The Futurist Cookbook (1930) Tried to Turn Italian Cuisine into Modern Art

in Art, Food & Drink | March 10th, 2026

With the sav­age cuts in arts fund­ing, per­haps we’ll return to a sys­tem of noblesse oblige famil­iar to stu­dents of The Gild­ed Age, when artists need­ed inde­pen­dent wealth or patron­age, and wealthy indus­tri­al­ists often decid­ed what was art, and what wasn’t. Unlike fine art, how­ev­er, haute cui­sine has always relied on the patron­age of wealthy donors—or din­ers. It can be mar­ket­ed in pre­made pieces, sold in cook­books, and made to look easy on TV, but for rea­sons both cul­tur­al and prac­ti­cal, giv­en the nature of food, an exquis­ite­ly-pre­pared dish can only be made acces­si­ble to a select few.

Still, we would be mis­tak­en, sug­gest­ed Futur­ist poet and the­o­rist F.T. Marinet­ti (1876–1944), should we neglect to see cook­ing as an art form akin to all the oth­ers in its moral and intel­lec­tu­al influ­ence on us. While hard­ly the first or the last artist to pub­lish a cook­book, Marinetti’s Futur­ist Cook­book seems at first glance dead­ly, even aggres­sive­ly, seri­ous, lack­ing the whim­sy, imprac­ti­cal weird­ness, and sur­re­al­ist art of Sal­vador Dali’s Les Din­ers de Gala, for exam­ple, or the eclec­tic wist­ful­ness of the MoMA’s Artist’s Cook­book.

Just as he had sought with his ear­li­er Futur­ist Man­i­festo to rev­o­lu­tion­ize art, Marinet­ti intend­ed his cook­book to foment a “rev­o­lu­tion of cui­sine,” as Alex Rev­el­li Sori­ni and Susan­na Cuti­ni point out. You might even call it an act of war when it came to cer­tain sta­ples of Ital­ian eat­ing, like pas­ta, which he thought respon­si­ble for “slug­gish­ness, pes­simism, nos­tal­gic inac­tiv­i­ty, and neu­tral­ism” (antic­i­pat­ing scads of low and no-carb diets to come).

Believ­ing that peo­ple “think, dream and act accord­ing to what they eat and drink,” Marinet­ti for­mu­lat­ed strict rules not only for the prepa­ra­tion of food, but also the serv­ing and eat­ing of it, going so far as to call for abol­ish­ing the knife and fork. A short excerpt from his intro­duc­tion shows him apply­ing to food the tech­no-roman­ti­cism of his Futur­ist theory—an ethos tak­en up by Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni, whom Marinet­ti sup­port­ed:

The Futur­ist culi­nary rev­o­lu­tion … has the lofty, noble and uni­ver­sal­ly expe­di­ent aim of chang­ing rad­i­cal­ly the eat­ing habits of our race, strength­en­ing it, dynamiz­ing it and spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing it with brand-new food com­bi­na­tions in which exper­i­ment, intel­li­gence and imag­i­na­tion will eco­nom­i­cal­ly take the place of quan­ti­ty, banal­i­ty, rep­e­ti­tion and expense.

In hind­sight, the fas­cist over­tones in Marinetti’s lan­guage seem glar­ing. In 1932, when the Futur­ist Cook­book was pub­lished, his Futur­ism seemed like a much-need­ed “jolt to all the prac­ti­cal and intel­lec­tu­al activ­i­ties,” note Sori­ni and Cuti­ni.  “The sub­ject [of cook­ing] need­ed a good shake to reawak­en its spir­it.” And that’s just what it got. The Futur­ist Cook­book act­ed as “a pre­view of Ital­ian-style Nou­velle Cui­sine,” with such inno­va­tions as “addi­tives and preser­v­a­tives added to food, or using tech­no­log­i­cal tools in the kitchen to mince, pul­ver­ize, and emul­si­fy.”

Yet, for all the high seri­ous­ness with which Marinet­ti seems to treat his sub­ject, “what the media missed” at the time, writes Maria Popo­va, “was that the cook­book was arguably the great­est artis­tic prank of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.” In an intro­duc­tion to the 1989 edi­tion, British jour­nal­ist and his­to­ri­an Les­ley Cham­ber­lain called the Futur­ist Cook­book “a seri­ous joke, rev­o­lu­tion­ary in the first instance because it over­turned with rib­ald laugh­ter every­thing ‘food’ and ‘cook­books’ held sacred.” Marinet­ti first swept away tra­di­tion in favor of cre­ative din­ing events the Futur­ists called “aer­oban­quets,” such as one in Bologna in 1931 with a table shaped like an air­plane and dish­es called “spicy air­port” (Olivi­er sal­ad) and “ris­ing thun­der” (orange risot­to). Lam­br­us­co wine was served in gas cans.

