Thomas Jefferson’s Handwritten Vanilla Ice Cream Recipe

in Food & Drink, History | February 23rd, 2026

Here’s anoth­er thing you can cred­it Thomas Jef­fer­son with: being the first known Amer­i­can to record an ice cream recipe. It’s one of 10 sur­viv­ing recipes writ­ten by the found­ing father.

Accord­ing to Monticello.org, ice cream began appear­ing “in French cook­books start­ing in the late 17th cen­tu­ry, and in Eng­lish-lan­guage cook­books in the ear­ly 18th cen­tu­ry.” And there “are accounts of ice cream being served in the Amer­i­can colonies as ear­ly as 1744.” Jef­fer­son like­ly tast­ed his fair share of the dessert while liv­ing in France (1784–1789), and it con­tin­ued to be served at Mon­ti­cel­lo upon his return to Vir­ginia. By the first decade of the 19th cen­tu­ry, ice cream became increas­ing­ly com­mon in cook­books pub­lished through­out the U.S.

You can see the entire recipe for Jef­fer­son­’s vanil­la ice cream here, and read a tran­script below.

2. bot­tles of good cream.
6. yolks of eggs.
1/2 lb. sug­ar

mix the yolks & sug­ar
put the cream on a fire in a casse­role, first putting in a stick of Vanil­la.
when near boil­ing take it off & pour it gen­tly into the mix­ture of eggs & sug­ar.
stir it well.
put it on the fire again stir­ring it thor­ough­ly with a spoon to pre­vent it’s stick­ing to the casse­role.
when near boil­ing take it off and strain it thro’ a tow­el.
put it in the Sabottiere[12]
then set it in ice an hour before it is to be served. put into the ice a hand­ful of salt.
put salt on the cov­er­lid of the Sabotiere & cov­er the whole with ice.
leave it still half a quar­ter of an hour.
then turn the Sabot­tiere in the ice 10 min­utes
open it to loosen with a spat­u­la the ice from the inner sides of the Sabotiere.
shut it & replace it in the ice
open it from time to time to detach the ice from the sides
when well tak­en (prise) stir it well with the Spat­u­la.
put it in moulds, justling it well down on the knee.
then put the mould into the same buck­et of ice.
leave it there to the moment of serv­ing it.
to with­draw it, immerse the mould in warm water, turn­ing it well till it will come out & turn it into a plate

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Amer­i­can Cook­book: Sam­ple Recipes from Amer­i­can Cook­ery (1796)

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac and Cheese

Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Ham­burg­er Recipe

The Recipes of Icon­ic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Mar­quis de Sade & More

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

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Strange, Sur­re­al­ist Video

How to Actu­al­ly Cook Sal­vador Dali’s Sur­re­al­ist Recipes: Cray­fish, Prawns, and Spit­ted Eggs

A Tour Inside the Chelsea Hotel: Once Home to Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen & More

in Architecture, History | February 20th, 2026

We’ve all stayed at the Chelsea Hotel, though most of us have done so only in our minds, through such cul­tur­al arti­facts as Leonard Cohen’s “Chelsea Hotel No. 2,” Bob Dylan’s “Sara,” Nico’s “Chelsea Girls,” Andy Warhol’s epony­mous film that includes the Nico song, or Pat­ti Smith’s Just Kids, which tells of the time she spent there with Robert Map­plethor­pe. Enthu­si­asts of the work of every­one from Janis Joplin to Arthur C. Clarke to Miloš For­man to Dylan Thomas to Mark Twain may not know that they, too, there­by enjoy an indi­rect con­nec­tion to that New York insti­tu­tion, which has stood on West 23rd Street since its con­struc­tion in 1884.

At that time, it also stood quite tall, loom­ing over every oth­er apart­ment build­ing in the city, and indeed over most of the rest of Man­hat­tan. Nowa­days, how­ev­er, the cul­tur­al pro­file of the Chelsea Hotel (offi­cial­ly, and less cool­ly, the Hotel Chelsea) is high­er than its phys­i­cal one ever was.

