Culture & Media news

• Animations Show the Melting Arctic Sea Ice, and What the Earth Would Look Like When All of the Ice Melts

  24-05-2017 21:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  It’s no secret that climate change has been taking a toll on the Arctic. But it’s one thing to read about it, another thing to see it in action. Above you can watch an animation narrated by NASA’s cryospheric scientist Dr. Walt Meier. Documenting changes between 1984 and 2016, the animation lets you see the Arctic sea ice shrinking. As the important perennial sea ice diminishes, the remaining ice cover “almost looks gelatinous as it pulses through the seasons.” For
  
  Read more

• What’s Entering the Public Domain in 2025: Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Early Hitchcock Films, Tintin and Popeye Cartoons & More

  01-01-2025 10:00 via openculture.com
  
  Each Public Domain Day seems to bring us a richer crop of copyright-liberated books, plays, films, musical compositions, sound recordings, works of art, and other pieces of intellectual property. This year happens to be an especially notable one for connoisseurs of Belgian culture. Among the characters entering the American public domain, we find a certain boy reporter named Tintin, who first appeared — along with his faithful pup Milou, or in English, Snowy — in the January 10th, 1
  
  Read more

• The Complete History of the Music Video: From the 1890s to Today

  31-12-2024 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  If you want to understand the history of music videos, you must consider a lot of things that are not obviously music videos. The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” the first selection of MTV’s inaugural broadcast, must surely count as a music video — but then, it was produced a couple years earlier for the much different context of the British chart program Top of the Pops, much like Queen’s proto music video for “Bohemian Rhapsody” from 1975
  
  Read more

• The Longest Construction Projects in History: Why Sagrada Família, the Milan Duomo, Greek Temples & Other Famous Structures Took Generations to Complete

  30-12-2024 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  Public-transit projects are the religious building endeavors of twenty-first century America, less because they’re motivated by the belief in any particular deity than by how much time and money they now require to complete. Take New York’s Second Avenue subway, whose less than two-mile-long first phase opened in 2017: its construction had cost $4.45 billion, and the line itself had first been proposed 97 years earlier. That’s nothing by ancient standards: the Temple of Apollo
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Hunter S. Thompson Remembers Jimmy Carter’s Captivating Bob Dylan Speech (1974)

  30-12-2024 03:00 via openculture.com
  
  51 years ago, Hunter S. Thompson wrote Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, which “is still considered a kind of bible of political reporting,” noted Matt Taibbi in a 40th anniversary edition of the book. Fear and Loathing ’72 entered the canon of American political writing for many reasons. But if you’re looking for one bottom-line explanation, it probably comes down to this: Says Taibbi, “Thompson stared right into the flaming-hot sun
  
  Read more

• The New York Times Presents the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, Selected by 503 Novelists, Poets & Critics

  26-12-2024 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  For longtime readers of American book journalism, scrolling through the New York Times Book Review’s just-published list of the 100 best books of the twenty-first century will summon dim memories of many a once-unignorable critical fuss. At one time or another over the past 25 years, some of us felt as if we could hardly consider ourselves literate unless we’d read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, say, or A Visit from the Goon Squad, or The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar
  
  Read more

• Francis Ford Coppola Picks His Favorite Criterion Movies & Gives Advice to Filmmakers

  26-12-2024 10:00 via openculture.com
  
  Upon stepping into the hallowed Criterion Closet, stocked with hundreds of that cinephile video label’s finest releases, Francis Ford Coppola speaks of a director who “believed in a film he wanted to make, and used his entire fortune, because the financing system of the time wouldn’t finance it. And it came out and it was a big flop, and he died sort of penniless, not realizing that this film he put everything up for” would “be considered today the masterp
  
  Read more

• How A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Its Beloved Soundtrack Album, Almost Never Happened

  24-12-2024 10:00 via openculture.com
  
  A Charlie Brown Christmas uses a cast of amateur child voice actors, deals with the theme of seasonal depression, and culminates in the recitation of a Bible verse, all to a jazz score. It was not, safe to say, the special that CBS had expected, to say nothing of its sponsor, the Coca-Cola Company. In all likelihood, it would have been canceled, but seeing as it had already been announced and promoted (and in any case, was completed only a few days before it was scheduled to air), the show went
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• How Leonardo da Vinci Painted The Last Supper: A Deep Dive Into a Masterpiece

