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Try the Oldest Known Recipe For Toothpaste: From Ancient Egypt, Circa the 4th Century BC
Image of Ancient Egyptian Dentistry, via Wikimedia Commons When we assume that modern improvements are far superior to the practices of the ancients, we might do well to actually learn how people in the distant past lived before indulging in 'chronological snobbery.' Take, for example, the area of dental hygiene.
An Animated Introduction to Michel Foucault, “Philosopher of Power”
How Jackson Pollock Redefined Modern Art: An Introduction
https://www.openculture.com/2025/06/how-jackson-pollock-redefined-modern-art-an-introduction.html
The Entire Archives of Radical Philosophy Go Online: Read Essays by Michel Foucault, Alain Badiou, Judith Butler & More (1972–2022)
https://www.openculture.com/2022/10/the-entire-archives-of-radical-philosophy-now-online.html
On a seemingly daily basis, we see attacks against the intellectual culture of the academic humanities, which, since the 1960s, have opened up spaces for leftists to develop critical theories of all kinds.
A Newly Discovered Recording Lets You Hear Delta Blues Legend Robert Johnson in Stunning Clarity
Great swathes of rock music since the nineteen-sixties would never have existed, we're sometimes told, were it not for the recordings of Robert Johnson. Certainly the likes of Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Robert Plant, and Bob Dylan have never hesitated to acknowledge his influence.
John Turturro Reads Italo Calvino’s Fairy Tale, “The False Grandmother,” in a Short Animated Film
https://www.openculture.com/2011/10/john_turturro_reads_italo_calvinos_animated_fairy_tale.html
In 1956, Italo Calvino, one of Italy's finest postwar writers, published Italian Folktales, a series of 200 fairy tales based sometimes loosely, sometimes more strictly on stories from a great folk tradition.
How George Orwell Predicted the Rise of “AI Slop” in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
https://www.openculture.com/2026/04/how-george-orwell-predicted-the-rise-of-ai-slop.html
A Newly Discovered Recording Lets You Hear Delta Blues Legend Robert Johnson in Stunning Clarity
Great swathes of rock music since the nineteen-sixties would never have existed, we're sometimes told, were it not for the recordings of Robert Johnson. Certainly the likes of Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Robert Plant, and Bob Dylan have never hesitated to acknowledge his influence.
People in the Middle Ages Slept Not Once But Twice Each Night: How This Lost Practice Was Rediscovered
The importance of a good night's sleep has been featured now and again here on Open Culture. But were a medieval European to visit our time, he'd probably ask — among other questions — if we didn't mean a good night's sleeps, plural.
Confidence: The Cartoon That Helped America Get Through the Great Depression (1933)
https://www.openculture.com/2014/06/confidence-great-depression.html
