The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Animation, Google, Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
This week marked the eight anniversary of Johnny Cash’s death. Google didn’t give Johnny a doodle, unlike Freddie Mercury earlier this month. However the Googlers did create a special theme for their Chrome browser based on The Johnny Cash Project. And they announced it on Monday Night Football earlier this week. (Watch the commercial above.) As [...]
≡ Category: Film, History | ≅ Leave a Comment
After the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in August, 1949, American anxiety levels ran higher. The fear of nuclear war was in the air. And a young generation of Americans soon got its introduction to Duck and Cover, the little technique that would save lives if the U.S. ever endured a Hiroshima-style bombing. Or so [...]
≡ Category: Film, Science, Technology | ≅ Leave a Comment
Long before anyone started talking about “green” or “sustainability,” Jack Nicholson put his money and star power behind a new alternative energy — solar-powered hydrogen. The year was 1978, and solar hydrogen, a limitless resource, promised to lower energy costs and pollution levels, all at once. Fast forward 30+ years, and we know one thing: [...]
≡ Category: Books, Science | ≅ 8 Comments
We told you about the book earlier this year, and now it’s just about here. Set for release on October 4th, The Magic of Reality will be unlike any book written by Richard Dawkins before. It is illustrated for starters, and largely geared toward young and old readers alike. Perfect, he says, for anyone 12 [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 4 Comments
Earlier this summer, the good folks at The Word assembled 40 Noises That Built Pop, a collection of distinctive pop music sounds that have “caused your ears to prick up, or your eyebrows to raise.” Some were originally created in quite calculated ways. Others were happy accidents. Either way, theses sounds are now part of the [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Film | ≅ 1 Comment
Iran had a rich tradition of filmmaking before the Revolution of 1979, when the fundamentalists burned cinemas and shut down productions. But, by the late 80s, the clerics warmed up to cinema again and a filmmaking renaissance got underway. Then, in 1997, the whole world took notice when Abbas Kiarostami won the Palme d’Or at the [...]
≡ Category: Science, Video - Science | ≅ 5 Comments
Two scientific fields find themselves under attack in the United States. Evolutionary biology and climatology. No matter what the science shows, no matter how great the evidence, evangelicals dismiss the whole idea of evolution, and our free market dogmatists, operating under the assumption that “the business of America is business,” reject conclusions accepted by 98% of climate scientists [...]
≡ Category: iPad, Literature | ≅ 1 Comment
William F. Buckley famously said that he flogged himself to get through Atlas Shrugged, and now you can too in grand style. This week, Penguin released Ayn Rand’s politically-influential novel as an iPad app. It will run you $14.99, but it brings together “the classic, unabridged text and a treasury of rarely-seen archival materials,” including [...]
≡ Category: Film, Psychology | ≅ 3 Comments
Just when you thought that Freudian theory was dead, it makes a comeback, thanks to Slavoj Žižek, our favorite Slovenian philosopher and critical theorist. Above, Žižek offers a reading that finds Freud’s model of the psyche at work in the Marx Brothers. Hyper Groucho is the super-ego; rational Chico, the ego; and mute Harpo, the id. [...]
≡ Category: Beat & Tweets | ≅ Leave a Comment
What cultural goodies did we tweet (and re-tweet) on our Twitter stream in recent days? Here are the highlights. Follow us on Twitter at @openculture to get the rest, or Like us on Facebook. We’ll keep you plugged into quality culture every day. Haruki Murakami’s New Story, “Town of Cats.” Published in last week’s New Yorker. 10 [...]
Get updates as soon as they go live, via RSS feed, email and now Twitter!
Get the latest from our Twitter Stream.
Why can't we be friends?
Got a link we should post? Send it our way!
©2006-2012 Open Culture. All rights reserved.
