Open Culture
@openculture.bsky.social
A culture and education website that tries to make the web a more intelligent place. Features free courses, movies, audio books, ebooks & thought-provoking daily posts.
Find us at: https://www.openculture.com/
Find us at: https://www.openculture.com/
The Only Illustrated Manuscript of Homer’s Iliad from Antiquity
The Only Illustrated Manuscript of Homer’s Iliad from Antiquity
Despite its status as one of the most widely known and studied epic poems of all time, Homer's Iliad has proven surprisingly resistant to adaptation.
www.openculture.com
December 15, 2025 at 7:52 PM
The Only Illustrated Manuscript of Homer’s Iliad from Antiquity
Take a Tour of 18th-Century London, Recreated with AI
Take a Tour of 18th-Century London, Recreated with AI
If you want to know what it was like to live in seventeenth-century London, read the diary of Samuel Pepys.
www.openculture.com
December 15, 2025 at 6:02 PM
Take a Tour of 18th-Century London, Recreated with AI
Tom Jones Performs Prince’s “Purple Rain” Accompanied by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour (1992)
Tom Jones Performs Prince’s “Purple Rain” Accompanied by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour (1992)
Over the decades, Tom Jones has performed with the best of them. In 1969, we can find him singing 'Long Time Gone' with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and taking them delightfully by surprise. The same...
www.openculture.com
December 15, 2025 at 5:42 PM
Tom Jones Performs Prince’s “Purple Rain” Accompanied by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour (1992)
Reposted by Open Culture
Carl Jung on the Power of Tarot Cards: They Provide Doorways to the Unconscious & Perhaps a Way to Predict the Future
Carl Jung on the Power of Tarot Cards: They Provide Doorways to the Unconscious & Perhaps a Way to Predict the Future
It is generally accepted that the standard deck of playing cards we use for everything from three-card monte to high-stakes Vegas poker evolved from the Tarot. “Like our modern cards,” writes Sallie N...
www.openculture.com
December 14, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Carl Jung on the Power of Tarot Cards: They Provide Doorways to the Unconscious & Perhaps a Way to Predict the Future
Reposted by Open Culture
Watch Hand-Drawn Animations of 7 Stories & Essays by C.S. Lewis
Watch Hand-Drawn Animations of 7 Stories & Essays by C.S. Lewis
I can vividly recall the first time I read C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. I was fourteen, and I was prepared to be terrified by the book, knowing of its demonic subject matter and believing at th...
www.openculture.com
December 14, 2025 at 5:49 PM
Watch Hand-Drawn Animations of 7 Stories & Essays by C.S. Lewis
The Night When Charlie Parker Played for Igor Stravinsky (1951)
The Night When Charlie Parker Played for Igor Stravinsky (1951)
It thrills to hear of the time in 1951 when Charlie Parker added one more story to the most storied jazz club of all by performing for Igor Stravinsky at Birdland.
www.openculture.com
December 15, 2025 at 3:33 PM
The Night When Charlie Parker Played for Igor Stravinsky (1951)
The measles, inflation and Jeffry Epstein--the mid terms cannot get here fast enough.
December 15, 2025 at 4:20 AM
The measles, inflation and Jeffry Epstein--the mid terms cannot get here fast enough.
Meditation for Beginners: Buddhist Monks & Teachers Explain the Basics
Meditation for Beginners: Buddhist Monks & Teachers Explain the Basics
In the app-rich, nuance-starved culture of late capitalism, we are encouraged to conflate two vastly different concepts: the simple and the easy.
www.openculture.com
December 15, 2025 at 2:39 AM
Meditation for Beginners: Buddhist Monks & Teachers Explain the Basics
Learn to Code with Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Minecraft
Learn to Code with Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Minecraft
Code.org, a non-profit dedicated to expanding access to computer science, has created a fun way for students to learn the basics of coding. Teaming up with Disney and Lucasfilm, they've launched Star ...
www.openculture.com
December 15, 2025 at 1:01 AM
Learn to Code with Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Minecraft
This is what you get when the country is run by quacks and hacks.
