How to Make Sure You Get Open Culture in Your Facebook Newsfeed: Now You Can Take Control

in Media, Technology | July 9th, 2015

For the longest time, Face­book gave you no abil­i­ty to con­trol what con­tent you see in your Face­book news­feed. Some 378,000 peo­ple have “liked” our Face­book page. But only a frac­tion actu­al­ly see Open Cul­ture posts in their news­feed. That’s because a Face­book algo­rithm start­ed mak­ing the deci­sions for you, show­ing you mate­r­i­al from some people/publishers, and not oth­ers.

Now, Face­book has final­ly intro­duced a new fea­ture that will let you con­trol what you see. Please check out the instruc­tions below. When you’re done read­ing them, con­sid­er giv­ing us a Like on Face­book, and then set your news­feed accord­ing­ly. (You get bonus points if you Fol­low us on Twit­ter too!)

• If you’re using a mobile phone, open the Face­book app, click the “More” icon along the bot­tom of the app, then scroll down and click “News­feed pref­er­ences,” then click “Pri­or­i­tize who to see first,” and make your picks. (You can select more than one item.)
• If you’re using Face­book on a com­put­er, click on the down­ward fac­ing arrow on the top nav bar, then click “News­feed pref­er­ences,” locate one of the peo­ple or pub­lish­ers you fol­low, and change the set­ting from “Fol­low­ing” to “See First.”

Hope all of that makes sense.

Open Culture Goes Mobile: Your Feedback Requested

in Random | October 28th, 2010

A quick note for our read­ers: This week, we soft launched a new mobile web site for Open Cul­ture – one designed to give our read­ers the abil­i­ty to access Open Cul­ture con­tent with far greater ease on their smart­phones. If you have an iPhone, iPod Touch, Android phone (or any phone with an advanced web brows­er), you should be able to read our posts, watch videos, and lis­ten to audio much more clean­ly, no mat­ter where you are. Sim­ply pick up your phone, vis­it any page on openculture.com, and you will see what I mean.

This mobile site is still in “beta.” So if you expe­ri­ence any prob­lems, or have any feed­back, please send it our way. We want your input. And, if you don’t pre­fer the mobile site, you can always turn it off. Just scroll to the bot­tom of the mobile page and click “Switch to Stan­dard View.”

Final­ly, as you can imag­ine, this project required some time and expense. If you can com­fort­ably afford it, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion via Pay­Pal to sup­port this ini­tia­tive and oth­ers like it. And if you can’t swing it, that’s a‑okay. Maybe just tell a friend about the site (or about our Free iPhone app) and oth­er­wise enjoy the ride.

Thanks for any feed­back you might have, and hope you enjoy the mobile ver­sion of Open Cul­ture.

The New Design and Your Feedback

in Uncategorized | January 28th, 2009

As you prob­a­bly know, Open Cul­ture launched a new look last week, and it seemed worth devot­ing a few words to it. With the new design, I was hop­ing to give the site a more invit­ing look and stream­line the over­all nav­i­ga­tion. I was also hop­ing to make it clear that user con­tri­bu­tions are always wel­come. If you have tips on good media, send them our way. And if you ever want to write a guest blog post, please feel free to let me know what you have in mind. The more indi­vid­ual read­ers con­tribute, the more our com­mu­ni­ty of read­ers ben­e­fits.

I def­i­nite­ly want to send a word of thanks to the folks at Rolling Orange, who han­dled all of the design and imple­men­ta­tion. An excel­lent group to work with. Also, I want to thank Eric Ober­le who has been very gen­er­ous with his tech sup­port since the begin­ning.

Last­ly, this is a great time to ask you what you would like to see from Open Cul­ture in the future. What should the site do more of? What should it do less of? What good things haven’t we thought about? Your input would be real­ly appre­ci­at­ed. Feel free to send thoughts from the con­tact page, or add any thoughts in the com­ments sec­tion below. Thanks in advance to all…

University Course Collection Now Updated with RSS Feeds

in Uncategorized | July 24th, 2007 Read More...

What Feed Readers Don’t See on Open Culture

in Uncategorized | June 28th, 2007 Read More...

Open Culture Podcast Directories Viewable in Feed Readers

in Uncategorized | February 19th, 2007

The only down­side to using a feed read­er (Blog­lines, Google Read­er, MyYa­hoo, etc.) to access Open Cul­ture
is that you won’t be able to see our pod­cast direc­to­ries which reside
in our left nav bar. To assist you, we have past­ed links below that
will give you direct access to the pod­cast col­lec­tions. We’ll post this reminder from time to time.

