Open Culture
@openculture.bsky.social
A culture and education website that tries to make the web a more intelligent place. Features free courses, movies, audio books, ebooks & thought-provoking daily posts.
Find us at: https://www.openculture.com/
Find us at: https://www.openculture.com/
Behind the Banksy Stunt: An In-Depth Breakdown of the Artist’s Self-Shredding Painting
Behind the Banksy Stunt: An In-Depth Breakdown of the Artist’s Self-Shredding Painting
By now, even those of us who pay no attention at all to the art market have heard about Banksy's latest art stunt: a painting called Balloon Girl that, when it sold for $1.4 million at auction, then i...
www.openculture.com
November 11, 2025 at 5:10 AM
Behind the Banksy Stunt: An In-Depth Breakdown of the Artist’s Self-Shredding Painting
Watch 10 Great German Expressionist Films: Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari & More
Watch 10 Great German Expressionist Films: Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari & More
In 1913, Germany, flush with a new nation’s patriotic zeal, looked like it might become the dominant nation of Europe and a real rival to that global superpower Great Britain. Then it hit the buzzsaw ...
www.openculture.com
November 11, 2025 at 1:31 AM
Watch 10 Great German Expressionist Films: Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari & More
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Puts 490,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Puts 490,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use
Update: The Metropolitan Museum of Art has put online 492,000 high-resolution images of artistic works. Even better, the museum has placed the vast majority of these images into the public domain, mea...
www.openculture.com
November 10, 2025 at 9:58 PM
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Puts 490,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use
The Ambitious Engineering Behind the Golden Gate Bridge
The Ambitious Engineering Behind the Golden Gate Bridge
As many as a million people crossed the Golden Gate Bridge on foot to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its construction in 1987.
www.openculture.com
November 10, 2025 at 5:40 PM
The Ambitious Engineering Behind the Golden Gate Bridge
Dozens of M.C. Escher Prints Have Been Digitized & Put Online by the Boston Public Library
Dozens of M.C. Escher Prints Have Been Digitized & Put Online by the Boston Public Library
In addition to the iconic scene in Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, or appearances in animated TV shows and video games, M.C.
www.openculture.com
November 10, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Dozens of M.C. Escher Prints Have Been Digitized & Put Online by the Boston Public Library
Reposted by Open Culture
How Edward Hopper “Storyboarded” His Iconic Painting Nighthawks
How Edward Hopper “Storyboarded” His Iconic Painting Nighthawks
Edward Hopper's Nighthawks (1942) doesn't just evoke a certain stripe of mid-century, after-hours, big-city American loneliness; it has more or less come to stand for the feeling itself.
www.openculture.com
November 9, 2025 at 4:58 PM
How Edward Hopper “Storyboarded” His Iconic Painting Nighthawks
‘The Character of Physical Law’: Richard Feynman’s Legendary Course Presented at Cornell, 1964
‘The Character of Physical Law’: Richard Feynman’s Legendary Course Presented at Cornell, 1964
Lecture One, The Law of Gravitation:
Feynman ended the first of his famous 1964 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University, a talk entitled 'The Law of Gravitation, an Example of Physical Law.' (See ab...
www.openculture.com
November 10, 2025 at 1:15 AM
‘The Character of Physical Law’: Richard Feynman’s Legendary Course Presented at Cornell, 1964
A List of 1,065 Medieval Dog Names: Nosewise, Garlik, Havegoodday & More
A List of 1,065 Medieval Dog Names: Nosewise, Garlik, Havegoodday & More
The Rovers, Fidos, and Spots of the world have been regarded since time immemorial as man's best friends. But they haven't always been named Rover, Fido, and Spot: early fifteenth-century English dog ...
www.openculture.com
November 9, 2025 at 10:28 PM
A List of 1,065 Medieval Dog Names: Nosewise, Garlik, Havegoodday & More
How to Make Roman Concrete, One of Human Civilization’s Longest-Lasting Building Materials
How to Make Roman Concrete, One of Human Civilization’s Longest-Lasting Building Materials
More than a millennium and a half after its fall, we still look back with wonder on the accomplishments of the ancient Roman Empire. Few elements of its legacy impress us as much as its built environm...
