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

Watch Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page Rock the Theremin, the Early Soviet Electronic Instrument

in Music | May 21st, 2026

It can be frus­trat­ing for Led Zep­pelin fans to hear the band reduced to pla­gia­rism law­suits or the quin­tes­sence of sex­u­al­ly-aggres­sive rock-star enti­tle­ment (though much of that is deserved). For one thing, Zeppelin’s occult song­writ­ing ten­den­cies, cour­tesy of both Page and Plant, play just as promi­nent a role as their blues-rock come-ons (as sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions of fan­ta­sy met­al bands can attest). For anoth­er, their stu­dio pro­duc­tions and live shows are renowned for pio­neer­ing mash-ups of mod­ern rock, folk, and clas­si­cal instru­men­ta­tion, cour­tesy of both Page and Jones. And final­ly, the band’s record­ing tech­niques were—for the time—demonstrations of tech­ni­cal wiz­ardry.

Thus it should come as no sur­prise that tech­ni­cal wiz­ard Jim­my Page would play the Theremin, though he does play on it the kind of scream­ing, feed­back-laden bends he unleashed from his Les Paul. Intro­duced to the world by Sovi­et inven­tor Leon Theremin in 1919, the ear­ly elec­tron­ic instru­ment emits high-pitched singing when a play­er’s hands come with­in range of its invis­i­ble elec­tri­cal fields. “It hasn’t got six strings,” Page says in his demon­stra­tion at the top of the post, from the 2009 film It Might Get Loud, “but it’s a lot of fun.”

Page used a Son­ic Wave Theremin in his Zep­pelin days in a very gui­tar-like way—running it through a Mae­stro Echoplex and Orange amps and cab­i­nets. (Watch him revive the tech­nique in a 1995 French TV broad­cast above.) For sev­er­al months in 1971, writes fan­site Achilles Last Stand, Page “used a dou­ble-stacked Theremin” for twice the son­ic assault.

Though he seems to have gone back to just the one Theremin in the solo above, the effect is no less elec­tri­fy­ing, if you’ll excuse the pun, as he sends echoes of ray-gun noise cas­cad­ing around the the­ater. Well over five min­utes into the hyp­not­ic affair, Page takes to his Les Paul, cre­at­ing more ragged pat­terns with vio­lin bow and Echoplex. Even if you aren’t in a dazed and con­fused state, you’ll feel like you are if you give your­self over to this piece of per­for­mance art. Hero­ics? Yes, and indeed the bowed gui­tar act has its phal­lic over­tones. But it begins and ends with long stretch­es of the kind of dron­ing exper­i­men­tal noise one would expect to find onstage at an ear­ly Kraftwerk show.

Those in the know will know that Page put the theremin to use on one of the band’s most tech­ni­cal­ly exper­i­men­tal record­ings (though it also hap­pens to be an appro­pri­at­ed blues stom­per), “Whole Lot­ta Love” from 1969’s Led Zep­pelin II. “I always envi­sioned the mid­dle to be quite avant-garde,” Page told Gui­tar World, “The Theremin gen­er­ates most of the high­er pitch­es and my Les Paul makes the low­er sounds.” Watch him rip out a theremin-and-gui­tar solo above in the live per­for­mance from 1973. Tak­en with the psy­che­del­ic video effects, the per­for­mance reach­es mys­ti­cal planes of rhyth­mic abstrac­tion.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sovi­et Inven­tor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Ear­ly Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment That Could Be Played With­out Being Touched (1954)

Learn How to Play the Theremin: A Free Short Video Course

Meet Clara Rock­more, the Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Musi­cian Who First Rocked the Theremin in the Ear­ly 1920s

Leon Theremin Adver­tis­es the First Com­mer­cial Pro­duc­tion Run of His Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment (1930)

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

The Lost Scenes of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons Are Being Controversially Restored with AI

in Artificial Intelligence, Film, Technology | May 20th, 2026

When tele­vi­sion mogul Ted Turn­er died ear­li­er this month, it gave cinephiles occa­sion to remem­ber his brief but high-pro­file for­ay into col­oriza­tion. In the mid-nine­teen-eight­ies, he com­mis­sioned for broad­cast col­orized ver­sions of more than 100 clas­sic movies, from The Trea­sure of the Sier­ra Madre to It’s a Won­der­ful Life to Casablan­ca. It was only thanks to a clause spec­i­fy­ing a black-and-white pic­ture in Orson Welles’ con­tract with RKO that Cit­i­zen Kane nev­er got the full Turn­er treat­ment. That bless­ed­ly failed project is now being invoked again in com­par­i­son with the start­up Fable Stu­dio’s enter­prise, under­way even now, of using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to restore Welles’ sopho­more fea­ture The Mag­nif­i­cent Amber­sons, which was noto­ri­ous­ly muti­lat­ed by the stu­dio before its release in 1942.

