Revered by music lovers of temperaments as varied as Peanuts’ Schroeder and A Clockwork Orange’s Alex, Ludwig van Beethoven is one of the most celebrated composers in the Western classic...
In 20th-century mathematics, the renowned name of Nicolas Bourbaki stands alone in its class — the class, that is, of renowned mathematical names that don’t actually belong to real people. Bo...
https://www.openculture.com/2021/07/an-introduction-to-nicolas-bourbaki.html
We tend to imagine Pompeii as a city frozen in time by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, inhabitants and all, but most Pompeiians actually survived the disaster. “The volcano’s molten rock, sc...
In 2015, 3.8 billion years after “creativity emerged” out of “sheerest emptiness,” Kermit the Frog was tapped to give a talk on creativity at TEDxJackson. How did a local, one-day even...
The two characters at the core of origami (折り紙), one of the best-known Japanese words around the world, mean “folding” and “paper.” You might well have guessed that, but given the v...
https://www.openculture.com/2021/03/the-mathematics-behind-origami.html
“Either the wallpaper goes, or I do.” —Oscar Wilde Looking to repel bed bugs and rats? Decorate your bedroom à la Napoleon’s final home on the damp island of Saint Helena. Those in a ...
Is this what we want? A post-truth world where toxicity and tribalism trump bridge building and consensus seeking? —Yaël Eisenstat It’s an increasingly familiar occurrence. A friend you’ve...
https://www.openculture.com/2020/10/dear-facebook-this-is-how-youre-breaking-democracy.html
When next you meet an existentialist, ask him what kind of existentialist s/he is. There are at least as many varieties of existentialism as there have been high-profile thinkers propounding it. ...
https://www.openculture.com/2020/09/an-animated-introduction-to-albert-camus-existentialism.html
Who among us hasn’t wished to be as efficient as a computer? While computers seem to do everything at once, we either flit or plod from task to task, often getting sidetracked or even lost. At ...
https://www.openculture.com/2020/09/how-to-manage-your-time-more-effectively.html
It certainly may not feel like things are getting better behind the anxious veils of our COVID lockdowns. But some might say that optimism and pessimism are products of the gut, hidden somewhere ...
https://www.openculture.com/2020/05/16-ways-the-world-is-getting-remarkably-better.html
There are many roads through the coronavirus crisis. One is denial, which only makes things worse. Another is service and self-sacrifice, a choice we honor in the medical professionals putting th...
https://www.openculture.com/2020/04/how-to-find-emotional-strength-resilience-during-covid-19.html
Almost anything can be preserved in alcohol, except health, happiness and money… Roderick Phillips’ Ted-Ed lesson, a Brief History of Alcohol, above, opens with a bon mot from early 20th-c...
https://www.openculture.com/2020/01/a-brief-animated-history-of-alcohol.html
Offered the ability to remember everything, who among us could turn it down? For that matter, who among us could turn down even a slight increase in our memory capacity? If we’re older, we comp...
https://www.openculture.com/2019/12/how-to-improve-your-memory.html
“I tried to get Latin canceled for five years,” says an exasperated Max Fischer, protagonist of Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, when he hears of his school’s decision to scrap Latin classes. “...
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead”: those words have been a mantra to hard-living types everywhere since Warren Zevon first sang them back in 1976, but as Berkeley sleep scientist and Why We Sle...
https://www.openculture.com/2019/07/how-sleeping-can-become-your-superpower.html