How Fritz Lang’s Metropolis Created the Blueprint for Modern Science Fiction (1927)

in Film, History | February 27th, 2026

A vast, mis­er­able pro­le­tari­at squan­ders its days in mean­ing­less toil. Soci­ety is under the con­trol of ultra-wealthy busi­ness mag­nates. In order to paci­fy the under­class, the rul­ing class pins its hopes on a tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tion: arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Wel­come to the year 2026, as envi­sioned in Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis. When the film pre­miered, not long after 1926 had come to an end, that date would have seemed arbi­trar­i­ly futur­is­tic. Now, of course, it’s the present, though our world may nowhere look quite as styl­ish as the Art Deco dystopia craft­ed at great expense and an unprece­dent­ed scale of pro­duc­tion by Lang and com­pa­ny. Yet when we watch Metrop­o­lis today, the ele­ments that now seem pre­scient stand out more than the fan­tas­ti­cal ones.

The new short doc­u­men­tary from DW above exam­ines the mak­ing and lega­cy of Metrop­o­lis, pay­ing spe­cial atten­tion to its con­sid­er­able influ­ence on much of the sci­ence-fic­tion and dystopi­an cin­e­ma since. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, Blade Run­ner, Ter­mi­na­tor 2, Madon­na’s “Express Your­self” video: these are just a few of the pro­duc­tions that take no great pains to hide — and in some cas­es, even empha­size — their debt to Lang’s vision.

Ver­tig­i­nous, inten­sive­ly illu­mi­nat­ed, infra­struc­ture-webbed sky­scraper canyons and labor­ers at once manip­u­lat­ing and being manip­u­lat­ed by over­sized clock­work are only the most obvi­ous images that have come down through decades of pop­u­lar cul­ture. For the ori­gin of the wild-haired “mad sci­en­tist” sur­round­ed by tubes and coils, look no fur­ther than Metrop­o­lis’ Rot­wang.

Much could also be writ­ten — and indeed, much already has been writ­ten — about the lega­cy of Rot­wang’s inven­tion, the robot woman who takes on the like­ness of a work­ing-class hero­ine. Beyond the ground­break­ing nature of its design, Metrop­o­lis has also retained atten­tion after near­ly a cen­tu­ry thanks to the folk­loric, even myth­i­cal res­o­nances of its sto­ry. It may be tech­ni­cal­ly implau­si­ble, at least from our point of view, to imag­ine large-scale automa­tion coex­ist­ing with large-scale employ­ment, how­ev­er dire the jobs, but age-old nar­ra­tive under­cur­rents allow even mod­ern audi­ences to sus­pend dis­be­lief (a phe­nom­e­non that has­n’t gone unno­ticed by the mak­ers of more recent sci-fi and fan­ta­sy block­busters). We may not live in quite the 2026  that Metrop­o­lis puts onscreen, but in some sense, we do inhab­it the world it made.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 1927 Film Metrop­o­lis Cre­at­ed a Dystopi­an Vision of What the World Would Look Like in 2026 — and It Hits Close to Home

Fritz Lang First Depict­ed Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence on Film in Metrop­o­lis (1927), and It Fright­ened Peo­ple Even Then

Fritz Lang Invents the Video Phone in Metrop­o­lis (1927)

Read the Orig­i­nal 32-Page Pro­gram for Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis (1927)

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

H. G. Wells Pans Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis in a 1927 Movie Review: It’s “the Sil­li­est Film”

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 Medieval Cathedrals Were Built Without Science, or Even Mathematics

in Architecture, History | February 26th, 2026

Sci­ence and engi­neer­ing may be con­flat­ed to some degree in the pub­lic mind, but any­one who’s spent much time in an aca­d­e­m­ic depart­ment belong­ing to one or the oth­er of those branch­es of endeav­or knows how insis­tent­ly dis­tinc­tions can be drawn between them. Bill Ham­mack, a pro­fes­sor of engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois Urbana-Cham­paign who’s been there since he was a mas­ter’s stu­dent in 1986, sure­ly has his own thoughts on the sub­ject. The video above from his pop­u­lar YouTube chan­nel Engi­neer­guy explains how cathe­drals were designed in the Mid­dle Ages, using the exam­ple of Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. Specif­i­cal­ly, it gets into how such a build­ing’s arch­es and sup­port­ing walls could have been engi­neered with­out the aid of sci­ence at all, or even the use of math­e­mat­ics.