The recut hap­pened in Welles’ absence. After the attack on Pearl Har­bor, he received what sounds like some­thing more than a request from Nel­son Rock­e­feller, then the government’s Coor­di­na­tor of Inter-Amer­i­can Affairs, to go to Brazil and shoot a doc­u­men­tary about Car­ni­val in the inter­est of “Pan-Amer­i­can uni­ty.” Due to a dis­as­trous test screen­ing, as Welles explains in the clip from a 1982 Are­na broad­cast above, “it was thought by every­one in Hol­ly­wood, while I was in South Amer­i­ca, that it was too ‘down­beat,’ a famous Hol­ly­wood word at the time.” Yet the entire film, to his mind, was about the down­fall of the tit­u­lar fam­i­ly, who lose their wealth and pres­tige as the soci­ety they knew slips out from under­neath them dur­ing the trans­for­ma­tions of the ear­ly auto­mo­bile age: not a wide­ly res­o­nant theme, it seems, in mid-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca.

“They destroyed Amber­sons,” Welles says of the RKO’s recut, “and the pic­ture itself destroyed me.” Yet even the Bowd­ler­ized ver­sion has more than a few admir­ers. Among them is Edward Saatchi, the movie-lov­ing adver­tis­ing-com­pa­ny scion behind this AI restora­tion and/or recon­struc­tion project. “His Ama­zon-backed generative‑A.I. plat­form, Showrun­ner, would feed off the data from the extant ver­sion of the film to prompt entire new scenes, based on volu­mi­nous pro­duc­tion mate­ri­als that sur­vived, includ­ing scripts, pho­tographs, and detailed notes,” writes the New York­er’s Michael Schul­man. “For emo­tion­al authen­tic­i­ty, Fable would first shoot live actors, then over­lay the footage with the dig­i­tized voic­es and like­ness­es of the long-dead cast mem­bers.” The result has the poten­tial to be unset­tling on sev­er­al lev­els at once.

As Schul­man empha­sizes, the film’s con­cern with the human cost of a tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion is hard­ly lost on Saatchi. “With all their speed for­ward, they may be a step back­ward in civ­i­liza­tion,” says Joseph Cot­ten’s char­ac­ter, an ear­ly auto­mo­bile investor, in a scene from the stu­dio cut. “It may be that they won’t add to the beau­ty of the world or the life of men’s souls — I’m not sure. But auto­mo­biles have come, and almost all out­ward things are going to be dif­fer­ent because of what they bring.” Even the human mind, he spec­u­lates, will be “changed in sub­tle ways,” a process clear­ly in effect by the for­ties. As far as the con­se­quences of AI, we can already see how it’s begun chang­ing the think­ing of its ear­ly adopters. Saatchi him­self dis­plays an ambiva­lence about the tech­nol­o­gy, describ­ing it as “poten­tial­ly the end of human cre­ativ­i­ty” but also going full-speed-ahead with his unau­tho­rized work on The Mag­nif­i­cent Amber­sons — which, at the very least, he’s keep­ing in black-and-white.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the New Trail­er for Orson Welles’ Lost Film The Oth­er Side of the Wind: A Glimpse of Footage from the Final­ly Com­plet­ed Film

AI “Com­pletes” Kei­th Haring’s Unfin­ished Paint­ing and Con­tro­ver­sy Erupts

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Brings to Life Fig­ures from 7 Famous Paint­ings: The Mona Lisa, Birth of Venus & More

Dis­cov­er the Lost Films of Orson Welles

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

When Ted Turn­er Tried to Col­orize Cit­i­zen Kane: See the Only Sur­viv­ing Scene from the Great Act of Cin­e­mat­ic Sac­ri­lege

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.

