What Pompeii Looked Like Hours Before Its Destruction: A Reconstruction

in History | December 22nd, 2025

How­ev­er cel­e­brat­ed by his­to­ri­ans, scru­ti­nized by archae­ol­o­gists, and descend­ed-upon by tourists it may be, Pom­peii is not excep­tion­al — not even in the fate of hav­ing been buried in ash by Mount Vesu­vius in the year 76, which also hap­pened to the near­by town of Her­cu­la­neum. Rather, it is the sheer ordi­nar­i­ness of that medi­um-sized provin­cial Roman city that we most val­ue today, inad­ver­tent­ly pre­served as it was by that vol­canic dis­as­ter. The new Lost in Time video above recon­structs Pom­peii as it must have looked at the very end of its days, tak­ing a look at every­thing from its homes to its aque­ducts, its forum to its basil­i­ca, and its wine and per­fume pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties to its glad­i­a­to­r­i­al are­na.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the Amphithe­atre of Pom­peii is much small­er than the Colos­se­um. But it was actu­al­ly built 140 years ear­li­er, at a time when local lead­ers across the empire were already start­ing to feel that any self-respect­ing Roman town ought to have its own venue for spec­ta­cles involv­ing one-on-one com­bat, feats of ath­leti­cism, exot­ic ani­mals, and even pub­lic exe­cu­tions.

The same ulti­mate­ly went for all the types of facil­i­ties unearthed in the entombed city’s pub­lic spaces and pri­vate homes alike, includ­ing baths, snack bars, and din­ing rooms. To that extent, Pom­peii had it all, even if life there lacked the poten­tial for advance­ment and intrigue offered only by the Eter­nal City.

As the video gives its tour of a still-thriv­ing Pom­peii, it counts down to the erup­tion of Vesu­vius, which last­ed about two days. “Why did­n’t peo­ple leave the city?” asks the nar­ra­tor. “His­to­ri­ans claim that about 2,000 peo­ple lost their lives in Pom­peii that day, mean­ing about 10,000 man­aged to escape.” It is to the writ­ings of one such escapee, Pliny the Younger, that we owe much of what we know about the expe­ri­ence of the cat­a­stro­phe itself — and to cen­turies of exam­i­na­tion since its redis­cov­ery as an archae­o­log­i­cal site that we have the kind of knowl­edge about the place that goes into a recon­struc­tion like this one. Those efforts have fed our under­stand­ing of life in the ancient world as a whole, for in its after­life, Pom­peii has become not just a medi­um-sized provin­cial Roman city, but the medi­um-sized provin­cial Roman city.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

Take a High Def, Guid­ed Tour of Pom­peii

Behold 3D Recre­ations of Pompeii’s Lav­ish Homes–As They Exist­ed Before the Erup­tion of Mount Vesu­vius

The Last Morn­ing in Pom­peii & The Night Pom­peii Died: A New Video Series Explores the End of the Doomed Roman City

The Only Writ­ten Eye-Wit­ness Account of Pompeii’s Destruc­tion: Hear Pliny the Younger’s Let­ters on the Mount Vesu­vius Erup­tion

The Only Writ­ten Eye-Wit­ness Account of Pompeii’s Destruc­tion: Hear Pliny the Younger’s Let­ters on the Mount Vesu­vius Erup­tion

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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Langston Hughes’ Homemade Christmas Cards From 1950

in Life, Literature, Poetry | December 22nd, 2025

Who doesn’t trea­sure a hand­made present?

As the years go by, we may begin to offload the ill-fit­ting sweaters, the nev­er lit sand cast can­dles, and the Sty­ro­foam ball snow­men. But a present made of words takes up very lit­tle space, and it has the Ghost of Christ­mas Past’s pow­er to instant­ly evoke the sender as they once were.

Sev­en­ty years ago, poet Langston Hugh­es, too skint to go Christ­mas shop­ping, sent every­one on his gift list sim­ple, home­made hol­i­day post­cards. Typed on white card­stock, each signed card was embell­ished with red and green pen­cils and mailed for the price of a 3¢ stamp.

