Stephen Fry Explains Why Artificial Intelligence Has a “70% Risk of Killing Us All”
Apart from his comedic, dramatic, and literary endeavors, Stephen Fry is widely known for his avowed...
Watch the 1896 Film The Pistol Duel, a Startling Re-Creation of the Last Days of Pistol Dueling in Mexico
One sometimes hears lamented the tendency of movies to depict Mexico — and in particular, its...
37 Hitchcock Cameo Appearances Over 50 Years: All in One Video
Early in his career, Alfred Hitchcock began making small appearances in his own films. The cameos...
Sex and Alcohol in Medieval Times: A Look into the Pleasures of the Middle Ages
Playing video games, road-tripping across America, binge-listening to podcasts, chatting with artificial intelligence: these are a...
Buckminster Fuller Tells the World “Everything He Knows” in a 42-Hour Lecture Series (1975)
History seems to have settled Buckminster Fuller’s reputation as a man ahead of his time. He...
Meet Madame Inès Decourcelle, One of the Very First Female Taxi Drivers in Paris (Circa 1908)
If you can read this, you almost certainly know the French word for a professional automobile...
When the Grateful Dead Played at the Egyptian Pyramids, in the Shadow of the Sphinx (1978)
In September of 1978, the Grateful Dead traveled to Egypt and played three shows at the Great...
The Page That Changed Comics Forever: Discover the Innovative 1950s Comic Book That Almost Went Unpublished
If you grew up reading American comic books during the second half of the twentieth century,...
When Slavoj Žižek and Jordan Peterson Debated Capitalism Versus Marxism
Karl Marx was a German philosopher-historian (with a few other pursuits besides) who wrote in pursuit...
The Cramps Play a Mental Health Hospital in Napa, California in 1978: The Punkest of Punk Concerts
“We’re The Cramps, and we’re from New York City, and we drove 3,000 miles to play...
Face to Face with Carl Jung: ‘Man Cannot Stand a Meaningless Life’ (1959)
Carl Gustav Jung, founder of analytic psychology and explorer of the collective unconscious, was born on...
Behold James Sowerby’s Strikingly Illustrated New Elucidation of Colours (1809)
James Sowerby was an artist dedicated to the natural world. It thus comes as no surprise...
The “Nonsense” Botanical Illustrations of Victorian Artist-Poet Edward Lear (1871–77)
Since the Victorian era, Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” has been, for generation upon...
Simone de Beauvoir Explains “Why I’m a Feminist” in a Rare TV Interview (1975)
In Simone de Beauvoir’s 1945 novel The Blood of Others, the narrator, Jean Blomart, reports on...
How Rome Began: The History As Told by Ancient Historians
Much attention has been paid to the fall of the Roman Empire, by everyone from august...
Martin Scorsese Plays Vincent Van Gogh in a Short, Surreal Film by Akira Kurosawa
The idea of the auteur director has been a controversial one at times given the sheer...
Oscar-Winning Director Frank Capra Made an Educational Science Film Warning of Climate Change in 1958
In 2015, we highlighted for you The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays, a largely-forgotten 1957...
Eno: The New “Generative Documentary” on Brian Eno That’s Never the Same Movie Twice
Brian Eno once wrote that “it’s possible that our grandchildren will look at us in wonder...
How Choose Your Own Adventure Books Became Beloved Among Generations of Readers
We’ve all read plenty of literature written in the first person, and plenty of literature written...
You Can Buy Historic Italian Houses for €1 — But What’s the Catch?
From Abruzzo to Vergemoli, small Italian towns and villages have recently been making their historic homes...
Jimi Hendrix Unplugged: Two Great Recordings of Hendrix Playing Acoustic Guitar
As a young guitar player, perhaps no one inspired me as much as Jimi Hendrix, though...
Watch Hardware Wars, the Original Star Wars Parody, in HD (1978)
This past May, YouTuber Jenny Nicholson set off waves of social-media discourse with “The Spectacular Failure...
Honoré de Balzac Writes About “The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee,” and His Epic Coffee Addiction
174 years after his death, Honoré de Balzac remains an extremely modern-sounding wag. Were he alive...
Andy Warhol Hosts Frank Zappa on His Cable TV Show, and Later Recalls, “I Hated Him More Than Ever” After the Show
Had Andy Warhol lived to see the internet–especially social networking–he would have loved it, though it...
