The Best of Open Culture

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If you go to Paris, many will advise you, you must go to the Louvre; but then, if you go to Paris, as nearly as many will advise you, you must not go to the Louvre.

«“For the first time ever,” says last week’s press release, “the entire Louvre collection is available online,»

Painting of Asimov on his throne by Rowena Morill, via Wikimedia Commons Everyone should read the Bible, and—I’d argue—should read it with a sharply critical eye and the guidance of reputable critics…

Given this intimidating biography, and the fact that Asimov believed that “hardly anyone can read” in the U.S., we might expect the science fiction legend wanted nothing to do with television. We…

Hazel Barnes by way of opening the television series Self-Encounter: A Study in Existentialism. 'As a mood, I think we could say that it is the mood of the twentieth century — or, at least, of those…

Given how many academic philosophy departments have banished Existentialism into some primitive wilderness, it seems striking to hear people talk about it as a current phenomenon with a serious,…

Begun by user "BackForward24" and crowdsourced through Reddit, this map of the world illustrates the most beloved/popular book of each country by pasting a scan of the book cover over its space on the…

Download 1,300 free courses from Stanford, Yale, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley and other great universities to your computer or mobile device. Over 45,000 hours of free audio & video lectures.

If you listen to the hype surrounding quantum computing, you might think the near future shown in Alex Garland's sci-fi series Devs is upon us -- that we have computers complex enough to recreate time…

What turns people into science-fiction fans? Many enter through the gateway of Star Trek, an early 1960s television series 'set on the worlds visited by a giant Spaceship, the U.S.S. Enterprise, and on the ship itself.

Late in life, Kingsley Amis declared that he would henceforth read only novels opening with the sentence 'A shot rang out.' On one level, this would have sounded bizarre coming from one of Britain's…

Is the singularity upon us? AI seems poised to replace everyone, even artists whose work can seem like an inviolably human industry. Or maybe not.

Creative Commons image by Rob Bogaerts, via the National Archives in Holland Umberto Eco knew a great many things. Indeed too many things, at least according to his critics:

«Hold those quotes. Emerson aptly said, “I hate quotes. Tell me only what you know.”»

Lyricists must write concretely enough to be evocative, yet vaguely enough to allow each listener his personal interpretation.

According to NPR, 'Caffeine is the most widely consumed drug in the world. Here in the U.S., according to a 2022 survey, more than 93% of adults consume caffeine, and of those, 75% consume caffeine at…

We can learn much about how a historical period viewed the abilities of its children by studying its children's literature.

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Watch 50 great Noir films directed by Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, and starring Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson. All free.