It’s per­for­mance art wor­thy of Dal­i’s bizarre cos­tumed din­ner par­ties, but fueled by a gen­uine desire to rev­o­lu­tion­ize food, if not the actu­al eat­ing of it, by “bring­ing togeth­er ele­ments sep­a­rat­ed by bias­es that have no true foun­da­tion.” So remarked French chef Jules Main­cave, a 1914 con­vert to Futur­ism and inspi­ra­tion for what Marinet­ti calls “flex­i­ble fla­vor­ful com­bi­na­tions.” See sev­er­al such recipes excerpt­ed from the Futur­ist Cook­book at Brain Pick­ings, read the full book in Ital­ian here, and, just below, see Marinetti’s rules for the per­fect meal, first pub­lished in 1930 as the “Man­i­festo of Futur­ist Cui­sine.”

Futur­ist cui­sine and rules for the per­fect lunch

1. An orig­i­nal har­mo­ny of the table (crys­tal ware, crock­ery and glass­ware, dec­o­ra­tion) with the fla­vors and col­ors of the dish­es.

2. Utter orig­i­nal­i­ty in the dish­es.

3. The inven­tion of flex­i­ble fla­vor­ful com­bi­na­tions (edi­ble plas­tic com­plex), whose orig­i­nal har­mo­ny of form and col­or feeds the eyes and awak­ens the imag­i­na­tion before tempt­ing the lips.

4. The abo­li­tion of knife and fork in favor of flex­i­ble com­bi­na­tions that can deliv­er prelabi­al tac­tile enjoy­ment.

5. The use of the art of per­fumery to enhance taste. Each dish must be pre­ced­ed by a per­fume that will be removed from the table using fans.

6. A lim­it­ed use of music in the inter­vals between one dish and the next, so as not to dis­tract the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the tongue and the palate and serves to elim­i­nate the fla­vor enjoyed, restor­ing a clean slate for tast­ing.

7. Abo­li­tion of ora­to­ry and pol­i­tics at the table.

8. Mea­sured use of poet­ry and music as unex­pect­ed ingre­di­ents to awak­en the fla­vors of a giv­en dish with their sen­su­al inten­si­ty.

9. Rapid pre­sen­ta­tion between one dish and the next, before the nos­trils and the eyes of the din­ner guests, of the few dish­es that they will eat, and oth­ers that they will not, to facil­i­tate curios­i­ty, sur­prise, and imag­i­na­tion.

10. The cre­ation of simul­ta­ne­ous and chang­ing morsels that con­tain ten, twen­ty fla­vors to be tast­ed in a few moments. These morsels will also serve the ana­log func­tion […] of sum­ma­riz­ing an entire area of life, the course of a love affair, or an entire voy­age to the Far East.

11. A sup­ply of sci­en­tif­ic tools in the kitchen: ozone machines that will impart the scent of ozone to liq­uids and dish­es; lamps to emit ultra­vi­o­let rays; elec­trolyz­ers to decom­pose extract­ed juices etc. in order to use a known prod­uct to achieve a new prod­uct with new prop­er­ties; col­loidal mills that can be used to pul­ver­ize flours, dried fruit and nuts, spices, etc.; dis­till­ing devices using ordi­nary pres­sure or a vac­u­um, cen­trifuge auto­claves, dial­y­sis machines.

The use of this equip­ment must be sci­en­tif­ic, avoid­ing the error of allow­ing dish­es to cook in steam pres­sure cook­ers, which leads to the destruc­tion of active sub­stances (vit­a­mins, etc.) due to the high tem­per­a­tures. Chem­i­cal indi­ca­tors will check if the sauce is acidic or basic and will serve to cor­rect any errors that may occur: lack of salt, too much vine­gar, too much pep­per, too sweet.”

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

Relat­ed Con­tent

When Ital­ian Futur­ists Declared War on Pas­ta (1930)

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

MoMA’s Artists’ Cook­book (1978) Reveals the Meals of Sal­vador Dalí, Willem de Koon­ing, Andy Warhol, Louise Bour­geois & More

The Artists’ and Writ­ers’ Cook­book Col­lects Recipes From T.C. Boyle, Mari­na Abramović, Neil Gaiman, Joyce Car­ol Oates & More

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

RIP Gladys Mae West, the Pioneering Black Mathematician Who Helped Lay the Foundation for GPS

in History, Math, Technology | January 28th, 2026

Gladys Mae West was born in rur­al Vir­ginia in 1930, grew up work­ing on a tobac­co farm, and died ear­li­er this month a cel­e­brat­ed math­e­mati­cian whose work made pos­si­ble the GPS tech­nol­o­gy most of us use each and every day. Hers was a dis­tinc­tive­ly Amer­i­can life, in more ways than one. Seek­ing an escape from the agri­cul­tur­al labor she’d already got­ten to know all too well, she won a schol­ar­ship to Vir­ginia State Col­lege by becom­ing her high school class vale­dic­to­ri­an; after earn­ing her bach­e­lor’s and mas­ter’s degrees in math­e­mat­ics, she taught for a time and then applied for a job at the naval base up in Dahlgren. She first dis­tin­guished her­self there by ver­i­fy­ing the accu­ra­cy of bomb­ing tables with a hand cal­cu­la­tor, and from there moved on up to the com­put­er pro­gram­ming team.