Behold Gustave Doré’s Dramatic Illustrations of the Bible (1866)
One occasionally hears it said that, thanks to the internet, all the books truly worth reading...
The Internet Archive Rescues MTV News’ Web Site, Making 460,000+ of Its Pages Searchable Again
Image via Internet Archive Last month, MTV News’ web site went missing. Or at least almost...
“Tsundoku,” the Japanese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the English Language
There are some words out there that are brilliantly evocative and at the same time impossible...
2000-Year-Old Bottle of White Wine Found in a Roman Burial Site
Image via Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports Back in 2017, we featured the oldest unopened bottle...
Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa Now Appears on Japanese Banknotes
If you’ve lived or traveled in Japan, you know full well how much of daily life...
How a Steady Supply of Coffee Helped the Union Win the U.S. Civil War
Americans doing “e‑mail jobs” and working in the “laptop class” tend to make much of the...
Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Hamburger Recipe
Image via Wikimedia Commons In 2013, the food writer Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan stumbled across an article...
The Story of Lee Miller: From the Cover of Vogue to Hitler’s Bathtub
In late-twenties Manhattan, a nineteen-year-old woman named Elizabeth “Lee” Miller stepped off the curb and into...
The Original Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland Manuscript, Handwritten & Illustrated By Lewis Carroll (1864)
On a summer day in 1862, a tall, stammering Oxford University mathematician named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson...
Martin Mull (RIP) Satirically Interviews a Young Tom Waits on Fernwood 2 Night (1977)
These days, references to seventies television increasingly require prefatory explanation. Who under the age of 60...
Why You Do Your Best Thinking In The Shower: Creativity & the “Incubation Period”
Image via Wikimedia Commons “The great Tao fades away.” So begins one translation of the Tao...
A Close Look at Beowulf-Era Helmets & Swords, Courtesy of the British Museum
Even if a student assigned Beowulf is, at first, dismayed by its language, that same student...
Thousands of Pablo Picasso’s Works Now Available in a New Digital Archive
If you want to immerse yourself in the world of Pablo Picasso, you might start at...
See Albert Camus’ Historic Lecture, “The Human Crisis,” Performed by Actor Viggo Mortensen
Back in 2016, New York City staged a month-long festival celebrating Albert Camus’ historic visit to NYC...
Enter a Huge Archive of Amazing Stories, the World’s First Science Fiction Magazine, Launched in 1926
If you haven’t heard of Hugo Gernsback, you’ve surely heard of the Hugo Award. Next to...
Watch a Japanese Artisan Hand-Craft a Cello in 6 Months
Cellists unwilling to settle for any but the finest instrument must, sooner or later, make a...
How the 18th-Century French Media Stoked a Werewolf Panic
If you’ve studied French (or, indeed, been French) in the past couple of decades, you may...
Gustave Doré’s Macabre Illustrations of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)
One of the busiest, most in-demand artists of the 19th century, Gustave Doré made his name...
How Sci-Fi Writers Isaac Asimov & Robert Heinlein Contributed to the War Effort During World War II
Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague De Camp at the Navy Yard in 1944 Robert...
Watch Patti Smith Read from Virginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Surviving Recording of Woolf’s Voice
In the video above, poet, artist, National Book Award winner, and “godmother of punk” Patti Smith...
Tracking Pianist Yuja Wang’s Heartbeats During Her Marathon Rachmaninoff Performance
The Carnegie Hall YouTube Channel sets the scene: On January 28, 2023, pianist Yuja Wang joined...
World Religions Explained with Useful Charts: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity & More
It doesn’t take an expert in the field to know that, around the world, there is much...
How the Ancient Greeks & Romans Made Beautiful Purple Dye from Snail Glands
Much has been written about the loss of color in the twenty-first century. Our environments offered...
Medievalist Professor Answers Medieval Questions From Twitter: Why Is It called the “Middle” Ages?, What Did Medieval English Sound Like?, and More
From Wired comes this: “Professor of English and Medieval Literature Dr. Dorsey Armstrong answers your questions...
How Carl Jung Inspired the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous
There may be as many doors into Alcoholics Anonymous in the 21st century as there are people...
The Amazing Engineering of Roman Baths
Few depictions of ancient Roman life neglect to reference all the time ancient Romans spent at...