A 3D Model Reveals What the Parthenon and Its Interior Looked Like 2,500 Years Ago

in Architecture, History, Religion | May 23rd, 2025

Stand­ing atop the Acrop­o­lis in Athens as it has for near­ly 2,500 years now, the Parthenon remains an impres­sive sight indeed. Not that those two and a half mil­len­nia have been kind to the place: one of the most famous ruins of the ancient world is still, after all, a ruin. But it does fire up vis­i­tors’ imag­i­na­tions, fill­ing their heads with visions of how it must have looked back in the fifth cen­tu­ry BC, when it was a func­tion­ing tem­ple and trea­sury. One enthu­si­ast in par­tic­u­lar, an Oxford archae­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor named Juan de Lara, has spent four years using 3D mod­el­ing tools to cre­ate a 3D dig­i­tal recon­struc­tion of the Parthenon at the height of its glo­ry, of which you can get glimpses in the video above and at the pro­jec­t’s offi­cial site.

Image by Juan de Lara/The Parthenon 3D

The mate­ri­als pro­mot­ing Parthenon 3D, as it’s called, empha­size one ele­ment above all: its almost 40-foot-tall stat­ue of the god­dess Athena Parthenos, bet­ter known mononymi­cal­ly as Athena. The work of the renowned sculp­tor Phidias, who also han­dled the rest of the struc­ture’s sculp­tur­al dec­o­ra­tion, it end­ed up cost­ing twice as much as the build­ing itself.

Though now long lost, the Athena stat­ue was well doc­u­ment­ed enough for de Lara to mod­el its every detail, down to the folds in her gold­en robes and the cracks in her ivory skin. Dur­ing the Pana­thenaic Fes­ti­val, which came around every four years, sun­light would enter the Parthenon at just the right angle to cause a super­nat­ur­al-look­ing illu­mi­na­tion of the god­dess against the sur­round­ing dark­ness.

Image by Juan de Lara/The Parthenon 3D

Of course, that effect was­n’t acci­den­tal. Even if we con­sid­er the cre­ation of the Parthenon to have been divine­ly inspired, we can best under­stand it as a work of man — and a metic­u­lous­ly thought-out work at that. For ancient Greek vis­i­tors, the illu­mi­na­tion of Athena would have been enhanced by the place­ment of roof aper­tures, reflect­ing water pools, and reflec­tive mate­ri­als, whose orig­i­nal incor­po­ra­tion into the space would come as a sur­prise to most mod­ern vis­i­tors. At present, Parthenon 3D offers the clos­est expe­ri­ence we have to a time machine set to the Parthenon as Phidias and archi­tects Ikti­nos and Cal­l­i­crates orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed. But as de Lara’s research notes, the build­ing also con­tained numer­ous incense burn­ers, so per­fect real­ism won’t be achieved until smells can go through the inter­net. Vis­it the Parthenon 3D site here.

Image by Juan de Lara/The Parthenon 3D

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Parthenon Mar­bles End­ed Up In The British Muse­um

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Athens: Fly Over Clas­si­cal Greek Civ­i­liza­tion in All Its Glo­ry

Robots Are Carv­ing Repli­cas of the Parthenon Mar­bles: Could They Help the Real Ancient Sculp­tures Return to Greece?

Explore Ancient Athens 3D, a Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tion of the Greek City-State at the Height of Its Influ­ence

The City of Nashville Built a Full-Scale Repli­ca of the Parthenon in 1897, and It’s Still Stand­ing Today

Artist is Cre­at­ing a Parthenon Made of 100,000 Banned Books: A Mon­u­ment to Democ­ra­cy & Intel­lec­tu­al Free­dom

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Leo Tolstoy’s Family Recipe for Mac and Cheese

in Food & Drink, Literature | May 23rd, 2025

In 1874, Stepan Andree­vich Bers pub­lished The Cook­book and gave it as a gift to his sis­ter, count­ess Sophia Andreev­na Tol­staya, the wife of the great Russ­ian nov­el­ist, Leo Tol­stoy. The book con­tained a col­lec­tion of Tol­stoy fam­i­ly recipes, the dish­es they served to their fam­i­ly and friends, those for­tu­nate souls who belonged to the aris­to­crat­ic rul­ing class of late czarist Rus­sia. 150 years lat­er, this cook­book has been trans­lat­ed and repub­lished by Sergei Bel­tyukov.

