In Her Final Reflections, Jane Goodall Issues a Warning: “Without Hope, We Fall Into Apathy”

in Life, Science | March 18th, 2026

For many of us, Jane Goodall was one of those cul­tur­al fig­ures who seemed always to have been around, and on some lev­el, made us feel like she always would be. But of course, no human being lives for­ev­er, no mat­ter how wide­ly admired. Goodall made her own depar­ture last fall, in the mid­dle of an Amer­i­can speak­ing tour, at the age of 91. Just two days there­after, she appeared as the guest on the pre­miere of Net­flix’s Famous Last Words, a pro­gram con­sist­ing of inter­views con­duct­ed express­ly to air only after the inter­vie­wee’s death. In the clip above, the show’s host, TV writer-direc­tor-pro­duc­er Brad Falchuk, asks her an out­ward­ly sim­ple ques­tion: “Who would you say you were?”

Goodall describes her­self as “some­body sent to this world to try to give peo­ple hope in dark times, because with­out hope, we fall into apa­thy and do noth­ing, and in the dark times that we are liv­ing in now, if peo­ple don’t have hope, we’re doomed. How can we bring lit­tle chil­dren into this dark world we’ve cre­at­ed and let them be sur­round­ed by peo­ple who’ve giv­en up? So even if this is the end of human­i­ty as we know it, let’s fight to the very end. Let’s let the chil­dren know that there is hope, if they get togeth­er. And even if it becomes impos­si­ble for any­body, it’s bet­ter to go on fight­ing to the end than just to give up and say, ‘Okay.’ ” These are fine words, though it may sur­prise some of us that they make no men­tion of chimps.

Though she became famous as a pri­ma­tol­o­gist, and specif­i­cal­ly as an expert on chim­panzees, Goodall devot­ed much ener­gy in her lat­er decades to tak­ing action on broad­er caus­es. These includ­ed envi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion and the secu­ri­ty of life on Earth itself, which she saw as imper­iled by the actions of cer­tain gov­ern­ments and polit­i­cal actors. When Falchuk asks who she does­n’t like, she express­es her desire to send per­ma­nent­ly into space Elon Musk, Don­ald Trump and “some of his real sup­port­ers,” Vladimir Putin, Xi Jin­ping, Ben­jamin Netanyahu and “his far-right gov­ern­ment.” That answer may get us won­der­ing whether the result­ing pow­er vac­u­ums would be filled by more or less savory char­ac­ters. The entire inter­view will leave us with anoth­er, per­haps more trou­bling ques­tion: who, today, could be suit­ed to assume the place in pub­lic life left behind by Jane Goodall?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Remem­ber­ing Jane Goodall (RIP): Watch Jane, the Acclaimed Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Doc­u­men­tary

Ani­mat­ed: The Inspi­ra­tional Sto­ry of Jane Goodall, and Why She Believes in Big­foot

Google Street View Lets You Walk in Jane Goodall’s Foot­steps and Vis­it the Chim­panzees of Tan­za­nia

The Last Inter­view Book Series Fea­tures the Final Words of Cul­tur­al Icons: Borges to Bowie, Philip K. Dick to Fri­da Kahlo

The Celebri­ty Encoun­ters of Koko the Goril­la. For Her 43rd Birth­day Today

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Learn Ancient Greek in 118 Free Lessons: A Free Online Course from Brandeis & Harvard

in Language Lessons | March 18th, 2026

Leonard Muell­ner (Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of Clas­si­cal Stud­ies at Bran­deis Uni­ver­si­ty) and Belisi Gille­spie (who now teach­es clas­sics at Agnes Scott Col­lege) have post­ed 118 videos on YouTube, which, when tak­en togeth­er, “present all the con­tent cov­ered in two semes­ters of a col­lege-lev­el Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek course.”

The text­book used is Greek: An Inten­sive Course. 2nd edi­tion. And if you read the blurb that accom­pa­nies each video on YouTube, you’ll find out 1) what mate­r­i­al each video cov­ers, and 2) what pages are being used in the text­book.