As biog­ra­ph­er Arnold Ram­per­sad notes:

The last weeks of 1950 found him nev­er­the­less in a melan­choly mood, his spir­its sink­ing low­er again as he again became a tar­get of red-bait­ing.

The year start­ed aus­pi­cious­ly with The New York Times prais­ing his libret­to for The Bar­ri­er, an opera based on his play, Mulat­to: A Tragedy of the Deep South. But the opera was a com­mer­cial flop, and pos­i­tive reviews for his book Sim­ple Speaks His Mind failed to trans­late into the hoped-for sales.

Although he had recent­ly pur­chased an East Harlem brown­stone with an old­er cou­ple who dot­ed on him as they would a son, pro­vid­ing him with a sun­ny, top floor work­space, 1950 was far from his favorite year.

His type­writ­ten hol­i­day cou­plets took things out on a jaun­ty note, while pay­ing light lip ser­vice to his plight.

Maybe we can aspire to the same…

Hugh­es’ hand­made hol­i­day cards reside in the Langston Hugh­es Papers in Yale’s Bei­necke Rare Book and Man­u­script Library, along with hol­i­day cards spe­cif­ic to the African-Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence received from friends and asso­ciates.

via the Bei­necke Rare Book and Man­u­script Library at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Langston Hugh­es Reads Langston Hugh­es

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

Hear Neil Gaiman Read A Christ­mas Car­ol Just as Dick­ens Read It

How Joni Mitchell’s Song of Heart­break, “Riv­er,” Became a Christ­mas Clas­sic

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er in NYC.

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Hunter S. Thompson Sets His Christmas Tree on Fire, Nearly Burning His House Down (1990)

in Literature, Random | December 19th, 2025

It was some­thing of a Christ­mas rit­u­al at Hunter S. Thomp­son’s Col­orado cab­in, Owl Farm. Every year, his sec­re­tary Deb­o­rah Fuller would take down the Christ­mas tree and leave it on the front porch rather than dis­pose of it entire­ly. That’s because Hunter, more often than not, want­ed to set it on fire. In 1990, Sam Allis, a writer for the then for­mi­da­ble TIME mag­a­zine, vis­it­ed Thomp­son’s home and watched the fiery tra­di­tion unfold. He wrote:

I gave up on the inter­view and start­ed wor­ry­ing about my life when Hunter Thomp­son squirt­ed two cans of fire starter on the Christ­mas tree he was going to burn in his liv­ing-room fire­place, a few feet away from an unopened wood­en crate of 9‑mm bul­lets. That the tree was far too large to fit into the fire­place mat­tered not a whit to Hunter, who was sport­ing a dime-store wig at the time and resem­bled Tony Perkins in Psy­cho. Min­utes ear­li­er, he had smashed a Polaroid cam­era on the floor.

Hunter had decid­ed to video­tape the Christ­mas tree burn­ing, and we lat­er heard on the replay the ter­ri­fied voic­es of Deb­o­rah Fuller, his long­time sec­re­tary-baby sit­ter, and me off-cam­era plead­ing with him, “NO, HUNTER, NO! PLEASE, HUNTER, DON’T DO IT!” The orig­i­nal man­u­script of Hell’s Angels was on the table, and there were the bul­lets. Noth­ing doing. Thomp­son was a man pos­sessed by now, full of the Chivas Regal he had been slurp­ing straight from the bot­tle and the gin he had been mix­ing with pink lemon­ade for hours.

The wood­en man­tel above the fire­place appar­ent­ly still has burn marks on it today.

