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Articles by Colin Marshall
How the Bird Sound Effects in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds Were Created with a Pioneering Electronic Instrument, the Trautonium
Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Special Effects, though viewers raised on more recent Hollywood spectacles would hardly find its mechanized and optically printed avian attackers convincing. Still, the picture as a whole has retained its eerie, ominous power over the last six decades, and a decent amount of the credit for that goes to an aspect that hasn’t dated at all: its non-musical “score” by the early electronic composer Oskar Sala.
How the Bird Sound Effects in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds Were Created with a Pioneering Electronic Instrument, the Trautonium
1 day ago "Horror is going through real appreciation now." Willem Dafoe talks about his appreciation for the horror genre, being a part of the Academy Museum's horror exhibit and reveals that Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" is the film that scared him the most as a kid.
The History of Glam Rock and How It Put an End to the Hippie Era Original
Cast your mind back to the distant year 2021 and recall, if you will, its music, its fashions, the obsessions of its youth. This probably won’t be a difficult task, since in most respects — the dampening effects of the pandemic notwithstanding — none of those aspects of popular culture seem any different today.
How Ancient Greek Warships Worked: The Engineering of the Trireme Explained in 3D Animation
Recall, if you will, the first time you read Book 2 of Homer’s Iliad. The section likely to have given you the most trouble — unless, of course, you’re blessed with an obsessive interest in ancient naval warfare — is the much-remarked-upon Catalogue of Ships, a rundown of not just the contingents of the Achaean army sailing to Troy, but also the ships they’re doing it in.
How Ancient Greek Warships Worked: The Engineering of the Trireme Explained in 3D Animation
3 hours ago On August 6, 1945, a 10-foot-long uranium bomb that weighed 9,788 pounds called "Little Boy" was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 5 square miles of the city, including 62,000 buildings. As many as 80,000 people are estimated to have been killed instantly. The …
Read 20,000+ Golden Age Comic Books Free Online: Superheroes, Westerns, Romance, Horror, and More
For generations of kids in the twentieth century, few pleasures were as intoxicating as a trip to the comic-book shop with the week’s allowance fresh in hand. Those of us who grew up in the nineties had any number of high-production-value paper superhero spectacles from major publishers on which to blow our money. Personally, I preferred the greater value of Carl Barks’ old Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck stories then being reprinted.
Read 20,000+ Golden Age Comic Books Free Online: Superheroes, Westerns, Romance, Horror, and More
Spaceballs 4 hours ago Rick Moranis Visited Mel Brooks’ Home for the First Time in 39 Years Before Their Spaceballs Reunion People - Rachel Raposas, Tommy McArdle • 4h After nearly four decades apart, Rick Moranis and Mel Brooks shared a heartfelt reunion. The two actors, who first starred together in 1987’s Spaceballs, are sharing the screen once more in the film’s long-awaited sequel, Spaceballs: The New One.
What Did Ancient Rome Look Like? A 3D Virtual Tour of the City During the Second Century AD
The description “open-air museum” has often been applied, in various senses both positive and negative, to the country of Italy in general and the city of Rome in particular. Indeed, only the imagination of a truly blinkered (or unusually phone-addicted) tourist could fail to be cast back to antiquity upon entering its historic center, itself an officially designated UNESCO World Heritage Site.
What Did Ancient Rome Look Like? A 3D Virtual Tour of the City During the Second Century AD
1 hour ago Whether it’s culture or car-free landscapes you’re seeking, our list of the best has got it all. Think of Italian islands and most likely Sardinia and Sicily spring to mind. Beyond the coasts of these megastars, you’ll find quiet countryside villages, as well as over 400 smaller, little-known isles …
Watch the Evolution of Manhattan Unfold in a Timelapse Video, from 1600 to 2026 Original
A Manhattan without skyscrapers sounds difficult, if not impossible, to imagine today. But such a place really did exist, at least up until the turn of the twentieth century. While the title of the very first skyscraper ever built may go to the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, New York City caught up so aggressively thereafter — in its characteristic style — that it soon became practically synonymous with tall steel-framed towers.
Why Mapmakers Put Fake Towns on Their Maps in the 1920s — and the One That Became Real
Open Culture readers may know John Green best for Crash Course, the YouTube channel that teaches everything you need to know about subjects like world history, U.S. history, big history, literature, and philosophy. Or at least it teaches everything a teenage student facing down the prospect of Advanced Placement subject exams needs to know.