This was the ear­ly nine­teen-six­ties, when pro­gram­ming a com­put­er meant not cod­ing, but labo­ri­ous­ly feed­ing punch cards into an enor­mous main­frame. West and her col­leagues used IBM’s first tran­sis­tor­ized machine, the 7030 (or “Stretch”), which was for a few years the fastest com­put­er in the world.

It cost an equiv­a­lent of $81,860,000 in today’s dol­lars, but no oth­er com­put­er had the pow­er to han­dle the project of cal­cu­lat­ing the pre­cise shape of Earth as affect­ed by grav­i­ty and the nature of the oceans. About a decade lat­er, anoth­er team of gov­ern­ment sci­en­tists made use of those very same cal­cu­la­tions when putting togeth­er the mod­el employed by the World Geo­det­ic Sys­tem, which GPS satel­lites still use today. Hence the ten­den­cy of cel­e­bra­to­ry obit­u­ar­ies to under­score the point that with­out West­’s work, GPS would­n’t be pos­si­ble.

Nor do any of them neglect to point out the fact that West was black, one of just four such math­e­mati­cians work­ing for the Navy at Dahlgren. Sto­ries like hers have drawn much greater pub­lic inter­est since the suc­cess of Hid­den Fig­ures, the Hol­ly­wood adap­ta­tion of Mar­got Lee Shet­ter­ly’s book about the black female math­e­mati­cians at NASA dur­ing the Space Race. When that movie came out, in 2016, even West­’s own chil­dren did­n’t know the impor­tance of the once-clas­si­fied work she’d done. Only in 2018, when she pro­vid­ed that infor­ma­tion on a bio­graph­i­cal form she filled out for an event host­ed by her col­lege soror­i­ty, did it become pub­lic. She thus spent the last years of her long life as a celebri­ty, sought out by aca­d­e­mics and jour­nal­ists eager to under­stand the con­tri­bu­tions of anoth­er no-longer-hid­den fig­ure. But to their ques­tions about her own GPS use, she report­ed­ly answered that she pre­ferred a good old-fash­ioned paper map.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mar­garet Hamil­ton, Lead Soft­ware Engi­neer of the Apol­lo Project, Stands Next to Her Code That Took Us to the Moon (1969)

Women’s Hid­den Con­tri­bu­tions to Mod­ern Genet­ics Get Revealed by New Study: No Longer Will They Be Buried in the Foot­notes

Meet Grace Hop­per, the Pio­neer­ing Com­put­er Sci­en­tist Who Helped Invent COBOL and Build the His­toric Mark I Com­put­er (1906–1992)

Joce­lyn Bell Bur­nell Dis­cov­ered Radio Pul­sars in 1974, But the Cred­it Went to Her Advi­sor; In 2018, She Gets Her Due, Win­ning a $3 Mil­lion Physics Prize

Hen­ri­et­ta Lacks Gets Immor­tal­ized in a Por­trait: It’s Now on Dis­play at the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery

Black His­to­ry in Two Min­utes: Watch 93 Videos Writ­ten & Nar­rat­ed by Hen­ry Louis Gates Jr.

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.

Can Genius Be Taught? The Polgár Sisters and the Experiment That Put the Question to the Test

in Education, Games | January 8th, 2026

As any new par­ent soon finds out, there exists a robust mar­ket for prod­ucts, ser­vices, and media that promise to boost a child’s intel­li­gence. Some of these offer­ings come as close as legal­ly pos­si­ble to hold­ing out the promise of putting any tot on the path to genius, brazen­ly beg­ging the ques­tion of whether it’s pos­si­ble to raise a genius in the first place. Still, the efforts par­ents have delib­er­ate­ly made in that direc­tion have occa­sion­al­ly pro­duced notable results, from epochal fig­ures like Mozart or John Stu­art Mill to the promis­ing-math­e­mati­cian-turned-street­car-trans­fer-obsessed-recluse William Sidis. More recent­ly came the Pol­gár sis­ters, who were suc­cess­ful­ly raised to become some of the great­est female chess play­ers in his­to­ry.

Hav­ing stud­ied the nature of intel­li­gence at uni­ver­si­ty, their father Lás­zló got it in his head that, since most genius­es start­ed learn­ing their sub­jects inten­sive­ly and ear­ly, par­ents could cul­ti­vate genius-lev­el per­for­mance in their chil­dren by direct­ing that learn­ing process them­selves. He sought out a wife both intel­lec­tu­al­ly promis­ing and will­ing to devote her­self to test­ing this hypoth­e­sis. Togeth­er they went on to father three daugh­ters, putting them through a rig­or­ous, cus­tom-made edu­ca­tion ori­ent­ed toward chess mas­tery. Chess became the pro­jec­t’s cen­tral sub­ject in large part because of its sheer objec­tiv­i­ty, all the bet­ter for Lás­zló Pol­gár to mea­sure the results of this domes­tic exper­i­ment.