Leo Tol­stoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe Book fea­tures dozens of recipes, every­thing from Tar­tar Sauce and Spiced Mush­rooms (what’s a Russ­ian kitchen with­out mush­rooms?), to Stuffed Dumplings and Green Beans à la Maître d’Hô­tel, to Cof­fee Cake and Vien­nese Pie. The text comes with a trans­la­tion, too, of Russ­ian weights and mea­sures used dur­ing the peri­od. One recipe Mr. Bel­tyukov pro­vid­ed to us (which I did­n’t see in the book) is for the Tol­stoys’ good ole Mac ‘N’ Cheese dish. It goes some­thing like this:

Bring water to a boil, add salt, then add mac­a­roni and leave boil­ing on light fire until half ten­der; drain water through a colan­der, add but­ter and start putting mac­a­roni back into the pot in lay­ers – lay­er of mac­a­roni, some grat­ed Parme­san and some veg­etable sauce, mac­a­roni again and so on until you run out of mac­a­roni. Put the pot on the edge of the stove, cov­er with a lid and let it rest in light fire until the mac­a­roni are soft and ten­der. Shake the pot occa­sion­al­ly to pre­vent them from burn­ing.

We’ll leave you with bon appétit! — an expres­sion almost cer­tain­ly heard in the homes of those French-speak­ing Russ­ian aris­to­crats.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Leo Tol­stoy Read From His Last Major Work in Four Lan­guages, 1909

Leo Tol­stoy Makes a List of the 50+ Books That Influ­enced Him Most (1891)

The Final Days of Leo Tol­stoy Cap­tured in Rare Footage from 1910

Thomas Edison’s Record­ings of Leo Tol­stoy: Hear the Voice of the Great Russ­ian Nov­el­ist

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The “Dark Relics” of Christianity: Preserved Skulls, Blood & Other Grim Artifacts

in History, Religion | May 22nd, 2025

Chris­tian­i­ty often man­i­fests in pop­u­lar cul­ture through cel­e­bra­tions like Christ­mas and East­er, or icons like lambs and fish. Less often do you see it asso­ci­at­ed with vials of blood and dis­em­bod­ied heads. Yet as the new Hochela­ga video above reveals, the most famed Chris­t­ian arti­facts do tend toward the grue­some. Take one par­tic­u­lar­ly renowned exam­ple, the Shroud of Turin: hear the name, and you imag­ine a cloth bear­ing the image of Jesus Christ. But think about it a moment, and you remem­ber that it’s the blood­stained wrap­ping of a cru­ci­fied body — that is, if the tales told about it are true in the first place.

As with any reli­gious relics, you have to decide for your­self what to believe about all of these. If you pay a vis­it to the Basil­i­ca of St. Antho­ny in Pad­ua, you’ll see on dis­play the pre­served jaw of that holy fig­ure — which does, at least, look like a real human jaw. In south­east­ern France, at the basil­i­ca of Saint-Max­imin-la-Sainte-Baume, you’ll find a skull pur­port­ed to be that of Mary Mag­da­lene.

And we cer­tain­ly can’t rule out that it real­ly is, spec­u­la­tive though the evi­dence may be. The sit­u­a­tion grows some­what more com­pli­cat­ed with the head of John the Bap­tist — or rather, the heads of John the Bap­tist, four of which have been claimed in dif­fer­ent places so far.

“Dur­ing the Mid­dle Ages, relics were in high demand, and there were always peo­ple will­ing to sup­ply them,” explains Hochela­ga cre­ator Tom­mie Trelawny. “It’s often joked that, if you gath­ered all the alleged frag­ments of the true cross, you’d have enough wood to build a small for­est.” Even the Shroud of Turin has come under unfor­giv­ing scruti­ny. Radio­car­bon dat­ing has placed it in the mid-four­teenth cen­tu­ry, imply­ing a forgery, but more recent X‑ray tests sug­gest that its linen was made in the first cen­tu­ry, between the years 55 and 74: close enough to what we under­stand as the time of Jesus’ bur­ial. Debates over the authen­tic­i­ty of all these arti­facts will con­tin­ue for cen­turies — and quite pos­si­bly mil­len­nia — to come, but their pow­er­ful embod­i­ment of both “the deeply dis­turb­ing and the haunt­ing­ly beau­ti­ful” won’t fade away any time soon.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Our Depic­tion of Jesus Changed Over 2,000 Years and What He May Have Actu­al­ly Looked Like