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

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

Free: Read the Orig­i­nal 23,000-Word Essay That Became Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Future, Telling Studs Terkel About the Com­ing Revenge of the Eco­nom­i­cal­ly & Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly “Obso­lete” (1967)

Hunter S. Thomp­son, Exis­ten­tial­ist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Find­ing Mean­ing in Life

Hunter S. Thompson’s Ball­sy & Hilar­i­ous Job Appli­ca­tion Let­ter (1958)

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A Visual Timeline of World History: Watch the Rise & Fall of Civilizations Over 5,000 Years

in Design, History | December 18th, 2025

In the video above, Use­fulCharts cre­ator Matt Bak­er sug­gests that we not refer to the peri­od span­ning the fifth and the late fif­teenth cen­turies as the “dark ages.” In jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, he does­n’t put forth the argu­ment, now fair­ly com­mon, that the time in ques­tion was actu­al­ly full of sub­tle inno­va­tion occlud­ed by mod­ern prej­u­dice. The real prob­lem, as he sees it, is that the slow­ing, if not revers­ing, of the progress of human soci­ety that we’ve tra­di­tion­al­ly regard­ed as occur­ring in what are com­mon­ly known as the Mid­dle Ages only occurred in Europe. What’s more, there have been mul­ti­ple such eras in the world: take the ear­li­er “Greek dark ages” asso­ci­at­ed with the Bronze Age civ­i­liza­tion­al col­lapse of 1177 BC.

All this and more comes across at a glance on Bak­er’s Time­line of World His­to­ry, whose design is explained in the video. With char­ac­ter­is­tic Use­fulCharts clar­i­ty (also demon­strat­ed by the World Reli­gions Fam­i­ly Tree and the Evo­lu­tion of the Alpha­bet, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture), it lays out all the peri­ods of his­to­ry we may know bet­ter by their names than by their rela­tion­ship to actu­al events.

At the top, it begins with the end of pre­his­to­ry and the start of his­to­ry: that is, when writ­ing devel­oped around 5,300 years ago. At that point, mul­ti­ple civ­i­liza­tions had already begun to estab­lish them­selves around the world, and it is their growth and decline rep­re­sent­ed by the thick­ness of the lines run­ning down the time­line’s reg­u­lar cen­tu­ry-long divi­sions.

As the ear­ly Bronze Age gives way to the Bronze Age, the Bronze Age gives way to the Iron Age, and the Iron Age gives way to Clas­si­cal Antiq­ui­ty, these lines of civ­i­liza­tion thick­en into those of empire. None come thick­er than that of ancient Rome, which occu­pies the visu­al cen­ter of the poster (itself, inci­den­tal­ly, avail­able for pur­chase from Use­fulCharts’ site), but the design’s strength lies less in under­scor­ing the impor­tance of any one empire than of reveal­ing how much his­to­ry was going on all over the world at any giv­en time. Using its ver­ti­cal lines to trace the rise and fall of the Olmecs, say, or the Aksum­ite Empire or the Mis­sis­sip­pi­an Cul­ture, one can hard­ly sup­press a feel­ing of Ozy­man­di­an tran­sience. Nor, for that mat­ter, can one ignore that all of us live out our lives with­in the span of two of its hor­i­zon­tal ones.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Inter­ac­tive Time­line Cov­er­ing 14 Bil­lion Years of His­to­ry: From The Big Bang to 2015

The His­to­ry of Civ­i­liza­tion Mapped in 13 Min­utes: 5000 BC to 2014 AD

World Reli­gions Explained with Use­ful Charts: Hin­duism, Bud­dhism, Judaism, Islam, Chris­tian­i­ty & More

The His­to­ry of the Earth (All 4.5 Bil­lion Years) in 1 Hour: A Mil­lion Years Cov­ered Every Sec­ond

6,000 Years of His­to­ry Visu­al­ized in a 23-Foot-Long Time­line of World His­to­ry, Cre­at­ed in 1871

The Writ­ing Sys­tems of the World Explained, from the Latin Alpha­bet to the Abugi­das of India

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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Hear Debussy Play Debussy: A Vintage Recording from 1913

in History, Music, Photography | December 18th, 2025

A cen­tu­ry ago, the great French com­pos­er Claude Debussy sat down at a con­trap­tion called a Welte-Mignon repro­duc­ing piano and record­ed a series of per­for­mances for pos­ter­i­ty. The machine was designed to encode the nuances of a pianist’s play­ing, includ­ing ped­al­ing and dynam­ics, onto piano rolls for lat­er repro­duc­tion.