Made avail­able online by Har­vard’s Cen­ter for Hel­lenic Stud­ies, the playlist of Ancient Greek lessons will be added to our col­lec­tions, Learn 45+ Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More and 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Lis­ten to a Recon­struc­tion That’s “100% Accu­rate”

Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek His­to­ry: A Free Online Course by Yale His­to­ri­an Don­ald Kagan

The His­to­ry of Ancient Greece in 18 Min­utes: A Brisk Primer Nar­rat­ed by Bri­an Cox

 

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Hear Paul McCartney’s Forgotten 1967 Movie Soundtrack, Arranged by George Martin

in Film, Music | March 17th, 2026

In 1967, a young Roger Ebert drew up a top-ten-films-of-the-year list includ­ing Bon­nie and Clyde, Blow-Up, The Grad­u­ate, A Man for All Sea­sons, and Cool Hand Luke. Lat­er, he added a few more pic­tures from this cin­e­mat­ic bumper crop that he remem­bered fond­ly, the first of which was The Fam­i­ly Way. Though sel­dom ref­er­enced today, it was a big hit in Britain — one of sev­er­al, in fact, for the twin-broth­er film­mak­ers John and Roy Boult­ing. Respon­si­ble for such nine­teen-fifties come­dies as Lucky Jim and I’m All Right Jack, the two attained in their home­land not only auteur sta­tus, but also the curi­ous posi­tion of estab­lish­ment satirists, val­i­dat­ing the insti­tu­tions of mid-cen­tu­ry Eng­lish life even as they ridiculed them.

Adapt­ed from a stage play by Alfie author Bill Naughton, The Fam­i­ly Way finds its mate­r­i­al in the tri­als of a pair of north­ern new­ly­weds who, hav­ing been fleeced by a crooked trav­el agent, end up hav­ing to spend their hon­ey­moon at home. What’s worse, giv­en their impe­cu­nious­ness, “home” meant a room in the house of the groom’s par­ents.

That 1967 was a dif­fer­ent time is also sig­naled by a scene in which the father-in-law bel­lows for his cham­ber pot, which his wife had hoped to keep hid­den from her new daugh­ter-in-law’s sen­si­tive eyes. In that role is the acclaimed per­former of Eng­lish every­man John Mills, appear­ing onscreen for the first time with his daugh­ter Hay­ley, who plays the bride. It marked her first real adult part, a kind of grad­u­a­tion from her child-actress career in pic­tures like The Par­ent Trap and That Darn Cat!

The pic­ture also boast­ed a score by Paul McCart­ney, or at any rate by Bea­t­les pro­duc­er George Mar­tin, who built upon what themes he could suc­cess­ful­ly impor­tune the seem­ing­ly writer’s-blocked Bea­t­le to bang out. Tak­ing into account that this was hap­pen­ing between Revolver and Sgt. Pep­per, it’s per­haps under­stand­able that McCart­ney would feel his cre­ative ener­gies drained by oth­er projects, but the Boult­ing broth­ers had offered a first, irre­sistible oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­pose offi­cial­ly out­side the Lennon-McCart­ney dyad. Though not with­out the charms of Mar­t­in’s orches­tral work (more of which would be heard in Yel­low Sub­ma­rine in 1969), The Fam­i­ly Way’s brief sound­track bears few obvi­ous marks of the McCart­ney musi­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty. Present on the Bea­t­les’ albums, of course, that sen­si­bil­i­ty has con­tin­ued to devel­op through­out a solo career that has out­lived the band by 56 years — and count­ing.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How George Mar­tin Defined the Sound of the Bea­t­les: From String Quar­tets to Back­wards Gui­tar Solos

The Genius of Paul McCartney’s Bass Play­ing in 7 Iso­lat­ed Tracks

Paul McCart­ney Breaks Down His Most Famous Songs and Answers Most-Asked Fan Ques­tions in Two New Videos

Paul McCart­ney Explains How Bach Influ­enced “Black­bird”

Hear The Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road with Only Paul McCartney’s Bass: You Won’t Believe How Good It Sounds

A 17-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Bea­t­les Songs: 338 Tracks Let You Hear the Musi­cal Evo­lu­tion of the Icon­ic Band

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Enchanting Video Shows How Globes Were Made by Hand in 1955: The End of a 500-Year Tradition

in Maps | March 17th, 2026

The first globe—a spher­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of our plan­et Earth—dates back to the Age of Dis­cov­ery. Or 1492, to be more pre­cise, when Mar­tin Behaim and painter Georg Glock­endon cre­at­ed the “Nürn­berg Ter­res­tri­al Globe,” oth­er­wise known as the “Erdapfel.” It was made by hand. And that tra­di­tion con­tin­ued straight through the 20th cen­tu­ry, until machines large­ly took over.