Nor could it have hurt, giv­en the impor­tance of retain­ing the inter­est of chil­dren, that chess was a game — and one with evoca­tive toy-like pieces — that offers imme­di­ate feed­back and feel­ings of accom­plish­ment. For his daugh­ters, Pol­gár has empha­sized, learn­ing involved none of the drudgery and busy­work of school. “A child does not like only play: for them it is also enjoy­able to acquire infor­ma­tion and solve prob­lems,” he writes in his book Raise a Genius! “A child’s work can also be enjoy­able; so can learn­ing, if it is suf­fi­cient­ly moti­vat­ing, and if it means a con­stant sup­ply of prob­lems to solve that are appro­pri­ate for the lev­el of the child’s needs. A child does not need play sep­a­rate from work, but mean­ing­ful action.”

The proof of Pol­gár’s the­o­ries is in the pud­ding — or at any rate, in the rat­ings. All three of his daugh­ters became elite chess play­ers. Sofia, the mid­dle one, became the sixth-strongest female play­er in the world; Susan, the eldest, the top-ranked female play­er in the world; Judit, the youngest, the strongest female chess play­er of all time. This despite the fact that their father was an unex­cep­tion­al chess play­er, and their moth­er not a chess play­er at all. Some eager­ly take the sto­ry of the Pol­gár sis­ters as a vin­di­ca­tion of nur­ture over nature; oth­ers, sci­en­tif­ic researchers includ­ed, argue that it only shows that prac­tice is a nec­es­sary con­di­tion for this kind of genius, not a suf­fi­cient one. For my part, hav­ing kept an eye on a pair of infant twins while writ­ing this, I’d be hap­py if my own kids could just mas­ter hold­ing on to their bot­tles.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Learn How to Play Chess Online: Free Chess Lessons for Begin­ners, Inter­me­di­ate Play­ers & Beyond

Meet Alma Deutsch­er, the Clas­si­cal Music Prodi­gy: Watch Her Per­for­mances from Age 6 to 14

The Mag­ic of Chess: Kids Share Their Unin­hib­it­ed, Philo­soph­i­cal Insights about the Ben­e­fits of Chess

Hear the Pieces Mozart Com­posed When He Was Only 5 Years Old

Read an 18th-Cen­tu­ry Eye­wit­ness Account of 8‑Year-Old Mozart’s Extra­or­di­nary Musi­cal Skills

The Renewed Pop­u­lar­i­ty of Chess and The Queen’s Gam­bit: Pret­ty Much Pop Cul­ture Pod­cast Dis­cus­sion #78 with Chess Expert J. J. Lang

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.

What’s Entering the Public Domain in 2026: Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, All Quiet on the Western Front, Betty Boop & More

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, Film, Law, Music | January 1st, 2026

Though it isn’t the kind of thing one hears dis­cussed every day, seri­ous Dis­ney fans do tend to know that Goofy’s orig­i­nal name was Dip­py Dawg. But how many of the non-obses­sive know that Mick­ey’s faith­ful pet Plu­to was first called Rover? (We pass over in dig­ni­fied silence the qua­si-philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion of why the for­mer dog is humanoid and the lat­ter isn’t.) It is Rover, as dis­tinct from Plu­to, who pass­es into the pub­lic domain this new year, one of a cast of now-lib­er­at­ed char­ac­ters includ­ing Blondie and Dag­wood as well as Bet­ty Boop — who, upon mak­ing her debut in Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios’ Dizzy Dish­es of 1930, has a some­what canoid appear­ance her­self. You can see them all in the video above from Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain, with much more infor­ma­tion avail­able in their blog post mark­ing this year’s “Pub­lic Domain Day.”

The year 1930, write the Cen­ter’s Jen­nifer Jenk­ins and James Boyle, was one “of detec­tives, jazz, speakeasies, and icon­ic char­ac­ters step­ping onto the cul­tur­al stage — many of whom have been locked behind copy­right for near­ly a cen­tu­ry.”

Nov­els that come avail­able this year include William Faulkn­er’s As I Lay Dying, Dashiell Ham­met­t’s The Mal­tese Fal­con, and Agatha Christie’s The Mur­der at the Vic­arage; among the films are Lewis Mile­stone’s Best Pic­ture-win­ning All Qui­et on the West­ern Front, Vic­tor Heer­man’s Marx Broth­ers pic­ture Ani­mal Crack­ers, and Luis Buñuel and Sal­vador Dalí’s L’Âge d’Or. In music, com­po­si­tions like “I Got Rhythm” and “Embrace­able You” by the Gersh­win Broth­ers as well as record­ings like “Nobody Knows the Trou­ble I’ve Seen” by Mar­i­an Ander­son and “Sweet Geor­gia Brown” by Ben Bernie and His Hotel Roo­sevelt Orches­tra have also, at long last, gone pub­lic.