Com­pared to today, the scope of knowl­edge human­i­ty com­mand­ed back in medieval times may have been impos­si­bly nar­row — to say noth­ing of the knowl­edge pos­sessed by any giv­en human, espe­cial­ly out­side the lit­er­ate elite. Yet what was then known proved more than suf­fi­cient to build struc­tures that still stand, and indeed impress, many cen­turies (and in some cas­es, more than a mil­len­ni­um) lat­er.

Ham­mack explains that, in the place of mak­ing cal­cu­la­tions, their builders would per­form actions. For instance, a medieval mason would have made a life-size chalk draw­ing of the arch, laid a rope along its form, and cut the rope’s length to match that of the arch. He could then use the rope to deter­mine just how thick the wall would need to be, between a fourth and a fifth of the arch’s span, with­out a num­ber ever being involved.

Ham­mack notes that the Romans, too, under­stood this nec­es­sary pro­por­tion for arch con­struc­tion. “The pro­por­tion­al rule does­n’t come from some sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis of stone and its prop­er­ties,” he says. “It comes from cen­turies of expe­ri­ence, from tri­al and error.” Such heuris­tics, or rules of thumb, con­sti­tute “an impre­cise method used as a short­cut to find a solu­tion to a prob­lem, often by nar­row­ing the range of pos­si­ble solu­tions.” They’re also employed in the engi­neer­ing method to “cause the best change in a poor­ly under­stood sit­u­a­tion using avail­able resources.” Its thor­ough­go­ing prac­ti­cal­i­ty would seem to have lit­tle to do with the dif­fer­ent sort of rig­ors that apply in sci­ence, where estab­lish­ing truth, or at least the absence of false­ness, is all. Belief in the engi­neer­ing approach to prob­lems like this does­n’t require faith in the reli­gious sense, but if you like, you can find proof of its effec­tive­ness in hous­es of wor­ship from Sainte-Chapelle to the Pan­theon to Hagia Sophia — or at least in their arch­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Göbek­li Tepe: The 12,000-Year-Old Ruins That Rewrite the Sto­ry of Civ­i­liza­tion

The Cre­ation & Restora­tion of Notre-Dame Cathe­dral, Ani­mat­ed

An Ani­mat­ed Video Shows the Build­ing of a Medieval Bridge: 45 Years of Con­struc­tion in 3 Min­utes

Behold a 21st-Cen­tu­ry Medieval Cas­tle Being Built with Only Tools & Mate­ri­als from the Mid­dle Ages

How Design­ing Build­ings Upside-Down Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Archi­tec­ture, Mak­ing Pos­si­ble St. Paul’s Cathe­dral, Sagra­da Família & More

The Longest Con­struc­tion Projects in His­to­ry: Why Sagra­da Família, the Milan Duo­mo, Greek Tem­ples & Oth­er Famous Struc­tures Took Gen­er­a­tions to Com­plete

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

What Did the Instruments in Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights Sound Like? Oxford Scholars Recreate Them

in Art, Music | February 26th, 2026

Wel­come to The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights.

You’ll find no angel­ic strings here.

Those are reserved for first-class cit­i­zens whose vir­tu­ous lives earned them pas­sage to the upper­most heights.

Down below, stringed instru­ments pro­duce the most hell­ish sort of cacoph­o­ny, a fit­ting accom­pa­ni­ment for the horn whose bell is befouled with the arm of a tor­tured soul.

How do we know that’s what they sound­ed like?

A group of musi­col­o­gists, crafts­peo­ple and aca­d­e­mics from the Bate Col­lec­tion of Musi­cal Instru­ments at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford, took it upon them­selves to actu­al­ly build the instru­ments depict­ed in Hierony­mus Bosch’s action-packed trip­tych—the hell harp, the vio­lat­ed lute, the gross­ly over­sized hur­dy-gur­dy…

…And then they played them.

Let us hope they stopped shy of shov­ing flutes up their bums. (Such a place­ment might pro­duce a sound, but not from the flute’s gold­en throat).

