culture

Hear an AI Chatbot, Masquerading as a Clueless Grandmot...

And now for a good use of AI. The UK-based telecom company O2 has developed a ch...

Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Who Was the Greatest Scien...

Neil deGrasse Tyson has spent his career talking up not just science itself, but...

Tracing English Back to Its Oldest Known Ancestor: An I...

People understand evolution in all sorts of different ways. We’ve all heard a va...

Horrifying 1906 Illustrations of H.G. Wells’ War of the...

H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds has terrified and fascinated readers and writers f...

Watch 10 Great German Expressionist Films: Nosferatu, T...

In 1913, Germany, flush with a new nation’s patriotic zeal, looked like it might...

What It Was Like to Get a Meal at a Medieval Tavern

At least since The Canterbury Tales, the setting of the medieval tavern has held...

Jane Austen Used Pins to Edit Her Manuscripts: Before t...

Before the word processor, before White-Out, before Post-It Notes, there were st...

Flannery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand

In a letter dated May 31, 1960, Flannery O’Connor, the author best known for her...

How the Fairlight CMI Synthesizer Revolutionized Music

In the credits of Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required appears the disclaimer that “...

Meet Jesse Welles, the Folk Singer Who Turns News into ...

At first glance, Jesse Welles resembles nothing so much as a time traveler from ...

How Frank Lloyd Wright Became Frank Lloyd Wright: A Vid...

Frank Lloyd Wright is unlikely to be displaced as the archetype of the genius ar...

Mahatma Gandhi’s List of the Seven Social Sins; or Tips...

Image via Wikimedia Commons In 590 AD, Pope Gregory I unveiled a list of the Sev...

Benedict Cumberbatch Reads a Letter to a Man Blow-Dryin...

We have featured Benedict Cumberbatch reading letters by Kurt Vonnegut, Alan Tur...

When Neapolitans Used to Eat Pasta with Their Bare Hand...

Even if you don’t speak Italian, you can make a decent guess at the meaning of t...

A 1933 Profile of Frida Kahlo: “Wife of the Master Mura...

Walter Keane—supposed painter of “Big Eyed Children” and subject of a 2014 Tim B...

How Erik Satie’s ‘Furniture Music’ Was Designed to Be I...

Imagine how many times someone born in the eighteen-sixties could ever expect to...

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