Sci-Fi Writer Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Future in 1964: Artificial Intelligence, Instantaneous Global Communication, Remote Work, Singularity & More

in Science, Technology | April 13th, 2026

Are you feel­ing con­fi­dent about the future? No? We under­stand. Would you like to know what it was like to feel a deep cer­tain­ty that the decades to come were going to be filled with won­der and the fan­tas­tic? Well then, gaze upon this clip from the BBC Archive YouTube chan­nel of sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke pre­dict­ing the future in 1964.

Although we best know him for writ­ing 2001: A Space Odyssey, the 1964 tele­vi­sion-view­ing pub­lic would have known him for his futur­ism and his tal­ent for calm­ly explain­ing all the great things to come. In the late 1940s, he had already pre­dict­ed telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion satel­lites. In 1962 he pub­lished his col­lect­ed essays, Pro­files of the Future, which con­tains many of the ideas in this clip.

Here he cor­rect­ly pre­dicts the ease with which we can be con­tact­ed wher­ev­er in the world we choose to, where we can con­tact our friends “any­where on earth even if we don’t know their loca­tion.” What Clarke doesn’t pre­dict here is how “loca­tion” isn’t a thing when we’re on the inter­net. He imag­ines peo­ple work­ing just as well from Tahi­ti or Bali as they do from Lon­don. Clarke sees this advance­ment as the down­fall of the mod­ern city, as we do not need to com­mute into the city to work. Now, as so many of us are doing our jobs from home post-COVID, we’ve also dis­cov­ered the dystopia in that fan­ta­sy. (It cer­tain­ly has­n’t dropped the cost of rent.)

Next, he pre­dicts advances in biotech­nol­o­gy that would allow us to, say, train mon­keys to work as ser­vants and work­ers. (Until, he jokes, they form a union and “we’d be back right where we start­ed.) Per­haps, he says, humans have stopped evolving—what comes next is arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (although that phrase had yet to be used) and machine evo­lu­tion, where we’d be hon­ored to be the “step­ping stone” towards that des­tiny. Make of that what you will. I know you might think it would be cool to have a mon­key but­ler, but c’mon, think of the ethics, not to men­tion the cost of bananas.

Point­ing out where Clarke gets it wrong is too easy—nobody gets it right all of the time. How­ev­er, it is fas­ci­nat­ing that some things that have nev­er come to pass—being able to learn a lan­guage overnight, or eras­ing your memories—have man­aged to resur­face over the years as sci­ence fic­tion films, like Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind. His ideas of cryo­genic sus­pen­sion are sta­ples of numer­ous hard sci-fi films.

And we are still wait­ing for the “Repli­ca­tor” machine, which would make exact dupli­cates of objects (and by so doing cause a col­lapse into “glut­to­nous bar­barism” because we’d want unlim­it­ed amounts of every­thing.) Some com­menters call this a pre­cur­sor to 3‑D print­ing. I’d say oth­er­wise, but some­thing very close to it might be around the cor­ner. Who knows? Clarke him­self agrees about all this conjecture—it’s doomed to fail.

“That is why the future is so end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. Try as we can, we’ll nev­er out­guess it.”

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How French Artists in 1899 Envi­sioned What Life Would Look Like in the Year 2000 

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts the Future on The David Let­ter­man Show (1980)

In 1926, Niko­la Tes­la Pre­dicts the World of 2026

In 1922, a Nov­el­ist Pre­dicts What the World Will Look Like in 2022: Wire­less Tele­phones, 8‑Hour Flights to Europe & More

In 1894, A French Writer Pre­dict­ed the End of Books & the Rise of Portable Audio­books and Pod­casts

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.

What You Would See and Feel While Traveling Near the Speed of Light

in Astronomy, Physics, Science | April 10th, 2026

We all learn in school, or at least from our more rig­or­ous choic­es of sci­ence fic­tion, that we’ll nev­er be able to trav­el faster than the speed of light. At first, this may sound dis­ap­point­ing, but upon reflec­tion, 186,000 miles per sec­ond is noth­ing to sneeze at. Ques­tions about how to achieve that speed soon give way to ques­tions about what an attempt to do so would be like, many of them answered by the ani­mat­ed video from Sci­enceClic above. The first sur­prise is that mov­ing so fast, in and of itself, would have no neg­a­tive effect on us. When we trav­el by bicy­cle, car, air­plane, space­craft, or what have you, we feel only the accel­er­a­tion. If that remains at a safe rate, no absolute speed will be a prob­lem, in the­o­ry, assum­ing you can get up to it. Still, it could­n’t hurt to buck­le up, not that it would help much in the event of a col­li­sion, even with a speck of dust.

Putting that out of our minds by assum­ing that “our ship is equipped with a force field that repels dan­ger­ous objects and allows us to roam freely through space,” we can con­cen­trate on what we’d see through the win­dow. First, “the stars in front of us, which we get clos­er to, seem to grad­u­al­ly move away. The sky con­tracts before us,” much as rain appears to fall from the front when you’re dri­ving through it.

