See the Climactic Ending of Steven Spielberg’s Breakout Duel Recreated Entirely with 3D-Printed Models

in Film | March 25th, 2026

With his last pic­ture The Fabel­mans, Steven Spiel­berg told a sto­ry of his own. Giv­en his long-held stature as more or less the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of big-screen Hol­ly­wood enter­tain­ment, there’s only one such sto­ry he could have told: that of how he became a film­mak­er. The most mem­o­rable of The Fabel­mans depicts the young direc­to­r­i­al sur­ro­gate alone in the base­ment of his fam­i­ly home, re-cre­at­ing the train crash scene from The Great­est Show on Earth with an eight-mil­lime­ter cam­era and a Lionel set. Today, on the brink of his ninth decade with his famous pro­duc­tiv­i­ty hard­ly slow­ing, Spiel­berg remains, on some lev­el, the wide-eyed boy smash­ing his toys togeth­er at just the right angle. What bet­ter way to pay him trib­ute than to repli­cate his cin­e­mat­ic achieve­ments in minia­ture?

The Fabel­mans ends with its pro­tag­o­nist a col­lege stu­dent, eager to drop out and go straight to Hol­ly­wood. At the same point in life, the real Spiel­berg was about to receive an offer from Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures to write and direct the short film that became Amblin’, which itself led to a con­tract to direct tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tions.

He showed what he could do with episodes of Mar­cus Wel­by, M.D., The Name of the Game, and Colum­bo, among oth­er series. Then he stepped up to TV movies, a form regard­ed as infe­ri­or in all respects to the­atri­cal releas­es, but one he man­aged to tran­scend on the first try. When it first aired in 1971 as an ABC Movie of the Week, Duel pre­sent­ed its view­ers with a har­row­ing, near-mytho­log­i­cal con­fronta­tion between a mid­dle-aged trav­el­ing sales­man in a Ply­mouth Valiant and an unseen truck­er in a hulk­ing, smoke-belch­ing big rig who seems bent on destroy­ing him.

Giv­en that its direc­tor was just 24 years old at the time, Duel very much counts as ear­ly Spiel­berg. Yet it’s also dis­tilled Spiel­berg, a head-on treat­ment of mid­dle-class nor­mal­i­ty’s sud­den encounter with a force of incom­pre­hen­si­ble men­ace — a theme much revis­it­ed in his work since — with cin­e­mat­ic rhythms pre­cise­ly cal­cu­lat­ed for opti­mal ten­sion and release. An aspir­ing film­mak­er could learn much from re-cre­at­ing its sequences shot-for-shot. The YouTube chan­nel Movies Minia­tures Effects does just that in the video above, which doc­u­ments a remak­ing with 3D-print­ed maque­ttes of the final crash, after Den­nis Weaver’s des­per­ate every­man man­ages to out­wit his pur­suer. “Sheer skill need­ed more phi­los­o­phy for a fit­ting res­o­lu­tion,” wrote David Thom­son of this end­ing. Per­haps so, but the more than 18 mil­lion views so far racked up by its minia­ture ver­sion do sug­gest a film that more than retains its pow­er after 45 years.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Steven Spielberg’s Rarely Seen 1968 Film Amblin’

Watch Steven Spielberg’s Debut: Two Films He Direct­ed as a Teenag­er

Shot-By-Shot Break­downs of Spielberg’s Film­mak­ing in Jaws, Scorsese’s in Cape Fear, and De Palma’s in The Untouch­ables

How Movies Cre­at­ed Their Spe­cial Effects Before CGI: Metrop­o­lis, 2001: A Space Odyssey & More

How Wes Ander­son Uses Minia­tures to Cre­ate His Aes­thet­ic: A Primer from His Mod­el Mak­er & Prop Painter

How Car Chase Scenes Have Evolved Over 100 Years

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 Hoover Dam Works: A 3D Animated Introduction

in History, Technology | March 25th, 2026

When it comes to tourist pil­grim­age sites in the Unit­ed States, the Hoover Dam may not quite rank up there with the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al, Mount Rush­more, the Grand Canyon, or Dis­ney­land. But that’s not due to a lack of impor­tance, nor even a lack of impres­sive­ness. Prop­er appre­ci­a­tion of its man-made majesty, how­ev­er, requires an under­stand­ing of not just the vital func­tion it serves, but the enor­mous task of its con­struc­tion. The guides at the Hoover Dam have been trained to explain just that to its many vis­i­tors, of course, but all of us could ben­e­fit from going in pre­pared with a lit­tle knowl­edge. Watch the hour-long video on the dam’s design and con­struc­tion from Ani­ma­graffs above, and you may be pre­pared with enough knowl­edge to tell the guides a thing or two.