Debussy record­ed 14 pieces onto six rolls in Paris on or before Novem­ber 1, 1913. Accord­ing to Debussy enthu­si­ast Steve Bryson’s web site, the com­pos­er was delight­ed with the repro­duc­tion qual­i­ty, say­ing in a let­ter to Edwin Welte: “It is impos­si­ble to attain a greater per­fec­tion of repro­duc­tion than that of the Welte appa­ra­tus. I am hap­py to assure you in these lines of my aston­ish­ment and admi­ra­tion of what I heard. I am, Dear Sir, Yours Faith­ful­ly, Claude Debussy.”

The selec­tion above is “La soirée dans Grenade” (“Grena­da in the evening”), from Debussy’s 1903 trio of com­po­si­tions titled Estam­pes, or “Prints.” Debussy was inspired by the Sym­bol­ist poets and Impres­sion­ist painters who strove to go beyond the sur­face of a sub­ject to evoke the feel­ing it gave off. “La soirée dans Grenade” is described by Chris­tine Steven­son at Notes From a Pianist as a “sound pic­ture” of Moor­ish Spain:

Debussy’s first-hand expe­ri­ence of Spain was neg­li­gi­ble at that time, but he imme­di­ate­ly con­jures up the coun­try by using the per­sua­sive Haben­era dance rhythm to open the piece–softly and sub­tly. It insin­u­ates itself into our con­scious­ness with its qui­et insis­tence on a repeat­ed C sharp in dif­fer­ent reg­is­ters; around it cir­cles a lan­guid, Moor­ish arabesque, with nasal aug­ment­ed 2nds, and a nag­ging semi­tone pulling against the tonal cen­tre, occa­sion­al­ly inter­rupt­ed by mut­ter­ing semi­qua­vers [16th notes] and a whole-tone based pas­sage. Debussy writes Com­mencer lente­ment dans un rythme non­cha­la­m­ment gra­cieux [Begin slow­ly in a casu­al­ly grace­ful rhythm] at the begin­ning, but lat­er Tres ryth­mé [Very rhyth­mic] in a bright­ly lit A major as the dance comes out of the shad­ows, ff [Fortissimo–loudly], with the click of cas­tanets and the stamp­ing of feet.

Debussy was 52 years old and suf­fer­ing from can­cer when he made his piano roll record­ings. He died less than five years lat­er, on March 25, 1918. Since then, his beau­ti­ful and evoca­tive music has secured a place for him as one of the most influ­en­tial and pop­u­lar com­posers of the 20th cen­tu­ry. As Roger Hecht writes at Clas­si­cal Net, “Debussy was a dream­er whose music dreamed with him.”

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!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear The Rite of Spring Con­duct­ed by Igor Stravin­sky Him­self: A Vin­tage Record­ing from 1929

Hear a 1930 Record­ing of Bolero, Con­duct­ed by Rav­el Him­self

Rare 1946 Film: The Great Russ­ian Com­pos­er Sergei Prokofiev Plays Piano, Dis­cuss­es His Music

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The Evil Genius of Fascist Design: How Mussolini and Hitler Used Art & Architecture to Project Power

in Architecture, History, Politics | December 17th, 2025

When the Nazis came to pow­er in 1933, they declared the begin­ning of a “Thou­sand-Year Reich” that ulti­mate­ly came up about 988 years short. Fas­cism in Italy man­aged to hold on to pow­er for a cou­ple of decades, which was pre­sum­ably still much less time than Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni imag­ined he’d get on the throne. His­to­ry shows us that regimes of this kind suf­fered a fair­ly severe sta­bil­i­ty prob­lem, which is per­haps why they need­ed to put forth such a sol­id, for­mi­da­ble image. The IMPERIAL video above explores “the evil genius of fas­cist design,” focus­ing on how Hitler and Mus­soli­ni ren­dered their ide­olo­gies in art and the built envi­ron­ment, but many of its obser­va­tions can be gen­er­al­ized to any polit­i­cal move­ment that seeks total con­trol of a soci­ety, espe­cial­ly if that soci­ety has a suf­fi­cient­ly glo­ri­ous-seem­ing past.