“Behind us, the sky seems to widen, and becomes dark­er,” and any object we pass “would appear to be slight­ly angled in our direc­tion.” Just as the light in the sky we see while stargaz­ing takes some time to reach us, thus con­sti­tut­ing a view of the stars as they were in the past, events on the Earth from which we’re mov­ing away — pre­sum­ing we had a way to see them — would appear to be tak­ing place in “slow motion.” Earth­’s image would shift toward the col­or red, and that of every­thing in front of us would shift toward blue. After a few hun­dred days, our ship begins to approach light speed, and that’s when things get even stranger.

This, sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly speak­ing, is when spe­cial rel­a­tiv­i­ty comes into play, caus­ing our ship to swerve onto its own “time axis” apart from the one fol­lowed by Earth. From our per­spec­tive, the entire uni­verse would con­tract along our length of motion, mak­ing our jour­ney short­er than we’d expect­ed. As we move faster and faster, the view in front of us inten­si­fies, while the view behind us turns com­plete­ly black. And what would hap­pen when we final­ly reach light speed? Noth­ing, because we can’t reach it: “You may try to catch a light ray, but from your point of view, it will always escape at the same speed.” Accel­er­ate all you like; “from your point of view, you are still motion­less, and light escapes inex­orably.” At best, “our ship will con­tin­ue to accel­er­ate for­ev­er, and our field of vision will shrink ever more, until form­ing an infi­nite­ly bright spot in front of us, sur­round­ed by an infi­nite­ly black sky.” But there may be a loop­hole, in that, even if an object can’t do it, “noth­ing pro­hibits space itself from mov­ing faster than light” — a premise for some tru­ly mind-blow­ing sci-fi if ever there was one.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

M.I.T. Cam­era Cap­tures Speed of Light: A Tril­lion-Frames-Per-Sec­ond

60 Sec­ond Adven­tures in Astron­o­my Explains the Big Bang, Rel­a­tiv­i­ty & More with Fun Ani­ma­tion

Does Einstein’s The­o­ry of Spe­cial Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Sug­gest That There Is an After­life?: A The­o­ret­i­cal Physi­cist Explains

Pro­fes­sor Ronald Mal­lett Wants to Build a Time Machine in this Cen­tu­ry … and He’s Not Kid­ding

Einstein’s The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Explained in One of the Ear­li­est Sci­ence Films Ever Made (1923)

What It Feels Like to Fly Over Plan­et Earth

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.

Explore 1,000,000 Digitized Artworks from Across the UK: Paintings, Sculptures, Street Art & More

in Archives, Art, Museums | April 9th, 2026

No art enthu­si­ast’s vis­it to the Unit­ed King­dom would be com­plete with­out days at the British Muse­um, the Tate, the V&A and the Nation­al Gallery. The fact that all those respect­ed insti­tu­tions are in Lon­don con­sti­tutes a plau­si­ble excuse nev­er to stray out­side the cap­i­tal. But that cap­i­tal is sur­round­ed, lest we for­get, by not just a whole coun­try, but a whole Unit­ed King­dom’s worth of coun­tries. Each region of Eng­land has its own muse­ums and gal­leries worth vis­it­ing, and so do Scot­land, Wales, and North­ern Ire­land. But why just vis­it muse­ums and gal­leries? Uni­ver­si­ties, libraries, town halls, hos­pi­tals, homes: these places and more also put art on dis­play for any­one who cares to vis­it them, which you can now do not just phys­i­cal­ly, but also online at Art UK.

A free-to-all por­tal that “con­nects every­one with the UK’s pub­lic art col­lec­tions,” Art UK has tak­en it as its mis­sion to “dig­i­tal­ly unite one mil­lion art­works from 3,500 insti­tu­tions.” Some of the most pop­u­lar of the rough­ly 70,000 artists whose work it makes avail­able to view online include Fran­cis Bacon, Agnes Mar­tin, Sal­vador Dalí, Andy Warhol, Tracey Emin, Paul Gau­guin, Con­stan­tin Brân­cuși, Damien Hirst, and Yay­oi Kusama.

As even that short list reflects, what’s on dig­i­tal dis­play at Art UK is by no means lim­it­ed to British works, nor are there any restric­tions on medi­um or sen­si­bil­i­ty. Paint­ings, draw­ings, pho­tographs, sculp­tures, ceram­ics, dig­i­tal art: if it’s held at a UK insti­tu­tion, it’s avail­able for your view­ing plea­sure — or your edu­ca­tion, your research, what­ev­er your pur­pose may be.