Hear Seven Hours of Women Making Electronic Music (1938–2014)

in Music | March 13th, 2026

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

A num­ber of years ago, in a post on the pio­neer­ing com­pos­er of the orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who theme, we wrote that “the ear­ly era of exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic music belonged to Delia Der­byshire.” Derbyshire—who almost gave Paul McCart­ney a ver­sion of “Yes­ter­day” with an elec­tron­ic back­ing in place of strings—helped invent the ear­ly elec­tron­ic music of the six­ties through her work with the Radio­phon­ic Work­shop, the sound effects lab­o­ra­to­ry of the BBC. She went on to form one of the most influ­en­tial, if large­ly obscure, elec­tron­ic acts of the decade, White Noise. And yet, call­ing the ear­ly eras of elec­tron­ic music hers is an exag­ger­a­tion. Of course her many col­lab­o­ra­tors deserve men­tion, as well as musi­cians like Bruce Haack, Pierre Hen­ry, Kraftwerk, Bri­an Eno, and so many oth­ers. But what gets almost com­plete­ly left out of many his­to­ries of elec­tron­ic music, as with so many oth­er his­to­ries, is the promi­nent role so many women besides Der­byshire played in the devel­op­ment of the sounds we now hear around us all the time.

In recog­ni­tion of this fact, musi­cian, DJ, and “escaped housewife/schoolteacher” Bar­bara Gold­en devot­ed two episodes of her KPFA radio pro­gram “Crack o’ Dawn” to women in elec­tron­ic music, once in 2010 and again in 2013. She shares each broad­cast with co-host Jon Lei­deck­er (“Wob­bly”), and in each seg­ment, the two ban­ter in casu­al radio show style, offer­ing his­to­ry and con­text for each musi­cian and com­pos­er. High­light­ed on Ubu’s for­mer Twit­ter stream, the first show, “Women in Elec­tron­ic Music 1938–1982 Part 1” (above) gives Der­byshire her due, with three tracks from her, includ­ing the Doc­tor Who theme.

It also includes music from twen­ty one oth­er com­posers, begin­ning with Clara Rock­more, a refin­er and pop­u­lar­iz­er of the theremin, that weird instru­ment designed to sim­u­late a high, tremu­lous human voice. Also fea­tured is Wendy Carlos’s “Timesteps,” an orig­i­nal piece from her A Clock­work Orange score.

The sec­ond show, above, fills in sev­er­al gaps in the orig­i­nal broad­cast and “could eas­i­ly be six hours” says co-host Lei­deck­er, giv­en the sheer amount of elec­tron­ic music out there com­posed and record­ed by women over the past sev­en­ty years. This show includes one of our host Golden’s own com­po­si­tions, “Melody Sum­n­er Car­na­han,” as well as music from Lau­rie Ander­son and musique con­crete com­pos­er Doris Hays. These two broad­casts alone cov­er an enor­mous range of styl­is­tic and tech­no­log­i­cal ground, but for even more disco­graph­i­cal his­to­ry of women in elec­tron­ic music, see the playlist below, com­piled by “Nerd­girl” Antye Greie-Ripat­ti. Com­mis­sioned by Club Trans­me­di­ale Berlin, the mix includes such well-known names as Yoko Ono, Bjork, and M.I.A., as well as fore­moth­ers Der­byshire and Car­los, and dozens more.

In lieu of the radio-show chat­ter of Gold­en and Lei­deck­er, we have Greie-Ripatti’s post detail­ing each artist’s time peri­od, coun­try of ori­gin, and con­tri­bu­tions to elec­tron­ic music his­to­ry. Many of the com­posers rep­re­sent­ed here worked for major radio and film stu­dios, scored fea­ture films (like 1956’s For­bid­den Plan­et), invent­ed and inno­vat­ed new instru­ments and tech­niques, wrote for orches­tras, and passed on their knowl­edge as edu­ca­tors and pro­duc­ers. Greie-Ripatti’s page quotes a Dan­ish elec­tron­ic pro­duc­er and per­former say­ing “there is a lot of women in elec­tron­ic music… invis­i­ble women.” Thanks to efforts like hers and Golden’s, these pio­neer­ing cre­ators need no longer go unseen or, more impor­tant­ly, unheard.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Delia Der­byshire, the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

Watch Com­pos­er Wendy Car­los Demo an Orig­i­nal Moog Syn­the­siz­er (1989)

Meet Four Women Who Pio­neered Elec­tron­ic Music: Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros

New Doc­u­men­tary Sis­ters with Tran­sis­tors Tells the Sto­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music’s Female Pio­neers

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

Hear Elec­tron­ic Lady­land, a Mix­tape Fea­tur­ing 55 Tracks from 35 Pio­neer­ing Women in Elec­tron­ic Music

Thomas Dol­by Explains How a Syn­the­siz­er Works on a Jim Hen­son Kids Show (1989)

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