Its rep­u­ta­tion as a refuge for artists dates to the man­age­ment of Stan­ley Bard, who inher­it­ed the busi­ness from his father in 1964. Already, a degree of dilap­i­da­tion in the build­ing itself, as well as the sur­round­ing neigh­bor­hood, kept rents low enough to attract impe­cu­nious cre­ative types. Bard dis­played enough gen­eros­i­ty to artists that, before long, Andy Warhol’s fac­to­ry had more or less moved in.

The Chelsea’s lat­est trans­for­ma­tion began in the mid-two-thou­sands with a series of takeovers and ren­o­va­tions not nec­es­sar­i­ly wel­comed by the exist­ing long-term res­i­dents, who appre­ci­at­ed the hotel pre­cise­ly for its seem­ing imper­vi­ous­ness to gen­tri­fi­ca­tion. In the new Archi­tec­tur­al Digest video above, cur­rent own­er Sean MacPher­son gives a tour of the lux­u­ri­ous Chelsea of the twen­ty-twen­ties, all of whose spaces have been metic­u­lous­ly curat­ed to evoke its sto­ried past. In its bar (with cig­a­rette burns care­ful­ly pre­served) guests can order a cock­tail called the Two Dylans, named in homage to both Bob and Thomas; in the base­ment, they can choose from the largest selec­tion of Japan­ese whiskey at a new restau­rant named after for­mer res­i­dent Teruko Yokoi. The expe­ri­ence of a nine­teen-six­ties New York bohemi­an is now avail­able to all of us — or at least those of us who can come up with $500 per night.

If you want to revis­it the hotel dur­ing its pre-restora­tion hey­day, you can watch the 1981 doc­u­men­tary below. It will let you get glimpses of Andy Warhol, William S. Bur­roughs, Nico, and more.

Relat­ed con­tent:

New York’s Famous Chelsea Hotel and Its Cre­ative Res­i­dents Revis­it­ed in a 1981 Doc­u­men­tary

Vin­tage Footage Shows a Young, Unknown Pat­ti Smith & Robert Map­plethor­pe Liv­ing at the Famed Chelsea Hotel (1970)

Nico Sings “Chelsea Girls” in the Famous Chelsea Hotel

Thanks­giv­ing Menu at the Plaza Hotel in New York City (1899)

Watch Iggy Pop Per­form Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gen­tle Into That Good Night”

Archi­tect Breaks Down Five of the Most Icon­ic New York City Apart­ments

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.

An Introduction to Outsider Artist Henry Darger and His Bizarre 15,000-Page Illustrated Masterwork

in Art, Books | February 18th, 2026

The expres­sion “Don’t quit your day job” is often used as an insult, imply­ing that the recip­i­en­t’s cre­ative skills aren’t up to attract­ing a career-sup­port­ing audi­ence. But it can also be prac­ti­cal advice in cer­tain cas­es, espe­cial­ly those of artists pos­sessed of a sen­si­bil­i­ty too par­tic­u­lar and strange to bear direct expo­sure to the mar­ket­place. So it was with Hen­ry Darg­er, who delib­er­ate­ly passed his 81 years in near-absolute obscu­ri­ty, work­ing increas­ing­ly menial jan­i­to­r­i­al jobs by day and, when not attend­ing one of his five dai­ly mass­es, obsess­ing over his art the rest of the time. That art took var­i­ous forms, most notably The Sto­ry of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unre­al, of the Glandeco–Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebel­lion, which has been described as the longest work of fic­tion ever writ­ten — and the strangest.

As described in the video above from Fredrik Knud­sen (and in the 2004 fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary In the Realms of the Unre­al), its 15,145 pages relate the adven­tures of a set of immac­u­late­ly vir­tu­ous lit­tle girls against the back­drop of an apoc­a­lyp­tic, ultra-vio­lent reli­gious war. When Darg­er’s land­lords dis­cov­ered the work after his death, they also turned up a vari­ety of draw­ings, paint­ings, and col­lages, many of them at least oblique­ly relat­ed to the sto­ry.

Against back­drops alter­nate­ly idyl­lic and har­row­ing, the Vivian girls often appear naked, some­times bewil­der­ing­ly out­fit­ted with male gen­i­talia. Though clear­ly com­posed with­out for­mal train­ing of any kind, Darg­er’s visu­al com­po­si­tions demon­strate an askew kind of pro­fi­cien­cy, or at least a kind of stag­ger­ing evo­lu­tion over the course of decades. What­ev­er the appeal of his work, there’s nev­er been an artist like him. Nor could there be, giv­en the high­ly spe­cif­ic stretch of his­to­ry occu­pied by his long yet rigid­ly bound­ed life.