  23-12-2024 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  When Leonardo da Vinci was 42 years old, he hadn’t yet completed any major publicly viewable work. Not that he’d been idle: in that same era, while working for the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, he “developed, organized, and directed productions for festival pageants, triumphal processions, masks, jousting tournaments, and plays, for which he choreographed performances, engineered and decorated stage sets and props, and even designed costumes.” So explains gallerist and
  
  Read more

• Read J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Letter From Father Christmas” To His Young Children (1925)

  23-12-2024 06:31 via openculture.com
  
  J.R.R. Tolkien is best known for the sweeping fantasy landscapes of Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit. Apart from being a celebrated author, the Oxford University professor of Anglo-Saxon was also a devoted father who doted on his children.
  In 1920, a few short years after Tolkien returned from World War I, he began an endearing family Christmas tradition that would continue for the next 23 years. After the birth of his firstborn son, John, Tolkien began to write his four children letters from F
  
  Read more

• The Story Behind the Making of the Iconic Surrealist Photograph, Dalí Atomicus (1948)

  20-12-2024 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  With his cane, his famous waxed mustache, and his habit of taking unusual animals for walks, Salvador Dalí would appear to have cultivated his own photographability. But taking a picture of the man who stood as a living definition of popular surrealism wasn’t a task to be approached casually — especially not for Philippe Halsman, who did it more than anyone else. Originally from what’s now Latvia, he led a turbulent life that eventually (after a couple of interventions b
  
  Read more

• Richard Feynman Enthusiastically Explains How to Think Like a Physicist in His Series Fun to Imagine (1983)

  19-12-2024 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  “It’s interesting that some people find science so easy, and others find it kind of dull and difficult,” says Richard Feynman at the beginning of his 1983 BBC series Fun to Imagine. “One of the things that makes it very difficult is that it takes a lot of imagination. It’s very hard to imagine all the crazy things that things really are like.” A true scientist accepts that nothing is as it seems, in that nothing, when you zoom in close enough or zoom out far e
  
  Read more

• Hear Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast from 1938: The Original Tale of Mysterious Objects Flying Over New Jersey

  18-12-2024 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  A month ago, drones were spotted near Morris County, New Jersey. Since then, reports of further sightings in various locations in the region have been lodged on a daily basis, and anxieties about the origin and purpose of these unidentified flying objects have grown apace. “We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus,” declared the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security in a
  
  Read more

• Watch the Sex Pistols’ Christmas Party for Kids–Which Happened to Be Their Final Gig in the UK (1977)

  18-12-2024 08:17 via openculture.com
  
  I’m not sure the Sex Pistols had “available for children’s parties” on their press release, but on a cold and grim Christmas in 1977, that’s exactly what happened. While many Britons were settling in for a warm yuletide, the Pistols decided to host a party/benefit for the children of striking firemen and miners at a venue called Ivanhoe’s in Huddersfield, UK.
  It turned out that this afternoon gig, along with an evening concert with full-grown punks in the audi
  
  Read more

• The Ingenious Engineering of Leonardo da Vinci’s Self-Supporting Bridge, Explained with Animation

  17-12-2024 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  The video above from Sabins Civil Engineering promises to reveal “the MAGIC behind Da Vinci’s Self Supporting Bridge.” That sounds like a typical example of YouTube hyperbole, though on first glance, it isn’t at all obvious how the fragile-looking structure can stay up, much less support the weight of a crossing army. Not only does the design use no permanent joints, says the narrator, “the more weight on the bridge, the stronger it becomes.” The key is the di
  
  Read more

• The Ingenious Engineering of Leonardo da Vinci’s Self-Supporting Bridge, Explained