www.openculture.com
November 9, 2025 at 7:24 PM
How to Make Roman Concrete, One of Human Civilization’s Longest-Lasting Building Materials
What Americans Ate for Dessert 200 Years Ago: Watch Re-Creations of Original Recipes
What Americans Ate for Dessert 200 Years Ago: Watch Re-Creations of Original Recipes
Many of us avoid turning on the oven during a heatwave, but how do we feel about making cookies in a Dutch Oven heaped with glowing embers?
www.openculture.com
November 9, 2025 at 5:55 PM
What Americans Ate for Dessert 200 Years Ago: Watch Re-Creations of Original Recipes
How Edward Hopper “Storyboarded” His Iconic Painting Nighthawks
How Edward Hopper “Storyboarded” His Iconic Painting Nighthawks
Edward Hopper's Nighthawks (1942) doesn't just evoke a certain stripe of mid-century, after-hours, big-city American loneliness; it has more or less come to stand for the feeling itself.
www.openculture.com
November 9, 2025 at 4:58 PM
How Edward Hopper “Storyboarded” His Iconic Painting Nighthawks
The Rolling Stones Introduce Bluesman Howlin’ Wolf on US TV, One of the “Greatest Cultural Moments of the 20th Century” (1965)
The Rolling Stones Introduce Bluesman Howlin’ Wolf on US TV, One of the “Greatest Cultural Moments of the 20th Century” (1965)
Howlin’ Wolf may well have been the greatest blues singer of the 20th century. Certainly many people have said so, but there are other measurements than mere opinion, though it’s one I happen to share...
www.openculture.com
November 9, 2025 at 3:18 AM
The Rolling Stones Introduce Bluesman Howlin’ Wolf on US TV, One of the “Greatest Cultural Moments of the 20th Century” (1965)
What is Love? BBC Philosophy Animations Feature Sartre, Freud, Aristophanes, Dawkins & More
What is Love? BBC Philosophy Animations Feature Sartre, Freud, Aristophanes, Dawkins & More
The BBC's recent series of Nigel Warburton-scripted, celebrity-narrated animations in philosophy haven't shied away from the hard questions the discipline touches.
www.openculture.com
November 9, 2025 at 1:55 AM
What is Love? BBC Philosophy Animations Feature Sartre, Freud, Aristophanes, Dawkins & More
An Archive of Handwritten Traditional Mexican Cookbooks Is Now Online
An Archive of Handwritten Traditional Mexican Cookbooks Is Now Online
“The search for authentic Mexican food—or rather, the struggle to define what that meant—has been going on for two hundred years,” writes Jeffrey Pilcher at Guernica. Arguments over national cuisine f...
www.openculture.com
November 8, 2025 at 8:04 PM
An Archive of Handwritten Traditional Mexican Cookbooks Is Now Online
3,900 Pages of Paul Klee’s Personal Notebooks Are Now Online, Highlighting His Bauhaus Teachings (1921–1931)
3,900 Pages of Paul Klee’s Personal Notebooks Are Now Online, Highlighting His Bauhaus Teachings (1921–1931)
Paul Klee led an artistic life that spanned the 19th and 20th centuries, but he kept his aesthetic sensibility tuned to the future.
www.openculture.com
November 8, 2025 at 5:51 PM
3,900 Pages of Paul Klee’s Personal Notebooks Are Now Online, Highlighting His Bauhaus Teachings (1921–1931)
See Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in 3D in a New 108-Gigapixel Scan
See Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in 3D in a New 108-Gigapixel Scan
You may believe that you've had a close enough view of Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring. You may have gone to The Hague and seen the painting in person at the Mauritshuis. You may have zoo...
www.openculture.com
November 8, 2025 at 5:00 PM
See Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in 3D in a New 108-Gigapixel Scan
Reposted by Open Culture
The Roman Empire’s Vast Road Network—186,000 Miles of It—Has Just Been Mapped in a New Digital Atlas
The Roman Empire’s Vast Road Network—186,000 Miles of It—Has Just Been Mapped in a New Digital Atlas
Everywhere you look, you can find traces of the ancient Roman civilization from which the modern West descends. That's especially true if you happen to be looking in Europe, though echoes of Latin mak...
www.openculture.com
November 7, 2025 at 5:00 PM
The Roman Empire’s Vast Road Network—186,000 Miles of It—Has Just Been Mapped in a New Digital Atlas
Saul Bass’ Rejected Poster Concepts for The Shining (and His Pretty Excellent Signature)
Saul Bass’ Rejected Poster Concepts for The Shining (and His Pretty Excellent Signature)
Stanley Kubrick's perfectionism extended well beyond his films themselves. He even took pains to ensure the promotion of his projects with posters as memorable as the actual experience of watching the...