The Bosch exper­i­ment added ten more instru­ments to the museum’s already impres­sive, over 1000-strong col­lec­tion of wood­winds, per­cus­sion, and brass, many from the stu­dios of esteemed mak­ers, some dat­ing all the way back to the Renais­sance.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the new addi­tions don’t sound very good. “Hor­ri­ble” and “painful” are among the adjec­tives the Bate Col­lec­tion man­ag­er Andrew Lamb uses to describe the aur­al fruits of his team’s months-long labors.

Might we assume Bosch would have want­ed it that way?

Bran­don McWilliams, the wag behind Bosch’s wild­ly enthu­si­as­tic, f‑bomb-laced review of thrash met­al band Slayer’s 1986 Reign in Blood album, would sure­ly say yes, as would Alden and Cali Hack­mann, North Amer­i­can hur­dy-gur­dy mak­ers, who note that Bosch’s painter­ly des­e­cra­tions were not lim­it­ed to their per­son­al favorite instru­ment:

Bosch and his con­tem­po­raries viewed music as sin­ful, asso­ci­at­ing it with oth­er sins of the flesh and spir­it. A num­ber of oth­er instru­ments are also depict­ed: a harp, a drum, a shawm, a recorder, and the met­al tri­an­gle being played by the woman (a nun, per­haps) who is appar­ent­ly impris­oned in the key­box of the instru­ment. The hur­dy-gur­dy was also asso­ci­at­ed with beg­gars, who were often blind. The man turn­ing the crank is hold­ing a beg­ging bowl in his oth­er hand. Hang­ing from the bowl is a met­al seal on a rib­bon, called a “gaber­lun­zie.” This was a license to beg in a par­tic­u­lar town on a par­tic­u­lar day, grant­ed by the nobil­i­ty. Sol­diers who were blind­ed or maimed in their lord’s ser­vice might be giv­en a gaber­lun­zie in rec­om­pense.

To the best of our knowl­edge, no gaber­lun­zies were grant­ed, nor any sin­ners eter­nal­ly damned, in the Bate Collection’s caper. Accord­ing to man­ag­er Lamb, expand­ing the bound­aries of music edu­ca­tion was rec­om­pense enough, well worth the tem­po­rary affront to ten­der ears.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Song Writ­ten on a Sinner’s But­tock in Hierony­mus Bosch’s Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

The Mean­ing of Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Explained

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

The Hierony­mus Bosch Demon Bird Was Spot­ted Rid­ing the New York City Sub­way the Oth­er Day…

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  

The Ingenious Engineering of Silk: How the 2,000-Year-Old Pattern Loom Powered the Silk Road and the Wealth of Ancient China

in History, Technology | February 25th, 2026

The Silk Road’s long peri­od of high activ­i­ty spanned the sec­ond cen­tu­ry BC and the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry AD, but its name was­n’t coined until more than 400 years after that. Schol­ars have argued it prac­ti­cal­ly ever since, giv­en that the ref­er­ent was­n’t just one road but a vast and ever-chang­ing net­work of them, and that silk was hard­ly the only com­mod­i­ty car­ried by its traders. Yet the name per­sists, and not only due to Mar­co Polo-type roman­ti­cism. Silk may not have been the high­est-vol­ume item on its epony­mous road — more busi­ness was sure­ly done in every­day tex­tiles, to say noth­ing of spices, grains, or dyes — but it was per­haps the most vis­i­ble, and sure­ly the most glam­orous. From the per­spec­tive of Chi­nese civ­i­liza­tion, it can also look like the most impor­tant.

In the new Pri­mal Space video above, you can hear the sto­ry of “the machine that made Chi­na rich”: the pat­tern loom, that is, a mod­el of which was unearthed in 2017 dur­ing sub­way con­struc­tion in the city of Cheng­du. At some­where between 2,100 and 2,200 years old, they rep­re­sent the ear­li­est known evi­dence of pat­tern loom tech­nol­o­gy, of which Chi­na made high­ly pro­duc­tive use dur­ing the time of its three-mil­len­ni­um monop­oly on silk.