Fas­cis­m’s visu­al lan­guage has many inspi­ra­tions, two of the most impor­tant cit­ed in the video being  Roman­ti­cism and Futur­ism. The for­mer offered “a long­ing for the past, an obses­sion with nature, and a focus on the sub­lime”; the lat­ter “wor­shiped speed, machines, and vio­lence.” Despite their appar­ent con­tra­dic­tion, these dual cur­rents allowed fas­cism “a pecu­liar abil­i­ty to look both back­ward and for­ward, to sum­mon the glo­ry of past empires while promis­ing a rad­i­cal new future.”

In Italy, such an empire may have been dis­tant in time, but it was nev­er­the­less close at hand. “We dream of a Roman Italy that is wise and strong, dis­ci­plined and Impe­r­i­al.” Even Hitler drew from the glo­ries of ancient Rome and Greece to shape his own aspi­ra­tional vision of an all-pow­er­ful Ger­man civ­i­liza­tion.

Hence both of those dic­ta­tors under­tak­ing large-scale Neo­clas­si­cal-style archi­tec­tur­al projects “to bring the aes­thet­ics of ancient Rome to their city streets,” includ­ing even mus­cu­lar stat­ues meant to embody the offi­cial­ly sanc­tioned human ide­al. Of course, the builders of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca had also looked to Roman forms, but they did so at a small­er, more humane scale. Fas­cist struc­tures were designed not just to be eter­nal sym­bols but over­whelm­ing pres­ences, intend­ed “not to ele­vate the soul, but to crush the indi­vid­ual into the crowd and pro­mote con­for­mi­ty.” This, in the­o­ry, would make the cit­i­zen feel small and pow­er­less, but with an accom­pa­ny­ing qua­si-reli­gious long­ing to be part of a larg­er project: that of fas­cism, which sub­or­di­nates every­thing to the state. For the likes of Mus­soli­ni and Hitler (an artist-turned-politi­cian, as one can hard­ly fail to note), aes­thet­ics was pow­er — albeit not quite enough, in the event, to ensure their own sur­vival.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wal­ter Ben­jamin Explains How Fas­cism Uses Mass Media to Turn Pol­i­tics Into Spec­ta­cle (1935)

Yale Pro­fes­sor Jason Stan­ley Iden­ti­fies 10 Tac­tics of Fas­cism: The “Cult of the Leader,” Law & Order, Vic­tim­hood and More

Mus­soli­ni Sends to Amer­i­ca a Hap­py Mes­sage, Full of Friend­ly Feel­ings, in Eng­lish (1927)

Are You a Fas­cist?: Take Theodor Adorno’s Author­i­tar­i­an Per­son­al­i­ty Test Cre­at­ed to Com­bat Fas­cism (1947)

The Sto­ry of Fas­cism: Rick Steves’ Doc­u­men­tary Helps Us Learn from the Painful Lessons of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Umber­to Eco’s List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

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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Why Coffee Makes You Go #2

in Food & Drink, Science | December 17th, 2025

James Hoff­mann, the author of The World Atlas of Cof­fee and the cre­ator of a cof­fee-cen­tric YouTube chan­nel, can tell you many things about coffee—from how to roast cof­fee, to the tools and tech­niques need­ed to make espres­so, to the ulti­mate French Press tech­nique. Then he can also get into more tan­gen­tial­ly relat­ed ques­tions, like why cof­fee makes you drop the prover­bial deuce. Above, Mr. Hoff­mann takes you on a short sci­en­tif­ic jour­ney through the human body, explor­ing the effects of cof­fee on diges­tion, gut bac­te­ria, and our ner­vous sys­tem. We’ll pro­vide no spoil­ers or gory details here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