The British Muse­um is Full of Loot­ed Arti­facts

Europe’s Old­est Intact Book Was Pre­served and Found in the Cof­fin of a Saint

Did Psy­che­del­ic Mush­rooms Appear in Medieval Chris­t­ian Art?: A Video Essay

The Real Sto­ry of East­er: How We Got from the First East­er in the Bible to Bun­nies, Eggs & Choco­late

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd & Jethro Tull Financed the Making Monty Python and the Holy Grail

in Film, History | May 21st, 2025

Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail isn’t a big-bud­get spec­ta­cle, and nobody knew that bet­ter than the Pythons them­selves. Neces­si­ty being the moth­er of inven­tion, they turned the pro­jec­t’s finan­cial con­straints into one of its many sources of humor, fash­ion­ing mem­o­rable gags out of every­thing from coconut shells sub­sti­tut­ing for hors­es to the sud­den shut­down of film­ing that ends the “sto­ry.” But, as explained in the Canned His­to­ry video above, putting togeth­er even the mod­est sum with which they had to work was hard­ly a straight­for­ward endeav­or. Turned down by stu­dios, the Pythons sought out the only financiers like­ly to pos­sess both suf­fi­cient wealth and suf­fi­cient belief in an absur­dist TV com­e­dy troupe mak­ing their first prop­er film: rock stars.

This was the mid-nine­teen-sev­en­ties, recall, when a group with a few hit albums could find them­selves mak­ing, quite lit­er­al­ly, more mon­ey than they knew what to do with. Such was the case with Pink Floyd, for exam­ple, after releas­ing The Dark Side of the Moon in 1973.

Mon­ty Python, for their part, had put out not only three sea­sons of their BBC series Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus, but also a vari­ety of pur­chasable goods like books and LPs. The lat­ter made them the music-indus­try con­nec­tions that they could use to enlist the likes of not just the Floyd, but also Led Zep­pelin, Jethro Tull, as well as record labels like Island, Charis­ma, and Chrysalis. As Eric Idle tweet­ed much lat­er, Zep­pelin con­tributed £31,500, Pink Floy­d’s com­pa­ny £21,000, and Jethro Tul­l’s Ian Ander­son £6,300: £627,000 in more recent val­ue, or near­ly $850,000 in U.S. dol­lars.

Alto­geth­er, Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail’s bud­get came to £282,035 in 1974 pounds: by no means a king’s ran­som, but just enough to put togeth­er a com­ic take on Arthuri­an leg­end. No more con­ven­tion­al investors than the Pythons were con­ven­tion­al film­mak­ers, the rock stars and oth­er music-indus­try fig­ures involved made no vis­its to the set, nor offered any “notes” on the work in progress. One sus­pects that they were hap­py just to sup­port a Mon­ty Python project, and even more so to receive the tax break offered for films pro­duced in the U.K. In the event, of course, they all made their mon­ey back many times over, with a cut of the Broad­way musi­cal adap­ta­tion Spa­malot to boot. The film’s imme­di­ate and out­sized suc­cess can’t have been far from the mind of George Har­ri­son — that great ene­my of the tax­man — when Idle called him up a few years lat­er, ask­ing for the mon­ey to make Life of Bri­an.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream Online Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail Free on Its 50th Anniver­sary

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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60 Free Film Noir Movies You Can Watch Online, Including Classics by John Huston, Orson Welles & Fritz Lang

in Film | May 21st, 2025

Dur­ing the 1940s and 50s, Hol­ly­wood entered a “noir” peri­od, pro­duc­ing riv­et­ing films based on hard-boiled fic­tion. These films were set in dark loca­tions and shot in a black & white aes­thet­ic that fit like a glove. Hard­ened men wore fedo­ras and for­ev­er smoked cig­a­rettes. Women played the femme fatale role bril­liant­ly. Love was the surest way to death. All of these ele­ments fig­ured into what Roger Ebert calls “the most Amer­i­can film genre” in his short Guide to Film Noir.