Reflec­tion on some of these works them­selves sug­gests some­thing about the impor­tance of the pub­lic domain. With the title of Cakes and Ale, anoth­er book in this year’s crop, Som­er­set Maugh­am makes ref­er­ence to “a clas­sic pub­lic domain work, in this case Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night”; so, for that mat­ter, does Faulkn­er, giv­en that the line “as I lay dying” comes from the Odyssey. “To tell new sto­ries, we draw from old­er ones,” write Jenk­ins and Boyle. “One work of art inspires anoth­er — that is how the pub­lic domain feeds cre­ativ­i­ty.” Today, we’re free to take explic­it inspi­ra­tion for our own work from Nan­cy Drew, “Just a Gigo­lo,” Blondie, Mon­dri­an’s Com­po­si­tion with Red, Blue, and Yel­low, Hitch­cock­’s Mur­der!, and much else besides. And by all means use Rover, but if you also want to bring in Dip­py Dawg, you’re going to have to wait until 2028.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s Enter­ing the Pub­lic Domain in 2025: Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Ear­ly Hitch­cock Films, Tintin and Pop­eye Car­toons & More

The Harlem Jazz Singer Who Inspired Bet­ty Boop: Meet the Orig­i­nal Boop-Oop-a-Doop, “Baby Esther”

Car­toon­ists Draw Their Famous Car­toon Char­ac­ters While Blind­fold­ed (1947)

Watch Restored Ver­sions of Clas­sic Fleis­ch­er Car­toons on Youtube, Fea­tur­ing Bet­ty Boop, Koko the Clown & Oth­ers

Vin­tage Audio: William Faulkn­er Reads From As I Lay Dying

16 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

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.

Top 10 Alternative Christmas Movie Lists: Horror, Action, Comedy & More

in Film | December 23rd, 2025

Die Hard is a Christ­mas movie. That once-con­trar­i­an cat­e­go­riza­tion has increas­ing­ly been accept­ed over the past cou­ple of decades, at least since an edi­tor with whom I’ve often worked first declared it in a Slate roundup. As a result, John McTier­nan’s stur­dy piece of one-build­ing eight­ies Hol­ly­wood action may have dis­placed It’s a Won­der­ful Life as a hol­i­day home-video tra­di­tion in cer­tain house­holds. But it’s also stoked a broad­er desire for ever more alter­na­tive Christ­mas movies with sub­tle, even sub­ver­sive hol­i­day ele­ments. If you, too, can’t han­dle yet anoth­er view­ing of Mir­a­cle on 34th Street, A Christ­mas Sto­ry, or Home Alone this year, have a look at the top ten lists com­piled in these four videos, which offer a selec­tion of films beyond — some­times well beyond — the estab­lished sea­son­al canon.

These selec­tions come from a vari­ety of gen­res, includ­ing the super­hero pic­ture: if you haven’t seen Bat­man Returns in a few decades, you may have for­got­ten how thor­ough­ly Tim Bur­ton sat­u­rates it with Christ­mas imagery, albeit of a kind suit­ed to the dank, men­ac­ing Gotham City. Those who want to crank up the dark­ness fur­ther still would do well to put on the Cana­di­an soror­i­ty-house slash­er film Black Christ­mas, which also appears on more than one of these lists.

Joe Dan­te’s Yule­tide-set Grem­lins con­tains much high­er-bud­get spec­ta­cles of destruc­tion, albeit comedic ones; the humor of Ter­ry Gilliam’s Brazil, anoth­er elab­o­rate mid-eight­ies auteur project, runs to the dystopi­an, a sen­si­bil­i­ty cer­tain­ly present in the hol­i­day sea­son itself, if sel­dom treat­ed with such grotesque vivid­ness.

The work of no sin­gle pro­fes­sion­al makes these alter­na­tive Christ­mas movie lists more often than Shane Black, the writer of Lethal Weapon (with Die Hard, the mak­ings of a hol­i­day dou­ble bill if ever there was one) and The Long Kiss Good­night, as well as the writer-direc­tor of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man 3, and The Nice Guys. That all of those pic­tures are set at Christ­mas­time makes them feel — no mat­ter how height­ened, fan­tas­ti­cal, or visu­al effects-sat­u­rat­ed they may be — pal­pa­bly con­nect­ed to our own real­i­ty. It also tends to inten­si­fy the dra­ma: as Black remarked in one inter­view, “Christ­mas rep­re­sents a lit­tle stut­ter in the march of days, a hush in which we have a chance to assess and ret­ro­spect our lives.” Which hard­ly means, of course, that it can’t be enter­tain­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch San­ta Claus, the Ear­li­est Movie About San­ta in Exis­tence (1898)

Watch The Insects’ Christ­mas from 1913: A Stop Motion Film Star­ring a Cast of Dead Bugs

An Ani­mat­ed Christ­mas Fable by Mau­rice Sendak (1977)

The Junky’s Christ­mas: William S. Burrough’s Dark Clay­ma­tion Christ­mas Film Pro­duced by Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la (1993)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, the Most Trou­bling Christ­mas Film Ever Made

Blue Christ­mas: A Cri­te­ri­on Video Essay

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.

Why Overconfidence Is Our Most Dangerous Cognitive Bias

in Psychology | November 17th, 2025

In the two-thou­sands, the magi­cian-come­di­ans Penn and Teller host­ed a tele­vi­sion series called Bull­shit! In it, they took on a vari­ety of cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na they regard­ed as wor­thy of the tit­u­lar epi­thet, from ESP to Area 51, exor­cism to cre­ation­ism, feng shui to haute cui­sine. Their sar­don­ic argu­ments were enriched by clips of assort­ed inter­vie­wees —speak­ing in defense of the top­ic of the day. Penn once addressed the view­ers, say­ing that we might won­der why any­one agrees to come on the show, giv­en how they must know it will make them come off. But every­one, he explained, con­fi­dent­ly believes that their own ideas are the cor­rect ones.