A decade into Art UK’s evo­lu­tion, one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing sec­tions of its dig­i­tal hold­ings may hard­ly con­tain any work by artists whose names you’ve heard. That’s because it’s a col­lec­tion of the UK’s murals and street art, whose dig­i­ti­za­tion began in ear­ly 2024. “The project fol­lowed the suc­cess­ful, award-win­ning sculp­ture dig­i­ti­za­tion and engage­ment project, which firm­ly estab­lished Art UK as the home for show­cas­ing the UK’s pub­lic realm art­works,” writes pho­tog­ra­ph­er Tra­cy Jenk­ins. “We have now record­ed over 6,600 murals, bring­ing the total num­ber of pub­lic art­works on the web­site to 21,400.” Dat­ing from 1000 AD to the present, these “include wall paint­ings in his­toric church­es, post-war ceram­ic and con­crete works, and con­tem­po­rary paint­ed murals and mosaics.” Col­lec­tive­ly, they remind us that, in our haste to tour the most august tem­ples of art, we ignore at our per­il the muse­ums with­out walls — or rather, the muse­ums that are walls. Enter Art UK here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Muse­um Puts 1.9 Mil­lion Works of Art Online

Down­load 60,000 Works of Art from the Nation­al Gallery, Includ­ing Mas­ter­pieces by Van Gogh, Gau­guin, Rem­brandt & More

Art Trips: Vis­it the Art of Cities Around the World, from Los Ange­les & Lon­don, to Venice and New York

Great Art Cities: Vis­it the Fas­ci­nat­ing, Less­er-Known Muse­ums of Lon­don & Paris

Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of Street Art from Across the Globe

The British Muse­um is Full of Loot­ed Arti­facts

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.

9 Things a Woman Couldn’t Do in 1971

in Gender, History | April 9th, 2026

More than a cen­tu­ry after women’s suf­frage in the Unit­ed States, it’s not enough to bone up on the plat­forms of female pri­ma­ry can­di­dates (though that’s an excel­lent start).

A Twit­ter user and self-described Old Crone named Robyn urged her fel­low Amer­i­cans to take a good long gan­der at a list of nine free­doms that women in the Unit­ed States were not uni­ver­sal­ly grant­ed in 1971, the year Helen Red­dy released the soon-to-be anthem, “I Am Woman,” above.

Even those of us who remem­ber singing along as chil­dren may expe­ri­ence some shock that these facts check out on Snopes.

1. CREDIT CARDS: Pri­or to the Equal Cred­it Oppor­tu­ni­ty Act of 1974, mar­ried women couldn’t get cred­it cards with­out their hus­bands’ sig­na­tures. Sin­gle women, divorcees, and wid­ows were often required to have a man co-sign. The dou­ble stan­dard also meant female appli­cants were fre­quent­ly issued card lim­its up to 50% low­er than that of males who earned iden­ti­cal wages.
2. PREGNANT WORKERS: The Preg­nan­cy Dis­crim­i­na­tion Act of 1978 pro­tect­ed preg­nant women from being fired because of their impend­ing mater­ni­ty. But it came with a major loop­hole that’s still in need of clos­ing. The lan­guage of the law stip­u­lates that employ­ers must accom­mo­date preg­nant work­ers only if con­ces­sions are being made for oth­er employ­ees who are “sim­i­lar in their abil­i­ty or inabil­i­ty to work.”
3. JURY DUTY: In 1975, the Supreme Court declared it con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly unac­cept­able for states to deny women the oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve on juries. This is an are­na where we’ve all come a long way, baby. It’s now com­plete­ly nor­mal for men to be excused from jury duty as the pri­ma­ry care­givers of their young chil­dren.
4. MILITARY COMBAT: In 2013, for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense Leon Panet­ta and for­mer Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen­er­al Mar­tin Dempsey announced that the Pen­ta­gon was rescind­ing the direct com­bat exclu­sion rule that barred women from serv­ing in artillery, armor, infantry and oth­er such bat­tle roles. At the time of the announce­ment, the mil­i­tary had already seen more than 130 female sol­diers killed, and 800 wound­ed on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan.
5. IVY LEAGUE ADMISSIONS: Those who con­ceive of elite col­leges as breed­ing grounds for sex­u­al assault protests and Title IX activism would do well to remem­ber that Colum­bia Col­lege didn’t admit women until 1983, fol­low­ing in the mar­gin­al­ly deep­er foot­steps of oth­ers in the Ivy League—Harvard (1977), Dart­mouth (1972), Brown (1971), Yale (1969), and Prince­ton (1969). These days, sin­gle-sex high­er edu­ca­tion options for women far out­num­ber those for men, but the net­work­ing pow­er and increased earn­ing poten­tial an Ivy League degree con­fers remain the same.
6. WORKPLACE HARASSMENT: In 1977, women who’d been sex­u­al­ly harassed in the work­place received con­fir­ma­tion in three sep­a­rate tri­als that they could sue their employ­ers under Title VII of the 1964 Civ­il Rights Act. In 1998, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex harass­ment was also unlaw­ful. In between was the tele­vi­sion event of 1991, Ani­ta Hill’s shock­ing tes­ti­mo­ny against her for­mer boss, U.S. Supreme Court jus­tice (then nom­i­nee) Clarence Thomas.
7. SPOUSAL CONSENT: In 1993, spousal rape was offi­cial­ly out­lawed in all 50 states. Not tonight hon­ey, or you’ll have a headache in the form of your wife’s legal back­up.
8. HEALTH INSURANCE: In 2010, the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act decreed that any health insur­ance plan estab­lished after March of that year could not charge women high­er pre­mi­ums than men for iden­ti­cal ben­e­fits. This was bad news for women who got their health insur­ance through their jobs, and whose employ­ers were grand­fa­thered into dis­crim­i­na­to­ry plans estab­lished pri­or to 2010. Of course, that’s all ancient his­to­ry now.
9. CONTRACEPTIVES: In 1972, the Supreme Court made it legal for all cit­i­zens to pos­sess birth con­trol, irre­spec­tive of mar­i­tal sta­tus, stat­ing “if the right of pri­va­cy means any­thing, it is the right of the indi­vid­ual, mar­ried or sin­gle, to be free from unwar­rant­ed gov­ern­men­tal intru­sion into mat­ters so fun­da­men­tal­ly affect­ing a per­son as the deci­sion whether to bear or beget a child.” (It’s worth not­ing, how­ev­er, that in 1972, states could still con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­hib­it and pun­ish sex out­side of mar­riage.)