How Human­i­ty Got Hooked on Cof­fee: An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry

“The Virtues of Cof­fee” Explained in 1690 Ad: The Cure for Lethar­gy, Scurvy, Drop­sy, Gout & More

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know about the Bialet­ti Moka Express: A Deep Dive Into Italy’s Most Pop­u­lar Cof­fee Mak­er

The Birth of Espres­so: The Sto­ry Behind the Cof­fee Shots That Fuel Mod­ern Life

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How Movies Created Their Special Effects Before CGI: Metropolis, 2001: A Space Odyssey & More

in Film, History | December 16th, 2025

The youngest movie­go­ers today do not, of course, remem­ber a time before visu­al effects could be cre­at­ed dig­i­tal­ly. What may give us more pause is that, at this point in cin­e­ma his­to­ry, most of their par­ents don’t remem­ber it either. Con­sid­er the fact that Steven Spiel­berg’s Juras­sic Park, with its once impos­si­bly real­is­tic (and still whol­ly pass­able) CGI dinosaurs, came out 32 years ago. That may put it, we must acknowl­edge, into the realm of the “clas­sic,” the kind of pic­ture whose enter­tain­ment val­ue holds up despite — or because of — the qual­i­ties that fix it in its time. Equal­ly spec­tac­u­lar but longer-can­on­ized clas­sics pose a greater chal­lenge to the imag­i­na­tions of young view­ers, who can hard­ly guess how they could have been made “before com­put­ers.”

After see­ing the notable exam­ples pro­vid­ed in the new Pri­mal Space video above, they’ll cer­tain­ly under­stand one thing: it was­n’t easy. Even a seem­ing­ly sim­ple effect like the pen float­ing loose through the zero-grav­i­ty cab­in in 2001: A Space Odyssey required no small degree of inge­nu­ity. We might nat­u­ral­ly assume that film­mak­ers in 1968 would have accom­plished it with a cou­ple of pieces of Scotch tape and fish­ing line, but that would have result­ed in unac­cept­able tan­gling prob­lems, to say noth­ing of the trick­i­ness of ensur­ing, quite lit­er­al­ly, that the strings did­n’t show. Instead, Kubrick­’s team end­ed up attach­ing the pen to a sheet of glass — metic­u­lous­ly cleaned, no doubt, to elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­i­ty of streaks — large enough to occu­py the entire frame and thus go unno­ticed by the view­er. It was then slow­ly rotat­ed by a crank-turn­ing assis­tant.

A few dif­fer­ent effects from 2001 come in for expla­na­tion through­out the course of the video, includ­ing the mul­ti­ple-expo­sure pho­tog­ra­phy that made pos­si­ble shots of space­craft pass­ing plan­ets as well as the psy­che­del­ic “Star Gate” sequence toward the end. Though some of the devices used in these process­es were put togeth­er just for the pro­duc­tion, the under­ly­ing tech­niques had already been evolv­ing for more than 60 years. Indeed, many were pio­neered by Georges Méliès, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for A Trip to the Moon from 1902, the very first sci­ence-fic­tion film. This video goes behind the scenes of a work from the year before: L’Homme à la tête en caoutchouc, or The Man with the Rub­ber Head, in which Méliès man­aged a shot in which his own cra­ni­um inflates to huge pro­por­tions with­out the use of so much as a zoom lens.