Ani­ma­graffs is the YoT­tube chan­nel of Jacob O’Neal, which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for its acclaimed expla­na­tions on a six­teenth-cen­tu­ry explor­er’s sail­ing ship and the Gold­en Gate Bridge, anoth­er icon­ic con­struc­tion project of the Great Depres­sion. Like those, his Hoover Dam video uses detailed 3D mod­els based on seri­ous research, not least into the pro­jec­t’s orig­i­nal design doc­u­ments.

This allows O’Neal to show each ele­ment of the dam and its com­plex sys­tem of sup­port­ing infra­struc­ture in detail and from every angle, as well as in a kind of x‑ray vision. We’ve all seen pho­tographs of the Hoover Dam, and maybe even bought some from its gift shop, but even the most sub­lime aer­i­al view does­n’t reveal as much about its ambi­tion as a look into its inner work­ings.

And the ambi­tion of the Hoover Dam is one aspect guar­an­teed to impress any view­ers. It required thou­sands of work­ers about five years to re-shape the Neva­da and Ari­zona land­scape at a grand enough scale to make pos­si­ble human con­trol of the mighty — and, more to the point, might­i­ly unpre­dictable — Col­orado Riv­er. With its large tur­bines, the engi­neer­ing and instal­la­tion of which O’Neal explains in full, it man­aged to gen­er­ate enough elec­tric­i­ty to repay its con­struc­tion cost of more than $811 mil­lion in today’s dol­lars by 1987, just over 50 years after it opened. And in an achieve­ment almost impos­si­ble to believe today, it opened more than two years ahead of sched­ule. We hear a good deal today about the con­cept of “state capac­i­ty,” and how the U.S. could regain it. At the Hoover Dam, we behold state capac­i­ty quite lit­er­al­ly made con­crete.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Incred­i­ble Sto­ry of the Hoover Dam

The Genius Urban Design of Ams­ter­dam: Canals, Dams & Lean­ing Hous­es

How Medieval Islam­ic Engi­neer­ing Brought Water to the Alham­bra

The Genius Engi­neer­ing of Roman Aque­ducts

The Bril­liant Engi­neer­ing That Made Venice: How a City Was Built on Water

Dis­cov­er Ansel Adams’ 226 Pho­tos of U.S. Nation­al Parks (and Anoth­er Side of the Leg­endary Pho­tog­ra­ph­er)

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.

Lynda Barry on How the Smartphone Is Endangering Three Ingredients of Creativity: Loneliness, Uncertainty & Boredom

in Art, Creativity, Productivity, Technology | March 24th, 2026

The phone gives us a lot but it takes away three key ele­ments of dis­cov­ery: lone­li­ness, uncer­tain­ty and bore­dom. Those have always been where cre­ative ideas come from. — Lyn­da Bar­ry

In the spring of 2016, the great car­toon­ist and edu­ca­tor, Lyn­da Bar­ry, did the unthink­able, pri­or to giv­ing a lec­ture and writ­ing class at NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter.

She demand­ed that all par­tic­i­pat­ing staff mem­bers sur­ren­der their phones and oth­er such per­son­al devices.

Her vic­tims were as jan­gled by this prospect as your aver­age iPhone-addict­ed teen, but sur­ren­dered, agree­ing to write by hand, anoth­er anti­quat­ed notion Bar­ry sub­scribes to:

The delete but­ton makes it so that any­thing you’re unsure of you can get rid of, so noth­ing new has a chance. Writ­ing by hand is a rev­e­la­tion for peo­ple. Maybe that’s why they asked me to NASA – I still know how to use my hands… there is a dif­fer­ent way of think­ing that goes along with them.