A Guide to Every Major Film Adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey Before Christopher Nolan’s Movie Original
If you plan on shooting your own adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, bear in mind how much rests on your choice of leading man. In order to play Odysseus, an actor must summon a real gravitas, but also a still-smoldering vitality: here is a man who led the Greek army to defeat Troy, but still has the doggedness to make the decade-long journey back home to his wife.
How a 13th-Century Monk Created a Prayer Manuscript by Writing Over—and Accidentally Preserving—Archimedes’ Groundbreaking Mathematical Works Original
In Jerusalem of the year 1229, there lived a Greek Orthodox monk named Johannes Myronas. Needing some parchment for a prayer book, he grabbed some already-used pages, erased their existing content, and over them wrote down “prayers for the dead, prayers for repentance, blessings for the loaves at Easter, and even a prayer for those who were unreasonably excluded,” says math-and-science YouTuber Ben Syversen in the video above.
How a 13th-Century Monk Created a Prayer Manuscript by Writing Over—and Accidentally Preserving—Archimedes’ Groundbreaking Mathematical Works
Finally! After 20 Years, Major Quantum Entanglement Theory Has Been Experimentally Confirmed Quantum mechanics is so odd that even the visionary genius who described the secrets of the Universe seemed to dismiss certain aspects as …
Christopher Hitchens Explains Why Homer’s Odyssey Still Matters to Our World (2000)
At the moment, the answer to the question of why we should read Homer’s Odyssey seems rather straightforward: so we can more intelligently voice our opinions on Christopher Nolan’s new blockbuster film adaptation. A quarter-century ago, the matter was somewhat less clear. Still, an occasion had presented itself in the form of a new English translation, by University of Kansas classics professor Stanley Lombardo.
Christopher Nolan Picks 15 Favorite Films from the Criterion Closet Original
Maybe you’ve already seen Christopher Nolan’s new cinematic interpretation of the Odyssey more than once; maybe you don’t know whether you’ll ever get around to it at all. Either way, you’ve got to admit that the man makes films in a way very few living directors do. His combination of blockbuster-scale spectacle and personal vision, a rare experience indeed at the theater these days, can really only be achieved by filmmakers with a thoroughgoing love of the medium.
Where Did Europe’s Countries—and the United Kingdom—Get Their Names?
The typical student traveling on a Eurail pass will stop in such lands as Österreich, Italia, Česko and Schweiz — also known as Suisse, Svizzera, and Svizra. If that student happens to hail from the English-speaking world, the names Austria, Italy, the Czech Republic (the recent movement for Czechia notwithstanding), and Switzerland will sound more familiar.
Where Did Europe’s Countries—and the United Kingdom—Get Their Names?
Iran Now Trump considering a ‘massive attack’ on Iran as Tehran labels UK ‘accomplice’ to America CNBC - Chloe Taylor • 39m U.S. President Donald Trump said he will soon make a decision on whether to launch a "massive attack" on Iran after the conflict in the Middle East … Wales 10 hours ago Influencer apologises for leaving bathtub on mountain BBC News - Leigh Boobyer • 10h A content creator who took a bathtub up a mountain and left it there has apologised for what he called an "honest...
A Free Online Archive Lets You Explore 5.8 Million Works of Art Spanning 5,000 Years of History
Though it’s traditionally meant “last in a progression or series,” as Merriam-Webster puts it, the word ultimate has been more often used in recent decades to mean “the best or most extreme of its kind.” The name of a recently launched digital archive performs a rare inversion, labeling as last a creation marked not by finality but extremity.
A Free Online Archive Lets You Explore 5.8 Million Works of Art Spanning 5,000 Years of History
Now Summertime is a ripe time for terror. Our horror expert picks a night at the drive-in for a slasher double feature, an amble through a cemetery and more. New Scares In New York City, summer’s signature horror movie event is Film at Lincoln Center’s Scary Movies (Aug. 12-20), a reliably disturbing …
Umberto Eco’s Personal Library Opens to the Public: More Than 32,000 Books, Exactly as He Left Them
Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose sold so well that its English translator William Weaver could add an extension onto his Tuscan villa, which he called the “Eco Chamber.” The Biblioteca Eco, or Eco Library, whose ribbon-cutting earlier this month you can see in the Italian news clip just above, may not be as wittily named, but it’s a much more ambitious project.