Fem­i­nism is NOT just for oth­er women.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

No Women Need Apply: A Dis­heart­en­ing 1938 Rejec­tion Let­ter from Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion

How the Bicy­cle Accel­er­at­ed the Women’s Rights Move­ment (Cir­ca 1890)

Odd Vin­tage Post­cards Doc­u­ment the Pro­pa­gan­da Against Women’s Rights 100 Years Ago

The Library of Con­gress Dig­i­tizes Over 16,000 Pages of Let­ters & Speech­es from the Women’s Suf­frage Move­ment, and You Can Help Tran­scribe Them

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er in NYC.

The Self-Balancing Monorail: A 1910 Train That Could Balance Without Falling

in History, Technology | April 8th, 2026

If mono­rails have a bad name, The Simp­sons may be to blame. In an episode acclaimed for its hilar­i­ous­ness since it first aired 33 years ago, a huck­ster shows up in Spring­field and con­vinces the town to build just such a tran­sit sys­tem, which turns out to be not just sus­pi­cious­ly unnec­es­sary (at least in young Lisa’s judg­ment) but also dan­ger­ous­ly shod­dy. I watched it while grow­ing up in the sub­urbs of Seat­tle, a city that endured bit­ter­ly pro­tract­ed con­tention over whether or not to build out its own rudi­men­ta­ry mono­rail sys­tem — a World’s Fair arti­fact, like the Space Nee­dle — but final­ly opt­ed not to. Con­cerns were per­pet­u­al­ly raised, right­ly or wrong­ly, about the noise and dark­ness that could result from extend­ing the wide ele­vat­ed track on which it ran.

But what if there were anoth­er way to build a mono­rail? Indeed, what if it could run on the ground, like a tra­di­tion­al two-railed train? Such was the idea in the head of the inde­fati­ga­ble Irish-Aus­tralian engi­neer Louis Bren­nan, who’s remem­bered today for invent­ing a wire-guid­ed tor­pe­do back in 1877.

If things had gone dif­fer­ent­ly, maybe he’d be bet­ter remem­bered for invent­ing the gyro mono­rail, the sub­ject of the Pri­mal Space video above. In Bren­nan’s design, which he actu­al­ly got built and work­ing, the car bal­ances on a sin­gle rail with the aid of a pair of spin­ning pow­ered gyro­scopes that pre­vent it from falling over (and, in the case of pow­er loss, could keep spin­ning for half an hour to allow a safe evac­u­a­tion), allow­ing it to run faster and cor­ner more tight­ly than the trains the world knew.

Bren­nan’s gyro mono­rail made its pub­lic debut at the Japan-British Exhi­bi­tion in Lon­don in 1910, giv­ing 50 pas­sen­gers at a time the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ride around in a cir­cle at 20 miles per hour. Though the inter­est it drew inspired a minor boom of gyro-sta­bi­lized chil­dren’s toys, it nev­er actu­al­ly trans­lat­ed into a real tran­sit sys­tem. Around the same time, a group in Ger­many also unveiled their own ver­sion, and in the decades there­after, addi­tion­al abortive efforts were made in Rus­sia. The engi­neer­ing involved was impres­sive, as the video explains, but also a bit too com­pli­cat­ed and expen­sive for its time. The devel­op­ment of a new Ger­man app-ordered autonomous gyro mono­rail sys­tem was announced just a few years ago. Giv­en the pos­si­bil­i­ty of its enter­ing pro­duc­tion as soon as 2032, we could soon be hear­ing cho­rus­es of “Mono­rail, mono­rail, mono­rail” — or rather, “Mono­cab, Mono­cab, Mono­cab” — once again.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Trips on the World’s Old­est Elec­tric Sus­pen­sion Rail­way in 1902 & 2015 Show How a City Changes Over a Cen­tu­ry

Paris Had a Mov­ing Side­walk in 1900, and a Thomas Edi­son Film Cap­tured It in Action