Barry—who told the Onion’s AV Club that she craft­ed her book What It Is with an eye toward bored read­ers stuck in a Jiffy Lube oil-change wait­ing room—is also a big pro­po­nent of doo­dling, which she views as a cre­ative neu­ro­log­i­cal response to bore­dom:

Bor­ing meet­ing, you have a pen, the usu­al clowns are yakking. Most peo­ple will draw some­thing, even peo­ple who can’t draw. I say “If you’re bored, what do you draw?” And every­body has some­thing they draw. Like “Oh yeah, my lit­tle guy, I draw him.” Or “I draw eye­balls, or palm trees.” … So I asked them “Why do you think you do that? Why do you think you doo­dle dur­ing those meet­ings?” I believe that it’s because it makes hav­ing to endure that par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion more bear­able, by chang­ing our expe­ri­ence of time. It’s so slight. I always say it’s the dif­fer­ence between, if you’re not doo­dling, the min­utes feel like a cheese grater on your face. But if you are doo­dling, it’s more like Bril­lo.  It’s not much bet­ter, but there is a dif­fer­ence. You could han­dle Bril­lo a lit­tle longer than the cheese grater.

Meet­ings and class­rooms are among the few remain­ing venues in which screen-addict­ed moths are expect­ed to force them­selves away from the phone’s invit­ing flame. Oth­er settings—like the Jiffy Lube wait­ing room—require more ini­tia­tive on the user’s part.

Once, we were keen­er stu­dents of minor changes to famil­iar envi­ron­ments, the books strangers were read­ing in the sub­way, and those strangers them­selves. Our sub­se­quent obser­va­tions were known to spark con­ver­sa­tion and some­times ideas that led to cre­ative projects.

Now, many of us let those oppor­tu­ni­ties slide by, as we fill up on such fleet­ing con­fec­tions as fun­ny videos and all-you-can-eat serv­ings of social media.

It’s also tempt­ing to use our phones as defac­to shields any time social anx­i­ety looms. This dodge may pro­vide short term com­fort, espe­cial­ly to younger peo­ple, but remem­ber, Bar­ry and many of her car­toon­ist peers, includ­ing Daniel Clowes, Simon Hansel­mann, and Ariel Schrag, toughed it out by mak­ing art. That’s what got them through the lone­li­ness, uncer­tain­ty, and bore­dom of their mid­dle and high school years.

The book you hold in your hands would not exist had high school been a pleas­ant expe­ri­ence for me… It was on those qui­et week­end nights when even my par­ents were out hav­ing fun that I began mak­ing seri­ous attempts to make sto­ries in comics form.

- Adri­an Tomine, intro­duc­tion to 32 Sto­ries

Bar­ry is far from alone in encour­ag­ing adults to peel them­selves away from their phone depen­den­cy for their cre­ative good.

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Eric Pickersgill’s Removed imag­ines a series of every­day sit­u­a­tions in which phones and oth­er per­son­al devices have been ren­dered invis­i­ble. (It’s worth not­ing that he removed the offend­ing arti­cles from the mod­els’ hands, rather that Pho­to­shop­ping them out lat­er.)

Com­put­er Sci­ence Pro­fes­sor Calvin Newport’s book, Deep Work, posits that all that shal­low phone time is cre­at­ing stress, anx­i­ety, and lost cre­ative oppor­tu­ni­ties, while also doing a num­ber on our per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al lives.

Author Manoush Zomorodi’s TED Talk on how bore­dom can lead to bril­liant ideas, below, details a week­long exper­i­ment in bat­tling smart­phone habits, with lots of sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence to back up her find­ings.

But what if you wipe the slate of dig­i­tal dis­trac­tions only to find that your brain’s just… emp­ty? A once occu­pied room, now devoid of any­thing but dim­ly recalled memes, and gen­er­al­ized dread over the state of the world?

