Hear the Beatles’ ‘Blackbird’ Sung in the Indigenous Mi’kmaq Language

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To raise awareness of her native language, 16-year-old Emma Stevens sang a version of The Beatles’ 1968 classic “Blackbird” in the Mi’kmaq language, an Eastern Algonquian language spoken by nearly 11,000 in Canada and the United States. A member of the Eskasoni First Nation, the Nova Scotia student sang lyrics that were…

You Can Get Open Culture Posts on Threads, Mastodon, Post, & Other Social Media Platforms

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As Twitter decays, we want to remind you that you can find posts from Open Culture on other social media platforms. Find us now on Threads, where have 900+ followers in the first 24 hours. We’re also on Mastodon, Post, Blue Sky, and Facebook. Or get our…

Wes Anderson Visits a Paris Video Store and Highlights the Films He Loves: Kurosawa, Truffaut, Buñuel & More

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Wes Anderson lives at least part-time in Paris, a situation whose advantages include the ability to frequent JM Vidéo, one of the very few cinephile-oriented video-rental shops still in business. His apartment is on rue Daguerre, which would make it a bit of a trek — across the Seine and then some — to…

Explore Exquisite Kimono Designs from 19th-Century Japan

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Japan’s 19th-century kimonos blur the lines between art and fashion.

Meiji era customers could browse hinagata-bon, traditionally bound pattern books, on visits to drapers and fabric merchants. These colorful volumes offered a glamorous update of the Edo period’s black-and-white kimono pattern books.

Aspiring designers also studied hinagata-bon, as many of the designs…

A 3D Animation Reveals What Paris Looked Like When It Was a Roman Town

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The standard tour of Paris feels like a journey back through time: the Eiffel Tower stands for the eighteen-eighties, the Arc de Triomphe for the turn of the nineteenth century, Les Invalides for the turn of the eighteenth century, Notre-Dame for the mid-fourteenth century, Sainte-Chapelle for the mid-thirteenth century, and so on. But of…