Bruce Springsteen Won’t Back Down: Performs “Streets of Minneapolis” Live in Minneapolis

in Current Affairs, Life, Music | February 2nd, 2026

When the his­to­ry books are writ­ten, we’ll remem­ber the politi­cians, law firms, and CEOs who quick­ly bent the knee to Don­ald Trump. We’ll also remem­ber the scant few Amer­i­can fig­ures who refused to back down. Bruce Spring­steen will be high on that short list.

Tour­ing in Europe last sum­mer, Spring­steen warned his audi­ence: “The Amer­i­ca that I love, the Amer­i­ca I have writ­ten about, that has been a bea­con of hope and lib­er­ty for 250 years, is cur­rent­ly in the hands of a cor­rupt, incom­pe­tent and trea­so­nous admin­is­tra­tion.” Those words seem par­tic­u­lar­ly pre­scient giv­en the chaos and vio­lence now unfold­ing in Min­neso­ta.

Fol­low­ing the shoot­ings of Renee Good and Alex Pret­ti, Spring­steen made his voice heard again—this time through music. Last week, he released the protest song “Streets of Min­neapo­lis” and soon after­ward trav­eled to Min­neso­ta to per­form the song live at a ben­e­fit con­cert arranged by Tom Morel­lo. Speak­ing to the crowd, Spring­steen said, “I wrote Streets of Min­neapo­lis and record­ed it the next day.” When he won­dered if the song sound­ed too ‘soap­boxy,’ he turned to Morel­lo, and the Rage Against the Machine gui­tarist replied, “Bruce, nuance is won­der­ful, but some­times you need to kick them in the teeth.” We’ll say amen to that.

After “Streets of Min­neapo­lis,” Spring­steen and Morel­lo per­formed “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” Watch it above. The start of the show began with “Killing In The Name Of.” Catch it below.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Bruce Spring­steen Revives the Protest Song, Con­demns ICE Vio­lence in “Streets of Min­neapo­lis”

Scott Gal­loway Unveils “Resist and Unsub­scribe,” an Action Plan for Con­sumers to Push Back Against Gov­ern­ment Over­reach

Tom Morel­lo Responds to Angry Fans Who Sud­den­ly Real­ize That Rage Against the Machine’s Music Is Polit­i­cal: “What Music of Mine DIDN’T Con­tain Polit­i­cal BS?”

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Scott Galloway Unveils “Resist and Unsubscribe,” an Action Plan for Consumers to Push Back Against Government Overreach

in Current Affairs, Economics | February 1st, 2026

As men­tioned here last week, Scott Gal­loway argued that Amer­i­cans have one way to reverse the vio­lent over­reach of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment: launch a one-month eco­nom­ic strike aimed at major tech and AI com­pa­nies, with the goal of reduc­ing Amer­i­ca’s GDP and mak­ing the mar­kets wob­ble. When the mar­kets gyrat­ed after “Lib­er­a­tion Day,” Pres­i­dent Trump imme­di­ate­ly rolled back many tar­iffs. Now, if Amer­i­cans can flex their eco­nom­ic mus­cles in Feb­ru­ary, Gal­loway wagers the admin­is­tra­tion will rethink whether it wants to keep arrest­ing jour­nal­ists and let­ting masked ICE agents shoot civil­ians in the streets—with impuni­ty.

Today, Gal­loway has launched a new web­site, Resist and Unsub­scribe, that pro­vides an action plan for a month­long strike. In the “Ground Zero” sec­tion of the site, Gal­loway lists sub­scrip­tion ser­vices from America’s largest tech­nol­o­gy companies—Amazon, Meta, Google, Apple, Net­flix, Ope­nAI, and Microsoft—and pro­vides links that let users unsub­scribe quick­ly. He also sug­gests hold­ing off on buy­ing new hard­ware and prod­ucts from these com­pa­nies (e.g. iPhones). If you use Feb­ru­ary to review your sub­scrip­tions and find ones to cut, you’ll clean up your per­son­al finances. You’ll also get the atten­tion of the major tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies that account for one-third of the S&P 500. When the tech CEOs get “yip­py,” so too will Trump.