The afore­men­tioned AV Club inter­view with Bar­ry offers both encour­age­ment and some use­ful sug­ges­tions that will get the tem­porar­i­ly par­a­lyzed mov­ing again:

I don’t know what the strip’s going to be about when I start. I nev­er know. I often­times have—I call it the word-bag. Just a bag of words. I’ll just reach in there, and I’ll pull out a word, and it’ll say “ping-pong.” I’ll just have that in my head, and I’ll start draw­ing the pic­tures as if I can… I hear a sen­tence, I just hear it. As soon as I hear even the begin­ning of the first sen­tence, then I just… I write real­ly slow. So I’ll be writ­ing that, and I’ll know what’s going to go at the top of the pan­el. Then, when it gets to the end, usu­al­ly I’ll know what the next one is. By three sen­tences or four in that first pan­el, I stop, and then I say “Now it’s time for the draw­ing.” Then I’ll draw. But then I’ll hear the next one over on anoth­er page! Or when I’m draw­ing Marlys and Arna, I might hear her say some­thing, but then I’ll hear Marlys say some­thing back. So once that first sen­tence is there, I have all kinds of choic­es as to where I put my brush. But if noth­ing is hap­pen­ing, then I just go over to what I call my decoy page. It’s like decoy ducks. I go over there and just start mess­ing around.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Infor­ma­tion Over­load Robs Us of Our Cre­ativ­i­ty: What the Sci­en­tif­ic Research Shows

The Case for Delet­ing Your Social Media Accounts & Doing Valu­able “Deep Work” Instead, Accord­ing to Prof. Cal New­port

Lyn­da Barry’s Illus­trat­ed Syl­labus & Home­work Assign­ments from Her New UW-Madi­son Course, “Mak­ing Comics”

Lyn­da Bar­ry, Car­toon­ist Turned Pro­fes­sor, Gives Her Old Fash­ioned Take on the Future of Edu­ca­tion

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

Watch Jazzy Spies: 1969 Psychedelic Sesame Street Animation, Featuring Grace Slick, Teaches Kids to Count

in Animation, Music, Television | March 24th, 2026

When asked for their favorite Sesame Street seg­ment, many chil­dren of the 70s and 80s point to Pin­ball Num­ber Count. Psy­che­del­ic ani­ma­tion, the Point­er Sis­ters, odd time signatures—what’s not to love? But for the seri­ous Sesame Street buff, the “Jazz Num­bers” series above deserves the sil­ver medal. It’s got free jazz, Yel­low Sub­ma­rine-style sur­re­al­is­tic ani­ma­tion, and a vocal from Grace Slick of Jef­fer­son Air­plane. How many young par­ents rec­og­nized her dis­tinc­tive voice, I won­der?

Also known as “Jazzy Spies,” this 1969 series of ani­ma­tions was devot­ed to the num­bers 2 through 10 (there was no film for “one” as it is the loneli­est num­ber that you’ll ever do), and was an essen­tial ele­ment in Sesame Street’s first sea­son. High­lights include the dream-like ele­va­tor door sequence of “2,” the Jack­son 5 ref­er­ence in “5,” and the rac­ing fans in “10.”

Slick got involved through her first hus­band, Jer­ry Slick, who pro­duced the seg­ments for San Fran­cis­co-based ani­ma­tion stu­dio Imag­i­na­tion, Inc. Head­ed by ani­ma­tor Jeff Hale, the com­pa­ny also pro­duced the Pin­ball seg­ments, as well as the famous anamor­phic “Type­writer Guy,” the Ring­mas­ter, and the Detec­tive Man. Hale, by the way, has a cameo as Augie “Ben” Dog­gie in the well-loved Lucas par­o­dy Hard­ware Wars.)

The deliri­ous music was com­posed and per­formed by Colum­bia jazz artist Den­ny Zeitlin, who would go on to score the 1979 remake of Inva­sion of the Body Snatch­ers. Zeitlin plays both piano and clavinet; accom­pa­ny­ing him is Bob­by Natan­son on drums and Mel Graves on bass. Accord­ing to Zeitlin, Grace Slick over­dubbed her vocals lat­er.

This wasn’t Slick’s first encounter with Jim Hen­son. In 1968, she and oth­er mem­bers of Jef­fer­son Air­plane were part of a coun­ter­cul­ture doc­u­men­tary called Youth ’68, the trail­er for which you can groove on here.

