before that, most of us would have named the […]| Open Culture
We tend to think of the Roman Empire as having fallen around 476 AD, but had things gone a little differently, it could have come to its end much earlier — before it technically began, in fact. In the year 44 BC, for instance, the assassination of Julius Caesar and the civil wars raging across […]| Open Culture
The phrase “when Dylan went electric” once carried as much weight in pop culture history as “the fall of the Berlin Wall” carries in, well, history. Both events have receded into what feels like the distant past, but in the early 1960s, they likely seemed equally unlikely to many a serious Bob Dylan fan in […]| Open Culture
When first we take an interest in movies, we must figure out our own method of deciding what to watch next. The central factor may be box office performance, the presence of a favorite performer, adherence to a favorite genre, or the use of a familiar story from other media. Such paths through cinema can […]| Open Culture
Nearly 70 percent of Americans believe in angels, at least according to a statistic often cited in recent years. But what, exactly, comes to their minds — or those of any other believers around the world — when they imagine one? Personal conceptions may vary, of course, but we can be fairly certain of one […]| Open Culture
As scholars of ancient texts well know, the reconstruction of lost sources can be a matter of some controversy. In the ancient Hebrew and less ancient Christian Biblical texts, for example, critics find the remnants of many previous texts, seemingly stitched together by occasionally careless editors. Those source texts exist nowhere in any physical form, complete or […]| Open Culture
Back in 2015, President Obama joined Marc Maron on the WTF podcast, marking the first time a sitting president took part in this new kind of broadcasting format.| Open Culture
While reporting on the Eurovision Song Contest, the New Yorker's Anthony Lane 'asked a man named Seppo, from the seven-hundred-strong Eurovision Fan Club of Norway, what he loved about Eurovision.| Open Culture
Difficult as it may be to remember now, there was a time when Meryl Streep was not yet synonymous with silver-screen stardom — a time, in fact, when she had yet to appear on the silver screen at all.| Open Culture
Why do David Bowie's songs sounds like no one else's, right down to the words that turn up in their lyrics? Novelist Rick Moody, who has been privy more than once to details of Bowie's songwriting process, wrote about it in his column on Bowie's 2013 album The Next Day:| Open Culture
Rigorously clean-cut, competent on the acoustic guitar and double bass, and seldom dressed in anything more daring than cherry-red blazers, Tom and Dick Smothers looked like the antithesis of nineteen-sixties rebellion.| Open Culture
Some people talk to plants.| Open Culture
At the moment, there's no better way to see anything in space than through the lens of the James Webb Space Telescope.| Open Culture
Discover thousands of free online courses, audio books, movies, textbooks, eBooks, language lessons, and more.| Open Culture
Michelangelo was born in the Republic of Florence, with the talent of... well, Michelangelo.| Open Culture
There have been many times in American history when celebrations of the country’s multi-ethnic, ever-changing demography served as powerful counterweights to narrow, exclusionary, nationalisms.| Open Culture
Discover thousands of free online courses, audio books, movies, textbooks, eBooks, language lessons, and more.| Open Culture
The Wizard of Oz is now showing at Las Vegas' Sphere. Or a version of it is, at any rate, and not one that meets with the approval of all the picture's countless fans.| Open Culture
Most people’s to-do lists are, almost by definition, pretty dull, filled with those quotidian little tasks that tend to slip out of our minds. Pick up the laundry. Get that thing for the kid. Buy milk, canned yams and kumquats at the local market.| Open Culture
Sam Phillips changed the course of music history with his label Sun Records, which gave us Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Roy Orbison and essentially the second half of the 20th Century’s pop culture.| Open Culture
A too-precious genre of internet meme depicts departed public figures who did not know each other in life meeting in heaven with hugs, high-fives, and wincingly earnest exchanges.| Open Culture
Discover thousands of free online courses, audio books, movies, textbooks, eBooks, language lessons, and more.| Open Culture
In 2018 we brought you some exciting news.| Open Culture
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.| Open Culture
Ozzy Osbourne in a clip included in the Biography television documentary above.| Open Culture
If you want to see a tour de force of modern technology and design, there's no need to visit a Silicon Valley showroom.| Open Culture
As a New York City subway rider, I am constantly exposed to public health posters. More often than not these feature a photo of a wholesome-looking teen whose sober expression is meant to convey hindsight regret at having taken up drugs, dropped out of school, or forgone condoms.| Open Culture
The truth, they say, is stranger than fiction — or at least it is in the work of Herodotus, the ancient Greek writer and traveler often described as 'the Father of History' (and a favorite writer of none other than Jorge Luis Borges).| Open Culture
Watch 4,000+ quality movies online. Includes classics, indies, film noir, documentaries showcasing the talent of our greatest actors, actresses and directors.| Open Culture
In December 1967, The Monkees blew their audience's minds by hosting Frank Zappa, “participant in and perhaps even leader of” the Mothers Of Invention. Or did they?| Open Culture
Since the J. Paul Getty Museum launched its Open Content program back in 2013, we've been featuring their efforts to make their vast collection of cultural artifacts freely accessible online.| Open Culture