  17-12-2024 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  The video above from Sabins Civil Engineering promises to reveal “the MAGIC behind Da Vinci’s Self Supporting Bridge.” That sounds like a typical example of YouTube hyperbole, though on first glance, it isn’t at all obvious how the fragile-looking structure can stay up, much less support the weight of a crossing army. Not only does the design use no permanent joints, says the narrator, “the more weight on the bridge, the stronger it becomes.” The key is the di
  
  Read more

• Watch The Insects’ Christmas from 1913: A Stop Motion Film Starring a Cast of Dead Bugs

  17-12-2024 08:56 via openculture.com
  
  Kind Reader,
  Will you do us the honor of accepting our holiday invitation?
  Carve five minutes from your holiday schedule to spend time celebrating The Insects’ Christmas, above.
  In addition to offering brief respite from the chaos of consumerism and modern expectations, this simple stop-motion tale from 1913 is surprisingly effective at chasing away holiday blues.
  Not bad for a short with a supporting cast of dead bugs.
  Animator Ladislas Starevich began his cinematic manipulation
  
  Read more

• How Keith Jarrett Played on a Broken Piano & Turned a Potentially Disastrous Concert Into the Best-Selling Piano Album of All Time (1975)

  16-12-2024 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  Nearly fifty years ago, the celebrated young pianist Keith Jarrett arrived in the West German city of Köln (better known in English as Cologne). Having just come off a 500-mile-long road trip from Switzerland, where he’d played a concert the previous day, he was left with barely any time to recover before going onstage at the Köln Opera House that night — at 11:30 that night, to be precise, the only time that august cultural institution would give a jazz musician. Because t
  
  Read more

• A Simple, Down-to-Earth Christmas Card from the Great Depression (1933)

  16-12-2024 06:26 via openculture.com
  
  The Smithsonian sets the scene for this Christmas card sent in 1933, a few years into the Great Depression. They write:
  Despite the glum economic situation, the Pinero family used a brown paper bag to fashion an inexpensive holiday greeting card. They penned a clever rhyme and added some charming line drawings of Mom, Dad, and the kids with the message: “Oh, well—in spite of it all—here’s a Merry Christmas from the Pineros.” On December 19, 1933, they mailed it from
  
  Read more

• How Medieval Islamic Engineering Brought Water to the Alhambra

  13-12-2024 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  Between 711 and 1492, much of the Iberian Peninsula, including modern-day Spain, was under Muslim rule. Not that it was easy to hold on to the place for that length of time: after the fall of Toledo in 1085, Al-Andalus, as the territory was called, continued to lose cities over the subsequent centuries. Córdoba and Seville were reconquered practically one right after the other, in 1236 and 1248, respectively, and you can see the invasion of the first city animated in the opening scene of
  
  Read more

• The Sinking of the Britannic: An Animated Introduction to the Titanic’s Forgotten Sister Ship

  13-12-2024 10:00 via openculture.com
  
  We all know about the Titanic. Less often do we hear about the Britannic—the sister passenger liner that the British turned into a hospital ship during World War I. Launched in 1914, two years after the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean, the Britannic featured a number of safety improvements. It had enhanced watertight compartments, an increased number of lifeboats, and improved ventilation and escape routes. Those refinements paid dividends when the Britannic struck a German naval
  
  Read more

• Binge-Watch Classic Television Programs Free: The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Lone Ranger, Dragnet, That Girl & More

  12-12-2024 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  Earlier this week, we featured the 99-year-old Dick Van Dyke’s performance in Coldplay’s new music video, full of visual references to the sitcom that made him a household name in the early nineteen-sixties. And a household name he remains these six decades later, though one does wonder how many of those who appreciate his extreme longevity — both cultural and biological — have ever seen an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. I myself only caught the occasional late-night
  
  Read more

• The Engineering of the Strandbeest: How the Magnificent Mechanical Creatures Have Technologically Evolved

  11-12-2024 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  Life evolves, but machines are invented: this dichotomy hardly conflicts with what most of us have learned about biology and technology. But certain specimens roaming around in the world can blur that line — and in the curious case of the Strandbeesten, they really are roaming around. First assembled in 1990 by the Dutch artist Theo Jansen, a Strandbeest (Dutch for “beach beast”) is a kind of wind-powered kinetic sculpture designed to “walk” around the seaside in an
  