Sesame Street, with all its pri­ma­ry col­ors, plas­tic mer­chan­dise, and Elmo infes­ta­tion, may have lost its edge, but these ear­ly works show its rev­o­lu­tion­ary foun­da­tions.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philip Glass Com­pos­es Music for a Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion (1979)

Itzhak Perl­man Appears on Sesame Street and Poignant­ly Shows Kids How to Play the Vio­lin and Push Through Life’s Lim­its (1981)

Watch the First Episode of Sesame Street and 140 Oth­er Free Episodes

A Young Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets with Socks, Ten­nis Balls & Oth­er House­hold Goods (1969)

See Ste­vie Won­der Play “Super­sti­tion” and Ban­ter with Grover on Sesame Street in 1973

Thank You, Mask Man: Lenny Bruce’s Lone Ranger Com­e­dy Rou­tine Becomes a NSFW Ani­mat­ed Film (1968)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.

Why Smart People Feel Like Frauds: The Psychology of Impostor Syndrome and Its Hidden Benefits

in Life, Psychology | March 23rd, 2026

Incom­pe­tent peo­ple tend to see them­selves as not just com­pe­tent, but high­ly com­pe­tent. So, at any rate, holds the the­o­ry of the “Dun­ning-Kruger effect,” pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. But does the con­verse also hold: do high­ly com­pe­tent peo­ple tend to see them­selves as incom­pe­tent? That would seem to be an impli­ca­tion of what’s been called “impos­tor syn­drome,” a per­sis­tent sense of inad­e­qua­cy rel­a­tive to one’s sta­tus or posi­tion, unsup­port­ed by any objec­tive evi­dence. If you your­self have been afflict­ed with that con­di­tion, it may be a tad hasty to take it as a sign of your own effec­tive­ness, but as the Har­vard Busi­ness School’s Arthur C. Brooks explains in the clip above, it may nonethe­less ben­e­fit you to lean into it.

“What all strivers I’ve ever met have in com­mon is that, the high­er they climb and the more suc­cess they have, the more inse­cure they feel in their own suc­cess because they’re not quite sure that they’ve earned it or deserve it,” Brooks says. Iron­i­cal­ly, in his expe­ri­ence, “peo­ple who deserve suc­cess through hard work and mer­it and per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty are not quite sure they deserve it, and the peo­ple who don’t deserve it are often the peo­ple who are actu­al­ly most sure that they do.”

In that last group are pos­ses­sors of the so-called “dark tri­ad” traits: nar­cis­sism, Machi­avel­lian­ism, and psy­chopa­thy. A “good, nor­mal, healthy per­son,” by con­trast, will nat­u­ral­ly won­der if they real­ly mer­it the pro­mo­tions, rewards, and acco­lades they receive, and if they’re tru­ly up to each task ahead.

To com­bat impos­tor syn­drome, Brooks rec­om­mends you “under­stand it, keep up to date with it, and keep try­ing to get bet­ter at the things you’re not good at yet.” Human­i­ty’s gen­er­al neg­a­tiv­i­ty bias may keep most of us sus­pect­ing that we’ve been over­es­ti­mat­ed, but that does­n’t mean we should ignore the oppor­tu­ni­ties for gen­uine self-improve­ment that such feel­ings present. “The truth is, if things are real­ly, real­ly rough for you, you’re not all weak­ness­es, and if things are going real­ly well for you, you’re not all strengths.” It just hap­pens that at some times, every­one focus­es on the for­mer, and at oth­er times, the lat­ter, and what’s impor­tant is not to let your­self be too heav­i­ly influ­enced in either case. Per­haps you can stay ground­ed by bear­ing in mind a cou­ple of trusty old adages: that nobody’s per­fect, and that you do, some­times, have to fake it ’til you make it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

24 Com­mon Cog­ni­tive Bias­es: A Visu­al List of the Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sys­tems Errors That Keep Us From Think­ing Ratio­nal­ly

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

Why Over­con­fi­dence Is Our Most Dan­ger­ous Cog­ni­tive Bias

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (Oth­er­wise Known as the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

There Are Eight Forms of Intel­li­gence, Not Just One: Which Apply to You?