• Arts & Cul­ture Pod­casts
• Audio Book Pod­casts
• For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­casts
• News & Infor­ma­tion Pod­casts
• Tech­nol­o­gy Pod­casts
• Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts- All
• Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts — Busi­ness School

If you like what we’re doing here, please email your friends and let them know about Open Cul­ture.

If you need a new/bigger iPod or iPod Gear to lis­ten to our pod­casts, vis­it our new Ama­zon store.

Open Culture Podcast Directories Viewable in Feed Readers

in Uncategorized | January 17th, 2007

The only down­side to using a feed read­er (Blog­lines, Google Read­er, MyYa­hoo, etc.) to access Open Cul­ture is that you won’t be able to see our pod­cast direc­to­ries which reside in our left nav bar. To assist you, we have past­ed links below that will give you direct access to the pod­cast col­lec­tions. Book­mark & enjoy.

• Arts & Cul­ture Pod­casts
• Audio Book Pod­casts
• For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­casts
• News & Infor­ma­tion Pod­casts
• Tech­nol­o­gy Pod­casts
• Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts

Why Incompetent People Think They’re Amazing: An Animated Lesson from David Dunning (of the Famous “Dunning-Kruger Effect”)

in Business, Psychology, TED Talks | September 15th, 2026

The busi­ness world has long had spe­cial jar­gon for the Kafkaesque incom­pe­tence bedev­il­ing the ranks of upper man­age­ment. There is “the Peter prin­ci­ple,” first described in a satir­i­cal book of the same name in 1968. More recent­ly, we have the pos­i­tive notion of “fail­ing upward.” The con­cept has inspired a mantra, “fail hard­er, fail faster,” as well as pop­u­lar books like The Gift of Fail­ure. Famed research pro­fes­sor, author, and TED talk­er Brené Brown has called TED “the fail­ure con­fer­ence,” and indeed, a “Fail­Con” does exist, “in over a dozen cities on 6 con­ti­nents around the globe.”

The can­dor about this most unavoid­able of human phe­nom­e­na may prove a boon to pub­lic health, low­er­ing lev­els of hyper­ten­sion by a sig­nif­i­cant mar­gin. But is there a dan­ger in prais­ing fail­ure too fer­vent­ly? (Samuel Beckett’s quote on the mat­ter, beloved by many a 21st-cen­tu­ry thought leader, proves decid­ed­ly more ambigu­ous in con­text.) Might it present an even greater oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to “rise to their lev­el of incom­pe­tence”? Giv­en the preva­lence of the “Dun­ning-Kruger Effect,” a cog­ni­tive bias explained by John Cleese in a pre­vi­ous post, we may not be well-placed to know whether our efforts con­sti­tute suc­cess or fail­ure, or whether we actu­al­ly have the skills we think we do.

First described by social psy­chol­o­gists David Dun­ning (Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan) and Justin Kruger (N.Y.U.) in 1999, the effect “sug­gests that we’re not very good at eval­u­at­ing our­selves accu­rate­ly.” So says the nar­ra­tor of the TED-Ed les­son above, script­ed by Dun­ning and offer­ing a sober reminder of the human propen­si­ty for self-delu­sion. “We fre­quent­ly over­es­ti­mate our own abil­i­ties,” result­ing in wide­spread “illu­so­ry supe­ri­or­i­ty” that makes “incom­pe­tent peo­ple think they’re amaz­ing.” The effect great­ly inten­si­fies at the low­er end of the scale; it is often “those with the least abil­i­ty who are most like­ly to over­rate their skills to the great­est extent.” Or as Cleese plain­ly puts it, some peo­ple “are so stu­pid, they have no idea how stu­pid they are.”

Com­bine this with the con­verse effect—the ten­den­cy of skilled indi­vid­u­als to under­rate themselves—and we have the pre­con­di­tions for an epi­dem­ic of mis­matched skill sets and posi­tions. But while imposter syn­drome can pro­duce trag­ic per­son­al results and deprive the world of tal­ent, the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect’s worst casu­al­ties affect us all adverse­ly. Peo­ple “mea­sur­ably poor at log­i­cal rea­son­ing, gram­mar, finan­cial knowl­edge, math, emo­tion­al intel­li­gence, run­ning med­ical lab tests, and chess all tend to rate their exper­tise almost as favor­ably as actu­al experts do.” When such peo­ple get pro­mot­ed up the chain, they can unwit­ting­ly do a great deal of harm.