Hear the Haunting Sound of an Ancient Celtic War Trumpet: Silent for 2,000 Years, It Now Sounds Again
Norfolk is known for its network of rivers and lakes, its stock of medieval churches, and for being the home county of Alan Partridge. Last year, it quite literally unearthed another mark of distinction in the form of an iron age war trumpet. “The bronze trumpet or carnyx is only the third ever found in Britain, and the most complete example discovered anywhere in the world,” writes the Guardian’s Esther Addley.
The World’s Greatest Song That Simply Shouldn’t Exist: The Making of The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life”
Were we to take bets on the single most widely heard alarm clock, the one included on the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” would surely be a popular choice. It comes, you’ll recall, at the beginning of the song’s middle section, when Paul takes over from John and sings about waking up, combing his hair, catching a bus, and having a smoke. Given the lyrics’ subject matter, its inclusion seems natural, and even like one of the most straightforwardly explicable choices in the entire recording.
The World’s Greatest Song That Simply Shouldn’t Exist: The Making of The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life”
Liverpool FC 10 hours ago 14 Best Things to Do in Liverpool (Beyond the Beatles Museum!) boundlessroads.com - Isabella Biava • 10h I spent a week in Liverpool, and it completely rearranged what I thought this city was about. I went in expecting nothing but an industrial city … Ringo Starr 21 hours ago Ringo Starr's Granddaughter Grew Up To Be Gorgeous women.com - Charlene Teressa • 21h Ringo Starr's granddaughter Tatia Starkey is making her mark on the world as a talented guitarist.
The Radical, Unclassifiable Art of William Blake
William Blake is a household name, or not far from it, but things get more complicated when it comes to professional description. He was a poet, a painter, and a printmaker, at least insofar as he wrote poetry, painted paintings, and made prints. But we can’t hope to attain even a basic understanding of his legacy if we regard him as one man who happened to have the energy to do three different things.
The Origins of the Monsters in Homer’s Odyssey : The Cyclops, Sirens, Scylla & More
Despite having been composed about two and a half millennia before the invention of cinema, Homer’s Odyssey has offered tempting material to generation after generation of filmmakers. Part of the appeal is, of course, the work’s age, which obviates the need for potentially frustrating rights negotiations.
The Origins of the Monsters in Homer’s Odyssey: The Cyclops, Sirens, Scylla & More
Phoebe Waller-Bridge 4 hours ago The disgraced 2000s comedian Phoebe Waller-Bridge won’t apologise for being inspired by faroutmagazine.co.uk - Tim Bradley • 4h Before 2016, very few people had heard of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, but after she wrote and starred in Fleabag, a TV show tinged with genius, a lot of … Sam Neill 7 hours ago Sam Neill's Cause of Death Revealed Rolling Stone - Charisma Madarang • 7h Two days after Sam Neill’s death, the beloved actor’s cause of death has been revealed.
Explore 1,300+ Beautiful Wildlife Illustrations from the 19th Century, Now Restored and Available Online
Today, if you want to know about any of the flora or fauna that surround us, you have only to look it up online. After you get your fill of knowledge, you can decide whether or not you want to venture out into the world and see your object of interest in its natural environment (or a controlled simulation thereof). In the Victorian era, things worked a bit differently.
How Anti-Chinese Immigration Laws Unexpectedly Led to a Chinese Restaurant Boom in America
This past spring, the oldest continuously operated family-owned Chinese restaurant in the United States served its last plate of chop suey. Pekin Noodle Parlor had been an institution in Butte, Montana’s Chinatown since 1911, long outlasting the town’s gold-rush boom, but according to its final, fifth-generation owner, it couldn’t survive changing attitudes toward dining out in the twenty-twenties.
How Anti-Chinese Immigration Laws Unexpectedly Led to a Chinese Restaurant Boom in America
0:54 4 hours ago 'Beijing is laughing' at US-Mexico-Canada stalled trade talks Al Jazeera • 4h A US trade expert says the US, Mexico, and Canada need to hold trilateral talks to get a cross-border trade deal signed. World News 20 hours ago Trump is America’s biggest national security threat The Hill - by William S. Becker, opinion contributor • 20h Of all the responsibilities assigned to an American president, none is more important than keeping the country safe from its enemies.