Above, you can watch the wan­ing of a 500-year tra­di­tion. Some­where in North Lon­don, in 1955, “a woman takes one of the moulds from a shelf and takes it over to a work­bench. She fix­es it to a device which holds it steady whilst still allow­ing it to spin.” “Anoth­er girl,” notes British Pathe, “is stick­ing red strips onto a larg­er sphere.” After that, “coloured print­ed sec­tions show­ing the map of the world are cut to shape then past­ed onto the sur­face of the globes.” Through that “skilled oper­a­tion,” the Lon­don-based firm pro­duced some 60,000 globes each year.

Above, you can also find anoth­er globe-mak­ing mini-doc­u­men­tary, this one in black & white, from 1949. It gives you a glimpse of a process that takes 15 hours, from start to fin­ish. Final­ly, fur­ther down, watch a short fea­ture on Beller­by & Co., which still makes high-qual­i­ty, hand­craft­ed globes in Lon­don. It’s a reminder that, even in the age of mass pro­duc­tion, some arti­sans are keep­ing a cen­turies-long craft alive.


If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Map of the World: The Inno­va­tion that Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Map Design (1943)

Japan­ese Design­ers May Have Cre­at­ed the Most Accu­rate Map of Our World: See the Autha­Graph

How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956

How Ani­mat­ed Car­toons Are Made: A Vin­tage Primer Filmed Way Back in 1919

The Mak­ing of Japan­ese Hand­made Paper: A Short Film Doc­u­ments an 800-Year-Old Tra­di­tion

 

 

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The Fascinating Engineering of the Titanic: How the Great Ocean Liner Was Built

in History, Technology | March 16th, 2026

When many of us first learned of the RMS Titan­ic, it was pre­sent­ed first as one of his­to­ry’s great­est ironies: the “unsink­able” ocean lin­er that went down on its maid­en voy­age. Of course, there’s a great deal more to the sto­ry, as any­one who becomes obsessed with the ill-fat­ed ship (James Cameron being just one notable exam­ple) under­stands full well. Even apart from the many human expe­ri­ences sur­round­ing it, some of them told by the wreck­’s sur­vivors and pre­served on film, the mechan­i­cal aspects of the Titan­ic hold out con­sid­er­able fas­ci­na­tion for any­one with an engi­neer’s cast of mind. Put aside, for the moment, the mat­ter of the sink­ing, and con­sid­er just what went into mak­ing it one of the most glo­ri­ous cre­ations of man launched into the ocean to date — or rather, one of the three most glo­ri­ous.

The Titan­ic was one of a trio of sim­i­lar White Star Line ships com­plet­ed in the ear­ly nine­teen-tens. In the video above, Bill Ham­mack, known on YouTube as Engi­neer­guy, tells the sto­ry of not just the Titan­ic, but also the Olympic and the HMHS Bri­tan­nic. An engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois, he found in the cam­pus library issues of the jour­nal The Engi­neer pub­lished between 1909 and 1911 that con­tain detailed pho­tographs of the con­struc­tion of both the Titan­ic and Olympic, sis­ter ships that were built side-by-side.

One ele­ment high­light­ed that we may not much con­sid­er today is the sheer scale of the things: each was held togeth­er by three mil­lion riv­ets, could con­tain 1.5 mil­lion gal­lons of bal­last water, weighed 52,000 tons when ful­ly fit­ted, required 23 tons of lubri­cant to slide from the dock into the water, and burned 650 tons of coal per day on a transat­lantic cross­ing.

Alas, size alone was­n’t enough to pre­vent dis­as­ter. “Less than a year after the launch of these two giant ships, one suf­fered a col­li­sion that ripped a gap­ing hole in its side,” says Ham­mack. “That ship was of course, the Olympic.” Its sud­den encounter with a pass­ing war­ship neces­si­tat­ed patch­ing with wood before it could return home for a full repair, but there­after it remained in ser­vice for near­ly a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry. Its less lucky sib­ling end­ed up at the bot­tom of the ocean after run­ning into trou­ble of its own: a mine and a tor­pe­do spelled the end for the Bri­tan­nic in 1916. As for the Titan­ic, we all know about its fate­ful encounter with the ice­berg, and maybe we’ve even heard dis­cus­sions of how its design­ers could have mit­i­gat­ed the impact: more or taller bulk­heads, a dou­ble hull rather than just a dou­ble bot­tom, greater lifeboat capac­i­ty. As for whether and how those solu­tions would have worked, per­haps Ham­mack could still shoot a fol­low-up explain­ing it all to us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Full 3D Scan of the Titan­ic, Made of More Than 700,000 Images Cap­tur­ing the Wreck’s Every Detail