A Sub­way Ride Through New York City: Watch Vin­tage Footage from 1905

Why Pub­lic Tran­sit Sucks in the Unit­ed States: Four Videos Tell the Sto­ry

A Har­row­ing Test Dri­ve of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s 1933 Dymax­ion Car: Art That Is Scary to Ride

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 the CIA Secretly Funded Abstract Expressionism During the Cold War

in Art, History | April 8th, 2026

Con­sid­er­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a tru­ly pro­le­tar­i­an art, the great Eng­lish lit­er­ary crit­ic William Emp­son once wrote, “the rea­son an Eng­lish audi­ence can enjoy Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dist films is that the pro­pa­gan­da is too remote to be annoy­ing.” Per­haps this is why Amer­i­can artists and bohemi­ans have so often tak­en to the polit­i­cal iconog­ra­phy of far-flung regimes, in ways both roman­tic and iron­ic. One nation’s tedious social­ist real­ism is another’s rad­i­cal exot­i­ca.

But do U.S. cul­tur­al exports have the same effect? One need only look at the suc­cess of our most banal brand­ing over­seas to answer in the affir­ma­tive. Yet no one would think to add Abstract Expres­sion­ist paint­ing to a list that includes fast food and Walt Dis­ney prod­ucts.

Nev­er­the­less, the work of such artists as Jack­son Pol­lock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Koon­ing wound up as part of a secret CIA pro­gram dur­ing the height of the Cold War, aimed at pro­mot­ing Amer­i­can ideals abroad.

The artists them­selves were com­plete­ly unaware that their work was being used as pro­pa­gan­da. On what agents called a “long leash,” they par­tic­i­pat­ed in sev­er­al exhi­bi­tions secret­ly orga­nized by the CIA, such as “The New Amer­i­can Paint­ing” (see cat­a­log cov­er at top), which vis­it­ed major Euro­pean cities in 1958–59 and includ­ed such mod­ern prim­i­tive works as sur­re­al­ist William Baziotes’ 1947 Dwarf (below) and 1951’s Tour­na­ment by Adolph Got­tlieb above.

Of course what seems most bizarre about this turn of events is that avant-garde art in Amer­i­ca has nev­er been much appre­ci­at­ed by the aver­age cit­i­zen, to put it mild­ly. Amer­i­can Main Streets har­bor under­cur­rents of dis­trust or out­right hatred for out-there, art-world exper­i­men­ta­tion, a trend that fil­ters upward and peri­od­i­cal­ly erupts in con­tro­ver­sies over Con­gres­sion­al fund­ing for the arts. A 1995 Inde­pen­dent arti­cle on the CIA’s role in pro­mot­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ism describes these atti­tudes dur­ing the Cold War peri­od:

In the 1950s and 1960s… the great major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans dis­liked or even despised mod­ern art—President Tru­man summed up the pop­u­lar view when he said: “If that’s art, then I’m a Hot­ten­tot.” As for the artists them­selves, many were ex- com­mu­nists bare­ly accept­able in the Amer­i­ca of the McCarthyite era, and cer­tain­ly not the sort of peo­ple nor­mal­ly like­ly to receive US gov­ern­ment back­ing.

Why, then, did they receive such back­ing? One short answer:

This philis­tin­ism, com­bined with Joseph McCarthy’s hys­ter­i­cal denun­ci­a­tions of all that was avant-garde or unortho­dox, was deeply embar­rass­ing. It dis­cred­it­ed the idea that Amer­i­ca was a sophis­ti­cat­ed, cul­tur­al­ly rich democ­ra­cy.

The one-way rela­tion­ship between mod­ernist painters and the CIA—only recent­ly con­firmed by for­mer case offi­cer Don­ald Jameson—supposedly enabled the agency to make the work of Sovi­et Social­ist Real­ists appear, in Jameson’s words, “even more styl­ized and more rigid and con­fined than it was.” (See Evdokiya Usikova’s 1959 Lenin with Vil­lagers below, for exam­ple). For a longer expla­na­tion, read the full arti­cle at The Inde­pen­dent. It’s the kind of sto­ry Don DeLil­lo would cook up.

William Emp­son goes on to say that “a Tory audi­ence sub­ject­ed to Tory pro­pa­gan­da of the same inten­si­ty” as Russ­ian imports, “would be extreme­ly bored.” If he is cor­rect, it’s like­ly that the aver­age true believ­er social­ist in Europe was already bored sil­ly by Sovi­et-approved art. What sur­pris­es in these rev­e­la­tions is that the avant-garde works that so rad­i­cal­ly altered the Amer­i­can art world and enraged the aver­age con­gress­man and tax­pay­er were co-opt­ed and col­lect­ed by suave U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cers like so many Shep­ard Fairey posters.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When the State Depart­ment Used Dizzy Gille­spie and Jazz to Fight the Cold War (1956)

Dis­cov­er the CIA’s Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al: A Time­less Guide to Sub­vert­ing Any Orga­ni­za­tion with “Pur­pose­ful Stu­pid­i­ty” (1944)

How “America’s First Drug Czar” Waged War Against Bil­lie Hol­i­day and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends

How the CIA Secret­ly Used Jack­son Pol­lock & Oth­er Abstract Expres­sion­ists to Fight the Cold War

The CIA’s Style Man­u­al & Writer’s Guide: 185 Pages of Tips for Writ­ing Like a Spook

How the CIA Fund­ed & Sup­port­ed Lit­er­ary Mag­a­zines World­wide While Wag­ing Cul­tur­al War Against Com­mu­nism

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. 