Tatlin’s Tower, One of the Most Ambitious Buildings That Was Never Built
It’s no small project to found a new society, especially when you’re doing it on the scale of a place like Russia. Apart from the considerable practical challenges it entails, there’s also the need for symbols bold enough to represent the underlying ideal. The avant-garde artist Vladimir Tatlin took it upon himself to create just such a symbol in the years after the Russian Revolution.
The Bayeux Tapestry Explained: Watch an Animated Retelling of the Norman Conquest
Every time the World Cup comes around, or at least since England first and last won it 60 years ago, there’s talk of whether it’ll be brought “back home.” The idea being, of course, that football (or soccer, as it’s called in a couple of the countries hosting this year’s matches) was made in England.
The Bayeux Tapestry Explained: Watch an Animated Retelling of the Norman Conquest
1 hour ago Women’s professional and public ambition remains disproportionately undermined, unsupported, and punished when they act on it. Below, Stefanie O’Connell shares five key insights from her new book, The Ambition Penalty: How Corporate Culture Tells Women to Step Up―and Then Pushes Them Down. Stefanie is …
Watch the First Spectacular Film Adaptation of the Odyssey (1911)
Public and commercial spaces around the world are now lined with imagery of a vertebra-studded battle helmet and statues surrounded by flame. It’s all part of the promotional campaign for Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of the Odyssey, which will begin opening in theaters later this month. Much has been said and written about how the project represents the next phase of Nolan’s ever-grander cinematic ambitions, but banking on the spectacle value of Homer has a long history in filmmaking.
Watch the First Spectacular Film Adaptation of the Odyssey (1911)
1:38 1 day ago Matt Damon admits strict diet for The Odyssey 'completely changed' his life. StringersHub • 1d In an interview for the Good Hang with Amy Poehler podcast on Tuesday, host Amy asked the actor what it was like to get "jacked in your 50s”, to play Odysseus in Christopher Nolan's new feature, compared with his preparation to portray Jason Bourne in the Bourne franchise when he was in his 30s. "Just put your foot on the gas and that's it," he declared. "That's the only way to do it...
How an Edward Hopper Painting Inspired Norman Bates’ Iconic House in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho
Alfred Hitchcock was not American, as even casual viewers of his television show could tell right away. He may have exaggerated his Englishness, but like more than a few high-profile outsiders, he also used his cultural position to render the United States all the more vividly in his work. Growing up, he amassed enough second-hand knowledge of the country in which he would one day live that he already knew his way around New York when first he set foot there.
How an Edward Hopper Painting Inspired Norman Bates’ Iconic House in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho
1 hour ago Optimists once believed that universal literacy was inevitable. Now it seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history. Twenty-three hundred years ago, the legend goes, King Ptolemy I of Egypt asked his court adviser to assemble a comprehensive collection of the world’s …
How Nashville Became Home to a Full-Scale Replica of the Parthenon
Asked to identify “the Athens of the South,” many Americans might well point to Athens, Georgia, especially if they happen to be fans of REM, the B‑52s, or Of Montreal. In fact, that title was claimed by Nashville, Tennessee as early as the eighteen-fifties, when the city put into action its ambitious plans for a public education system.
Alfred Hitchcock Wanted Frank Lloyd Wright to Design the North by Northwest House: An Architect Just Built It for $45 Million Original
Villains who live in opulent, remote modernist houses may have been a cliché since the last century, but given Hollywood’s addiction to the tried and true, they do still turn up now and again. Unsurprisingly, few filmmakers have managed to use them anywhere near as memorably as Alfred Hitchcock did.
Alfred Hitchcock Wanted Frank Lloyd Wright to Design the North by Northwest House: An Architect Just Built It for $45 Million
2 hours ago Alfred Hitchcock Says Your Dialogue is Killing Your Story nofilmschool.com - Jo Light • 2h I was scrolling over the weekend, as one does, and found a really great TikTok from user themoviemagick discussing Alfred Hitchcock’s philosophy of … Princess Margaret 1 day ago Adored by Princess Margaret and Alfred Hitchcock — the rare Welsh terrier breed saved from extinction by Country Life countrylife.co.uk - Caroline Kennedy • 1d The Sealyham terrier has the sort of face that suggests...
The Declaration of Independence Performed by Morgan Freeman, Benicio del Toro, Winona Ryder & Other Actors
Some successful Hollywood producers spend their money on yachts, sports teams, and European castles. Norman Lear’s biggest purchase, or at least his most famous one, was a copy of the Declaration of Independence. He did not, of course, buy the kind of reproduction any tourist can pick up at the gift shop of a major American historic site, but a “Dunlap broadside,” one of 200 or so run off by Philadelphia printer John Dunlap on the very night of July 4th, 1776.
The Declaration of Independence Performed by Morgan Freeman, Benicio del Toro, Winona Ryder & Other Actors
Suspected Alabama Murderer Died From A Major Dose Of 'Karma' ... Victim's Brother Says The Alabama man suspected of strangling his girlfriend to death and then dying of an apparent heart attack while disposing of her body got hit with …
Meet the Syntopicon: The Ambitious Index That Tried to Organize All of Western Thought (1952) Original
Mortimer J. Adler rose to cultural prominence in the mid-twentieth-century United States, not that a figure like him could have done so in any other place or time. A haphazard professional and intellectual path involving copy-boy work at the New York Sun, night school, and an incomplete Columbia degree eventually led to a faculty position teaching philosophy of law at the University of Chicago.
The Thai Beef Noodle Soup That Has Been Continuously Simmering for 52 Years
As Bangkok rises into the ranks of the world’s great culinary destination cities, its restaurant scene caters to ever more well-heeled travelers. There, you can now visit establishments with not just one, and not just two, but three Michelin stars. Even so, many a Bangkok habitué will surely tell you that the city’s best food is still served in the same humble places as always, or at least whose rent hasn’t been hiked too badly.
The Thai Beef Noodle Soup That Has Been Continuously Simmering for 52 Years
Ice Cream 14 hours ago Most Store-Bought Ice Cream Isn't Technically Ice Cream—These Brands Make The Real Thing Delish - Amanda Mactas • 14h Not all scoops are created equal. Key Points Not every frozen treat in the grocery store freezer aisle can legally be called ice cream.
Just Hear Me Out: How To Change Minds Without Lies, Bullshit, or Moral Compromise
. Sept. 2026. 240p. ISBN 9780226842004. $25. PHILOSOPHY COPY ISBN It is a tough task to instruct readers about how to be persuasive without coming across as full of “bullshit.” Marshall (philosophy, Univ. of Washington; Kant’s Lasting Legacy: Essays in Honor of Béatrice Longuenesse) achieves this goal. How does the average person engage in difficult conversations? Not just any difficult conversations, but ones in which they feel the need to convince the other party of their view toward a specific cause?
An Entire Ancient Greek Philosophical Treatise Burned by Mount Vesuvius Has Been Deciphered with X‑Ray and AI Technologies
Most of our conception of Stoicism, an ancient school of thought much featured here on Open Culture, derives from the writings of just three figures: Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca the Younger. But there were other Stoics, and despite their antiquity, we may yet learn more about them. Take Chrysippus of Soli, who was officially known as the Second Founder of Stoicism due to his influence on its spread throughout the Greek and Roman world.
An Entire Ancient Greek Philosophical Treatise Burned by Mount Vesuvius Has Been Deciphered with X‑Ray and AI Technologies
Now The possibility that artificial intelligence will steal all our jobs has been hyped by industry leaders. It has roused politicians to sound the alarm. It now ranks at or near the top of the public’s concerns about the new technology. And right on cue, earlier this month Meta, Facebook’s parent …
How Japan Invented Daisugi, the Ancient Method of Growing Lumber Without Cutting Down Trees
Ask anyone, of most any age and in most any society, how we get wood, and you’ll hear one answer: by cutting down trees. It’s therefore natural that any method of lumber production that leaves trees standing will get a lot of attention. Such has been the case with daisugi, the 600-year-old Japanese technique we’ve previously featured here on Open Culture. The Leaf of Life video above explains just what it involves: “Specially planted cedar trees are pruned heavily.
How Japan Invented Daisugi, the Ancient Method of Growing Lumber Without Cutting Down Trees
1 day ago The $8 kitchen gadget I’m buying for peak raspberry season. Raspberries are peaking to sweet-tart perfection right now, but all I can taste when I look at my plastic clamshells of berries is betrayal. Raspberries always seem to spoil within hours of arriving in my fridge. Apparently, that isn’t a …
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