As far away as the Roman Empire, those who had the means could­n’t get enough of the stuff, espe­cial­ly when it came in designs nev­er before seen in human his­to­ry. Hence the high pri­or­i­ty Chi­na placed on keep­ing knowl­edge of its har­vest­ing and weav­ing pro­pri­etary — at least until a cou­ple of Roman monks man­aged to smug­gle silk­worm lar­vae back to Europe in the mid­dle of the sixth cen­tu­ry.

Yet even hav­ing lost its sta­tus as the only land capa­ble of pro­duc­ing silk, Chi­na retained a great advan­tage in the form of its sheer man­u­fac­tur­ing capac­i­ty. (This sto­ry rings some­what famil­iar about a mil­len­ni­um and a half lat­er, when none of us can dis­pute which coun­try holds the title of “the world’s fac­to­ry.”) Its silk indus­try could achieve that scale thanks to the rel­a­tive ease of use of the pat­tern loom, which required no spe­cial skills to oper­ate. The most com­plex aspect would have been “pro­gram­ming” the pat­terns to be formed by the strands, which, though an entire­ly ana­log process, has its basic sim­i­lar­i­ties with the dig­i­tal com­put­er pro­gram­ming we know today. Chi­na’s trade net­works have great­ly mul­ti­plied since the days of Mar­co Polo, and the tech­nol­o­gy it uses has devel­oped to a pre­vi­ous­ly unimag­in­able degree. Yet some­how, the “Elec­tric Vehi­cle Road” does­n’t have quite the same ring, does it?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the World’s First Earth­quake Detec­tor, Invent­ed in Chi­na 2,000 Years Ago

How the Ornate Tapes­tries from the Age of Louis XIV Were Made (and Are Still Made Today)

China’s 8,000 Ter­ra­cot­ta War­riors: An Ani­mat­ed & Inter­ac­tive Intro­duc­tion to a Great Archae­o­log­i­cal Dis­cov­ery

Watch a Trans­fix­ing Demon­stra­tion of Kumi­hi­mo, the Ancient Japan­ese Art­form of Mak­ing Braids & Cords

The Improb­a­ble Inven­tion of Chi­nese Type­writ­ers & Com­put­er Key­boards: Three Videos Tell the Tech­no-Cul­tur­al Sto­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Hear Aldous Huxley Read Brave New World. Plus 84 Classic Radio Dramas from CBS Radio Workshop (1956–57)

in Radio, Sci Fi | February 25th, 2026

We seem to be liv­ing through yet anoth­er major moment for pod­cast­ing. Over the past two decades, the medi­um has gone from niche exper­i­ment to main­stream habit, becom­ing a reg­u­lar part of how we learn, enter­tain our­selves, and pass the time. The pop­u­lar­i­ty of podcasts—in an age of ubiq­ui­tous screens and per­pet­u­al distractions—speaks to some­thing deep with­in us. Oral sto­ry­telling, as old as human speech, nev­er real­ly dis­ap­pears. The medi­um evolves, plat­forms shift, dis­tri­b­u­tion changes—but the basic appeal remains con­stant.

But the dif­fer­ences between this gold­en age of pod­cast­ing and the gold­en age of radio are still sig­nif­i­cant. Where the pod­cast is often off-the-cuff, and often very inti­mate and personal—sometimes seen as “too personal”—radio pro­grams were almost always care­ful­ly script­ed and fea­tured pro­fes­sion­al tal­ent. Even those pro­grams with man-on-the street fea­tures or inter­views with ordi­nary folks were care­ful­ly orches­trat­ed and medi­at­ed by pro­duc­ers, actors, and pre­sen­ters. And the busi­ness of scor­ing music and sound effects for radio pro­grams was a very seri­ous one indeed. All of these formalities—in addi­tion to the lim­it­ed fre­quen­cy range of old ana­log record­ing technology—contribute to what we imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize as the sound of “old time radio.” It is a quaint sound, but also one with a cer­tain grav­i­tas, an echo of a bygone age.

That gold­en age waned as tele­vi­sion came into its own in the mid-fifties, but near its end, some broad­cast com­pa­nies made every effort to put togeth­er the high­est qual­i­ty radio pro­gram­ming they could in order to retain their audi­ence. One such pro­gram, the CBS Radio Work­shop, which ran from Jan­u­ary, 1956 to Sep­tem­ber, 1957, may have been “too lit­tle too late”—as radio preser­va­tion­ist site Dig­i­tal Deli writes—but it nonethe­less was “every bit as inno­v­a­tive and cut­ting edge” as the pro­grams that came before it.