If you head over to this list of Noir Films, you can find 60 films from the noir genre, includ­ing some clas­sics by John Hus­ton, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang and Ida Lupino. The list also fea­tures some cin­e­mat­ic leg­ends like Humphrey Bog­a­rt, Peter Lorre, Bar­bara Stan­wyck, Edward G. Robin­son, and even Frank Sina­tra. Hope the col­lec­tion helps you put some noir enter­tain­ment into 2025!

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The 5 Essen­tial Rules of Film Noir

The Essen­tial Ele­ments of Film Noir Explained in One Grand Info­graph­ic

Roger Ebert Lists the 10 Essen­tial Char­ac­ter­is­tics of Noir Films

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How the First Rock Concert Ended in Mayhem (Cleveland, 1952)

in History, Music | May 20th, 2025

“Amer­i­ca has only three cities: New York, San Fran­cis­co, and New Orleans. Every­where else is Cleve­land.” That obser­va­tion tends to be attrib­uted to Ten­nessee Williams, though it’s become some­what detached from its source, so deeply does it res­onate with a cer­tain expe­ri­ence of life in the Unit­ed States. But con­sid­er this: can every Amer­i­can city claim to be where rock and roll began — or at least the site of the very first rock and roll con­cert? Cleve­land can, thanks to Alan Freed, a famous radio announc­er of the nine­teen-for­ties and fifties. The Moon­dog Coro­na­tion Ball he orga­nized in 1952 may have end­ed in dis­as­ter, but it began a pop-cul­tur­al era that arguably con­tin­ues to this day.

Hav­ing attained pop­u­lar­i­ty announc­ing in a vari­ety of radio for­mats, includ­ing jazz and clas­si­cal music, Freed was awak­ened to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of what was then known as rhythm and blues by a local record-store own­er, Leo Mintz. It was with Mintz’s spon­sor­ship that Freed launched a pro­gram on Cleve­land’s WJW-AM, for which he cul­ti­vat­ed a hep­cat per­sona called “Moon­dog.” (Some cred­it the name to an album by Rob­by Vee and The Vees, and oth­ers to the avant-garde street musi­cian Moon­dog and his epony­mous “sym­pho­ny.”) Start­ing at mid­night, the show broad­cast hours of so-called “race music” to not just its already-enthu­si­as­tic fan base, but also the young white lis­ten­ers increas­ing­ly intrigued by its cap­ti­vat­ing, propul­sive sounds.

Freed soon com­mand­ed enough of an audi­ence to describe him­self as “King of the Moon­dog­gers.” When he announced the upcom­ing Moon­dog Coro­na­tion Ball, a show at Cleve­land’s hock­ey are­na fea­tur­ing sets from such pop­u­lar acts as Paul Williams and the Huck­le­buck­ers, Tiny Grimes and the Rock­ing High­landers (an all-black group whose sig­na­ture kilts would sure­ly stir up “cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion” dis­course today), Varet­ta Dil­lard, and Dan­ny Cobb, the Moon­dog­gers turned out. About 20,000 of them turned out, in fact, twice what the venue could han­dle. A tick­et mis­print was to blame, but the dam­age had been done — or rather, it would be done, when the well-dressed but over-excit­ed crowd stormed the are­na and the author­i­ties were called in to shut the show down by force.

In the event, only the first two acts ever took the stage. The planned coro­na­tion of the two most pop­u­lar teenagers in atten­dance (a holdover from anoth­er cul­tur­al dimen­sion entire­ly) nev­er hap­pened. But the spir­it of rebel­lious­ness wit­nessed at this first-ever rock con­cert was like a genie that could­n’t be put back in its bot­tle. How­ev­er square his image, Freed, who pop­u­lar­ized the term “rock and roll” as applied to music, was nev­er much of a rule-fol­low­er in his pro­fes­sion­al life. His lat­er impli­ca­tion in the pay­ola bribe scan­dals of the late fifties sent his career into a tail­spin, and his ear­ly death fol­lowed a few years lat­er. But to judge by re-tellings like the one in the Drunk His­to­ry video just above, he remains the hero of the sto­ry of the Moon­dog Coro­na­tion Ball — and thus a hero of rock and roll his­to­ry.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Live Music Archive Lets You Stream/Download More Than 250,000 Con­cert Recordings–for Free

Inti­mate Live Per­for­mances of Radio­head, Son­ic Youth, the White Stripes, PJ Har­vey & More: No Host, No Audi­ence, Just Pure Live Music