That episode came right to mind while watch­ing the new Ver­i­ta­si­um video above, which deals with the phe­nom­e­non of over­con­fi­dence. Like the oft-cit­ed 93 per­cent of Amer­i­cans who believe them­selves bet­ter dri­vers than the medi­an, we all fall vic­tim to that afflic­tion at one time or anoth­er, to one degree or anoth­er; the more inter­est­ing mat­ter under inves­ti­ga­tion is why that should be so.

One can always point to what T. S. Eliot called “the end­less strug­gle to think well of them­selves”: want­i­ng to believe that we know it all, we take pains to present our­selves as if we do. But as explained by the pro­fes­sors inter­viewed here, Carnegie Mel­lon’s Baruch Fis­chhoff and Berke­ley’s Don A. Moore (author of Per­fect­ly Con­fi­dent: How to Cal­i­brate Your Deci­sions Wise­ly), the research has also revealed oth­er poten­tial fac­tors in play.

One impor­tant can­di­date is, as ever, stu­pid­i­ty. Much has been made of the Dun­ning-Kruger effect, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, which holds that the less com­pe­tent peo­ple are at a task, the more con­fi­dent they tend to be about their abil­i­ty to per­form it. That would seem to accord with much of our every­day expe­ri­ence, but we should also con­sid­er the role played by the basic cog­ni­tive lim­i­ta­tions that apply to us all. Our brains can only process so much at once, and when they come up against capac­i­ty, they default to sim­pli­fied, and often too-sim­pli­fied, ver­sions of the prob­lem before them. It all becomes more dif­fi­cult if we’re insu­lat­ed from direct, objec­tive feed­back, a con­di­tion that often results from the kind of suc­cess and esteem that can be achieved by pro­ject­ing — you guessed it — con­fi­dence.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why Incom­pe­tent Peo­ple Think They’re Com­pe­tent: The Dun­ning-Kruger Effect, Explained

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.

AC/DC Plays a Short Gig at CBGB in 1977: Hear Metal Being Played on Punk’s Hallowed Grounds

in Music | November 17th, 2025

Punk rock and heavy met­al were two gen­res that evolved over the ‘70s, but seemed to run par­al­lel to each oth­er, despite shar­ing com­mon fash­ion, sounds, and atti­tudes. But then there are moments in his­to­ry, where every­body plays togeth­er in the same sand­box. For exam­ple, the above remas­tered audio, which cap­tures the Aus­tralian band AC/DC on their first Amer­i­can tour, play­ing New York’s CBGB, syn­ony­mous now with punk and new wave music.

The date is August 24, 1977, and AC/DC were on a cross-coun­try trip that had tak­en in both club dates and are­nas, where they supported—yes, hard to believe, I know—REO Speed­wag­on. Their album Let There Be Rock had just dropped in June. The band would be in the States until the win­ter.

This CBGB gig finds them on the same bill as Talk­ing Heads and the Dead Boys, accord­ing to a poster from the time. And while there’s no video for this show, you can find a few pho­tos that doc­u­ment the con­cert here. You can feel the mug­gy New York sum­mer in these pho­tos, but also the excite­ment of an unfor­get­table gig.

At 15 min­utes, the set is short, but still three min­utes longer than the Ramones’ first set at the same club three years ear­li­er. That’s pret­ty met­al, man.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NYC’s Icon­ic Punk Club CBG­Bs Comes Alive in a Bril­liant Short Ani­ma­tion, Using David Godlis’ Pho­tos of Pat­ti Smith, The Ramones & More

CBGB’s Hey­day: Watch The Ramones, The Dead Boys, Bad Brains, Talk­ing Heads & Blondie Per­form Live (1974–1982)

Lis­ten to Pat­ti Smith’s Glo­ri­ous Three Hour Farewell to CBGB’s on Its Final Night

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club That Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Watch an Episode of TV-CBGB, the First Rock ‘n’ Roll Sit­com Ever Aired on Cable TV (1981)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.

A 400-Year-Old Ring that Unfolds to Track the Movements of the Heavens

in Astronomy, Design, Fashion, History | November 6th, 2025

Rings with a dis­creet dual pur­pose have been in use since before the com­mon era, when Han­ni­bal, fac­ing extra­di­tion, alleged­ly ingest­ed the poi­son he kept secret­ed behind a gem­stone on his fin­ger. (More recent­ly, poi­son rings gave rise to a pop­u­lar Game of Thrones fan the­o­ry…)

Vic­to­ri­ans pre­vent­ed their most close­ly kept secrets—illicit love let­ters, per­haps? Last wills and testaments?—from falling into the wrong hands by wear­ing the keys to the box­es con­tain­ing these items con­cealed in signet rings and oth­er state­ment-type pieces.

A tiny con­cealed blade could be lethal on the fin­ger of a skilled (and no doubt, beau­ti­ful) assas­sin. These days, they might be used to col­lect a bit of one’s attack­er’s DNA.