Discover Gadsby: The 50,000-Word Novel Written Without Using the Letter E (1939)

in Books, Literature | April 7th, 2026

“If Youth, through­out all his­to­ry, had had a cham­pi­on to stand up for it; to show a doubt­ing world that a child can think; and, pos­si­bly, do it prac­ti­cal­ly; you would­n’t con­stant­ly run across folks today who claim that ‘a child don’t know any­thing.’ ” Ranked along­side the oth­er notable open­ing sen­tences of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture, this falls some­what short of, say, “Call me Ish­mael.” The entire nov­el that fol­lows is writ­ten in the same odd­ly stilt­ed, cir­cum­loc­u­tive prose, and a read­er who skips the author’s intro­duc­tion may not per­ceive just what has set it askew for some time. They’d also have to be read­ing an edi­tion oth­er than the first, with its bold promise of a “50,000 WORD NOVEL WITHOUT THE LETTER ‘E.’ ”

The book is Ernest Vin­cent Wright’s Gads­by (1939). Though self-pub­lished in the late nine­teen-thir­ties to no fan­fare, it’s now acknowl­edged more or less wide­ly as a lit­er­ary odd­i­ty, far more often cit­ed as a piece of triv­ia than actu­al­ly read. (I first learned of it from a list of fun facts on the back of a cere­al box, which, look­ing back now, seems cul­tur­al­ly appro­pri­ate.) As the Dis­am­bi video above explains, in deny­ing him­self e, the sin­gle most com­mon let­ter in the Eng­lish lan­guage, Wright denied him­self the, as well as “the major­i­ty of pro­nouns, like he, she, they, them, theirs,” and so on. “Past-tense words that use -ed are out of the ques­tion, as is any num­ber between six and thir­ty.”

To some, more sur­pris­ing than the fact that Wright man­aged to com­pose a full-length nov­el this way (over­look­ing three thes and an offi­cer that slipped into the ini­tial print run) is the nature of the sto­ry he chan­neled this con­sid­er­able effort into telling. John Gads­by — not to be con­fused with the sim­i­lar­ly named, much more famous title char­ac­ter of anoth­er nov­el from the pre­vi­ous decade — returns in mid­dle age to his home­town of Bran­ton Hills, which has slid into a state of advanced dis­so­lu­tion. In despair, he assem­bles a youth league ded­i­cat­ed to breath­ing life back into the place, and before those 50,000 very near­ly e‑less words have passed, the pop­u­la­tion has grown thir­ty­fold, and he’s become the may­or.

In truth, Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry is lit­tered with Gads­bys; it’s just that none of the authors of those for­got­ten hom­i­lies on civic-mind­ed boos­t­er­ism thought to use so strik­ing a gim­mick. Tech­ni­cal­ly called a lipogram, the tech­nique of omit­ting a par­tic­u­lar let­ter has since been used since to greater lit­er­ary effect. With their char­ac­ter­is­tic weak­ness for Amer­i­can eccen­tric­i­ty, cer­tain French intel­lec­tu­als even­tu­al­ly took up Gads­by as a kind of mod­el. In 1969, Georges Perec pub­lished the longer but sim­i­lar­ly e‑less La Dis­pari­tion, which would have been much more chal­leng­ing to write, giv­en the French lan­guage’s even greater reliance on that miss­ing vow­el. Far from a par­lor trick, its lipogram res­onates with both the con­tent of the sto­ry and sense of absence felt by the author, who’d lost both par­ents in World War II. As for this post, per­haps you’ve noticed that it’s been writ­ten thus far with­out a sin­gle instance of the let­ter z. Please clap.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Jump­start Your Cre­ative Process with William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Tech­nique

An Intro­duc­tion to the Codex Seraphini­anus, the Strangest Book Ever Pub­lished

The Strangest Books in the World: Dis­cov­er The Madman’s Library, a Cap­ti­vat­ing Com­pendi­um of Pecu­liar Books & Man­u­scripts

Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture, From the Begin­nings to the Civ­il War: A Free Online Course from NYU

The Amer­i­can Nov­el Since 1945: A Free Yale Course on Nov­els by Nabokov, Ker­ouac, Mor­ri­son, Pyn­chon & More

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 434 Avant-Garde and Surreal Short Films Online: Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Luis Buñuel and Many More

in Film | April 6th, 2026

Much has been writ­ten late­ly about the cri­sis in Hol­ly­wood, which has left many appar­ent­ly sure-fire block­busters floun­der­ing, the­aters emp­ty, and pro­duc­tion jobs lost. There are many fac­tors in play — some of them, as few diag­noses fail to point out, struc­tur­al — but can we ignore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fatigue, per­haps even bore­dom, with film itself? We’ve post­ed in recent years here on Open Cul­ture about the decay of cin­e­ma, the rise of “visu­al muzak” on Net­flix, why movies don’t feel real any­more, and why movies don’t even feel like movies any­more. Even if they’ve lim­it­ed their expo­sure to big-bud­get spec­ta­cles, most once-avid cinephiles will have felt all those phe­nom­e­na for them­selves by now, and many will be con­sid­er­ing whether to look for a new art form to enjoy. But some will won­der: maybe there’s a cure?