How the Grate­ful Dead’s “Wall of Sound” — a Mon­ster, 600-Speak­er Sound Sys­tem — Changed Rock Con­certs & Live Music For­ev­er

The Ori­gin of the Rooftop Con­cert: Before the Bea­t­les Came Jef­fer­son Air­plane, and Before Them, Brazil­ian Singer Rober­to Car­los (1967)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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1980s Metalhead Kids Are Alright: Scientific Study Shows That They Became Well-Adjusted Adults

in Music, Psychology | May 20th, 2025

In the 1980s, The Par­ents Music Resource Cen­ter (PMRC), an orga­ni­za­tion co-found­ed by Tip­per Gore and the wives of sev­er­al oth­er Wash­ing­ton pow­er bro­kers, launched a polit­i­cal cam­paign against pop music, hop­ing to put warn­ing labels on records that pro­mot­ed Sex, Vio­lence, Drug and Alco­hol Use. Along the way, the PMRC issued “the Filthy Fif­teen,” a list of 15 par­tic­u­lar­ly objec­tion­able songs. Hits by Madon­na, Prince and Cyn­di Lau­per made the list. But the list real­ly took aim at heavy met­al bands from the 80s — name­ly, Judas Priest, Möt­ley Crüe, Twist­ed Sis­ter, W.A.S.P., Def Lep­pard, Black Sab­bath, and Ven­om. (Inter­est­ing foot­note: the Sovi­ets sep­a­rate­ly cre­at­ed a list of black­balled rock bands, and it looked pret­ty much the same.)

Above, you can watch Twist­ed Sis­ter’s Dee Snider appear before Con­gress in 1985 and accuse the PMRC of mis­in­ter­pret­ing his band’s lyrics and wag­ing a false war against met­al music. The evi­dence 40 years lat­er sug­gests that Snider per­haps had a point.

A study by psy­chol­o­gy researchers at Hum­boldt State, Ohio State, UC River­side and UT Austin “exam­ined 1980s heavy met­al groupies, musi­cians, and fans at mid­dle age” — 377 par­tic­i­pants in total — and found that, although met­al enthu­si­asts cer­tain­ly lived riski­er lives as kids, they were nonethe­less “sig­nif­i­cant­ly hap­pi­er in their youth and bet­ter adjust­ed cur­rent­ly than either mid­dle-aged or cur­rent col­lege-age youth com­par­i­son groups.” This left the researchers to con­tem­plate one pos­si­ble con­clu­sion: “par­tic­i­pa­tion in fringe style cul­tures may enhance iden­ti­ty devel­op­ment in trou­bled youth.” Not to men­tion that heavy met­al lyrics don’t eas­i­ly turn kids into dam­aged goods.

You can read the report, Three Decades Lat­er: The Life Expe­ri­ences and Mid-Life Func­tion­ing of 1980s Heavy Met­al Groupies here. And, right above, lis­ten to an inter­view with one of the researchers, Tasha Howe, a for­mer head­banger her­self, who spoke yes­ter­day with Michael Kras­ny on KQED radio in San Fran­cis­co.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in July 2015.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dev­il­ish His­to­ry of the 1980s Parental Advi­so­ry Stick­er: When Heavy Met­al & Satan­ic Lyrics Col­lid­ed with the Reli­gious Right

Sovi­et Union Cre­ates a List of 38 Dan­ger­ous Rock Bands: Kiss, Pink Floyd, Talk­ing Heads, Vil­lage Peo­ple & More (1985)

Watch Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot, the Cult Clas­sic Film That Ranks as One of the “Great Rock Doc­u­men­taries” of All Time

A Blue­grass Ver­sion of Metallica’s Heavy Met­al Hit, “Enter Sand­man”

The Hu, a New Break­through Band from Mon­go­lia, Plays Heavy Met­al with Tra­di­tion­al Folk Instru­ments and Throat Singing

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Watch Pablo Picasso’s Creative Process Unfold in Real-Time: Rare Footage Shows Him Creating Drawings of Faces, Bulls & Chickens

in Art, Film | May 19th, 2025

Pablo Picas­so was born not long before the inven­tion of the motion pic­ture. With a dif­fer­ent set of incli­na­tions, he might have become one of the most dar­ing pio­neers of that medi­um. Instead, as we know, he mas­tered and then prac­ti­cal­ly rein­vent­ed the much old­er art form of paint­ing. That said, cin­e­ma did seem to have been fas­ci­nat­ed by both Picas­so’s work and the man him­self. He made a cameo appear­ance in Jean Cocteau’s Tes­ta­ment of Orpheus in 1960, a few years after play­ing the title role in Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot’s doc­u­men­tary Le Mys­tère Picas­so. The short clip from the lat­ter above shows how Picas­so could cre­ate an expres­sive face with just a few strokes of a pen.