The Sur­pris­ing Pow­er of Bore­dom: It Lets You Con­front Big Ques­tions & Give Life Mean­ing

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 Quentin Tarantino’s One-Night “Detest Fest” Changed His Life & Set Him on the Path to Pulp Fiction

in Film, Life | March 20th, 2026

Just days ago, a game came out whose unlike­ly premise has already drawn a good deal of atten­tion. “Man­age your very own video store in the ear­ly 90s!” exclaims the descrip­tion of Retro Rewind. “Rent, sell, dec­o­rate and expand your busi­ness from the ground up and relive the gold­en ages of video rentals!” Those of us old enough to have relied on such estab­lish­ments for our ear­ly cin­e­mat­ic edu­ca­tion can all too eas­i­ly remem­ber how frus­trat­ing they could be, what with their phys­i­cal­ly lim­it­ed selec­tions, sel­dom-rewound tapes, and puni­tive late fees. Even so, younger gen­er­a­tions aren’t wrong to imag­ine that some were spe­cial places where it felt like a cinephile’s dreams could come true. Just ask Quentin Taran­ti­no.

The clip above comes from Joe Rogan’s inter­view with Taran­ti­no and Roger Avary, who worked togeth­er at Man­hat­tan Beach’s Video Archives before they co-wrote Pulp Fic­tion. “Work­ing at that store, I just got caught up in the lit­tle life there,” Taran­ti­no says. Yet he also remem­bers him­self think­ing, “Well, this isn’t my dream. This isn’t what I want­ed to do work­ing at a video store for years. I want­ed to actu­al­ly make movies. It’s not my dream, what I’m doing — but it’s dream-adja­cent!” It turned out that get­ting paid to watch movies all day long (to say noth­ing of becom­ing local­ly famous for sheer cinephil­ia) with­out putting in any seri­ous man­u­al labor “put my ambi­tions to sleep a lit­tle bit.”

Taran­ti­no explains that his awak­en­ing from this retail rever­ie began with wit­ness­ing the sud­den embit­ter­ment of fel­low clerks who passed the age of thir­ty doing the same “cool” jobs they always had. This set him on the path to under­go­ing a series of dark nights of the soul he called “Quentin detest fests,” dur­ing which he would make a no-excus­es account­ing of all the mis­takes he was active­ly or pas­sive­ly mak­ing. “I would spend all night lay­ing out every­thing I’m doing that’s wrong, and then I would spend the last two hours fig­ur­ing out how I could change it. And as opposed to just doing it and then going to get some sleep, and then you for­get about it and fall back into your rou­tine, I decid­ed to change my life.”

Attach­ment to his job was a big part of the prob­lem. “I’ve got to just move to Hol­ly­wood, I’ve got to get involved there, I’ve got to meet oth­er peo­ple that are in the busi­ness,” he real­ized. “I should­n’t be mak­ing mon­ey until I’m mak­ing mon­ey doing what I want to do.” Not long after relo­cat­ing from the South Bay to Kore­atown — still well south of Hol­ly­wood, but close enough — he start­ed mak­ing con­nec­tions in the low-bud­get hor­ror world. “Well, if these guys can do it, I can do it,” he came to believe, and with­in a year and a half he was mak­ing a liv­ing as a screen­writer. The video rental indus­try has long since col­lapsed, but Quentin Taran­ti­no is still going strong as a film­mak­er. If he takes a break from work­ing on what may be his last pic­ture to play Retro Rewind, we’d sure­ly all be inter­est­ed in hear­ing what mem­o­ries it brings back. Maybe he and Avary can dis­cuss it on their Video Archives Pod­cast.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of How Quentin Taran­ti­no Became a Film­mak­er and Cre­at­ed Pulp Fic­tion, as Told by Quentin Taran­ti­no

My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains How to Write & Direct Movies

Quentin Taran­ti­no Gives a Tour of Video Archives, the Store Where He Worked Before Becom­ing a Film­mak­er

Quentin Taran­ti­no & Roger Avary Rewatch Cult-Clas­sic Movies on Their New Video Archives Pod­cast

What Is a Life-Chang­ing Real­iza­tion You Wish You’d Had Soon­er in Life?