Not long after Darg­er’s birth in the Chica­go of 1892, the death of his moth­er fol­lowed by the inca­pac­i­ta­tion of his father plunged him into a child­hood of Dick­en­sian-sound­ing hard­ship, spent in insti­tu­tions with names like the Illi­nois Asy­lum for Fee­ble-Mind­ed Chil­dren. An aggriev­ed lon­er seem­ing­ly afflict­ed by what we would now call men­tal health dif­fi­cul­ties from the start, he took a kind of refuge in the fan­ta­sy coher­ing in his head, one shaped equal­ly by mass print media phe­nom­e­na like Win­nie Win­kle and Lit­tle Annie Rooney, Civ­il War pho­tographs, and ultra-devout Catholi­cism. Since his posthu­mous dis­cov­ery and ele­va­tion to the sta­tus of the ulti­mate “out­sider artist,” there’s been no end of spec­u­la­tion about his per­son­al habits, sex­u­al pro­cliv­i­ties, and state of mind. But with all such ques­tions beyond res­o­lu­tion, we can, for the moment, leave the last word to the artist him­self: “It’s bet­ter to be a suck­er who makes some­thing than a wise guy who is too cau­tious to make any­thing at all.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Hen­ry Darg­er, the Most Famous of Out­sider Artists, Who Died in Obscu­ri­ty, Leav­ing Behind Hun­dreds of Unseen Fan­ta­sy Illus­tra­tions and a 15,000-Page Nov­el

The Artistry of the Men­tal­ly Ill: The 1922 Book That Pub­lished the Fas­ci­nat­ing Work of Schiz­o­phrenic Patients, and Influ­enced Paul Klee, Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky & Oth­er Avant Garde Artists

Japan­ese Artist Has Drawn Every Meal He’s Eat­en for 32 Years: Behold the Deli­cious Illus­tra­tions of Itsuo Kobayashi

Explore a Dig­i­tized Edi­tion of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script, “the World’s Most Mys­te­ri­ous Book”

A Short Video Intro­duc­tion to Hilma af Klint, the Mys­ti­cal Female Painter Who Helped Invent Abstract Art

Lewis Carroll’s Pho­tographs of Alice Lid­dell, the Inspi­ra­tion for Alice in Won­der­land

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.

How This Skyscraper Ruined Paris, and Why They’re Now Trying to Make It Invisible

in Architecture, History | February 12th, 2026

The play­wright Tris­tan Bernard is said to have eat­en lunch at the Eif­fel Tow­er every day, but not because he liked the menu in its café: rather, because it was the only place in Paris with no view of the Eif­fel Tow­er. His view wasn’t whol­ly eccen­tric in the decades after its con­struc­tion, in the late eigh­teen-eight­ies, when the struc­ture had yet to become the most beloved in France, and per­haps in the world. Yet not far behind the Eif­fel Tow­er as a must-vis­it tourist attrac­tion in a town full of them is Paris’ least beloved build­ing: the Tour Mont­par­nasse, which since its com­ple­tion in 1973 has stood in infamy as the only sky­scraper in the cen­ter of the city.

Unlike the Eif­fel Tow­er, which was com­mis­sioned in part to cel­e­brate the cen­ten­ni­al of the French Rev­o­lu­tion, the Tour Mont­par­nasse projects no polit­i­cal sym­bol­ism; unlike Notre-Dame de Paris, or Sacré-Cœur de Mont­martre, it has no reli­gious sig­nif­i­cance. Its pur­pose is whol­ly com­mer­cial, befit­ting a large office build­ing with a shop­ping mall — or now, the remains of a shop­ping mall — at the bot­tom. But when it was first con­ceived in 1958, it embod­ied the very image of moder­ni­ty in a built envi­ron­ment that was dilap­i­dat­ed where it wasn’t war-torn. A mod­ern sky­scraper would show the world, unmis­tak­ably, that Paris had stepped ful­ly into the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry of indoor plumb­ing, elec­tric­i­ty, fast trains, and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion.