While arro­gant self-impor­tance plays its role in fos­ter­ing delu­sions of exper­tise, Dun­ning and Kruger found that most of us are sub­ject to the effect in some area of our lives sim­ply because we lack the skills to under­stand how bad we are at cer­tain things. We don’t know the rules well enough to suc­cess­ful­ly, cre­ative­ly break them. Until we have some basic under­stand­ing of what con­sti­tutes com­pe­tence in a par­tic­u­lar endeav­or, we can­not even under­stand that we’ve failed.

Real experts, on the oth­er hand, tend to assume their skills are ordi­nary and unre­mark­able. “The result is that peo­ple, whether they’re inept or high­ly skilled, are often caught in a bub­ble of inac­cu­rate self-per­cep­tion.” How can we get out? The answers won’t sur­prise you. Lis­ten to con­struc­tive feed­back and nev­er stop learn­ing, behav­ior that can require a good deal of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and humil­i­ty.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (a.k.a. the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

Research Finds That Intel­lec­tu­al Humil­i­ty Can Make Us Bet­ter Thinkers & Peo­ple; Good Thing There’s a Free Course on Intel­lec­tu­al Humil­i­ty

The Pow­er of Empa­thy: A Quick Ani­mat­ed Les­son That Can Make You a Bet­ter Per­son

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.

Scientists Discover the Earliest Evidence of Drug Use in 25,000-Year-Old Teeth

in Food & Drink, History, Psychology | September 11th, 2026

Image by Fakhri

“Sci­en­tists Dis­cov­er the Ear­li­est Evi­dence of Drug Use in Real­ly Old Teeth” may sound like odd head­line lan­guage, at least by the tra­di­tion­al stan­dards of the New York Times. But then, the teeth in ques­tion are, indeed, real­ly old. “Archae­ol­o­gists have pushed the time­line of human drug use back fur­ther than ever before by study­ing teeth that belonged to a hunter-gath­er­er who lived in Indone­sia some­time from 16,000 to 25,000 years ago,” writes reporter Becky Fer­reira. This beats the 13,000-year-old beer from Israel that pre­vi­ous­ly held the title of old­est known mind-alter­ing comestible. “The individual’s molars, which were found in a cave on the island of Sulawe­si, are marked with deep grooves that were most like­ly left by inces­sant suck­ing on betel nuts, which release psy­choac­tive stim­u­lants.”

All these mil­len­nia lat­er, betel nut-chew­ing remains a major rit­u­al and pas­time. Though it seems nev­er to have caught on in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world, it has a great many adher­ents in not just mod­ern-day Indone­sia but also oth­er parts of south­east and south Asia, includ­ing India, as well as in Chi­na.

Mixed into a com­pound with the leaves of its own plant, slaked lime, and a vari­ety of oth­er ingre­di­ents from coconut to men­thol to cloves to tobac­co — the region­al vari­a­tions are count­less — betel nuts can be chewed all day long, and often are. Whether you call it paan, buai, doma, ngangà, or some­thing else entire­ly, the stuff is “reput­ed to be the world’s fourth most pop­u­lar psy­choac­tive sub­stance after alco­hol, caf­feine, and nico­tine,” write the authors of a study on the Sulawe­si teeth new­ly pub­lished in Sci­ence Advances.

Before you seek out the near­est are­ca palm to expe­ri­ence what all the fuss is about for your­self, know that the doc­u­ment­ed health effects of betel nut-chew­ing include can­cer, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, liv­er dam­age, dia­betes, and infer­til­i­ty; even still-fer­tile chew­ers run the risk of caus­ing birth defects. At the very least, those who pick up the habit also acquire a char­ac­ter­is­tic red tooth stain, which has been seen on near­ly 5,000-year-old skele­tons unearthed in south­east Asia. In the case of the skull from Sulawe­si, it was­n’t the col­or of the teeth but their wear pat­terns that told the tale. Grif­fith Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Adam Brumm, who led the study, hypoth­e­sizes a “neg­a­tive feed­back loop” in which betel nuts inflict­ed den­tal dam­age on these ancient peo­ples, but also offered the only means of reliev­ing the pain of that dam­age. Whether now or 25,000 years ago, if one sub­stance seems to be both caus­ing your prob­lems and pro­vid­ing their solu­tions, it’s prob­a­bly time to quit.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Humans First Start­ed Enjoy­ing Cannabis in Chi­na Cir­ca 2800 BC