December 14, 2025 at 10:18 PM
This is what you get when the country is run by quacks and hacks.
Behold a Digital Restoration of 655 Plates of Roses & Lilies by Pierre-Joseph Redouté: The Greatest Botanical Illustrator of All Time
Behold a Digital Restoration of 655 Plates of Roses & Lilies by Pierre-Joseph Redouté: The Greatest Botanical Illustrator of All Time
Pierre-Joseph Redouté made his name by painting flowers, an achievement impossible without a meticulousness that exceeds all bounds of normality.
www.openculture.com
December 14, 2025 at 9:08 PM
Behold a Digital Restoration of 655 Plates of Roses & Lilies by Pierre-Joseph Redouté: The Greatest Botanical Illustrator of All Time
Carl Jung on the Power of Tarot Cards: They Provide Doorways to the Unconscious & Perhaps a Way to Predict the Future
Carl Jung on the Power of Tarot Cards: They Provide Doorways to the Unconscious & Perhaps a Way to Predict the Future
It is generally accepted that the standard deck of playing cards we use for everything from three-card monte to high-stakes Vegas poker evolved from the Tarot. “Like our modern cards,” writes Sallie N...
www.openculture.com
December 14, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Carl Jung on the Power of Tarot Cards: They Provide Doorways to the Unconscious & Perhaps a Way to Predict the Future
Watch Hand-Drawn Animations of 7 Stories & Essays by C.S. Lewis
Watch Hand-Drawn Animations of 7 Stories & Essays by C.S. Lewis
I can vividly recall the first time I read C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. I was fourteen, and I was prepared to be terrified by the book, knowing of its demonic subject matter and believing at th...
www.openculture.com
December 14, 2025 at 5:49 PM
Watch Hand-Drawn Animations of 7 Stories & Essays by C.S. Lewis
Pasta for War: The Award-Winning Animation That Satirizes 1930s Propaganda Films & Features Marching Rigatoni
Pasta for War: The Award-Winning Animation That Satirizes 1930s Propaganda Films & Features Marching Rigatoni
From art director Zach Schläppi comes Pasta for War, an animation that satirizes propaganda newsreels from the 1930s. The plot is simple:
It begins with fresh pasta marching towards the podium.
www.openculture.com
December 14, 2025 at 1:40 AM
Pasta for War: The Award-Winning Animation That Satirizes 1930s Propaganda Films & Features Marching Rigatoni
Chill Out to 70 Hours of Oceanscape Nature Videos Filmed by BBC Earth
Chill Out to 70 Hours of Oceanscape Nature Videos Filmed by BBC Earth
Those who harbor a deep-seated fear of the water may want to look for other methods of stress relief than BBC Earth’s relaxing 10-hour video loops, but everyone else is encouraged to take a dip in the...
www.openculture.com
December 13, 2025 at 10:30 PM
Chill Out to 70 Hours of Oceanscape Nature Videos Filmed by BBC Earth
Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Stories Read by Vincent Price & Basil Rathbone
Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Stories Read by Vincent Price & Basil Rathbone
Record label Caedmon Audio specialized in spoken-word recordings, pairing great literary works with great actors. They got James Mason to read the poetry of Robert Browning, multi-Oscar winner Walter ...
www.openculture.com
December 13, 2025 at 7:57 PM
Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Stories Read by Vincent Price & Basil Rathbone
The History of the World in One Beautiful, 5‑Foot-Long Chart (1931)
The History of the World in One Beautiful, 5‑Foot-Long Chart (1931)
In the image above, we see an impressive pre-internet macro-infographic called a “Histomap.' Its creator John B. Sparks (who later created “histomaps” of religion and evolution) published the graphic ...