There could well be, and a brac­ing one. If you seek a re-enchant­ment with film, there could be few bet­ter places to look than in the work of film­mak­ers who have bro­ken that medi­um down to its very com­po­nents and put it togeth­er again in uncon­ven­tion­al ways. Some of the results shocked audi­ences fifty, six­ty, sev­en­ty, even a hun­dred years ago — and indeed, some retain that pow­er today.

You can take a jour­ney through the his­to­ry of such exper­i­men­tal, avant-garde, and sur­re­al motion pic­tures with the YouTube playlist at the top of the post, which com­pris­es 434 such videos. The exact num­ber will vary depend­ing upon your region of the world, as well as upon how many of them have come and gone since the playlist’s cre­ation. What­ev­er the total, not even a fringe-cin­e­ma habitué will have seen every­thing on it (at least, not more than once).

Long­time Open Cul­ture read­ers may rec­og­nize on the playlist the work of Dadaist Hans Richter and Mar­cel Duchamp, abstrac­tion pio­neer Viking Eggeling, ear­ly fem­i­nist film­mak­er Ger­maine Dulac, and ani­ma­tor (as well as city sym­phon­ist) Wal­ter Ruttmann, not to men­tion Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel.

They may or may not already have encoun­tered the cin­e­mat­ic lega­cy of, say, Shūji Ter­aya­ma, the all-around avant-gardist and provo­ca­teur whose influ­ence is still felt in Japan­ese art today; Stan Brakhage, who forewent even the use of a cam­era and cre­at­ed his own cin­e­ma by manip­u­lat­ing film direct­ly; or Michael Snow, whose Wave­length tells a sto­ry with­out leav­ing a sin­gle room in which very lit­tle hap­pens. But then, after enough of these exper­i­men­tal, avant-garde, and sur­re­al view­ing expe­ri­ences, you’ll remem­ber that there are many ways for a film to tell a sto­ry — and much, much more that film can do besides sto­ry­telling, if only we’d let it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Page of Mad­ness: The Lost Avant Garde Mas­ter­piece from Ear­ly Japan­ese Cin­e­ma (1926)

The Evoca­tive­ness of Decom­pos­ing Film: Watch the 1926 Hol­ly­wood Movie The Bells Become the Exper­i­men­tal 2004 Short Film Light Is Call­ing

Watch the Med­i­ta­tive Cinepo­em “H20”: A Land­mark Avant-Garde Art Film from 1929

Watch 3000 Years of Art, a 1968 Exper­i­men­tal Film That Takes You on a Visu­al Jour­ney Through 3,000 Years of Fine Art

Watch Mesh­es of the After­noon, the Exper­i­men­tal Short Vot­ed the 16th Best Film of All Time

Paul Schrad­er Cre­ates a Dia­gram Map­ping the Pro­gres­sion of Art­house Cin­e­ma: Ozu, Bres­son, Tarkovsky & Oth­er Auteurs

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 a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Survive the Atomic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

in History | April 6th, 2026

Not too far back, we revis­it­ed some Cold War pro­pa­gan­da that taught upstand­ing Amer­i­can cit­i­zens How to Spot a Com­mu­nist Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism. It’s a gem, but it has noth­ing on the 1954 film, The House in the Mid­dle. Select­ed for preser­va­tion in the Nation­al Film Reg­istry by the Library of Con­gress, the short doc­u­men­tary makes the ulti­mate case for clean­li­ness. Bring­ing view­ers to the Neva­da Prov­ing Grounds, the 12-minute film shows what hap­pens when clean, white hous­es are sub­ject­ed to heat waves from an atom­ic blast, ver­sus what hap­pens when a dingy, ill-kept house goes through the same drill. It turns out that neat peo­ple can not only claim moral vic­to­ry (as they always do). They also get to live anoth­er day. Con­sid­er it proof of the sur­vival of the tidi­est.