The first two episodes, right below, were drama­ti­za­tions of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, read by the author him­self. The series’ remain­ing 84 pro­grams drew from the work of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, James Thurber, H.L. Menck­en, Mark Twain, Robert Hein­lein, Eugene O’Neill, Balzac, Carl Sand­burg, and so many more. It also fea­tured orig­i­nal com­e­dy, dra­ma, music, and This Amer­i­can Life-style pro­files and sto­ry­telling.

Hux­ley returned in pro­gram #12, with a sto­ry called “Jacob’s Hands,” writ­ten in col­lab­o­ra­tion with and read by Christo­pher Ish­er­wood. The great Ray Brad­bury made an appear­ance, in pro­gram #4, intro­duc­ing his sto­ries “Sea­son of Dis­be­lief” and “Hail and Farewell,” read by John Dehn­er and Sta­cy Har­ris, and scored by future film and TV com­pos­er Jer­ry Gold­smith. Oth­er pro­grams, like #10, “The Exur­ban­ites,” nar­rat­ed by famous war cor­re­spon­dent Eric Sevareid, con­duct­ed prob­ing inves­ti­ga­tions of mod­ern life—in this case the growth of sub­ur­bia and its rela­tion­ship to the adver­tis­ing indus­try. The above is but a tiny sam­pling of the wealth of qual­i­ty pro­gram­ming the CBS Radio Work­shop pro­duced, and you can hear all of it—all 86 episodes—courtesy of the Inter­net Archive.

Sam­ple stream­ing episodes in the play­er above, or down­load indi­vid­ual pro­grams as MP3s and enjoy them at your leisure, almost like, well, a pod­cast. See Dig­i­tal Deli for a com­plete run­down of each program’s con­tent and cast, as well as an exten­sive his­to­ry of the series. This is the swan song of gold­en age radio, which, it seems, maybe nev­er real­ly left, giv­en the incred­i­ble num­ber of lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences we still have at our dis­pos­al. Yes, some­day our pod­casts will sound quaint and curi­ous to the ears of more advanced lis­ten­ers, but even then, I’d bet, peo­ple will still be telling and record­ing sto­ries, and the sound of human voic­es will con­tin­ue to cap­ti­vate us as it always has.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 230 Episodes of Escape: Clas­sic Radio Dra­mas of Sto­ries by Ray Brad­bury, Edgar Allan Poe, H.G. Wells & More (1947–1954)

X Minus One: Hear Clas­sic Sci-Fi Radio Sto­ries from Asi­mov, Hein­lein, Brad­bury & Dick

Dimen­sion X: The 1950s Sci­Fi Radio Show That Dra­ma­tized Sto­ries by Asi­mov, Brad­bury, Von­negut & More

Hear 90+ Episodes of Sus­pense, the Icon­ic Gold­en Age Radio Show Launched by Alfred Hitch­cock

Hear 149 Vin­tage Hal­loween Radio Shows from the Gold­en Age of Radio

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

How to Carve Hieroglyphs Just Like the Ancient Egyptians Did

in Art, History | February 24th, 2026

In ancient Egypt, writ­ing hiero­glyphs was a high­ly spe­cial­ized skill, one com­mand­ed by only a small frac­tion of the pop­u­la­tion. The fact that there were more than 1,000 char­ac­ters to mem­o­rize prob­a­bly had some­thing to do with that, but the vari­ety of sur­faces on which hiero­glyphs were writ­ten could­n’t have made it any eas­i­er. Depend­ing on the occa­sion, ancient Egyp­tians used papyrus, wood, met­al, and pot­tery shards as writ­ing sur­faces. The most mon­u­men­tal or reli­gious­ly impor­tant texts, how­ev­er, got carved into stone, thus ensur­ing the words a kind of eter­nal life — a par­tic­u­lar con­cern in the cas­es of tomb walls and sar­copha­gi.