By the time he made Le Mys­tère Picas­so, Clouzot was already well estab­lished as a direc­tor of ele­vat­ed genre films, hav­ing just made Le salaire de la peur or (The Wages of Fear) and Les dia­boliques (or Dia­bolique), which would turn out to be one of his defin­ing works.

To film­go­ers fol­low­ing his career, it may have come as a sur­prise to see him fol­low those up with a doc­u­men­tary about a painter: a genius, yes, but one whose work had already seemed famil­iar. But Clouzot took as his task not telling the sto­ry of Les Demoi­selles d’Av­i­gnon or Three Musi­cians or Guer­ni­ca, but cap­tur­ing Picas­so (whom he’d known since his teenage years) in the act of cre­at­ing new works of art — works nev­er to be seen except on film.

That was the idea, in any case; though most of the 20 paint­ings and draw­ings cre­at­ed just for Le Mys­tère Picas­so were destroyed, some weren’t. One such sur­vivor, a chick­en-turned-dev­il­ish-vis­age that emerges in one of the film’s more tense sequences (an inter­sec­tion of Clouzot and Picas­so’s artis­tic instincts), was actu­al­ly restored a few years ago for inclu­sion in the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Arts’ exhi­bi­tion Picas­so and Paper. He could also work on glass, as evi­denced by the clip just above from Vis­it to Picas­so, a 1949 doc­u­men­tary short by the Bel­gian film­mak­er Paul Hae­saerts. In it he paints — in less than 30 sec­onds, with the cam­era run­ning just on the oth­er side of the pane — an evoca­tive image of a bull, demon­strat­ing that, no mat­ter how ful­ly he was embraced by the Fran­coph­o­ne world, a Spaniard he remained.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thou­sands of Pablo Picasso’s Works Now Avail­able in a New Dig­i­tal Archive

What Makes Picasso’s Guer­ni­ca a Great Paint­ing?: Explore the Anti-Fas­cist Mur­al That Became a World­wide Anti-War Sym­bol

Pablo Picasso’s Mas­ter­ful Child­hood Paint­ings: Pre­co­cious Works Paint­ed Between the Ages of 8 and 15

14 Self-Por­traits by Pablo Picas­so Show the Evo­lu­tion of His Style: See Self-Por­traits Mov­ing from Ages 15 to 90

Pablo Picas­so Pos­es as Pop­eye (1957)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Steven Soderbergh Directs a Scene & Makes It Great

in Film | May 19th, 2025

Steven Soder­bergh was one of the ear­li­est film­mak­ers to break out in what’s now called the “Indiewood” move­ment of the nine­teen-nineties. He was ear­ly enough, in fact, to have done so in the eight­ies, with the Palme d’Or-win­ning Sex, Lies, and Video­tape. His sub­se­quent films have been many and var­ied, even more so than those of his Indiewood peers Spike Lee, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Taran­ti­no. Some, like Schizopo­lis, Bub­ble, The Girl­friend Expe­ri­ence, and Let Them All Talk, have been more “indie”; oth­ers, like, Out of Sight, Erin Brock­ovich, and the Ocean’s and Mag­ic Mike series, have been more “Hol­ly­wood.” But wher­ev­er on the one-for-them-and-one-for-me spec­trum he’s worked, nev­er has he com­pro­mised on his craft.

To illu­mi­nate this ded­i­ca­tion, Evan Puschak, known on YouTube as the Nerd­writer, breaks down a scene from Soder­bergh’s lat­est pic­ture in the video above. Black Bag, which came out this past March, is a mid-bud­get thriller, a form that has proven fruit­ful for the direc­tor in recent decades.

It’s proven cre­ative­ly fruit­ful, at any rate, if not always finan­cial­ly; already, Soder­bergh him­self has pub­licly expressed his dis­ap­point­ment with the movie’s box-office per­for­mance. But if audi­ences have over­looked Black Bag, they haven’t done so due to its shod­dy work. In even one minor, tran­si­tion­al scene under two min­utes long, Puschak explains, we can iden­ti­fy numer­ous direc­to­r­i­al choic­es that make every­thing work effec­tive­ly.