See the First 8K Footage of the Titan­ic, the High­est-Qual­i­ty Video of the Ship­wreck Yet

The Titan­ic: Rare Footage of the Ship Before Dis­as­ter Strikes (1911–1912)

Titan­ic Sur­vivor Inter­views: What It Was Like to Flee the Sink­ing Lux­u­ry Lin­er

The Sink­ing of the Bri­tan­nic: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Titan­ic’s For­got­ten Sis­ter Ship

How a 16th-Cen­tu­ry Explorer’s Sail­ing Ship Worked: An Ani­mat­ed Video Takes You on a Com­pre­hen­sive Tour

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How to Read Books That Challenge Your Mind: Advice from Robert Greene, Author of The 48 Laws of Power

in Books | March 16th, 2026

If you’ve fall­en out of the habit of read­ing books, you’re cer­tain­ly not alone. Con­sid­er how often posts cir­cu­late on social media (itself a big part of the prob­lem) about stud­ies show­ing a rapid increase in the num­ber of peo­ple who don’t even get one book read per year. How best to get back on the lit­er­ary wag­on? You might try going straight for the hard stuff, as it were, by tak­ing on a nov­el like Moby-Dick. But that, accord­ing to the view artic­u­lat­ed in the video above by The 48 Laws of Pow­er author Robert Greene, would be like step­ping back into the gym after years away and try­ing to bench press 300 pounds. Rather than start­ing with Melville’s mas­ter­piece, build your way up to it — but once you get to it, you’ve got to fin­ish it.

“You want to train your­self to fin­ish books, and not con­stant­ly be going from one to anoth­er to anoth­er,” Greene says, and that holds even for those you may not enjoy. “When I read a book that I hate, that is bor­ing, and I make myself read all the way through, I kind of take angry notes about it: God, this is ridicu­lous, this is so stu­pid, I hate this, this guy does­n’t know what he’s talk­ing about. You can react to the book, you can have a dia­logue with it, but you want to be able to have the patience to get through a 400- 500, 600-page book.” To return to the weight-train­ing anal­o­gy, a short­er book to start could be “kind of easy, and it could be in a sub­ject that inter­ests you,” but upon fin­ish­ing it, you should “choose some­thing that’s a lit­tle bit dif­fi­cult and a lit­tle bit com­pli­cat­ed.”

The idea is delib­er­ate­ly to choose books that chal­lenge you, a qual­i­ty that does­n’t come from length alone. If one gives you an impres­sion that “it’s not how you feel polit­i­cal­ly about the world, it’s not how you feel spir­i­tu­al­ly about the world, it’s some­thing that’s a lit­tle bit out­side what you would nor­mal­ly encounter,” take it as a sign that you should read it. Approach­ing the mat­ter from the oth­er direc­tion, Greene also advis­es not to “just choose things that you think are enter­tain­ing and fun, because that’s going to make you lazy, and it’s going to make you weak, and it’s going to make you always look for things that are enter­tain­ing, fun, and dis­tract­ing.” An air­port-thriller-heavy diet may work for Mal­colm Glad­well, but it’s unlike­ly to work for you.

As an exam­ple of a chal­leng­ing read, Greene points to any of Robert Caro’s four bio­graph­i­cal vol­umes about U.S. Pres­i­dent Lyn­don B. John­son, one of which runs to well over 1,000 pages. He could also have sug­gest­ed Caro’s ear­li­er The Pow­er Bro­ker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, one of those books — along­side not just Moby-Dick, but also the Bible, Ulysses, War and Peace, and even Pride and Prej­u­dice — that even many seri­ous read­ers only pre­tend to have made it through, or indeed start­ed. What­ev­er the mate­r­i­al you use, Greene says, “I beg you to train your mind like you train your body, to go through some­thing that’s a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult, a lit­tle more chal­leng­ing, that’s going to take some time for you. That’s the way to devel­op the habit of want­i­ng to read, and to have the patience to read more books.” No pain, no gain, as the body­builders say; bear that in mind when you get to Melville’s dis­tilled course on cetol­ogy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How to Read Five Books Per Month & Become a Seri­ous Read­er: Tips from Deep Work Author Cal New­port