Oth­er exam­ples, drawn from a range of beloved films from Metrop­o­lis to Mary Pop­pins, illus­trate the inven­tive­ness born of sheer tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tion in the days when film­mak­ing was a whol­ly ana­log affair. In some cas­es, the effects these pro­duc­tions pulled off with minia­tures, prisms, and mir­rors 60, 80, 100 years ago look as good as any­thing Hol­ly­wood puts on the screen today — or rather bet­ter, since the innate phys­i­cal­i­ty behind them makes them feel more “real.” Per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, this video’s arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence course spon­sor makes ref­er­ence to the end­less range of visu­al pos­si­bil­i­ties avail­able to those who mas­ter that tech­nol­o­gy. And it’s not impos­si­ble that we now stand on the cusp of a rev­o­lu­tion in visu­al effects for that rea­son, with at least as much of an upside and down­side as CGI. If so, we should pre­pare our­selves to hear the ques­tion, from chil­dren born today, of how any­one ever made movies before AI.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Georges Méliès A Trip to the Moon Became the First Sci-Fi Film & Changed Cin­e­ma For­ev­er (1902)

The Art of Cre­at­ing Spe­cial Effects in Silent Movies: Inge­nu­ity Before the Age of CGI

The 1927 Film Metrop­o­lis Cre­at­ed a Dystopi­an Vision of What the World Would Look Like in 2026–and It Hits Close to Home

How Stan­ley Kubrick Made 2001: A Space Odyssey: A Sev­en-Part Video Essay

How 2001: A Space Odyssey Became “the Hard­est Film Kubrick Ever Made”

Why Movies Don’t Feel Real Any­more: A Close Look at Chang­ing Film­mak­ing Tech­niques

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 Many Humans Have Ever Lived, and How Many Are Alive Right Now?

in Biology, History | December 16th, 2025

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How many peo­ple have ever walked the earth? Good ques­tion, even if you’ve nev­er quite pon­dered it before. Accord­ing to the Pop­u­la­tion Ref­er­ence Bureau, a non-prof­it research orga­ni­za­tion, if you trav­el back to 8000 B.C.E., the world pop­u­la­tion stood at about 5 mil­lion. By 1 C.E., the num­ber climbs to 300 mil­lion, before grad­u­al­ly increas­ing to 500 mil­lion in 1650. Once we get beyond the plagues of the medieval peri­od, our pop­u­la­tion explodes, reach­ing the 1 bil­lion mark in 1800 and then 8 bil­lion in 2022. Tak­en togeth­er, an esti­mat­ed 117 bil­lion peo­ple have col­lec­tive­ly lived on our plan­et, and, of that total num­ber, 7% are alive right now. A strik­ing fig­ure. Using sim­i­lar data, video jour­nal­ist Cleo Abram visu­al­izes the his­tor­i­cal trend in a short, suc­cinct video above.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Buck­min­ster Fuller Cre­ates an Ani­mat­ed Visu­al­iza­tion of Human Pop­u­la­tion Growth from 1000 B.C.E. to 1965

200,000 Years of Stag­ger­ing Human Pop­u­la­tion Growth Shown in an Ani­mat­ed Map

Crowd­ed House: How the World’s Pop­u­la­tion Grew to 7 Bil­lion Peo­ple

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Take a Tour of 18th-Century London, Recreated with AI

in Art, Artificial Intelligence, History | December 15th, 2025

If you want to know what it was like to live in sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Lon­don, read the diary of Samuel Pepys. While doing so, take note of his fre­quent ref­er­ences to the unclean­li­ness of the city’s streets: “very dirty and trou­ble­some to walk through,” “mighty dirty after the rain,” and dur­ing the large-scale rebuild­ing in the after­math of the Great Fire of 1666, “much built, yet very dirty and encum­bered.” If you want to know what it was like to live in nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Lon­don, read Charles Dick­ens. How­ev­er much-lament­ed the dif­fi­cul­ties it presents to young read­ers, the open­ing of Bleak House remains high­ly evoca­tive, set­ting the scene with “as much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but new­ly retired from the face of the earth,” “dogs, undis­tin­guish­able in mire, and “hors­es, scarce­ly bet­ter; splashed to their very blink­ers.”