www.openculture.com
December 13, 2025 at 6:29 PM
The History of the World in One Beautiful, 5‑Foot-Long Chart (1931)
Reposted by Open Culture
An Animated History of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Predator to Sofa Sidekick
An Animated History of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Predator to Sofa Sidekick
Dogs sees us as their masters while cats sees us as their slaves. - Anonymous
The next time your friend’s pet cat sinks its fangs into your wrist, bear in mind that the beast is probably still laborin...
www.openculture.com
December 12, 2025 at 5:37 PM
An Animated History of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Predator to Sofa Sidekick
Reposted by Open Culture
So, Donald, if you and Jeff Epstein were not close, then why was he selling Donald Trump branded condoms with your face on the wrapper?
December 12, 2025 at 4:19 PM
So, Donald, if you and Jeff Epstein were not close, then why was he selling Donald Trump branded condoms with your face on the wrapper?
Reposted by Open Culture
Göbekli Tepe: The 12,000-Year-Old Ruins That Rewrite the Story of Civilization
Göbekli Tepe: The 12,000-Year-Old Ruins That Rewrite the Story of Civilization
We didn't have civilization until we had cities, and we didn't have cities until we had agriculture. So, at least, goes a widely accepted narrative in 'big history' — a narrative somewhat troubled by ...
www.openculture.com
December 12, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Göbekli Tepe: The 12,000-Year-Old Ruins That Rewrite the Story of Civilization
The Open Syllabus Project Visualizes the 1,000,000+ Books Most Frequently Assigned in College Courses
The Open Syllabus Project Visualizes the 1,000,000+ Books Most Frequently Assigned in College Courses
The Prince, The Canterbury Tales, The Communist Manifesto, The Souls of Black Folk, The Elements of Style: we've read all these, of course. Or at least we've read most of them (one or two for sure), i...
www.openculture.com
December 12, 2025 at 11:56 PM
The Open Syllabus Project Visualizes the 1,000,000+ Books Most Frequently Assigned in College Courses
An 1585 Recipe for Making Pancakes: Make It Your Saturday Morning Breakfast
An 1585 Recipe for Making Pancakes: Make It Your Saturday Morning Breakfast
Earlier this week, Colin Marshall highlighted a trove of 3,000 vintage cookbooks on Archive.org, many of which date back to the 19th century.
Cookbooks, however, first arrived on the scene well befor...
www.openculture.com
December 12, 2025 at 9:13 PM
An 1585 Recipe for Making Pancakes: Make It Your Saturday Morning Breakfast
40,000-Year-Old Symbols Found in Caves Worldwide May Be the Earliest Written Language
40,000-Year-Old Symbols Found in Caves Worldwide May Be the Earliest Written Language
We may take it for granted that the earliest writing systems developed with the Sumerians around 3400 B.C.E. The archaeological evidence so far supports the theory. But it may also be possible that th...
www.openculture.com
December 12, 2025 at 7:55 PM
40,000-Year-Old Symbols Found in Caves Worldwide May Be the Earliest Written Language
An Animated History of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Predator to Sofa Sidekick
An Animated History of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Predator to Sofa Sidekick
Dogs sees us as their masters while cats sees us as their slaves. - Anonymous
The next time your friend’s pet cat sinks its fangs into your wrist, bear in mind that the beast is probably still laborin...
www.openculture.com
December 12, 2025 at 5:37 PM
An Animated History of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Predator to Sofa Sidekick
Göbekli Tepe: The 12,000-Year-Old Ruins That Rewrite the Story of Civilization
Göbekli Tepe: The 12,000-Year-Old Ruins That Rewrite the Story of Civilization
We didn't have civilization until we had cities, and we didn't have cities until we had agriculture. So, at least, goes a widely accepted narrative in 'big history' — a narrative somewhat troubled by ...
www.openculture.com
December 12, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Göbekli Tepe: The 12,000-Year-Old Ruins That Rewrite the Story of Civilization