This mis­sion gained the full back­ing of none oth­er than Andre Mal­raux, then France’s first Min­is­ter of Cul­tur­al Affairs. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, nine­teen-fifties Europe lacked the tech­nol­o­gy, exper­tise, and mon­ey required for a 60-sto­ry sky­scraper, let alone one serv­ing as the cen­ter­piece of a sweep­ing rede­vel­op­ment project that includ­ed gleam­ing new res­i­den­tial blocks and a com­plete­ly rebuilt Mont­par­nasse Sta­tion. The tow­er could­n’t even break ground until 1969, by which time the build­ing’s once-cut­ting-edge mid-cen­tu­ry design — hard­ly a uni­ver­sal hit even in maque­tte form — had already begun to look passé. (Part of the prob­lem was sure­ly its col­or, which archi­tect Philippe Tré­ti­ack described as hav­ing “a touch of the nico­tine stain about it.”)

When the Tour Mont­par­nasse turned 50 a few years ago, I hap­pened to be in Paris on my hon­ey­moon. Noth­ing was hap­pen­ing to mark the occa­sion, apart from the long-ongo­ing dis­cus­sions about whether to ren­o­vate the thing or just knock it down. The for­mer option hav­ing won the day, you can see the details of the planned extreme makeover in the B1M video above. Rather than destroy­ing the exist­ing build­ing, the idea is to do the next best thing and make it invis­i­ble. This ambi­tious project will install a new façade of clear glass and bands of sky gar­dens, among oth­er changes, in order to light­en its bur­den­some visu­al mass. But how­ev­er rad­i­cal its trans­for­ma­tion, one sus­pects that it will remain most appre­ci­at­ed as the only place in Paris with­out a view of the Tour Mont­par­nasse.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Paris Became Paris: The Sto­ry Behind Its Icon­ic Squares, Bridges, Mon­u­ments & Boule­vards

Watch the Build­ing of the Eif­fel Tow­er in Time­lapse Ani­ma­tion

The Archi­tec­tur­al His­to­ry of the Lou­vre: 800 Years in Three Min­utes

The Cre­ation & Restora­tion of Notre-Dame Cathe­dral, Ani­mat­ed

Why Europe Has So Few Sky­scrap­ers

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

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.

Watch All of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Performed on Original Baroque Instruments

in Music | February 12th, 2026

Anto­nio Vivaldi’s The Four Sea­sons reigns as one of the world’s most rec­og­niz­able ear­ly 18th-cen­tu­ry pieces, thanks to its fre­quent appear­ances in films and tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials.

Upon its debut in 1725, The Four Sea­sons stunned lis­ten­ers by telling a sto­ry with­out the help of a human voice. Vival­di drew on four exist­ing son­nets (pos­si­bly of his own prove­nance), using strings to paint a nar­ra­tive filled with spring thun­der­storms, summer’s swel­ter, autum­nal hunts and har­vests, and the icy winds of win­ter.

The com­pos­er stud­ded his score with pre­cise­ly placed lines from the son­nets, to con­vey his expec­ta­tions that the musi­cians would use their instru­ments to son­i­cal­ly embody the expe­ri­ences being described.

For two hun­dred years, musi­cians cleaved close­ly to Vivaldi’s orig­i­nal orches­tra­tion.

The last hun­dred years, how­ev­er, have seen a wide range of instru­ments and inter­pre­ta­tions. Drums, synths, an elec­tric gui­tar, a Chi­nese pipa, an Indi­an saran­gi, a pair of Inu­it throat singers, a Japan­ese a cap­pel­la women’s cho­rus, a Theremin and a musi­cal saw are among those to have tak­en a stab at The Four Sea­sons’ drows­ing goatherd, bark­ing dog, and twit­ter­ing birdies.

Remem­ber­ing that Vival­di him­self was a great inno­va­tor, we sug­gest that there’s noth­ing wrong with tak­ing a break from all that to revis­it the orig­i­nal fla­vor.

The San Fran­cis­co-based ear­ly music ensem­ble, Voic­es of Music does so beau­ti­ful­ly, above, with a video playlist of live per­for­mances giv­en between 2015 and 2018, with the four con­cer­tos edit­ed to be pre­sent­ed in their tra­di­tion­al order.

Voic­es of Music co-direc­tors David Tayler and Han­neke van Proos­dij were adamant that these high qual­i­ty audio record­ings would leave lis­ten­ers feel­ing as if they are in the same room with the musi­cians and their baroque instru­ments. As Tayler told Ear­ly Music Amer­i­ca:

We did tests where we sat in the audi­ence lis­ten­ing to the mix. We stopped when we got to the point that it sound­ed like sit­ting in the audi­ence. We didn’t want some­thing that looked like a con­cert, with a CD play­ing in the back­ground.

Mul­ti­ple sta­tionery cam­eras ensured that the most­ly stand­ing per­form­ers’ spon­ta­neous phys­i­cal respons­es to the music and each oth­er would not pass unre­marked. As tempt­ing as it is to savor these joy­ful sounds with ears alone, we rec­om­mend tak­ing it in with your eyes, too. The plea­sure these vir­tu­osos take in Vival­di and each oth­er is a delight.

You also won’t want to miss the Eng­lish trans­la­tions of the son­net, bro­ken into sub­ti­tles and timed to appear at the exact place where they appear in Vivaldi’s 300 year-old score.

Spring:

Alle­gro — 0:00

Largo — 3:32

Alle­gro — 6:13

Sum­mer:

Alle­gro non molto — 10:09

Ada­gio — 15:31

Presto — 17:46

Autumn:

Alle­gro — 20:42

Ada­gio molto — 26:14

Alle­gro — 28:25

Win­ter:

Alle­gro non molto — 31:56

Largo — 35:29

Alle­gro — 37:25

While the audi­ence reac­tions were edit­ed from the pre­sen­ta­tion above, we’d be remiss if we didn’t direct you to a playlist where­in these vir­tu­oso play­ers are seen gra­cious­ly accept­ing the applause of the crowds who were lucky enough to catch these per­for­mances in per­son.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2021.

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:

See Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons Visu­al­ized in Col­or­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Scores

The Authen­tic Vivaldi’s The Four Sea­sons: Watch a Per­for­mance Based on Orig­i­nal Man­u­scripts & Played with 18th-Cen­tu­ry Instru­ments

Why We Love Vivaldi’s “Four Sea­sons”: An Ani­mat­ed Music Les­son

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, the­ater­mak­er, and the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist in NYC.

Why Some People Think in Words, While Others Think in Pictures & Feelings

in Psychology | February 9th, 2026

The age of social media has shown human­i­ty a fair few truths about itself, not all of them flat­ter­ing. But once in a while, one of the waves of dis­course that roll through the inter­net real­ly does help us bet­ter under­stand one anoth­er. Take the sur­prise some have expressed in recent years upon find­ing out that the expres­sion to “pic­ture” some­thing in one’s head isn’t just a fig­ure of speech. You mean that peo­ple “pic­tur­ing an apple,” say, haven’t been just think­ing about an apple, but actu­al­ly see­ing one in their heads? The inabil­i­ty to do that has a name: aphan­ta­sia, from the Greek word phan­ta­sia, “image,” and pre­fix -a, “with­out.”

That same tem­plate has late­ly been used to cre­ate anoth­er term, anen­dopha­sia, whose roots endo and pha­sia mean “inner” and “speech.” As you might expect, the word refers to the lack of an inter­nal mono­logue. That sounds bizarre to many who hear it for the first time: some because they can’t imag­ine think­ing in words, and oth­ers because they can’t imag­ine think­ing in any­thing else.

These, as explained in the Void­ed Thoughts video above, are just some of the ways the expe­ri­ences inside our heads dif­fer. Some 40 per­cent of us hear and even have con­ver­sa­tions with “inter­nal voic­es,” about 50 per­cent of us see things in our mind’s eye instead, and some 20 per­cent report think­ing exclu­sive­ly in feel­ings. Those who belong to one of those groups will have trou­ble imag­in­ing what life is like for any­one in the oth­ers.

