Open Culture » Harvard

The documentary filmmaker and sports editor Paul Devlin has won five Emmy awards, but he may well be better known for not getting into Harvard — or rather, for not getting into Harvard, then re...

https://www.openculture.com/2023/03/a-student-writes-a-rejection-letter-rejecting-harvards-rejection-letter-1981-hear-it-read-by-actor-himesh-patel.html

“It’s very easy to imagine how things go wrong,” says futurist Peter Schwartz in the video above. “It’s much harder to imagine how things go right.” So he demonstrated a quarter-centu...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/10/how-to-predict-what-the-world-will-look-like-in-2122-insights-from-futurist-peter-schwartz.html

These days the term multimedia sounds thoroughly passé, like the apotheosis of the 1990s techno-cultural buzzword. But perhaps it also refers to a dimension of art first opened in that era, of a...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/01/laurie-anderson-turns-zoom-into-an-art-form-watch-her-hypnotic-harvard-lecture-series-on-poetry-meditation-death-new-york-more.html

Nothing excites the imagination of young history-and-science-minded kids like the Egyptian pyramids, which is maybe why so many people grow up into amateur Egyptologists with very strong opinions...

https://www.openculture.com/2021/04/harvards-digital-giza-project.html

Image via Wikimedia Commons As team names go, the Harvard Computers has kind of an oddball ring to it, but it’s far preferable to Pickering’s Harem, as the female scientists brought in un...

https://www.openculture.com/2021/03/the-little-known-female-scientists-who-mapped-400000-stars-over-a-century-ago-an-introduction-to-the-harvard-computers.html

Shortly before he died, Queen’s frontman, Freddie Mercury, famously remarked, “Do whatever you want with my life and my music, just don’t make it boring.” Mission accomplished, thanks to...

https://www.openculture.com/2019/09/harvard-students-perform-amazing-boomwhacker-covers-of-queens-bohemian-rhapsody.html

There was a time—a strange time in pop culture history, I’ll grant—when legal dramas were everywhere in television, popular fiction, and film. Next to the barn-burning courtroom set pieces ...

https://www.openculture.com/2019/08/harvard-gives-free-online-access-to-40-million-pages-of-u-s-case-law.html

As all schoolchildren know, we hear with our ears. And as all schoolchildren also probably know, we hear with our brains — or if they don’t know it, at least they must suspect it, given the ...

https://www.openculture.com/2019/02/odyssey-of-the-ear.html

For years neuroscientists have been trying to correct the old assumption that our minds are reducible to our brains. Research into what is known as the gut microbiome, for example, has shown that...

https://www.openculture.com/2019/01/nutritional-psychiatry-why-diet-may-play-an-essential-role-in-treating-mental-health-conditions-including-depression-anxiety-beyond.html

Those of us who learned to write in a (mostly) phonetic language learned to take it for granted that writing should correspond (roughly) to sound. Then we learned of the pictographs, ideographs, ...

https://www.openculture.com/2018/11/inca-used-intricately-knotted-cords-called-khipu-write-histories-keep-records.html

You’re only as old as you feel, right? The platitude may be true. In a scientifically verifiable sense, “feeling”—a state of mind—may not only determine psychological well-being but phy...

https://www.openculture.com/2018/10/youre-old-feel-research-harvard-psychologist-ellen-langer-shows-age-may-mindset.html

It is difficult to have discussions in our current public square without becoming forced into false choices. Following Marshall McLuhan, we might think that the nature of the digital medium makes...

https://www.openculture.com/2018/03/harvard-launches-a-free-online-course-to-promote-religious-tolerance-understanding.html

Once reserved for rebels and outliers, tattoos have gone mainstream in the United States. According to recent surveys, 21% of all Americans now have at least one tattoo. And, among the 18–29 d...

https://www.openculture.com/2018/02/when-your-tattoos-can-start-your-monitoring-medical-conditions.html

 From Harvard professor Jelani Nelson comes “Advanced Algorithms,” a course intended for graduate students and advanced undergraduate students. All 25 lectures you can find on Youtube her...

https://www.openculture.com/2017/12/advanced-algorithms-a-free-course-from-harvard-university.html

From Harvard professor Jelani Nelson comes “Algorithms for Big Data,” a course intended for graduate students and advanced undergraduate students. All 25 lectures you can find on Youtube her...

https://www.openculture.com/2017/12/algorithms-for-big-data-a-free-course-from-harvard.html