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 the Strait of Hormuz and Its Role in the Longstanding US-Iran Conflict

in Current Affairs, Economics | March 19th, 2026

Above, you can watch a primer on the Strait of Hor­muz, the nar­row pas­sage between Iran and Oman through which rough­ly 20% of the world’s oil sup­ply flows. Pro­duced by Vox, the video explains why this choke­point has long played a cen­tral role in ten­sions between the Unit­ed States and Iran. Since the 1980s, Iran has threat­ened to dis­rupt traf­fic through the Strait, all as a way to exert pres­sure on the glob­al econ­o­my. Now, fac­ing an attack from the Unit­ed States and Israel, it’s mak­ing good on its threats, slow­ing traf­fic to a trick­le. With oil prices surg­ing, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has yet to demon­strate that it has a coher­ent plan for coun­ter­ing a strat­e­gy that Iran announced decades ago. Stay tuned for more…

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!

Alan Lomax’s Massive Music Archive Is Online: Features 20,000 Historic Blues & Folk Recordings

in Music | March 19th, 2026

A huge trea­sure trove of songs and inter­views record­ed by the leg­endary folk­lorist Alan Lomax from the 1940s into the 1990s has been dig­i­tized and made avail­able online for free lis­ten­ing. The Asso­ci­a­tion for Cul­tur­al Equi­ty, a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion found­ed by Lomax in the 1980s, has post­ed some 20,000 record­ings.

“For the first time,” Cul­tur­al Equi­ty Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Don Flem­ing told NPR’s Joel Rose, “every­thing that we’ve dig­i­tized of Alan’s field record­ing trips are online, on our Web site. It’s every take, all the way through. False takes, inter­views, music.”

It’s an amaz­ing resource. For a quick taste, here are a few exam­ples from one of the best-known areas of Lomax’s research, his record­ings of tra­di­tion­al African Amer­i­can cul­ture:

• “John Hen­ry” sung by pris­on­ers at the Mis­sis­sip­pi State Pen­i­ten­tiary, Parch­man Farm, in 1947.
• “Come Up Horsey,” a chil­dren’s lul­la­by sung in 1948 by Vera Hall, whose moth­er was a slave.
• “In a Shan­ty in Old Shan­ty Town” per­formed by Big Bill Broonzy, 1952.
• “Sto­ry of a slave who asked the dev­il to take his mas­ter,” told by Bessie Jones in 1961.

But that’s just scratch­ing the sur­face of what’s inside the enor­mous archive. Lomax’s work extend­ed far beyond the Deep South, into oth­er areas and cul­tures of Amer­i­ca, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. “He believed that all cul­tures should be looked at on an even play­ing field,” his daugh­ter Anna Lomax Wood told NPR. “Not that they’re all alike. But they should be giv­en the same dig­ni­ty, or they had the same dig­ni­ty and worth as any oth­er.”

You can lis­ten to Rose’s piece about the archive on the NPR web­site, as well as a 1990 inter­view with Lomax by Ter­ry Gross of Fresh Air, which includes sam­ple record­ings from Woody Guthrie, Jel­ly Roll Mor­ton, Lead Bel­ly and Mis­sis­sip­pi Fred McDow­ell. To dive into the Lomax audio archive, you can search the vast col­lec­tion by artist, date, genre, coun­try and oth­er cat­e­gories.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in March 2012.

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:

New, Inter­ac­tive Web Site Puts Online Thou­sands of Inter­na­tion­al Folk Songs Record­ed by the Great Folk­lorist Alan Lomax

Woody Guthrie Cre­ates a Doo­dle-Filled List of 33 New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions (1943): Beat Fas­cism, Write a Song a Day, and Keep the Hop­ing Machine Run­ning

A Playlist of Songs to Get You Through Hard Times: Stream 20 Tracks from the Alan Lomax Col­lec­tion

Jim Jarmusch Picks His Favorite Films from the The Criterion Collection

in Film | March 19th, 2026

Jim Jarmusch—the direc­tor of Stranger Than Par­adise, Down by Law, and Dead Man—recent­ly stepped into The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion clos­et to share the films that shaped his aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty. In the next three min­utes, Jar­musch pays trib­ute to a box set of Pier Pao­lo Pasolini’s 1960s films, along with Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mir­ror, plac­ing it even above Stalk­er and Andrei Rublev. Along the way, he name checks a num­ber of oth­er clas­sics. And then, with a bag full of DVDs in hand, he con­cludes: “I love Cri­te­ri­on. I always say the Cri­te­ri­on Chan­nel is my drug of choice.” For any­one inter­est­ed, you can start watch­ing films on the Cri­te­ri­on Chan­nel’s stream­ing ser­vice by sign­ing up for a free tri­al here.