This owes to the inher­ent inac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of one human being’s sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence to anoth­er, a con­di­tion that has bedev­iled philoso­phers prac­ti­cal­ly since the emer­gence of their pro­fes­sion. But sci­en­tif­ic researchers have also been look­ing into it, and their stud­ies have sug­gest­ed that the capac­i­ty for inter­nal mono­logues and men­tal pic­tures makes more than a triv­ial dif­fer­ence in one’s life. Visu­al thinkers, the video notes, tend to be bet­ter at mem­o­riza­tion; ver­bal thinkers “usu­al­ly have an edge when it comes to plan­ning, prob­lem-solv­ing, and rehears­ing,” but they’re also “more prone to loop­ing thoughts.” In prac­tice, most of us use both forms of think­ing in dif­fer­ent pro­por­tions depend­ing on the sit­u­a­tion, and thus, to an extent, enjoy both sets of advan­tages — and should watch out for both sets of dis­ad­van­tages.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How to Silence the Neg­a­tive Chat­ter in Our Heads: Psy­chol­o­gy Pro­fes­sor Ethan Kross Explains

How to Improve Your Mem­o­ry: Four TED Talks Explain the Tech­niques to Remem­ber Any­thing

The Secret to High Per­for­mance and Ful­fil­ment: Psy­chol­o­gist Daniel Gole­man Explains the Pow­er of Focus

Why You Do Your Best Think­ing In The Show­er: Cre­ativ­i­ty & the “Incu­ba­tion Peri­od”

What a Lack of Social Con­tact Does to Your Brain

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.

Discover Khipu, the Ancient Incan Record & Writing System Made Entirely of Knots

in Design, History, Language | February 6th, 2026

Khi­pus, the portable infor­ma­tion archives cre­at­ed by the Inca, may stir up mem­o­ries of 1970s macrame with their long strands of intri­cate­ly knot­ted, earth-toned fibers, but their func­tion more close­ly resem­bled that of a dense­ly plot­ted com­put­er­ized spread­sheet.

As Cecil­ia Par­do-Grau, lead cura­tor of the British Museum’s cur­rent exhi­bi­tion Peru: a jour­ney in time explains in the above Cura­tors Cor­ner episode, khi­pus were used to keep track of every­thing from inven­to­ries and cen­sus­es to his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tives, using a sys­tem that assigned mean­ing to the type and posi­tion of knot, spaces between knots, cord length, fiber col­or, etc.

Much of the infor­ma­tion pre­served with­in khi­pus has yet to be deci­phered by mod­ern schol­ars, though the Open Khipu Repos­i­to­ry — com­pu­ta­tion­al anthro­pol­o­gist Jon Clin­daniel’s open-source data­base — makes it pos­si­ble to com­pare the pat­terns of hun­dreds of khi­pus resid­ing in muse­um and uni­ver­si­ty col­lec­tions.

Even in the Incan Empire, few were equipped to make sense of a khipu. This task fell to quipu­ca­may­ocs, high­born admin­is­tra­tive offi­cials trained since child­hood in the cre­ation and inter­pre­ta­tion of these organ­ic spread­sheets.

Fleet mes­sen­gers known as chask­is trans­port­ed khipus on foot between admin­is­tra­tive cen­ters, cre­at­ing an infor­ma­tion super­high­way that pre­dates the Inter­net by some five cen­turies. Khi­pus’ stur­dy organ­ic cot­ton or native camelid fibers were well suit­ed to with­stand­ing both the rig­ors of time and the road.

A 500-year-old com­pos­ite khipu that found its way to the British Muse­um organ­ics con­ser­va­tor Nicole Rode pri­or to the exhi­bi­tion was intact, but severe­ly tan­gled, with a brit­tle­ness that betrayed its age. Below, she describes falling under the khipu’s spell, dur­ing the painstak­ing process of restor­ing it to a con­di­tion where­by researchers could attempt to glean some of its secrets.

Vis­it Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino’s web­site to learn more about khipu in a series of fas­ci­nat­ing short arti­cles that accom­pa­nied their ground­break­ing 2003 exhib­it QUIPU: count­ing with knots in the Inka Empire.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2022.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How the Incas Per­formed Skull Surgery More Suc­cess­ful­ly Than U.S. Civ­il War Doc­tors

How the Inca Used Intri­cate­ly-Knot­ted Cords, Called Khipu, to Write Their His­to­ries, Send Mes­sages & Keep Records

Explore the Flo­ren­tine Codex: A Bril­liant 16th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­script Doc­u­ment­ing Aztec Cul­ture Is Now Dig­i­tized & Avail­able Online

Ancient Maps that Changed the World: See World Maps from Ancient Greece, Baby­lon, Rome, and the Islam­ic World

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist in NYC.

The First American Cookbook: Sample Recipes from American Cookery (1796)

in Food & Drink, History | February 4th, 2026

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”

in Music, Politics | February 3rd, 2026

Pho­to by Al Aumuller, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Like anoth­er famous Okie from Musko­gee, Woody Guthrie came from a part of Okla­homa that the U.S. gov­ern­ment sold dur­ing the 1889 land rush away from the Qua­paw and Osage nations, as well as the Musco­gee, a peo­ple who had been forcibly relo­cat­ed from the South­east under Andrew Jackson’s Indi­an Removal Act. By the time of Guthrie’s birth in 1912 in Okfus­kee Coun­ty, next to Musko­gee, the region was in the hands of con­ser­v­a­tive Democ­rats like Guthrie’s father Charles, a landown­er and mem­ber of the revived KKK who par­tic­i­pat­ed in a bru­tal lynch­ing the year before Guthrie was born.

Guthrie was named after pres­i­dent Woodrow Wil­son, who was high­ly sym­pa­thet­ic to Jim Crow (but per­haps not, as has been alleged, an admir­er of the Klan). While he inher­it­ed many of his father’s atti­tudes, he recon­sid­ered them to such a degree lat­er in life that he wrote a song denounc­ing the noto­ri­ous­ly racist New York land­lord Fred Trump, father of the cur­rent pres­i­dent. “By the time he moved into his new apart­ment” in Brook­lyn in 1950, writes Will Kauf­man at The Guardian, Guthrie “had trav­eled a long road from the casu­al racism of his Okla­homa youth.”

Guthrie was deeply embed­ded in the for­ma­tive racial pol­i­tics of the coun­try. While some peo­ple may con­vince them­selves that a time in the U.S. past was “great”—unmarred by class con­flict and racist vio­lence and exploita­tion, secure in the hands of a benev­o­lent white majority—Guthrie’s life tells a much more com­plex sto­ry. Many Indige­nous peo­ple feel with good rea­son that Guthrie’s most famous song, “The Land is Your Land,” has con­tributed to nation­al­ist mythol­o­gy. Oth­ers have viewed the song as a Marx­ist anthem. Like much else about Guthrie, and the coun­try, it’s com­pli­cat­ed.

Con­sid­ered by many, Stephen Petrus writes, “to be the alter­na­tive nation­al anthem,” the song “to many peo­ple… rep­re­sents America’s best pro­gres­sive and demo­c­ra­t­ic tra­di­tions.” Guthrie turned the song into a hymn for the strug­gle against fas­cism and for the nascent Civ­il Rights move­ment. Writ­ten in New York in 1940 and first record­ed for Moe Asch’s Folk­ways Records in 1944, “This Land is Your Land” evolved over time, drop­ping vers­es protest­ing pri­vate prop­er­ty and pover­ty after the war in favor of a far more patri­ot­ic tone. It was a long evo­lu­tion from embit­tered par­o­dy of “God Bless Amer­i­ca” to “This land was made for you and me.”

But whether social­ist or pop­ulist in nature, Guthrie’s patri­o­tism was always sub­ver­sive. “By 1940,” writes John Pietaro, he had “joined forces with Pete Seeger in the Almanac Singers,” who “as a group, joined the Com­mu­nist Par­ty. Woody’s gui­tar had, by then, been adorned with the hand-paint­ed epi­taph, THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS.” (Guthrie had at least two gui­tars with the slo­gan scrawled on them, one on a stick­er and one with ragged hand-let­ter­ing.) The phrase, claims music crit­ic Jon­ny White­side, was orig­i­nal­ly “a morale-boost­ing WWII gov­ern­ment slo­gan print­ed on stick­ers that were hand­ed out to defense plant work­ers.” Guthrie reclaimed the pro­pa­gan­da for folk music’s role in the cul­ture. As Pietaro tells it:

In this time he also found­ed an inter-racial quar­tet with Lead­bel­ly, Son­ny Ter­ry and Cis­co Hous­ton, a ver­i­ta­ble super-group he named the Head­line Singers. This group, sad­ly, nev­er record­ed. The mate­r­i­al must have stood as the height of protest song—he’d named it in oppo­si­tion to a pro­duc­er who advised Woody to “stop try­ing to sing the head­lines.” Woody told us that all you can write is what you see.