Enter the fic­tion­al world of James Bond, and you’ll find a num­ber of handy dandy spy rings includ­ing one that dou­bles as a cam­era, and anoth­er capa­ble of shat­ter­ing bul­let­proof glass with a sin­gle twist.

Armil­lary sphere rings like the ones in the British Muse­um’s col­lec­tion and the Swedish His­tor­i­cal Muse­um (top) serve a more benign pur­pose. Fold­ed togeth­er, the two-part out­er hoop and three inte­ri­or hoops give the illu­sion of a sim­ple gold band. Slipped off the wearer’s fin­ger, they can fan out into a phys­i­cal mod­el of celes­tial lon­gi­tude and lat­i­tude.

Art his­to­ri­an Jes­si­ca Stew­art writes that in the 17th cen­tu­ry, rings such as the above spec­i­men were “used by astronomers to study and make cal­cu­la­tions. These pieces of jew­el­ry were con­sid­ered tokens of knowl­edge. Inscrip­tions or zodi­ac sym­bols were often used as dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments on the bands.”

The armil­lary sphere rings in the British Museum’s col­lec­tion are made of a soft high-alloy gold.

Jew­el­ry-lov­ing mod­ern astronomers seek­ing an old school fin­ger-based cal­cu­la­tion tool that real­ly works can order armil­lary sphere rings from Brook­lyn-based design­er Black Adept.

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: 

A 16th-Cen­tu­ry Astron­o­my Book Fea­tured “Ana­log Com­put­ers” to Cal­cu­late the Shape of the Moon, the Posi­tion of the Sun, and More

When Astronomer Johannes Kepler Wrote the First Work of Sci­ence Fic­tion, The Dream (1609)

The Rem­brandt Book Bracelet: Behold a Func­tion­al Bracelet Fea­tur­ing 1400 Rem­brandt Draw­ings

Behold the Astro­nom­icum Cae­sareum, “Per­haps the Most Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Book Ever Print­ed” (1540)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist in New York City.

Musician Plays the Last Stradivarius Guitar in the World, the “Sabionari” Made in 1679

in Music | September 30th, 2025

Last night, while the home team lost the big game on TVs at a local dive bar, my noisy rock band opened for a cham­ber pop ensem­ble. Elec­tric gui­tars and feed­back gave way to clas­si­cal acoustics, vio­lin, piano, accor­dion, and even a saw. It was an inter­est­ing cul­tur­al jux­ta­po­si­tion in an evening of cul­tur­al jux­ta­po­si­tions. The sports and music did­n’t gel, but an odd sym­me­try emerged from the two bands’ con­trast­ing styles, to a degree. The instru­ment above, on the oth­er hand, would have fit right in with the sec­ond act, whose old world charm would sure­ly find a place for a 1679 guitar—one craft­ed by the leg­endary mas­ter luthi­er Anto­nio Stradi­vari, no less.

If you know noth­ing at all about music or musi­cal instru­ments, you know the name Stradi­vari and the vio­lins that bear his name. They are such cov­et­ed, valu­able objects they some­times appear as the tar­get of crime capers in the movies and on tele­vi­sion. This Stradi­var­ius gui­tar, called the “Sabionari,” is even rar­er than the vio­lins. The Stradi­vari fam­i­ly, writes For­got­ten Gui­tar, “pro­duced over 1000 instru­ments, of which 960 were vio­lins.” Yet, “a small num­ber of gui­tars were also craft­ed, and as of today only one remains playable.” High­ly playable, you’ll observe in these videos, thanks to the restora­tion by luthiers Daniel Sinier, Fran­coise de Rid­der, and Loren­zo Frig­nani.

In the clip just above, Baroque con­cert gui­tarist Rolf Lisl­e­vand plays San­ti­a­go de Mur­ci­a’s “Taran­tela” on the restored gui­tar, whose sonorous ring­ing tim­bre recalls anoth­er Baroque instru­ment, the harp­si­chord.

So unique and unusu­al is the ten-string Stradi­var­ius Sabionari that it has its own web­site, where you’ll find many detailed, close-up pho­tos of the ele­gant design as well as more music, like the piece above, Ange­lo Michele Bar­tolot­ti’s Suite in G Minor as per­formed by clas­si­cal gui­tarist Krish­na­sol Jiménez, who, along with Lisl­e­vand, has been entrust­ed with the instru­ment for many live per­for­mances. Owned by a pri­vate col­lec­tor, the Sabionari very often appears at lec­tures on restora­tion and con­ser­va­tion of clas­si­cal instru­ments, as well as in per­for­mances around Europe. You’ll find on sabionari.com many more videos of the gui­tar in action (like that below of gui­tarist Ugo Nas­truc­ci impro­vis­ing), links to exhibits, descrip­tions of the chal­leng­ing­ly long neck and Baroque tun­ing, and a sense of just how much the Sabionari gets around for such a rare, antique instru­ment.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Sci­en­tists Can’t Recre­ate the Sound of Stradi­var­ius Vio­lins: The Mys­tery of Their Inim­itable Sound