This “mud,” an unspeak­ably foul admix­ture of sub­stances, only began to recede per­ma­nent­ly from Lon­don’s streets in the eigh­teen-fifties, after the instal­la­tion of sew­er sys­tems. So nor­mal for so long, its pres­ence would hard­ly have been down­played by the city’s observers back then, whether they record­ed their obser­va­tions on the page or on the can­vas.

Even the painter’s ide­al­iz­ing impulse could only do so much, as evi­denced by some of the shots includ­ed in the new video tour of eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry Lon­don from Majes­tic Stu­dios above. Turn­ing con­tem­po­rary paint­ings and engrav­ings into cin­e­mat­ic ani­ma­tions with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-gen­er­at­ed video, it offers the next best thing to actu­al footage of the city as it would have been seen by the likes of Jonathan Swift, Samuel John­son, Thomas Gains­bor­ough, and Mary Woll­stonecraft.

Sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Lon­don was the cul­tur­al and com­mer­cial cen­ter of Geor­gian Eng­land, but also a city well on its way to becom­ing the cen­ter of the world. Some of its famous sights seen here in their eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry urban con­text include St. Paul’s Cathe­dral by Sir Christo­pher Wren, mas­ter­mind of the city’s post-Great Fire recon­struc­tion; the old Lon­don Bridge, still lined with hous­es and shops; St. James’s Square after its trans­for­ma­tion from a state once con­sid­ered “mud­dy, neglect­ed, and frankly, embar­rass­ing for such pres­ti­gious address­es”; and the Tow­er of Lon­don on the bank of the Riv­er Thames. As for the riv­er itself, it hard­ly goes ignored by the works of art that shape this video, or indeed un-glo­ri­fied by them. But if you know any­thing about its con­di­tion before the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, you’ll be relieved that AI can’t yet restore its smell.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Growth of Lon­don, from the Romans to the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Visu­al­ized in a Time-Lapse Ani­mat­ed Map

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre in Lon­don

The Evo­lu­tion of Lon­don: 2,000 Years of Change Ani­mat­ed in 7 Min­utes

The Old­est Known Footage of Lon­don (1890–1920) Fea­tures the City’s Great Land­marks

Hear the Evo­lu­tion of the Lon­don Accent Over 660 Years: From 1346 to 2006

The Sights & Sounds of 18th-Cen­tu­ry Paris Get Recre­at­ed with 3D Audio and Ani­ma­tion

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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Tom Jones Performs Prince’s “Purple Rain” Accompanied by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour (1992)

in Music | December 15th, 2025

Over the decades, Tom Jones has per­formed with the best of them. In 1969, we can find him singing “Long Time Gone” with Cros­by, Stills, Nash & Young, and tak­ing them delight­ful­ly by sur­prise. The same goes for his duet with Janis Joplin in that same year. Now fast for­ward to the 1990s. In this decade, Jones teamed up with the Swedish rock band The Cardi­gans and per­formed a rol­lick­ing ver­sion of the Talk­ing Heads “Burn­ing Down the House.” And, rather unex­pect­ed­ly, he would get paired with Pink Floy­d’s David Gilmour and croon Prince’s “Pur­ple Rain.”

The record­ing above comes from Jones’ show The Right Time, a six-episode tele­vi­sion series that aired in 1992. Trac­ing the evo­lu­tion of pop music, the show fea­tured appear­ances by Bob Geld­of, Cyn­di Lau­per, The Chief­tains and Ste­vie Won­der. When it comes to his ver­sion of “Pur­ple Rain,” don’t miss the Gilmour solo mid­way through. Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Tom Jones Per­forms “Long Time Gone” with Cros­by, Stills, Nash & Young–and Blows the Band & Audi­ence Away (1969)

Janis Joplin & Tom Jones Bring the House Down in an Unlike­ly Duet of “Raise Your Hand” (1969)

Tom Jones Cov­ers Talk­ing Heads “Burn­ing Down the House”–and Burns Down the House (1999)

Prince Plays a Mind-Blow­ing Gui­tar Solo On “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps”

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