20 Books Peo­ple Pre­tend to Read (and Now Your Con­fes­sions?)

How to Read Many More Books in a Year: Watch a Short Doc­u­men­tary Fea­tur­ing Some of the World’s Most Beau­ti­ful Book­stores

5 Books You Can Read Again .… and Again and Again: Here’s Our Picks, Now Yours

7 Tips for Read­ing More Books in a Year

The Nature of Human Stu­pid­i­ty Explained by The 48 Laws of Pow­er Author Robert Greene

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Hear Seven Hours of Women Making Electronic Music (1938–2014)

in Music | March 13th, 2026

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

A num­ber of years ago, in a post on the pio­neer­ing com­pos­er of the orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who theme, we wrote that “the ear­ly era of exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic music belonged to Delia Der­byshire.” Derbyshire—who almost gave Paul McCart­ney a ver­sion of “Yes­ter­day” with an elec­tron­ic back­ing in place of strings—helped invent the ear­ly elec­tron­ic music of the six­ties through her work with the Radio­phon­ic Work­shop, the sound effects lab­o­ra­to­ry of the BBC. She went on to form one of the most influ­en­tial, if large­ly obscure, elec­tron­ic acts of the decade, White Noise. And yet, call­ing the ear­ly eras of elec­tron­ic music hers is an exag­ger­a­tion. Of course her many col­lab­o­ra­tors deserve men­tion, as well as musi­cians like Bruce Haack, Pierre Hen­ry, Kraftwerk, Bri­an Eno, and so many oth­ers. But what gets almost com­plete­ly left out of many his­to­ries of elec­tron­ic music, as with so many oth­er his­to­ries, is the promi­nent role so many women besides Der­byshire played in the devel­op­ment of the sounds we now hear around us all the time.

In recog­ni­tion of this fact, musi­cian, DJ, and “escaped housewife/schoolteacher” Bar­bara Gold­en devot­ed two episodes of her KPFA radio pro­gram “Crack o’ Dawn” to women in elec­tron­ic music, once in 2010 and again in 2013. She shares each broad­cast with co-host Jon Lei­deck­er (“Wob­bly”), and in each seg­ment, the two ban­ter in casu­al radio show style, offer­ing his­to­ry and con­text for each musi­cian and com­pos­er. High­light­ed on Ubu’s for­mer Twit­ter stream, the first show, “Women in Elec­tron­ic Music 1938–1982 Part 1” (above) gives Der­byshire her due, with three tracks from her, includ­ing the Doc­tor Who theme.

It also includes music from twen­ty one oth­er com­posers, begin­ning with Clara Rock­more, a refin­er and pop­u­lar­iz­er of the theremin, that weird instru­ment designed to sim­u­late a high, tremu­lous human voice. Also fea­tured is Wendy Carlos’s “Timesteps,” an orig­i­nal piece from her A Clock­work Orange score.

The sec­ond show, above, fills in sev­er­al gaps in the orig­i­nal broad­cast and “could eas­i­ly be six hours” says co-host Lei­deck­er, giv­en the sheer amount of elec­tron­ic music out there com­posed and record­ed by women over the past sev­en­ty years. This show includes one of our host Golden’s own com­po­si­tions, “Melody Sum­n­er Car­na­han,” as well as music from Lau­rie Ander­son and musique con­crete com­pos­er Doris Hays. These two broad­casts alone cov­er an enor­mous range of styl­is­tic and tech­no­log­i­cal ground, but for even more disco­graph­i­cal his­to­ry of women in elec­tron­ic music, see the playlist below, com­piled by “Nerd­girl” Antye Greie-Ripat­ti. Com­mis­sioned by Club Trans­me­di­ale Berlin, the mix includes such well-known names as Yoko Ono, Bjork, and M.I.A., as well as fore­moth­ers Der­byshire and Car­los, and dozens more.