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

What Makes the Stradi­var­ius Spe­cial? It Was Designed to Sound Like a Female Sopra­no Voice, With Notes Sound­ing Like Vow­els, Says Researcher

Watch Price­less 17-Cen­tu­ry Stradi­var­ius and Amati Vio­lins Get Tak­en for a Test Dri­ve by Pro­fes­sion­al Vio­lin­ists

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

Ernst Haeckel’s Sublime Drawings of Flora & Fauna: The Beautiful Scientific Drawings That Influenced Europe’s Art Nouveau Movement (1889)

in Art, Biology, Science | September 24th, 2025

If you fol­low the ongo­ing beef many pop­u­lar sci­en­tists have with phi­los­o­phy, you’d be for­giv­en for think­ing the two dis­ci­plines have noth­ing to say to each oth­er. That’s a sad­ly false impres­sion, though they have become almost entire­ly sep­a­rate pro­fes­sion­al insti­tu­tions. But dur­ing the first, say, 200 years of mod­ern sci­ence, sci­en­tists were “nat­ur­al philosophers”—often as well versed in log­ic, meta­physics, or the­ol­o­gy as they were in math­e­mat­ics and tax­onomies. And most of them were artists too of one kind or anoth­er. Sci­en­tists had to learn to draw in order to illus­trate their find­ings before mass-pro­duced pho­tog­ra­phy and com­put­er imag­ing could do it for them. Many sci­en­tists have been fine artists indeed, rival­ing the greats, and they’ve made very fine musi­cians as well.

And then there’s Ernst Hein­rich Haeck­el, a Ger­man biol­o­gist and nat­u­ral­ist, philoso­pher and physi­cian, and pro­po­nent of Dar­win­ism who described and named thou­sands of species, mapped them on a genealog­i­cal tree, and “coined sev­er­al sci­en­tif­ic terms com­mon­ly known today,” This is Colos­sal writes, “such as ecol­o­gy, phy­lum, and stem cell.” That’s an impres­sive resume, isn’t it? Oh, and check out his art—his bril­liant­ly col­ored, ele­gant­ly ren­dered, high­ly styl­ized depic­tions of “far flung flo­ra and fau­na,” of microbes and nat­ur­al pat­terns, in designs that inspired the Art Nou­veau move­ment. “Each organ­ism Haeck­el drew has an almost abstract form,” notes Kather­ine Schwab at Fast Co. Design, “as if it’s a whim­si­cal fan­ta­sy he dreamed up rather than a real crea­ture he exam­ined under a micro­scope. His draw­ings of sponges reveal their intense­ly geo­met­ric structure—they look archi­tec­tur­al, like feats of engi­neer­ing.”

Haeck­el pub­lished 100 fab­u­lous prints begin­ning in 1889 in a series of ten books called Kun­st­for­men der Natur (“Art Forms in Nature”), col­lect­ed in two vol­umes in 1904. The aston­ish­ing work was “not just a book of illus­tra­tions but also the sum­ma­tion of his view of the world,” one which embraced the new sci­ence of Dar­win­ian evo­lu­tion whole­heart­ed­ly, writes schol­ar Olaf Brei­d­bach in his 2006 Visions of Nature.

Haeckel’s method was a holis­tic one, in which art, sci­ence, and phi­los­o­phy were com­ple­men­tary approach­es to the same sub­ject. He “sought to secure the atten­tion of those with an inter­est in the beau­ties of nature,” writes pro­fes­sor of zool­o­gy Rain­er Will­mann in a book from Taschen called The Art and Sci­ence of Ernst Haeck­el­, “and to empha­size, through this rare instance of the inter­play of sci­ence and aes­thet­ics, the prox­im­i­ty of these two realms.”

The gor­geous Taschen book includes 450 of Haeckel’s draw­ings, water­col­ors, and sketch­es, spread across 704 pages, and it’s expen­sive. But you can see all 100 of Haeckel’s orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished prints in zoomable high-res­o­lu­tion scans here. Or pur­chase a one-vol­ume reprint of the orig­i­nal Art Forms in Nature, with its 100 glo­ri­ous prints, through this Dover pub­li­ca­tion, which describes Haeckel’s art as “hav­ing caused the accep­tance of Dar­win­ism in Europe…. Today, although no one is great­ly inter­est­ed in Haeck­el the biol­o­gist-philoso­pher, his work is increas­ing­ly prized for some­thing he him­self would prob­a­bly have con­sid­ered sec­ondary.” It’s a shame his sci­en­tif­ic lega­cy lies neglect­ed, if that’s so, but it sure­ly lives on through his art, which may be just as need­ed now to illus­trate the won­ders of evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy and the nat­ur­al world as it was in Haeckel’s time.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent

Down­load 435 High Res­o­lu­tion Images from John J. Audubon’s The Birds of Amer­i­ca

Explore a New Archive of 2,200 His­tor­i­cal Wildlife Illus­tra­tions (1916–1965): Cour­tesy of The Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

Cats in Japan­ese Wood­block Prints: How Japan’s Favorite Ani­mals Came to Star in Its Pop­u­lar Art

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness