Co-founder, Diamondback Beer // working on what’s next
Articles by Colin Marshall
How Else Marie Pade, a Prisoner in World War II, Became Denmark’s First Female Electronic Composer
Before she became a composer of electronic music, Else Marie Pade was a sick child listening to the radio. Frequent kidney inflammations consigned her to bed for long periods of time, which would constitute neither her last nor her harshest experience of confinement. She was still young when the Nazis occupied her homeland of Denmark during World War II, and perhaps her youth explains her decision to spit on a column of marching German soldiers.
How Else Marie Pade, a Prisoner in World War II, Became Denmark’s First Female Electronic Composer
Now From working better with AI to knowing when to quit. The workplace is changing fast, and the old playbook isn’t keeping up. This fall’s best business books rethink some of our most basic assumptions about leadership, ambition, teamwork, and success. From working better with AI to knowing when to …
The Long, Strange History of Tarot Cards: From the 14th Century to Modern Times
We have any number of reasons for difficulty getting to sleep, not least worries about the future. This is hardly a recent phenomenon, and indeed practices meant to clarify the nature of events to come may be older than civilization itself. In fact, many of us moderns trust the old ways of fortune-telling more than the new. Take the cards of the Tarot, often featured here on Open Culture, whose recognizable European form dates back to at least the fourteenth century.
When Salvador Dalí Gave a Surrealist Lecture in a Diving Suit … and Almost Suffocated (1936)
Many a foreigner has visited England and found it an unexpectedly surreal place. Some of that effect has to do with encountering familiar icons — Big Ben, double-decker Routemaster buses, Marmite — in cold, damp reality. More of it may be induced by the country’s simultaneously thoroughgoing cultures of normality and eccentricity, an endless source of inspiration for Monty Python’s Flying Circus and much other British comedy since.
How Alan Turing and His Fellow Codebreakers Broke the Nazis’ “Unbreakable” Enigma Code
There was a time when you could just go out and buy an Enigma machine. In the early nineteen-twenties, any organization with a need to keep its communications secret could order a few of those brand-new devices from Germany and rest assured that any messages encoded using them would be safe from prying eyes. It didn’t take long for the military to catch on to the Enigma’s usefulness.
When Galileo Calculated the Precise Dimensions of Hell in Dante’s Inferno
We venerate Galileo Galilei for daring to speak the scientific truth in the face of severe institutional opposition. He publicly acknowledged that the Earth revolves around the Sun in a time when the Church would rather he didn’t, displaying a bloody-mindedness that he seems to have acquired with age.
Rage Against the Machines: From the Luddites to the AI Data Center Backlash
One often-repeated anecdote about Milton Friedman has the famous economist visiting a canal under construction in nineteen-sixties China. Noticing the sheer number of human laborers digging away with shovels, he asked the official in charge why they weren’t getting the work done faster with excavators and other modern machines. The bureaucrat explained to him that doing it by hand created more jobs.
How Reading Changes the Way Your Brain Works
Reading is unnatural. This will hardly come as a surprise to any child trying to put off his homework for just one more hour of watching other kids play Minecraft. Yet there really are implications worth considering if we accept that our cognitive systems didn’t evolve to process text in the same way as they evolved to handle vision and speech.
How Reading Changes the Way Your Brain Works
Technology 12 hours ago These Tech Workers Were Laid Off in an ‘AI Transformation.’ Their Revenge? Building an AI That Replaces Executives Inc Magazine - Aaron Mok • 12h A small startup is creating an AI CEO that ‘never sleeps’ and ‘never asks for a raise.’ Companies are cutting workers as they go all-in on AI. Now, some engineers are turning the technology on the C-suite.
The Genius Logic of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet: How It Was Created & How It Works
Most of us can rattle off the first few words-that-stand-for-letters of the NATO phonetic alphabet. Alfa, Bravo, and Charlie no doubt come right to mind, and depending on how many war movies you’ve seen, so may Delta, Echo, and Foxtrot. But how many of us would recognize Kilo, Mike, and Sierra? For that matter, how much do any of us know about how these particular words came to be used to spell out other words when communicating over walkie-talkies or other low-fidelity communication systems?
The Radical Ideas of Plato’s Republic : An In-Depth Introduction
We no longer live in a time when college freshmen get shocked by much of the reading material assigned to them. Counterintuitively, the texts that do retain their power to disturb young minds (presuming they can read texts in the first place) tend to skew old — and in one prominent case, about 2,400 years old. Even the most superficial interpretations of Plato’s Republic challenge the political assumptions held by almost every student today, at least in the developed West.
How the Silk Road Actually Worked (and What Could Go Terribly Wrong On It)
You don’t have to spend a long time reading up on the Silk Road before you see the term itself (“Silk Road”) called a misnomer. In fact, what we refer to by that name comprises a whole network of trade routes connecting Asia, Africa, and Europe, whose traffic constantly shifted over a millennium and a half according to climatic, geopolitical, and civilizational conditions. Nor was silk the only, or even the primary type of good carried along those routes.
How the Silk Road Actually Worked (and What Could Go Terribly Wrong On It)
Now Organisers in Japan say they had ‘neither the manpower nor the budget’ to deal with the accommodation shortage. Accommodation at the Asian Games, which start this week in Japan, is the “worst ever”, say South Korean officials, warning of “a serious shortage” of rooms. Beds in shipping container-style …
Scientists Discover the Earliest Evidence of Drug Use in 25,000-Year-Old Teeth
Image by Fakhri “Scientists Discover the Earliest Evidence of Drug Use in Really Old Teeth” may sound like odd headline language, at least by the traditional standards of the New York Times. But then, the teeth in question are, indeed, really old. “Archaeologists have pushed the timeline of human drug use back further than ever before by studying teeth that belonged to a hunter-gatherer who lived in Indonesia sometime from 16,000 to 25,000 years ago,” writes reporter Becky Ferreira.
Route 66 Turns 100 This Year: Take a Tour of America’s Most Famous Highway
This past summer, the United States of America celebrated 250 years of independence. But for a great many Americana-lovers around the world, this year also brings another, even more resonant date: the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Route 66. In the months leading up to November 11th, the official birthday of what John Steinbeck dubbed the “Mother Road,” tourists both foreign and domestic have seized the occasion to make the 2,448-mile drive of which they’ve long dreamed.
The Ancient Greek Water Clock That Kept the Most Accurate Time for 1,800 Years
Today, we’re surrounded by technologies we could justifiably describe as time thieves.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Secret Career as a Japanese Art Dealer & How It Shaped His Architecture
Frank Lloyd Wright was often strapped for cash. In that respect, he had something in common with Vincent van Gogh, who passed most of his much shorter life in more dire circumstances. Unlike Wright, who enjoyed decades of fame at the pinnacle of the American architectural profession, van Gogh remained practically unknown until after his death.
Bertrand Russell Explains Why Karl Marx’s Philosophy Produced the Disaster of Communism
In 1927, Bertrand Russell delivered a lecture titled “Why I Am Not a Christian.” At the time, such a declaration was still fairly bold, as was the reasoning he provided for it. Nearly three decades thereafter, he included in his collection Portraits from Memory another, shorter piece, “Why I Am Not a Communist.” That description was safe to apply to oneself in 1954, at least in the mainstream of the English-speaking world.
Why Inventing Color TV Was So Difficult
Many who read this will remember watching television on a black-and-white set at some point in their lives. Fewer will remember doing so because only black-and-white sets existed. Of course, your own experience will depend upon your country of origin. The United States began the transition to color television in 1953, and more than half of its population owned color sets less than twenty years thereafter. France’s stations started to change over in 1967, and the last one did so in 1983.
Why Inventing Color TV Was So Difficult
1 day ago Every time I learn about some ridiculously smart thing another country has, I get a little more confused about what exactly we're doing here in America. So, let's just start taking notes from everyone else, because clearly some of these problems are VERY solvable. Here are 19 things that exist in …
Wes Anderson Picks Nine of His Favorite Criterion Films
Many an internet cinephile has wondered aloud if the Criterion Closet is a real place, or just a set thrown together to make videos when famous directors like Christopher Nolan, Francis Ford Coppola, or Jim Jarmusch drop by. It turns out indeed to exist, not only at Criterion’s offices in New York, but also elsewhere. The Criterion Mobile Closet, for example, has taken the label’s home-video library on the road since 2024, the 40th anniversary of the company’s foundation.
Wes Anderson Picks Nine of His Favorite Criterion Films
Houston 1 day ago Last minute donations save historic Houston theater from demolition culturemap.com - Craig D.
How Leonardo da Vinci’s Procrastination Contributed to His Creativity
At the height of their productivity as Beatles, neither Paul McCartney nor John Lennon could read or write music notation. Clearly it didn’t keep them from making a cultural impact, and as with so much else in life, they regarded it humorously. As McCartney has said, they used to liken themselves to ancient Egyptian pharaohs, who relied on scribes rather than being literate themselves.
How Leonardo da Vinci’s Procrastination Contributed to His Creativity
6 hours ago A man in his 30s named David sat in a chair all day doing nothing for days on end. He had been a productive finance professional with a wide social circle, but he’d suddenly stopped caring. He lost his job and his apartment, and he didn’t seem to mind. So, his neurologist began asking him questions. …
How Phone Addiction Keeps You from Achieving a Productive “Flow State”
If you have an iPhone, try pushing its side button three times in a row. Just like magic, the screen should turn from color into black-and-white, or rather grayscale. (To do the same on an Android phone, you’ll have to dive into settings, then “accessibility,” “vision enhancements,” and “color correction.”) Why would you want that in the first place? As Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School professor Arthur C.
How Phone Addiction Keeps You from Achieving a Productive “Flow State”
Apple Watch Ultra 3 2 hours ago These Apple Products May Be Discontinued After The September iPhone 18 Pro Launch Event Mashable - Priya Singh • 2h Apple may discontinue more than 10 products after its September 2026 event as new iPhones, wearables and other devices reportedly refresh the company’s lineup. Apple’s September event could bring a major refresh to its product lineup, with several new devices expected to be unveiled.
Tim Curry (RIP) Breaks Down His Most Iconic Roles: Rocky Horror , Clue , Muppet Treasure Island & More
Upon hearing of Tim Curry’s death last week, some of us could recall having seen him on stage: in Amadeus or Spamalot on Broadway, perhaps, though he also drew acclaim in the work of Stoppard, Brecht, and Shakespeare. For many more of us — perhaps all of us — it was his most memorable film and television performances that sprang to mind. To an extent, which ones are most memorable depends on the viewer.
Why AI Companies Are Buying—And Then Destroying—Old Books
We’ve long joked about delaying bedtime in order to read the entire internet, but the prospect of actually doing so doesn’t sound as appealing as it used to. An ever-growing proportion of text online, we may sense, hasn’t been written by humans, but generated by artificial intelligence. One solution is to return to reading on paper, and beyond that, spending our time only with books published before the advent — and thus uncorrupted by the output — of large language models.
The Art of Splendor Solis , the Most Glorious Illuminated Alchemical Manuscript of Them All
When it was published in the United States in 1998, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was retitled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. The jokes about the American reading public’s apparent allergy to the very word philosopher write themselves, but the change was also unfortunate for more substantial reasons. A “sorcerer’s stone” had no cultural resonance at all, whereas the philosopher’s stone had been sought after since, at the very latest, the dawn of the fourth century.
Why Reading Egyptian Hieroglyphics Is Easier Than You Think
We’ve featured Egyptologist Ilona Regulski here on Open Culture a few times before. Once, she explained how to read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs; another time, she told us what the Rosetta Stone actually says. It was, perhaps, inevitable that she would cross paths with Rob Watts, creator of the YouTube channel RobWords, whose videos we often post.
Why Reading Egyptian Hieroglyphics Is Easier Than You Think
Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson’s California Home Is a Lesson in Mixing Antique Treasures – It’s the Most Authentic Way to Decorate in 2027 Neutral rooms have an easy sense of calm, but without the right details, they can also feel a little too polished, or worse yet, unlived-in. Antiques …
The Wisdom of David Bowie: On Art, Religion, Technology and More Original
It doesn’t quite ring true to call David Bowie a rock star. Ziggy Stardust, the neon synthetic-clad alien alter ego he both created and retired in the early seventies, was, of course, rock stardom outlandishly personified. But then, that was the concept of what turned out to be just one of many personae he deliberately crafted throughout the course of his career.
The Daily Routine of Marcus Aurelius: How to Live Like a Stoic Original
Marcus Aurelius did not have a smartphone. In fact, he didn’t have a phone of any kind, owing to the fact that he lived in the second century, though we can be reasonably certain that he commanded more than enough messengers to keep himself informed around the clock. That’s because he was the Roman emperor at a time when the Roman Empire was at its height.
The Daily Routine of Marcus Aurelius: How to Live Like a Stoic
4 days ago Marcus Aurelius ruled Rome from 161 to 180 AD. His private notebooks, which we now call Meditations, were never written for readers. They were meant to be reminders to himself. In Book 12, the last of his meditations, he wrote: “It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other …
Why Americans Stopped Reading Books
The kids can’t read. Such has been the implication, even the declaration, made by a wave of articles in recent years. But the statement needs some qualification: the kids in question are American; what they can’t read is entire books, especially literary fiction; and it isn’t just the kids in the first place.
Why Americans Stopped Reading Books
Artificial Intelligence 5 hours ago Schools are starting to teach AI literacy. For many, that means helping kids see chatbots' flaws Associated Press - By JOCELYN GECKER and RUSS BYNUM • 5h NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Artificial intelligence chatbots have become the bane of teachers everywhere, but to prepare for the new school year, a group of educators in Charleston, South Carolina, packed into a high school auditorium and talked about inviting AI into the classroom. The teachers …
Discover the Mundaneum, an Early 20th-Century “Internet” That Put the World’s Knowledge on Millions of Index Cards
Pitch to friends or family the idea of a trip to Mons, Belgium to visit the Mundaneum, and you may be met with a less-than-enthusiastic reception. That’s unfortunate, since such an experience could fundamentally change the way they regard technology they use every day. Though its name may seem to promise unrelieved dullness today, the Mundaneum arose out of enormous high-tech ambitions.
Discover the Mundaneum, an Early 20th-Century “Internet” That Put the World’s Knowledge on Millions of Index Cards
Amazon Basin 19 hours ago 'Simply astonishing': Experts just found a massive lost civilisation hiding in the Amazon sciencefocus.com - Abbi Henderson • 19h A civilisation that may have once numbered up to 3 million people has been uncovered beneath the Amazon rainforest's dense canopy, according to a new … Culture 16 hours ago There's never been a better time to be a marketer Fast Company - BY Vineet Mehra • 16h Marketing work will change, roles will shift, and career paths will deviate but...
The Complete History of the Beatles as Told By Conan O’Brien
The world ended in the nineteen-sixties. Or rather, one world ended in the nineteen-sixties and gave way to another, a transition personified by no human beings more clearly than the Beatles. “They are lightning rods for so much that makes the sixties a revolutionary decade,” says The Rest Is History podcast co-host Tom Holland in the video above.
The Complete History of the Beatles as Told By Conan O’Brien
11 hours ago Nearly every week, I pass a colleague in the office who taunts me with four words: “Count of Monte Cristo, Count of Monte Cristo,” as he shakes his head. He’s disappointed his favorite book didn’t make the cut of our 101 best book club picks list, which served as the 2026 LA Times Festival of Books …
The Secret History of the Antichrist
PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel has spoken publicly on a variety of issues from contrarian entrepreneurship to technical stagnation to geopolitical struggle. Lately, he’s drawn more attention with extended remarks on what would seem an unexpected subject: the Antichrist, a seemingly enlightened but deceptively malevolent figure or movement bent on putting the world under innovation-stifling unified control.
The Genius of Airplane! : How to Make a Comedy by Playing Everything Completely Straight Original
Not every 46-year-old comedy still gets laughs, but Airplane! seems only to get funnier with the decades. Some viewers too young to have caught it in its theatrical release even take the Benjaminian view of it as the kind of great work that creates its own genre: the rapid-fire deadpan joke machine, we could call it. But as the InCinematic video essay above reminds us, Airplane! belongs, at its core, to that venerable comedic form of the parody.
The Genius of Airplane!: How to Make a Comedy by Playing Everything Completely Straight
10 hours ago With its world-class concert halls and galleries, peaceful fountain court and large foyers wrapped in textured raw concrete walls, London’s Barbican is a haven for arts, architecture and design fans. Now they will be able to bring home a slice of the brutalist landmark’s aesthetics, thanks to a …
Discover the Ancient Roman Shorthand Writing System with 4,000 Symbols Commissioned by Cicero
You can still type a symbol originally invented for Cicero nearly 21 centuries ago — at least if you configure your keyboard properly. The character ⁊ appears in Unicode as U+204A, but is better known as the “Tironian et”: the “et” is Latin for “and,” and the “Tironian” comes from its creator, a man named Tiro, or in full, Marcus Tullius Tiro.
Discover the Ancient Roman Shorthand Writing System with 4,000 Symbols Commissioned by Cicero
I don’t think I’m the only one who feels this way, but I find that many script fonts often look very similar after you’ve scrolled past fifty of them …
When the US Mail Was Delivered Underground at 35 MPH Through a Network of Pneumatic Tubes (1893–1953) Original
Twenty years ago, United States senator Ted Stevens drew long-lasting online ridicule by describing the internet as “a series of tubes.” While some commentators noted that the analogy wasn’t quite as outlandish as it seemed, most reacted with nothing more than amused bafflement. Where had Stevens come up with that image?
The Most Controversial Ancient Philosophy: Epicureanism Original
Over the years, you’ve probably heard at least a few people casually describe themselves as Epicureans. As used today, the label can refer to as little as enjoying the occasional expensive restaurant meal. The bar was a bit higher in the second century, as explained by ancient-history YouTuber Garrett Ryan in the new video above from his channel Told in Stone.
The Most Controversial Ancient Philosophy: Epicureanism
Culture 2 days ago How to think like a Hegelian | Psyche Guides psyche.co - Jeffrey Reid • 2d Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is a notoriously difficult thinker, and students sometimes ask me how I came to be interested in his philosophy, which … Culture 2 days ago Simone de Beauvoir: the Best Romantic Partners Celebrate Each Other’s Freedom philosophybreak.com - Jack Maden • 2d According to the existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, love is not about forever committing to pre-given...
How the Beatles Made their Most Acclaimed Album, Revolver , Released 60 Years Ago This Month Original
Among Beatles connoisseurs, it’s fair game to claim anything from Rubber Soul to Abbey Road as one’s favorite album. But even within that span of the catalog, a hierarchy of acclaim exists, and that hierarchy has been rearranged over the decades. The ecstatic reception of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band lasted at least a decade.
How the Beatles Made their Most Acclaimed Album, Revolver, Released 60 Years Ago This Month
entertainment news 1 hour ago 50 Years Ago Today: The Ramones Took on the Punk Skeptics at Their West Coast Debut Rolling Stone - Andy Greene • 1h By the time the Ramones traveled to Los Angeles in August 1976 to play their very first West Coast concerts, they’d already established themselves as … Guitar 5 hours ago “Every artist that has played it goes crazy about it – it has been owned by two legends for a reason”: Up close with the Les Paul Custom that both Paul Kossoff and Eric Clapton...
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Colin
Contact Colin, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack