openculture.comadded August 2026
Open Cultureby OC20d ago
Critical theorists like Theodor Adorno may have overreached in claiming that all mass culture is mediocre, mechanized propaganda made to justify the status quo.
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall21d ago
We venerate Galileo Galilei for daring to speak the scientific truth in the face of severe institutional opposition.
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall24d ago
One often-repeated anecdote about Milton Friedman has the famous economist visiting a canal under construction in nineteen-sixties China.
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall25d ago
Reading is unnatural. This will hardly come as a surprise to any child trying to put off his homework for just one more hour of watching other kids play Minecraft.
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall26d ago
Most of us can rattle off the first few words-that-stand-for-letters of the NATO phonetic alphabet.
Open Cultureby OC26d ago
For decades following World War II, the world was left wondering how the atrocities of the Holocaust could have been perpetrated in the midst of—and, most horrifically, by—a modern and civilized...
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall26d ago
We no longer live in a time when college freshmen get shocked by much of the reading material assigned to them.
Open Cultureby OC27d ago
The business world has long had special jargon for the Kafkaesque incompetence bedeviling the ranks of upper management.
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall28d ago
You don’t have to spend a long time reading up on the Silk Road before you see the term itself (“Silk Road”) called a misnomer.
Open Cultureby OC28d ago
The influence of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel on the revolutionary philosophy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels is well known.
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall11 Sept 2026
Image by Fakhri “Scientists Discover the Earliest Evidence of Drug Use in Really Old Teeth” may sound like odd headline language, at least by the traditional standards of the New York Times.
Open Cultureby OC11 Sept 2026
Before the Japanese fell completely, one hundred percent in love with anything and everything Disney (I mean, seriously, they love it), Mickey Mouse represented something completely different: Pure...
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall10 Sept 2026
This past summer, the United States of America celebrated 250 years of independence. But for a great many Americana-lovers around the world, this year also brings another, even more resonant date...
Open Cultureby OC10 Sept 2026
It’s an ungainly word for English speakers, which is maybe why we do not hear it often: Gleichschaltung. Yet the concept remains central for a clear view of what happened to Germany in the 1930s.
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall9 Sept 2026
Today, we’re surrounded by technologies we could justifiably describe as time thieves. In ancient Greece, those who wanted to know where their time was going consulted a device they called a “water...
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall8 Sept 2026
Frank Lloyd Wright was often strapped for cash. In that respect, he had something in common with Vincent van Gogh, who passed most of his much shorter life in more dire circumstances.
Open Cultureby OC8 Sept 2026
When the U.S. media began reporting on the phenomenon of “forest bathing” as a therapy for mental and physical health, the online commentariat—as it will—mocked the concept relentlessly as yet...
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall7 Sept 2026
In 1927, Bertrand Russell delivered a lecture titled “Why I Am Not a Christian.” At the time, such a declaration was still fairly bold, as was the reasoning he provided for it.
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall4 Sept 2026
Many who read this will remember watching television on a black-and-white set at some point in their lives. Fewer will remember doing so because only black-and-white sets existed.
Open Cultureby Colin Marshall3 Sept 2026
Many an internet cinephile has wondered aloud if the Criterion Closet is a real place, or just a set thrown together to make videos when famous directors like Christopher Nolan, Francis Ford...
top 67%