  Read more

• Hear the Evolution of Electronic Music: A Sonic Journey from 1929 to 2019

  10-12-2024 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  It’s easy to get the impression that enthusiasts of electronic music listen to nothing else. (Not that it isn’t true for some of them, who tend to relegate themselves to smaller subgenres: consult Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music for a map of the sonic territory.) And it’s equally easy to believe that, if you aren’t explicitly into electronic music, then you don’t listen to it. But in fact, its history is one of long-term integration so thorough that many of
  
  Read more

• 99-Year-Old Dick Van Dyke Sings & Dances in a Touching New Coldplay Video, Directed by Spike Jonze

  10-12-2024 10:00 via openculture.com
  
  There’s one thing right with our world, and it’s Dick Van Dyke. Appearing in a new Coldplay music video, Mr. Van Dyke dances barefoot and sings knowingly a little off-key—before reflecting on a century of life on this planet. What is love? Is he afraid of dying? What does luck look like? He knows the answers. Mr. Van Dyke turns 99 this week. And we’ll be rooting him on when he turns 100 next year. Enjoy the director’s cut of the touching new music video, “All
  
  Read more

• Sci-Fi Writer Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Rise of Artificial Intelligence & Wonders What Will Happen to Humanity (1978)

  09-12-2024 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  We now live in the midst of an artificial-intelligence boom, but it’s hardly the first of its kind. In fact, the field has been subject to a boom-and-bust cycle since at least the early nineteen-fifties. Eventually, those busts — which occurred when realizable AI technology failed to live up to the hype of the boom — became so long and so thoroughgoing that each was declared an “AI winter” of scant research funding and public interest. Yet even deep into one such fa
  
  Read more

• Sci-Fi Writer Arthur C. Clarke Predicted the Rise of Artificial Intelligence & the Existential Questions We Would Need to Answer (1978)

  09-12-2024 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  We now live in the midst of an artificial-intelligence boom, but it’s hardly the first of its kind. In fact, the field has been subject to a boom-and-bust cycle since at least the early nineteen-fifties. Eventually, those busts — which occurred when realizable AI technology failed to live up to the hype of the boom — became so long and so thoroughgoing that each was declared an “AI winter” of scant research funding and public interest. Yet even deep into one such fa
  
  Read more

• Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Rise of Artificial Intelligence & Questions What Will Happen to Humanity (1978)

  09-12-2024 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  We now live in the midst of an artificial-intelligence boom, but it’s hardly the first of its kind. In fact, the field has been subject to a boom-and-bust cycle since at least the early nineteen-fifties. Eventually, those busts — which occurred when realizable AI technology failed to live up to the hype of the boom — became so long and so thoroughgoing that each was declared an “AI winter” of scant research funding and public interest. Yet even deep into one such fa
  
  Read more

• An Illustrator Creates a Kindle for Charles Dickens, Placing 40 Miniature Classics within a Large Portable Book

  09-12-2024 10:00 via openculture.com
  
  For a design class project, Rachel Walsh, a student at Cardiff School of Art and Design, set out to explain the concept of a Kindle to Charles Dickens. Recognizing that Dickens, a 19th-century author, wouldn’t understand modern terms like ebooks, downloads or the internet, she decided to take a metaphorical approach. She crafted a “book of books,” a large portable book that contained 40 miniature versions of classics that Dickens might have enjoyed. Among the texts, you will fi
  
  Read more

• What Ancient Greek Music Sounded Like: Listen to a Reconstruction That’s “100% Accurate”

  06-12-2024 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  Between 750 BC and 400 BC, the Ancient Greeks composed songs meant to be accompanied by the lyre, reed-pipes, and various percussion instruments. More than 2,000 years later, modern scholars have finally figured out how to reconstruct and perform these songs with (it’s claimed) 100% accuracy.
  Writing on the BBC website, Armand D’Angour, a musician and tutor in classics at Oxford University, notes:
  [Ancient Greek] instruments are known from descriptions, paintings and archaeolog
  
  Read more

Follow @CultureMediaNws on Twitter!