In the “Blast Zone” sec­tion of Resist and Unsub­scribe, Gal­loway lists consumer‑facing com­pa­nies he has “iden­ti­fied as active enablers of ICE,” nam­ing AT&T, Com­cast, Lowe’s, Mar­riott, and Spo­ti­fy among oth­ers. He explains how these com­pa­nies sup­port ICE and rec­om­mends spe­cif­ic ser­vices you can can­cel or avoid. Scroll down the page to see these sug­ges­tions.

Vis­it Resist and Unsub­scribe, find some ser­vices to can­cel (it’s not a large sac­ri­fice), and spread the word. You can also find more infor­ma­tion about the Resist and Unsub­scribe move­ment on Gal­loway’s blog, “No Mercy/No Mal­ice.”

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Scott Gal­loway Explains How YOU Can Stop Gov­ern­ment Over­reach Using the Pow­er of Your Purse

Bruce Spring­steen Revives the Protest Song, Con­demns ICE Vio­lence in “Streets of Min­neapo­lis”

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Bruce Springsteen Revives the Protest Song, Condemns ICE Violence in “Streets of Minneapolis”

in Current Affairs, Music | January 29th, 2026

If there’s a sil­ver lin­ing to our tumul­tuous times, it’s that musi­cians are reviv­ing the protest song, a tra­di­tion that has with­ered since the end of the Viet­nam War. Cre­dence Clear­wa­ter Revival’s “For­tu­nate Son,” Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restau­rant,” Jimi Hen­drix’s “Machine Gun”—these songs all took aim at the John­son and Nixon admin­is­tra­tions’ increas­ing­ly mis­guid­ed war effort. But it was Neil Young who wrote the most damn­ing protest song. When the Ohio Nation­al Guard shot and killed four stu­dents at Kent State in 1970, Young dis­ap­peared for a few hours and returned with the haunt­ing lyrics of “Ohio.”

Tin sol­diers and Nixon com­ing,
We’re final­ly on our own.
This sum­mer I hear the drum­ming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Got­ta get down to it
Sol­diers are cut­ting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

With his new song released this week, Bruce Spring­steen picks up this thread. “Streets Of Min­neapo­lis” doc­u­ments the mur­der of civil­ians in Min­neso­ta’s largest city. On Jan­u­ary 7, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot Renee Good repeat­ed­ly in the head, leav­ing the moth­er of three dead. On Jan­u­ary 24, two fed­er­al agents fired at least 10 shots at Alex Pret­ti, killing the ICU nurse instant­ly. Days lat­er, the iden­ti­ty of these mur­der­ers remains hidden—something that news orga­ni­za­tions odd­ly don’t seem trou­bled by, almost as if we’re qui­et­ly accept­ing that we’re liv­ing in a police state. When was the last time Amer­i­can agents could wear masks before killing civil­ians, and then hide behind a veil of anonymi­ty after? Yeah, that’s nor­mal.

On social media, Spring­steen wrote: “I wrote this song on Sat­ur­day, record­ed it yes­ter­day and released it to you today in response to the state ter­ror being vis­it­ed on the city of Min­neapo­lis. It’s ded­i­cat­ed to the peo­ple of Min­neapo­lis, our inno­cent immi­grant neigh­bors and in mem­o­ry of Alex Pret­ti and Renee Good.” You can read the lyrics below.

Through the winter’s ice and cold
Down Nicol­let Avenue
A city aflame fought fire and ice
‘Neath an occupier’s boots
King Trump’s pri­vate army from the DHS
Guns belt­ed to their coats
Came to Min­neapo­lis to enforce the law
Or so their sto­ry goes
Against smoke and rub­ber bul­lets
By the dawn’s ear­ly light
Cit­i­zens stood for jus­tice
Their voic­es ring­ing through the night
And there were bloody foot­prints
Where mer­cy should have stood
And two dead left to die on snow-filled streets
Alex Pret­ti and Renee Good

Oh our Min­neapo­lis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
We’ll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
Here in our home they killed and roamed
In the win­ter of ’26
We’ll remem­ber the names of those who died
On the streets of Min­neapo­lis

Trump’s fed­er­al thugs beat up on
His face and his chest
Then we heard the gun­shots
And Alex Pret­ti lay in the snow, dead
Their claim was self defense, sir
Just don’t believe your eyes
It’s our blood and bones
And these whis­tles and phones
Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies

Oh our Min­neapo­lis, I hear your voice
Cry­ing through the bloody mist
We’ll remem­ber the names of those who died
On the streets of Min­neapo­lis

Now they say they’re here to uphold the law
But they tram­ple on our rights
If your skin is black or brown my friend
You can be ques­tioned or deport­ed on sight

In chants of ICE out now
Our city’s heart and soul per­sists
Through bro­ken glass and bloody tears
On the streets of Min­neapo­lis

Oh our Min­neapo­lis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
Here in our home they killed and roamed
In the win­ter of ’26
We’ll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
We’ll remem­ber the names of those who died
On the streets of Min­neapo­lis
We’ll remem­ber the names of those who died
On the streets of Min­neapo­lis

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Leg­endary Protest Songs from Wood­stock: Hen­drix, Jef­fer­son Air­plane, Coun­try Joe & More Per­form Protest Songs Dur­ing the Music Fes­ti­val That Launched 50 Years Ago This Week

David Byrne Curates a Playlist of Great Protest Songs Writ­ten Over the Past 60 Years: Stream Them Online

The Pow­er­ful Mes­sages That Woody Guthrie & Pete Seeger Inscribed on Their Gui­tar & Ban­jo: “This Machine Kills Fas­cists” and “This Machine Sur­rounds Hate and Forces it to Sur­ren­der”

Nina Simone’s Live Per­for­mances of Her Poignant Civ­il Rights Protest Songs

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Scott Galloway Explains How YOU Can Stop Government Overreach Using the Power of Your Purse

in Current Affairs | January 26th, 2026


Above, Scott Gal­loway and Kara Swish­er explain how every­day Amer­i­cans can push back against gov­ern­ment overreach—by focus­ing on the eco­nom­ic deci­sions they make each day. “Trump does not respond to out­rage. He responds to mar­kets,” says Gal­loway. Ergo, it’s time for an “eco­nom­ic strike,” a “short-term coor­di­nat­ed with­draw­al from spend­ing.” He con­tin­ues: “if wealthy house­holds took their spend­ing down 10% and mid­dle class and low­er income house­holds … took it down 5%, you would take GDP neg­a­tive almost overnight.”

But he also gets more spe­cif­ic than that:  “If you want­ed the fastest blue line path … I believe if you could con­vince Amer­i­ca, the entire econ­o­my now is built on AI… if you could con­vince a bunch of Amer­i­cans to can­cel their Chat­G­PT or Ope­nAI accounts and all of a sud­den Ope­nAI had to announce that their sub­scrip­tions had fall­en off a cliff, that would rip­ple into Nvidia. That would rip­ple into Microsoft. And these are the peo­ple that Trump cares about.”

He goes on to add: “If you could fig­ure out a way to basi­cal­ly kick a small num­ber of com­pa­nies relat­ed to the tech econ­o­my that account for 40% of the S&P right now … if all of a sud­den, if you took all of your mon­ey out of any JP Mor­gan–affil­i­at­ed bank and trans­ferred it to a local region­al bank, if you can­celled all of your stream­ing media plat­forms, if you can­celled Ope­nAI and Anthrop­ic and you said “I am not upgrad­ing my Apple phone,” and there was a real move­ment that reg­is­tered and they had to dis­close it in their earn­ings calls — this would come to an end pron­to.” CEOs would stop bend­ing their knees and sud­den­ly find their voice.

Every dol­lar we spend—or withhold—sends a sig­nal to the mar­ket and to Trump. When enough peo­ple hold back, the pow­er of the purse can do what courts and elect­ed offi­cials can­not. Trump reversed many tar­iffs after mar­kets freaked out on ‘Lib­er­a­tion Day.’ What’s to say it wouldn’t work again?

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How Thieves Stole Priceless Jewels at the Louvre in 8 Minutes

in Art, Current Affairs | October 21st, 2025

On Sun­day morn­ing, some auda­cious thieves stole price­less jew­els from the Lou­vre Muse­um. The heist took only eight min­utes from start to fin­ish.

At 9:30 a.m., the rob­bers parked a truck with a portable lad­der in front of the Parisian muse­um. They ascend­ed the lad­der, cut through a sec­ond-floor win­dow, entered the muse­um, smashed through dis­play cas­es, and snatched price­less jew­els, includ­ing a roy­al emer­ald neck­lace. By 9:38 a.m., they descend­ed the lad­der and escaped on motor­cy­cles. And, with that, they made off like ban­dits.

Above, the Wall Street Jour­nal video helps you visu­al­ize how the theft unfold­ed, as does this arti­cle in the New York Times.

In the Relat­eds below, you can learn about the great­est theft in Lou­vre history—that is, the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa, which helped turn da Vin­ci’s art­work into the most famous paint­ing in the world.

Relat­ed Con­tent

When Pablo Picas­so and Guil­laume Apol­li­naire Were Accused of Steal­ing the Mona Lisa (1911)

How the Mona Lisa Went From Being Bare­ly Known, to Sud­den­ly the Most Famous Paint­ing in the World (1911)

The Great­est Art Heist in His­to­ry: How the Mona Lisa Was Stolen from the Lou­vre (1911)

 

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Yuval Noah Harari Explains How to Protect Your Mind in the Age of AI

in Current Affairs, Technology | August 19th, 2025

You could say that we live in the age of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, although it feels truer about no aspect of our lives than it does of adver­tis­ing. “If you want to sell some­thing to peo­ple today, you call it AI,” says Yuval Noah Harari in the new Big Think video above, even if the prod­uct has only the vaguest tech­no­log­i­cal asso­ci­a­tion with that label. To deter­mine whether some­thing should actu­al­ly be called arti­fi­cial­ly intel­li­gent, ask whether it can “learn and change by itself and come up with deci­sions and ideas that we don’t antic­i­pate,” indeed can’t antic­i­pate. That AI-enabled waf­fle iron being pitched to you prob­a­bly does­n’t make the cut, but you may already be inter­act­ing with numer­ous sys­tems that do.

As the author of the glob­al best­seller Sapi­ens and oth­er books con­cerned with the long arc of human civ­i­liza­tion, Harari has giv­en a good deal of thought to how tech­nol­o­gy and soci­ety inter­act. “In the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the rise of mass media and mass infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, like the tele­graph and radio and tele­vi­sion” formed “the basis for large-scale demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tems,” but also for “large-scale total­i­tar­i­an sys­tems.”

Unlike in the ancient world, gov­ern­ments could at least begin to “micro­man­age the social and eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al lives of every indi­vid­ual in the coun­try.” Even the vast sur­veil­lance appa­ra­tus and bureau­cra­cy of the Sovi­et Union “could not sur­veil every­body all the time.” Alas, Harari antic­i­pates, things will be dif­fer­ent in the AI age.

Human-oper­at­ed organ­ic net­works are being dis­placed by AI-oper­at­ed inor­gan­ic ones, which “are always on, and there­fore they might force us to be always on, always being watched, always being mon­i­tored.” As they gain dom­i­nance, “the whole of life is becom­ing like one long job inter­view.” At the same time, even if you were already feel­ing inun­dat­ed by infor­ma­tion before, you’ve more than like­ly felt the waters rise around you due to the infi­nite pro­duc­tion capac­i­ties of AI. One indi­vid­ual-lev­el strat­e­gy Harari rec­om­mends to coun­ter­act the flood is going on an “infor­ma­tion diet,” restrict­ing the flow of that “food of the mind,” which only some­times has any­thing to do with the truth. If we binge on “all this junk infor­ma­tion, full of greed and hate and fear, we will have sick minds; per­haps a peri­od of absti­nence can restore a cer­tain degree of men­tal health. You might con­sid­er spend­ing the rest of the day tak­ing in as lit­tle new infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble — just as soon as you fin­ish catch­ing up on Open Cul­ture, of course.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

Will Machines Ever Tru­ly Think? Richard Feyn­man Con­tem­plates the Future of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (1985)

Isaac Asi­mov Describes How Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Lib­er­ate Humans & Their Cre­ativ­i­ty: Watch His Last Major Inter­view (1992)

How Will AI Change the World?: A Cap­ti­vat­ing Ani­ma­tion Explores the Promise & Per­ils of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Stephen Fry Explains Why Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Has a “70% Risk of Killing Us All”

Yuval Noah Harari and Fareed Zakaria Break Down What’s Hap­pen­ing in the Mid­dle East

