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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
Watch La Linea, the Popular 1970s Italian Animations Drawn with a Single Line
Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations. Thus spake designer Paul Rand, a man who knew something about making an impression, having created iconic logos for such immediately recognizable brands as ABC, IBM, and UPS.
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
Leo Tolstoy Calls Shakespeare an ‘Insignificant, Inartistic Writer.’ Then George Orwell Fires Back
After his radical conversion to Christian anarchism, Leo Tolstoy adopted a deeply contrarian attitude. The vehemence of his attacks on the class and traditions that produced him were so vigorous that certain critics, now mostly obsolete, might call his struggle Oedipal.
Watch Animations of Two Italo Calvino Stories: “The False Grandmother” and “The Distance from the Moon”
https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/animations-of-two-italo-calvino-stories.html
There are those books we go to not to escape this world, but to experience the truth of a mysteriously attributed quote, “There is another world, and it is this one.” That is to say that the worlds we find in certain novels are no less filled with dread, ambiguity, and moral freight than our own.
Leo Tolstoy Calls Shakespeare an ‘Insignificant, Inartistic Writer.’ Then George Orwell Fires Back
After his radical conversion to Christian anarchism, Leo Tolstoy adopted a deeply contrarian attitude. The vehemence of his attacks on the class and traditions that produced him were so vigorous that certain critics, now mostly obsolete, might call his struggle Oedipal.
10,000 Chicago Concert Recordings Are Being Uploaded to the Internet Archive: Nirvana, Phish, Sonic Youth, They Might Be Giants & More
Perhaps you've had the experience of moving to a new city and immediately being told that you've missed its golden age of live music. To an extent, this has happened in more or less every period of the past fifty or sixty years.
Hear Hours of Lectures by Michel Foucault: Recorded in English & French Between 1961 and 1983
https://www.openculture.com/2018/01/hear-hours-of-lectures-by-michel-foucault.html
Watch 35 Short Films by Charles and Ray Eames: “Powers of Ten,” the History of the Computer & More
https://www.openculture.com/2026/04/watch-35-short-films-by-charles-and-ray-eames.html