There may be lit­tle call to write hiero­glyphs today, but the tech­niques to do so haven’t been lost. In the new video above from the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um, sculp­tor and stone carv­er Miri­am John­son demon­strates how to carve into stone the name of Pharaoh Khu­fu, who built the Great Pyra­mid (and indeed, was buried in it).

The first step is to write that name, sur­round­ed by its car­touche, on a sheet of car­bon paper. This isn’t the brush and ink that the ancient Egyp­tians would have used, grant­ed, but for the rest of the project, John­son sticks to the old-fash­ioned ways. With the image trans­ferred, and using noth­ing more than a mal­let and a chis­el, she carves the hiero­glyphs into the stone not just once but twice.

The first time, John­son carves in “sunken relief,” a tech­nique that involves cut­ting the image out of the sur­face of the stone. The sec­ond time, she ren­ders Pharaoh Khu­fu’s name in “raised relief,” which requires cut­ting out every­thing but the image, cre­at­ing the effect of the hiero­glyphs ris­ing out of the stone. With the for­mer “you see more of the shad­ows”; with the lat­ter, “you’ve got more oppor­tu­ni­ty of putting more tex­ture into the char­ac­ters.” Seen in a state of com­ple­tion — by a lay­man, at least — John­son’s carv­ings would­n’t look out of place in a muse­um exhib­it on ancient Egypt. Even if tools man­u­fac­tured in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry pro­duce a few sub­tle dif­fer­ences from the real thing, give these stones a mil­len­ni­um or two to age, and they’ll sure­ly look even more con­vinc­ing.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

How to Read Ancient Egypt­ian Hiero­glyphs: A British Muse­um Cura­tor Explains

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Roset­ta Stone, and How It Unlocked Our Under­stand­ing of Egypt­ian Hiero­glyphs

What Ancient Egypt­ian Sound­ed Like & How We Know It

3,200-Year-Old Egypt­ian Tablet Records Excus­es for Why Peo­ple Missed Work: “The Scor­pi­on Bit Him,” “Brew­ing Beer” & More

You Could Soon Be Able to Text with 2,000 Ancient Egypt­ian Hiero­glyphs

Watch a Mas­ter­piece Emerge from a Sol­id Block of Stone

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 to Make Coffee in the Bialetti Moka Pot: The “Ultimate Techique”

in Food & Drink | February 24th, 2026

In Italy, rough­ly 70% of house­holds have a Bialet­ti Moka Pot. And chances are you have one too. But are you using it the right way? Prob­a­bly not, says James Hoff­mann, the author of The World Atlas of Cof­fee. Above, he sets the record straight, demon­strat­ing the best tech­nique for mak­ing a great cup of cof­fee. Enjoy this pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment and use it well.

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

The Bialet­ti Moka Express: The His­to­ry of Italy’s Icon­ic Cof­fee Mak­er, and How to Use It the Right Way

Deep Fried Cof­fee: A Very Dis­turb­ing Dis­cov­ery

Life and Death of an Espres­so Shot in Super Slow Motion

The Birth of Espres­so: How the Cof­fee Shots The Fuel Our Mod­ern Life Were Invent­ed

An Espres­so Mak­er Made in Le Corbusier’s Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­tur­al Style: Raw Con­crete on the Out­side, High-End Parts on the Inside

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

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

in Art, Books | February 23rd, 2026

Imag­ine you could talk to Hierony­mus Bosch, the authors of the Book of Rev­e­la­tion, or of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script—a bizarre 15th cen­tu­ry text writ­ten in an uncrack­able code; that you could solve cen­turies-old mys­ter­ies by ask­ing them, “what were you think­ing?” You might be dis­ap­point­ed to hear them say, as does Lui­gi Ser­afi­ni, author and illus­tra­tor of the Codex Seraphini­anus, “At the end of the day [it’s] sim­i­lar to the Rorschach inkblot test. You see what you want to see. You might think it’s speak­ing to you, but it’s just your imag­i­na­tion.”

If you were a long­time devo­tee of an intense­ly sym­bol­ic, myth­ic text, you might refuse to believe this. It must mean some­thing, fans of the Codex have insist­ed since the book’s appear­ance in 1981.