In lieu of the radio-show chat­ter of Gold­en and Lei­deck­er, we have Greie-Ripatti’s post detail­ing each artist’s time peri­od, coun­try of ori­gin, and con­tri­bu­tions to elec­tron­ic music his­to­ry. Many of the com­posers rep­re­sent­ed here worked for major radio and film stu­dios, scored fea­ture films (like 1956’s For­bid­den Plan­et), invent­ed and inno­vat­ed new instru­ments and tech­niques, wrote for orches­tras, and passed on their knowl­edge as edu­ca­tors and pro­duc­ers. Greie-Ripatti’s page quotes a Dan­ish elec­tron­ic pro­duc­er and per­former say­ing “there is a lot of women in elec­tron­ic music… invis­i­ble women.” Thanks to efforts like hers and Golden’s, these pio­neer­ing cre­ators need no longer go unseen or, more impor­tant­ly, unheard.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Delia Der­byshire, the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

Watch Com­pos­er Wendy Car­los Demo an Orig­i­nal Moog Syn­the­siz­er (1989)

Meet Four Women Who Pio­neered Elec­tron­ic Music: Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros

New Doc­u­men­tary Sis­ters with Tran­sis­tors Tells the Sto­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music’s Female Pio­neers

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

Hear Elec­tron­ic Lady­land, a Mix­tape Fea­tur­ing 55 Tracks from 35 Pio­neer­ing Women in Elec­tron­ic Music

Thomas Dol­by Explains How a Syn­the­siz­er Works on a Jim Hen­son Kids Show (1989)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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The Monty Python Philosophy Soccer Match: The Ancient Greeks Versus the Germans

in Comedy, Sports | March 13th, 2026

Today, we’re revis­it­ing a clas­sic Mon­ty Python skit. The scene is the 1972 Munich Olympics. The event is a football/soccer match, pit­ting Ger­man philoso­phers against Greek philoso­phers. On the one side, the Ger­mans — Hegel, Niet­zsche, Kant, Marx and, um, Franz Beck­en­bauer. On the oth­er side, Archimedes, Socrates, Pla­to and the rest of the gang. The ref­er­ee? Con­fu­cius. Of course.

Enjoy!

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Jorge Luis Borges Hat­ed Soc­cer: “Soc­cer is Pop­u­lar Because Stu­pid­i­ty is Pop­u­lar”

Albert Camus’ Lessons Learned from Play­ing Goalie: “What I Know Most Sure­ly about Moral­i­ty and Oblig­a­tions, I Owe to Foot­ball”

Video: Bob Mar­ley Plays a Soc­cer Match in Brazil, 1980

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How the Long-Lost Body of Richard III Was Found Under a Parking Lot: Solving a 500-Year-Old Mystery

in History | March 12th, 2026

Shake­speare’s The Tragedy of Richard the Third begins with the epony­mous char­ac­ter utter­ing the famous line “Now is the win­ter of our dis­con­tent.” It ends at the Bat­tle of Bosworth Field, by which point his vil­lain­ous schemes have come to ruin and his deser­tion by Lord Stan­ley seems to have sealed his fate. “A horse, a horse, my king­dom for a horse,” he cries out, coin­ing anoth­er expres­sion used four cen­turies lat­er before being slain by the Earl of Rich­mond, the man who would be Hen­ry VII. Though Shake­speare him­self was writ­ing more than 100 years after the his­tor­i­cal events he dra­ma­tized, he includ­ed lit­tle after the event of Richard’s death, whose most fas­ci­nat­ing mys­tery was in any case only solved in our own time.

You can see the sto­ry of Richard III’s long-unknown where­abouts in the Pri­mal Space video above. Accord­ing to records, says the nar­ra­tor, “he was buried uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly beneath the Greyfri­ars Church in Leices­ter, and a mon­u­ment was even­tu­al­ly placed above his grave.” When Hen­ry VIII ordered such hous­es of wor­ship shut down forty years lat­er, Greyfri­ars was among the insti­tu­tions demol­ished.

Every­one even­tu­al­ly came to believe that, amid this destruc­tion, Richard’s body had been exhumed and tossed off the Bow Bridge. Only in the ear­ly two-thou­sands did a search for his corpse com­mence in earnest, spear­head­ed by the Richard III Soci­ety. Hav­ing deter­mined that the Bow Bridge sto­ry had been made up, the soci­ety’s mem­bers then had to pin down the long-con­fused for­mer loca­tion of Greyfri­ars Church.