www.openculture.com
November 8, 2025 at 1:59 AM
Saul Bass’ Rejected Poster Concepts for The Shining (and His Pretty Excellent Signature)
Deliberate Practice: A Mindful & Methodical Way to Master Any Skill
Deliberate Practice: A Mindful & Methodical Way to Master Any Skill
Each and every day we eat, we sleep, we read, we brush our teeth. So why haven't we all become world-class masters of eating, sleeping, reading, and teeth-brushing?
www.openculture.com
November 7, 2025 at 11:39 PM
Deliberate Practice: A Mindful & Methodical Way to Master Any Skill
How the Grateful Dead’s “Wall of Sound”–a Monster, 600-Speaker Sound System–Changed Rock Concerts & Live Music Forever
How the Grateful Dead’s “Wall of Sound”–a Monster, 600-Speaker Sound System–Changed Rock Concerts & Live Music Forever
San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom when Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart walked on the stage and found the band’s sound engineer Owsley “Bear” Stanley standing in front of “a solid wall of over 600 ...
www.openculture.com
November 7, 2025 at 9:11 PM
How the Grateful Dead’s “Wall of Sound”–a Monster, 600-Speaker Sound System–Changed Rock Concerts & Live Music Forever
Hunter S. Thompson’s Decadent Daily Breakfast: The “Psychic Anchor” of His Frenetic Creative Life
Hunter S. Thompson’s Decadent Daily Breakfast: The “Psychic Anchor” of His Frenetic Creative Life
Image via Wikimedia Commons
Is breakfast really the most important meal of the day?
It certainly seems so from all the carefully staged photos of overnight oatmeal on Instagram.
www.openculture.com
November 7, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Hunter S. Thompson’s Decadent Daily Breakfast: The “Psychic Anchor” of His Frenetic Creative Life
The Roman Empire’s Vast Road Network—186,000 Miles of It—Has Just Been Mapped in a New Digital Atlas
The Roman Empire’s Vast Road Network—186,000 Miles of It—Has Just Been Mapped in a New Digital Atlas
Everywhere you look, you can find traces of the ancient Roman civilization from which the modern West descends. That's especially true if you happen to be looking in Europe, though echoes of Latin mak...
www.openculture.com
November 7, 2025 at 5:00 PM
The Roman Empire’s Vast Road Network—186,000 Miles of It—Has Just Been Mapped in a New Digital Atlas
Reposted by Open Culture
A 400-Year-Old Ring that Unfolds to Track the Movements of the Heavens
A 400-Year-Old Ring that Unfolds to Track the Movements of the Heavens
Rings with a discreet dual purpose have been in use since before the common era, when Hannibal, facing extradition, allegedly ingested the poison he kept secreted behind a gemstone on his finger.
www.openculture.com
November 6, 2025 at 5:42 PM
A 400-Year-Old Ring that Unfolds to Track the Movements of the Heavens
Reposted by Open Culture
Leonardo da Vinci’s Visionary Inventions Rendered in 3D Animation: Helicopters, Robotic Knights, The First Ever Diving Suit & More
Leonardo da Vinci’s Visionary Inventions Rendered in 3D Animation: Helicopters, Robotic Knights, The First Ever Diving Suit & More
To imagine ourselves into the time of Leonardo da Vinci, we must first imagine a world without such things as helicopters, parachutes, tanks, diving suits, robots. Yet those all existed for Leonardo h...
www.openculture.com
November 6, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Leonardo da Vinci’s Visionary Inventions Rendered in 3D Animation: Helicopters, Robotic Knights, The First Ever Diving Suit & More
Listen to Recordings of Allen Ginsberg & Other Poets on Phone-a-Poem, the 1970s Poetry Hotline
Listen to Recordings of Allen Ginsberg & Other Poets on Phone-a-Poem, the 1970s Poetry Hotline
Much of what we once used the telephone for, we now use the internet for. Conversely, some tasks to which the internet now seems perfectly suited were once performed, imperfectly, through the phone. T...
www.openculture.com
November 7, 2025 at 2:09 AM
Listen to Recordings of Allen Ginsberg & Other Poets on Phone-a-Poem, the 1970s Poetry Hotline