Sci­en­tists Dis­cov­er that Ancient Egyp­tians Drank Hal­lu­cino­genic Cock­tails from 2,300 Year-Old Mug

The Drugs Used by the Ancient Greeks and Romans

The Romans Stashed Hal­lu­cino­genic Seeds in a Vial Made From an Ani­mal Bone

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

Hofmann’s Potion: 2002 Doc­u­men­tary Revis­its the His­to­ry of LSD

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Ancient Greek Water Clock That Kept the Most Accurate Time for 1,800 Years

in History, Technology | September 9th, 2026

Today, we’re sur­round­ed by tech­nolo­gies we could jus­ti­fi­ably describe as time thieves. In ancient Greece, those who want­ed to know where their time was going con­sult­ed a device they called a “water thief.” The roots of the clep­sy­dra, or water clock, go back as far as the six­teenth cen­tu­ry BC, with evi­dence of such devices found in mod­ern-day Iraq, Iran, and Egypt, and more ambigu­ous evi­dence unearthed in places like India and Chi­na. The mech­a­nism in the ear­li­est exam­ples takes not much more com­plex a form than a bowl out of which water slow­ly drips, albeit not at a reg­u­lar pace. That nat­ur­al imped­i­ment to hydraulic time­keep­ing was­n’t cor­rect­ed until the third cen­tu­ry BC, when a Greek inven­tor called Cte­si­bius set about mak­ing his own improve­ments.

Cte­si­bius’ auto­mat­ic water clock used a ver­ti­cal cylin­der, rotat­ing once year­ly, marked with straight ver­ti­cal lines rep­re­sent­ing the months of the year and curved hor­i­zon­tal lines rep­re­sent­ing the hours of the day. A point­er next to it indi­cat­ed the cur­rent hour, its posi­tion changed by the water lev­el of the cylin­der in which it float­ed. That cylin­der was filled through a feed­ing reser­voir, itself con­stant­ly sup­plied with water.

The idea behind this arrange­ment was to keep the rate of flow steady, and thus the speed of the point­er con­stant. To emp­ty the reser­voir with­out the need for human inter­ven­tion, Cte­si­bius incor­po­rat­ed a siphon that let water out every 24 hours, reset­ting the clock­’s dai­ly cycle. A water wheel attached to a sim­ple sys­tem of gears kept the cylin­der turn­ing, so that its “dis­play” could keep up with the ever-chang­ing length of the day­light-based ancient Greek hour.

All this is explained with detailed visu­al aids in the ani­mat­ed Decon­struct­ed video above. “In a world with­out elec­tric­i­ty, dig­i­tal log­ic, or even mechan­i­cal clocks,” says its nar­ra­tor, “this ancient inven­tion laid the foun­da­tion for automa­tion and time­keep­ing as we know them today.” Indeed, Cte­si­bius’ clep­sy­dra “kept bet­ter time than any­thing else on Earth for 1800 years,” until Chris­ti­aan Huy­gens invent­ed the pen­du­lum clock in 1656. There’s some­thing in the swing­ing of such a mech­a­nism that appeals to the innate human attrac­tion to rhythm, and the metaphor­i­cal val­ue of the grains of sand pass­ing through an hour­glass (an inter­me­di­ary inven­tion between Cte­si­bius and Huy­gens) remains strong even now. But it’s prob­a­bly not a coin­ci­dence that the flow of time and the flow of water, at least from the human per­spec­tive, feel like two aspects of the same pri­mal phe­nom­e­non.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Plan­e­tar­i­um Table Clock: Mag­nif­i­cent 1775 Time­piece Tracks the Pass­ing of Time & the Trav­el of the Plan­ets

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Antikythera Mech­a­nism: The World’s First Ana­log Com­put­er from Ancient Greece

The Advanced Tech­nol­o­gy of Ancient Rome: Auto­mat­ic Doors, Water Clocks, Vend­ing Machines & More

How Medieval Islam­ic Engi­neer­ing Brought Water to the Alham­bra

Ancient Egypt­ian Pyra­mids May Have Been Built with Water: A New Study Explore the Use of Hydraulic Lifts

How Clocks Changed Human­i­ty For­ev­er, Mak­ing Us Mas­ters and Slaves of Time

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.