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 

Jim Jarmusch’s 10 Favorite Films: Ozu’s Tokyo Sto­ry, Kurosawa’s Sev­en Samu­rai and Oth­er Black & White Clas­sics

Watch Stalk­er, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mind-Bend­ing Mas­ter­piece Free Online

How Jim Jar­musch Gets Cre­ative Ideas from William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Method and Bri­an Eno’s Oblique Strate­gies

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

Jim Jarmusch’s Anti-MTV Music Videos for Talk­ing Heads, Neil Young, Tom Waits & Big Audio Dyna­mite

In Her Final Reflections, Jane Goodall Issues a Warning: “Without Hope, We Fall Into Apathy”

in Life, Science | March 18th, 2026

For many of us, Jane Goodall was one of those cul­tur­al fig­ures who seemed always to have been around, and on some lev­el, made us feel like she always would be. But of course, no human being lives for­ev­er, no mat­ter how wide­ly admired. Goodall made her own depar­ture last fall, in the mid­dle of an Amer­i­can speak­ing tour, at the age of 91. Just two days there­after, she appeared as the guest on the pre­miere of Net­flix’s Famous Last Words, a pro­gram con­sist­ing of inter­views con­duct­ed express­ly to air only after the inter­vie­wee’s death. In the clip above, the show’s host, TV writer-direc­tor-pro­duc­er Brad Falchuk, asks her an out­ward­ly sim­ple ques­tion: “Who would you say you were?”

Goodall describes her­self as “some­body sent to this world to try to give peo­ple hope in dark times, because with­out hope, we fall into apa­thy and do noth­ing, and in the dark times that we are liv­ing in now, if peo­ple don’t have hope, we’re doomed. How can we bring lit­tle chil­dren into this dark world we’ve cre­at­ed and let them be sur­round­ed by peo­ple who’ve giv­en up? So even if this is the end of human­i­ty as we know it, let’s fight to the very end. Let’s let the chil­dren know that there is hope, if they get togeth­er. And even if it becomes impos­si­ble for any­body, it’s bet­ter to go on fight­ing to the end than just to give up and say, ‘Okay.’ ” These are fine words, though it may sur­prise some of us that they make no men­tion of chimps.

Though she became famous as a pri­ma­tol­o­gist, and specif­i­cal­ly as an expert on chim­panzees, Goodall devot­ed much ener­gy in her lat­er decades to tak­ing action on broad­er caus­es. These includ­ed envi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion and the secu­ri­ty of life on Earth itself, which she saw as imper­iled by the actions of cer­tain gov­ern­ments and polit­i­cal actors. When Falchuk asks who she does­n’t like, she express­es her desire to send per­ma­nent­ly into space Elon Musk, Don­ald Trump and “some of his real sup­port­ers,” Vladimir Putin, Xi Jin­ping, Ben­jamin Netanyahu and “his far-right gov­ern­ment.” That answer may get us won­der­ing whether the result­ing pow­er vac­u­ums would be filled by more or less savory char­ac­ters. The entire inter­view will leave us with anoth­er, per­haps more trou­bling ques­tion: who, today, could be suit­ed to assume the place in pub­lic life left behind by Jane Goodall?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Remem­ber­ing Jane Goodall (RIP): Watch Jane, the Acclaimed Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Doc­u­men­tary

Ani­mat­ed: The Inspi­ra­tional Sto­ry of Jane Goodall, and Why She Believes in Big­foot

Google Street View Lets You Walk in Jane Goodall’s Foot­steps and Vis­it the Chim­panzees of Tan­za­nia

The Last Inter­view Book Series Fea­tures the Final Words of Cul­tur­al Icons: Borges to Bowie, Philip K. Dick to Fri­da Kahlo

The Celebri­ty Encoun­ters of Koko the Goril­la. For Her 43rd Birth­day Today

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.