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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A New 20-Minute Supercut of David Letterman Slamming CBS: “You Can’t Spell CBS Without BS”

in Current Affairs, Television | July 22nd, 2025

The can­cel­la­tion of The Late Show with Stephen Col­bert—CBS insists it was pure­ly a “finan­cial deci­sion,” the result of declin­ing ad rev­enue in late night tele­vi­sion. While some buy this argu­ment, oth­ers see it as a dif­fer­ent kind of “finan­cial deci­sion,” a deci­sion by Para­mount (the par­ent com­pa­ny of CBS) to sac­ri­fice Col­bert so that the Amer­i­can pres­i­dent won’t can­cel a lucra­tive $28-bil­lion merg­er. Yes­ter­day, David Let­ter­man, the pre­vi­ous host of CBS’ The Late Show, released a 20-minute super­cut fea­tur­ing the many times he took CBS to task over the years. The sub­text? He does­n’t seem to buy CBS’s talk­ing points. Nor does Jon Stew­art. More direct than Let­ter­man, Stew­art gives his own take on why CBS can­celed Col­bert: “I think the answer is in the fear and pre-com­pli­ance that is grip­ping all of Amer­i­ca’s insti­tu­tions at this very moment, insti­tu­tions that have cho­sen not to fight the venge­ful and vin­dic­tive actions of our pubic-hair-doo­dling com­man­der-in-chief. This is not the moment to give in. I’m not giv­ing in. I’m not going any­where.” Note to read­er: Jon Stew­art’s The Dai­ly Show airs on Com­e­dy Cen­tral, which is owned by Para­mount.

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 

Stephen Col­bert Reads Flan­nery O’Connor’s Dark­ly Comedic Sto­ry, “The Endur­ing Chill”

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts the Future on The David Let­ter­man Show (1980)

Hunter S. Thompson’s Many Strange, Unpre­dictable Appear­ances on The David Let­ter­man Show

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Watch the Very First YouTube Video, a Defining Moment in Internet History

in Current Affairs, Video - Arts & Culture | June 26th, 2025

Giv­en the dom­i­nance YouTube has achieved over large swaths of world cul­ture, we’d all expect to remem­ber the first video we watched there. Yet many or most of us don’t: rather, we sim­ply real­ized, one day in the mid-to-late two-thou­sands, that we’d devel­oped a dai­ly YouTube habit. Like as not, your own intro­duc­tion to the plat­form came through a video too triv­ial to make much of an impres­sion, assum­ing you could get it to load at all. (We for­get, in this age of instan­ta­neous stream­ing, how slow YouTube could be at first.) But per­haps the triv­i­al­i­ty was the point, a prece­dent set by the first YouTube video ever uploaded, “Me at the Zoo.”

“Alright, so here we are in front of the, uh, ele­phants,” says YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, stand­ing before those ani­mals’ enclo­sure at the San Diego Zoo. “The cool thing about these guys is that, is that they have real­ly, real­ly, real­ly long, um, trunks, and that’s, that’s cool. And that’s pret­ty much all there is to say.”

The run­time is 19 sec­onds. The upload date is April 24, 2005, two years before “Char­lie Bit My Fin­ger” and “Choco­late Rain,” four years before The Joe Rogan Expe­ri­ence, and sev­en years before “Gang­nam Style.” The pop-cul­tur­al force that is MrBeast, then a child known only as Jim­my Don­ald­son, would have been antic­i­pat­ing his sev­enth birth­day.

“After the zoo, the del­uge,” wrote Vir­ginia Hef­fer­nan in a 2009 New York Times piece on YouTube’s first four and a half years, when the site con­tained bare­ly any of the con­tent with which we asso­ciate it today. If you have a favorite YouTube chan­nel, it prob­a­bly did­n’t exist then. Hef­fer­nan approached the “fail,” “haul,” and “unbox­ing”  videos going viral at the time as new cul­tur­al forms, as indeed they were, but the con­ven­tions of the YouTube video as we now know them had yet to crys­tal­lize. Not every­one who saw the likes of “Me at the Zoo” would have under­stood the promise of YouTube. Per­haps it did­n’t feel par­tic­u­lar­ly rev­e­la­to­ry to be informed that ele­phants have trunks — but then, that’s still more infor­ma­tive than many of the count­less explain­er videos being uploaded as we speak.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Watch Hun­dreds of Free Movies on YouTube

The Very First Web­cam Was Invent­ed to Keep an Eye on a Cof­fee Pot at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty

Is the Viral “Red Dress” Music Video a Soci­o­log­i­cal Exper­i­ment? Per­for­mance Art? Or Some­thing Else?

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

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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