The film was pro­duced by the Nation­al Clean Up-Paint Up-Fix Up Bureau with sup­port from the Fed­er­al Civ­il Defense Admin­is­tra­tion. The Nation­al Paint, Var­nish and Lac­quer Asso­ci­a­tion also appar­ent­ly played a role, sug­gest­ing that cor­po­rate inter­ests were cap­i­tal­iz­ing on wartime fear. Not the first time that’s hap­pened in Amer­i­ca. Or that last…

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!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Ducked and Cov­ered: A Sur­vival Guide to the Post Apoc­a­lypse (A Lit­tle NSFW)

How to Spot a Com­mu­nist by Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism: A 1955 Man­u­al from the U.S. Mil­i­tary

Ani­mat­ed Films Made Dur­ing the Cold War Explain Why Amer­i­ca is Excep­tion­al­ly Excep­tion­al

The Red Men­ace: A Strik­ing Gallery of Anti-Com­mu­nist Posters, Ads, Com­ic Books, Mag­a­zines & Films

Watch “Don’t Be a Suck­er!,” the 1947 US Gov­ern­ment Anti-Hatred Film That’s Rel­e­vant All Over Again

How Dis­ney Fought Fas­cism with Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Dur­ing World War II & Avert­ed Finan­cial Col­lapse

Watch the Titanic and Lusitania Sink in Real Time: One Fast, One Slow

in History | April 3rd, 2026

Asked to name famous ship­wrecks at a bar triv­ia night, a fair few par­tic­i­pants might think imme­di­ate­ly of Pearl Har­bor, whether or not they can recall that it was the USS Ari­zona bombed there. More firm­ly with­in liv­ing mem­o­ry sits the SS Andrea Doria, though she’s hard­ly the cul­tur­al ref­er­ence she used to be. The wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzger­ald passed its fifti­eth anniver­sary just last year, which gave a boost to its remem­brance, if most­ly by Gor­don Light­foot fans. There is, of course, the Endurance, though the ship her­self has always been over­shad­owed by the efforts of her cap­tain to get the whole crew home alive. The schooner Hes­pe­rus does come to mind as a par­tic­u­lar­ly unfor­tu­nate ves­sel, per­haps all the more so because she did­n’t actu­al­ly exist.

Near­ly every­one at the bar is, of course, going to put down the RMS Titan­ic first. Even before she received the James Cameron treat­ment, that “unsink­able” ocean lin­er was eas­i­ly the most famous ship­wreck of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, and quite pos­si­bly of all his­to­ry. But sec­ond place has to go to the RMS Lusi­ta­nia, which went under just three years after the Titan­ic. As close as the year 1915 may sound to 1912, devel­op­ments in Europe had rearranged the world in the mean­time. The Titan­ic met her end by col­lid­ing with an ice­berg, and about two and a half hours lat­er, as you can see in the real-time sink­ing video at the top of the post, it was on the bot­tom of the North Atlantic. When the Lusi­ta­nia was tor­pe­doed by a Ger­man U‑boat, by con­trast, she went down in just eigh­teen min­utes.

You can wit­ness those min­utes re-cre­at­ed in the ani­mat­ed video from Ocean­lin­er Designs just above. Though the Great War was rag­ing, the ship had­n’t yet been com­mis­sioned as an armed mer­chant cruis­er, but was con­duct­ing her usu­al transat­lantic pas­sen­ger ser­vice while — as the Ger­man side insist­ed and the British at first denied — car­ry­ing war mate­ri­als on the side. She’d been trav­el­ing due east for six days when U‑20 sight­ed her; after an hour of track­ing came the launch of the fate­ful under­wa­ter mis­sile and its 160-kilo­gram explo­sive pay­load. The video shows and explains not just how the Lusi­ta­nia slipped below the water, but also the break­down along the way of her var­i­ous struc­tur­al ele­ments and mechan­i­cal sys­tems, includ­ing the ele­va­tors that had once seemed such mar­velous inno­va­tions.

It seems that after the tor­pe­do hit, prac­ti­cal­ly every­thing that could have con­se­quent­ly gone wrong did, right down to the few deploy­able lifeboats drop­ping cat­a­stroph­i­cal­ly from their davits. The crew of the Titan­ic man­aged to launch most of her lifeboats, but there weren’t enough of them in the first place. That con­tributed to a final death toll of around 1,500, as com­pared with 1,197 on the Lusi­ta­nia. Though sim­i­lar in scale and his­tor­i­cal tim­ing, these two mar­itime dis­as­ters end­ed up with very dif­fer­ent mean­ings. The wreck of the Titan­ic con­tin­ues to cap­ture imag­i­na­tions by res­onat­ing with the indus­tri­al romance, class strat­i­fi­ca­tion, and impe­r­i­al hubris of the long nine­teenth cen­tu­ry; that of the Lusi­ta­nia, whose sink­ing played a major role in bring­ing the Unit­ed States into what we now call World War I, shows us noth­ing so clear­ly as the mer­ci­less geopo­lit­i­cal log­ic of the twen­ti­eth.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia Ani­mat­ed in Real Time (1915)

How James Cameron Shot Titan­ic’s Huge­ly Com­plex Sink­ing Scene

The Sink­ing of the Bri­tan­nic: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Titanic’s For­got­ten Sis­ter Ship

The Cos­ta Con­cor­dia Ship­wreck Viewed from Out­er Space

The First Full 3D Scan of the Titan­ic, Made of More Than 700,000 Images Cap­tur­ing the Wreck’s Every Detail

A New 3D Scan, Cre­at­ed from 25,000 High-Res­o­lu­tion Images, Reveals the Remark­ably Well-Pre­served Wreck of Shackleton’s Endurance

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.