It shares many sim­i­lar­i­ties with the Voyn­ich Man­u­script, save its rel­a­tive­ly recent vin­tage and liv­ing author: both the Seraphini­anus and the Voyn­ich seem to be com­pendi­ums of an oth­er­world­ly nat­ur­al sci­ence and art, and both are writ­ten in a whol­ly invent­ed lan­guage.

Ser­afi­ni tells Wired he thinks Voyn­ich is a fake. “The Holy Roman Emper­or Rudolf II loved ancient man­u­scripts; some­body swin­dled him and spread the rumor that it was orig­i­nal. The idea of made-up lan­guages is not new at all.” As for his own made-up lan­guage in the Codex, he avers, “I always said that there is no mean­ing behind the script; it’s just a game.” But it is not a hoax. Though he hasn’t mind­ed the mon­ey from the book’s cult pop­u­lar­i­ty, he cre­at­ed the book, he says, “try­ing to reach out to my fel­low peo­ple, just like blog­gers do.” It is, he says, “the prod­uct of a gen­er­a­tion that chose to con­nect and cre­ate a net­work, rather than kill each oth­er in wars like their fathers did.”

The Codex, writes Abe Books, who made the short video review above, is “essen­tial­ly an ency­clo­pe­dia about an alien world that clear­ly reflects our own, each chap­ter appears to deal with key facets of this sur­re­al place, includ­ing flo­ra, fau­na, sci­ence, machines, games and archi­tec­ture.” That’s only a guess giv­en the unin­tel­li­gi­ble lan­guage.

The illus­tra­tions seem to draw from Bosch, Leonar­do da Vin­ci, and the medieval trav­el­ogue as much as from the sur­re­al­ism of con­tem­po­rary Euro­pean artists like Fan­tas­tic Plan­et ani­ma­tor René Laloux.

Ser­afi­ni has been delight­ed to see an exten­sive inter­net com­mu­ni­ty coa­lesce around the book, and has had his fun with it. He “now states,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “that a stray white cat that joined him while he cre­at­ed the Codex in Rome in the 1970s was actu­al­ly the real author, tele­path­i­cal­ly guid­ing Ser­afi­ni as he drew and ‘wrote.’” You can now, thanks to a recent, rel­a­tive­ly afford­able edi­tion pub­lished by Riz­zoli, pur­chase your copy of the Codex. Buy now, I’d say. First edi­tions of the book now fetch upwards of $6000, and its pop­u­lar­i­ty shows no sign of slow­ing.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

A Dig­i­tal Archive of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Com­plete Works: Zoom In & Explore His Sur­re­al Art

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

Carl Jung’s Hand-Drawn, Rarely-Seen Man­u­script The Red Book

The Foot-Lick­ing Demons & Oth­er Strange Things in a 1921 Illus­trat­ed Man­u­script from Iran

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

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.

How the Golden Gate Bridge Was Built: A 3D Animated Introduction

in Design | February 20th, 2026

Built dur­ing the depths of the Great Depres­sion (from 1933 to 1937), the Gold­en Gate Bridge became the longest and tallest sus­pen­sion bridge in the world. Dur­ing its con­struc­tion, work­ers bat­tled harsh con­di­tions — strong winds, thick fog, and the risk of plung­ing into the San Fran­cis­co Bay. 11 souls per­ished. Like­wise, the engi­neer Joseph Strauss had to work through com­pli­cat­ed design chal­lenges to anchor the struc­ture in the deep waters, then spin mas­sive cables and ten­sion them across the 4,000-foot span. Cre­at­ed by the YouTube chan­nel Ani­ma­graffs, the 3D ani­mat­ed video above takes view­ers on a tech­ni­cal tour of the Gold­en Gate Bridge’s con­struc­tion, decon­struct­ing the engi­neer­ing that makes the bridge both beau­ti­ful and endur­ing.

Note: If you vis­it this post in our archive, you can see vin­tage footage that shows the bridge under con­struc­tion and then open­ing to traf­fic in 1937.

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 

How the Brook­lyn Bridge Was Built: The Sto­ry of One of the Great­est Engi­neer­ing Feats in His­to­ry

Built to Last: How Ancient Roman Bridges Can Still With­stand the Weight of Mod­ern Cars & Trucks

Build­ing the Gold­en Gate Bridge: A Retro Film Fea­tur­ing Orig­i­nal Archival Footage