You can hear The Head­line Singers above, minus Lead Bel­ly and fea­tur­ing Pete Seeger, in the ear­ly 1940’s radio broad­cast of “All You Fas­cists Bound to Lose.” “I’m gonna tell you fas­cists,” sings Woody, “you may be sur­prised, peo­ple in this world are get­ting orga­nized.” Upon join­ing the Mer­chant Marines, Guthrie fought against seg­re­ga­tion in the mil­i­tary. After the war, he “stood shoul­der to shoul­der with Paul Robe­son, Howard Fast, and Pete Seeger” against vio­lent racist mobs in Peek­skill, New York. Both of Guthrie’s anti-fas­cist gui­tars have seem­ing­ly dis­ap­peared. As Robert San­tel­li writes, “Guthrie didn’t care for his instru­ments with much love.” But dur­ing the decade of the 1940’s he was nev­er seen with­out the slo­gan on his pri­ma­ry instru­ment.

“This Machine Kills Fas­cists” has since, writes Moth­er­board, become Guthrie’s “trade­mark slo­gan… still ref­er­enced in pop cul­ture and beyond” and pro­vid­ing an impor­tant point of ref­er­ence for the anti-fas­cist punk move­ment. You can see anoth­er of Guthrie’s anti-fas­cist slo­gans above, which he scrawled on a col­lec­tion of his sheet music: “Fas­cism fought indoors and out, good & bad weath­er.” Guthrie’s long-lived broth­er-in-arms Pete Seeger, car­ried on in the tra­di­tion of anti-fas­cism and anti-racism after Woody suc­cumbed in the last two decades of his life to Huntington’s dis­ease. Like Guthrie, Seeger paint­ed a slo­gan around the rim of his instru­ment of choice, the ban­jo, a mes­sage both play­ful and mil­i­tant: “This machine sur­rounds hate and forces it to sur­ren­der.”

Pho­to by “Jim, the Pho­tog­ra­ph­er”

Seeger car­ried the mes­sage from his days play­ing and singing with Guthrie, to his Civ­il Rights and anti-war orga­niz­ing and protest in the 50s and 60s, and all the way into the 21st cen­tu­ry at Occu­py Wall Street in Man­hat­tan in 2011. At the 2009 inau­gu­ra­tion of Barack Oba­ma, Seeger sang “This Land is Your Land” onstage with Bruce Spring­steen and his son, Tao-Rodriquez Singer. In rehearsals, he insist­ed on singing the two vers­es Guthrie had omit­ted from the song after the war. “So it was,” writes John Nichols at The Nation, “that the new­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States began his inau­gur­al cel­e­bra­tion by singing and clap­ping along with an old lefty who remem­bered the Depres­sion-era ref­er­ences of a song that took a class-con­scious swipe at those whose ‘Pri­vate Prop­er­ty’ signs turned away union orga­niz­ers, hobos and ban­jo pick­ers.”

Both Guthrie and Seeger drew direct con­nec­tions between the fas­cism and racism they fought and cap­i­tal­is­m’s out­sized, destruc­tive obses­sion with land and mon­ey. They felt so strong­ly about the bat­tle that they wore their mes­sages fig­u­ra­tive­ly on their sleeves and lit­er­al­ly on their instru­ments. Pete Seeger’s famous ban­jo has out­lived its own­er, and the col­or­ful leg­end around it has been mass-pro­duced by Deer­ing Ban­jos. Where Guthrie’s anti-fas­cist gui­tars went off to is any­one’s guess, but if one of them were ever dis­cov­ered, Robert San­tel­li writes, “it sure­ly would become one of Amer­i­ca’s most val­ued folk instru­ments.” Or one of its most val­ued instru­ments in gen­er­al.

Pho­to by “Jim, the Pho­tog­ra­ph­er”

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Hear Two Leg­ends, Lead Bel­ly & Woody Guthrie, Per­form­ing on the Same Radio Show (1940)

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

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

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”