Exam­in­ing each of the scene’s eleven shots (a bless­ed­ly patient edit­ing rhythm, by today’s stan­dards), Puschak points out Soder­bergh’s cuts, fram­ings, cam­era place­ments, move­ments, and focal lengths, explain­ing the rel­e­vance of each to the sto­ry play­ing out. This isn’t just a fan­boy’s auteurism: Soder­bergh always oper­ates his own cam­era and edits his own footage, cred­it­ing the jobs to pseu­do­nyms. That this prac­tice leaves his movies with a deep autho­r­i­al stamp, what­ev­er their sub­ject mat­ter or tar­get audi­ence, is obvi­ous; what’s less clear is how he’s man­aged to keep it up while mak­ing a fea­ture every year, on aver­age, since Sex, Lies, and Video­tape. If, after all this, you’re some­how not sold on watch­ing Black Bag, just wait for Soder­bergh’s next movie — which that most “effi­cient and cre­ative cin­e­mat­ic prob­lem solver” already fin­ished shoot­ing three months ago.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steven Soder­bergh Cre­ates Silent, Black & White Recut of Raiders of the Lost Ark to Explain the Art of “Stag­ing”

Why the Tav­ern Scene in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds Is a Mas­ter Class in Film­mak­ing

Two Ways To Shoot The Same Scene: A Com­par­i­son of The Shop Around the Cor­ner (1940) and You’ve Got Mail (1998) Shows How Film­mak­ing Changed Over the Decades

The Scene That Reveals the Beau­ty of Clas­sic Hol­ly­wood Cin­e­ma

Anato­my of a Scene: 100+ Film­mak­ers Like Wes Ander­son, Tim Bur­ton & Rid­ley Scott Break Down a Scene from Each of Their Films

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The World Record for the Shortest Math Article: 2 Words

in Math | May 16th, 2025

In 2004, John Con­way and Alexan­der Soifer, both work­ing on math­e­mat­ics at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, sub­mit­ted to the Amer­i­can Math­e­mat­i­cal Month­ly what they believed was “a new world record in the num­ber of words in a [math] paper.”

Soifer explains: “On April 28, 2004 … I sub­mit­ted our paper that includ­ed just two words, ‘n2 + 2 can’ and our two draw­ings. [See one of them above.]” The sto­ry then con­tin­ues: “The Amer­i­can Math­e­mat­i­cal Month­ly was sur­prised, and did not know what to do about our new world record of a 2‑word arti­cle. Two days lat­er, on April 30, 2004, the Edi­to­r­i­al Assis­tant Mrs. Mar­garet Combs acknowl­edged the receipt of the paper”:

The Month­ly pub­lish­es expo­si­tion of math­e­mat­ics at many lev­els, and it con­tains arti­cles both long and short. Your arti­cle, how­ev­er, is a bit too short to be a good Month­ly arti­cle… A line or two of expla­na­tion would real­ly help.

Soifer writ­ers: “The same day at the cof­fee hour I asked John [Con­way], ‘What do you think?’ His answer was con­cise, ‘Do not give up too eas­i­ly.’ Accord­ing­ly, I replied [to] The Month­ly the same day”:

I respect­ful­ly dis­agree that a short paper in general—and this paper in particular—merely due to its size must be “a bit too short to be a good Month­ly arti­cle.” Is there a con­nec­tion between quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty?… We have posed a fine (in our opin­ion) open prob­lem and report­ed two dis­tinct “behold-style” proofs of our advance on this prob­lem. What else is there to explain?

Soifer adds: “The Month­ly, appar­ent­ly felt out­gunned, for on May 4, 2004, the reply came from The Month­ly’s top gun, Edi­tor-in-Chief Bruce Pal­ka”:

The Month­ly pub­lish­es two types of papers: “arti­cles,” which are sub­stan­tive expos­i­to­ry papers rang­ing in length from about six to twen­ty-five pages, and “notes,” which are short­er, fre­quent­ly some­what more tech­ni­cal pieces (typ­i­cal­ly in the one-to-five page range). I can send your paper to the notes edi­tor if you wish, but I expect that he’ll not be inter­est­ed in it either because of its length and lack of any sub­stan­tial accom­pa­ny­ing text. The stan­dard way in which we use such short papers these days is as “boxed filler” on pages that would oth­er­wise con­tain a lot of the blank space that pub­lish­ers abhor. If you’d allow us to use your paper in that way, I’d be hap­py to pub­lish it.

Soifer con­cludes: “John Con­way and I accept­ed the ‘filler’, and in the Jan­u­ary 2005 issue our paper was pub­lished.” Vic­to­ry!

Get more of the back­sto­ry here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Short­est-Known Paper Pub­lished in a Seri­ous Math Jour­nal: Two Suc­cinct Sen­tences

John Nash’s Super Short PhD The­sis: 26 Pages & Two Cita­tions

The Map of Math­e­mat­ics: Ani­ma­tion Shows How All the Dif­fer­ent Fields in Math Fit Togeth­er

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The PhD Theses of Richard Feynman, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein & Others, Explained with Illustrations

in Science | May 15th, 2025

Raise your chil­dren with a love of sci­ence, and there’s a decent chance they’ll grow up want­i­ng to be like Richard Feyn­man, Marie Curie, Albert Ein­stein, or any num­ber of oth­er famous sci­en­tists from his­to­ry. Luck­i­ly for them, they won’t yet have learned that the pur­suit of such a career will almost cer­tain­ly entail grind­ing out a PhD the­sis. But it’s also lucky for you that they con­se­quent­ly won’t ask you to explain the sub­jects of their idols’ the­ses. Maybe you tell them about quan­tum elec­tro­dy­nam­ics, radi­a­tion, and even the the­o­ry of rel­a­tiv­i­ty, but what can you recall of “The Prin­ci­ple of Least Action in Quan­tum Mechan­ics,” “Research on Radioac­tive Sub­stances,” or “Eine neue Bes­tim­mung der Moleküldimen­sio­nen”?

Per­haps “recall” isn’t quite the word. But if you want to get a han­dle on these papers, which con­sti­tute impor­tant parts of the foun­da­tion of the research that would ulti­mate­ly make their authors famous, you could do much worse than begin­ning with the expla­na­tions of sci­ence YouTu­ber Toby Hendy. In recent years, while build­ing up an ever-larg­er audi­ence with her chan­nel Tibees, she’s occa­sion­al­ly reached into the archives and pulled out a notable sci­en­tist’s PhD the­sis.

We’ve assem­bled all of her videos in that series into the playlist above, which also includes Hendy expla­na­tions of the­ses writ­ten by fig­ures not pri­mar­i­ly known to the pub­lic for their research: Carl Sagan and Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Bri­an Cox (the physi­cist, not the Suc­ces­sion star), whose media work has inspired gen­er­a­tions of fans to go into sci­ence.

Though a young woman, Hendy has mas­tered old-school teach­ing tech­niques, such as draw­ing on a trans­paren­cy placed on an over­head pro­jec­tor, that may trig­ger Prous­t­ian mem­o­ries of sci­ence class, at least in those of us of a cer­tain age. With her calm­ness and clar­i­ty (not to men­tion her will­ing­ness to admit when she her­self strug­gles with the mate­r­i­al) she’d sure­ly have ranked among any of our favorite teach­ers, and if you intro­duce her chan­nel to your kids, she’ll prob­a­bly become one of theirs. Whether they go on to earn a sci­ence PhD is, of course, down to their own incli­na­tion and efforts. Like so many young peo­ple these days, they may ulti­mate­ly come away with a stronger desire to become a YouTu­ber — which, after all, is what Hendy quit her own PhD to do.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Marie Curie’s Ph.D. The­sis on Radioac­tiv­i­ty — Which Made Her the First Woman in France to Receive a Doc­tor­al Degree in Physics

John Nash’s Super Short PhD The­sis: 26 Pages & Two Cita­tions

Queen Gui­tarist Bri­an May Is Also an Astro­physi­cist: Read His PhD The­sis Online

Stephen Hawking’s Ph.D. The­sis, “Prop­er­ties of Expand­ing Uni­vers­es,” Now Free to Read/Download Online

Albert Einstein’s Grades: A Fas­ci­nat­ing Look at His Report Cards

This Is What an 1869 MIT Entrance Exam Looks Like: Could You Have Passed the Test?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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