One of them, Philip­pa Lan­g­ley, got the hunch to start look­ing under a Leices­ter park­ing lot. Bud­getary lim­i­ta­tions forced her team to try dig­ging just three trench­es across spaces like­li­est to cross the church’s foot­print. “Amaz­ing­ly, just six hours into the first day, they came across a skele­ton” with skull dam­age and spinal cur­va­ture. Richard was indeed described as a “hunch­back” in his life­time, but in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, only DNA evi­dence clos­es the case. Its acqui­si­tion neces­si­tat­ed both find­ing a cou­ple unbro­ken female lines (the only means of trans­mit­ting mito­chon­dr­i­al DNA) from his sis­ter down to liv­ing, testable indi­vid­u­als while car­bon-dat­ing the skele­ton. Sure enough, Richard turned out to have been in eter­nal repose not just under that park­ing lot, but near a sten­ciled let­ter R — the kind of coin­ci­dence from which even the Bard him­self might have shied away.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Con­firmed: The Bones of Richard III (1452–1485) Found Under a UK Park­ing Lot

74 Ways Char­ac­ters Die in Shakespeare’s Plays Shown in a Handy Info­graph­ic: From Snakebites to Lack of Sleep

How Eng­land First Became Eng­land: An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry

Hear What Ham­let, Richard III & King Lear Sound­ed Like in Shakespeare’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

A New Analy­sis of Beethoven’s DNA Reveals That Lead Poi­son­ing Could Have Caused His Deaf­ness

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How to Rescue a Wet, Damaged Book: A Handy Visual Primer

in Books | March 12th, 2026

How to save those wet, dam­aged books? The ques­tion has to be asked. Above, you can watch a visu­al primer from the Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty Libraries—peo­ple who know some­thing about tak­ing care of books. It con­tains a series of tips, some intu­itive, some less so, that will give you a clear action plan the next time water and paper meet.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How an Art Con­ser­va­tor Com­plete­ly Restores a Dam­aged Paint­ing: A Short, Med­i­ta­tive Doc­u­men­tary

Watch a 106-Year-Old Wiz­ard of Oz Book Get Mag­i­cal­ly Restored … By Cut­ting the Book’s Spine, Wash­ing Pages & Recol­or­ing Illus­tra­tions

Watch a Japan­ese Crafts­man Lov­ing­ly Bring a Tat­tered Old Book Back to Near Mint Con­di­tion

Watch 52,000 Books Get­ting Reshelved at The New York Pub­lic Library in a Short, Time­lapse Film

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The Met Releases High-Definition 3D Scans of 140 Famous Art Objects: Sarcophagi, Van Gogh Paintings, Marble Sculptures & More

in Art, Museums, Technology | March 11th, 2026

We can go through most of our lives hold­ing out hope of one day see­ing in real­i­ty such works as van Gogh’s Sun­flow­ers, Mon­et’s Haystacks, a clay tablet con­tain­ing actu­al cuneiform writ­ing with our own eyes, or the ancient Egypt­ian Tem­ple of Den­dur. We can actu­al­ly come face to face — or rather, face to sur­face — with all of them, tem­ple includ­ed, at New York’s Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, which con­tains all those and more arti­facts of human civ­i­liza­tion than any of us could hope to exam­ine close­ly in a life­time. But even if we did, we might only feel tempt­ed to look at them more close­ly still, even to touch them. That may be an improb­a­ble hope, but we can at least get clos­er than ever now thanks to the Met’s new archive of high-def­i­n­i­tion 3D scans.

“View­ers can zoom in, rotate, and exam­ine each mod­el, bring­ing unprece­dent­ed access to sig­nif­i­cant works of art,” says the Met’s offi­cial announce­ment. “The 3D mod­els can also be explored in view­ers’ own spaces through aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (AR) on most smart­phone and VR head­sets, as a resource for research, explo­ration, and curios­i­ty.”

High­lights include “a mar­ble sar­coph­a­gus with lions felling ante­lope (3rd cen­tu­ry); a stat­ue of Horus as a fal­con pro­tect­ing King Nectanebo II (360–343 BCE); Kano Sansetsu’s Old Plum (1646); and a house mod­el by Nayarit artist(s) (200 BCE–300 CE).” Or per­haps you’d pre­fer an inti­mate view of an eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry tile depic­tion of Mec­ca, a nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry mar­ble sculp­ture of Perseus with the head of Medusa, or a suit of armor belong­ing to King Hen­ry II of France?

Brows­ing this archive of more than 100 dig­i­tized his­tor­i­cal objects, you’ll also notice pieces from Japan like sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry screens by the artists Kano Sanset­su and Suzu­ki Kiit­su. These must have been pri­or­i­ties for the Met’s insti­tu­tion­al part­ner in this project, the Japan­ese tele­vi­sion net­work NHK. It all came about “as part of the pub­lic broadcaster’s ini­tia­tive to pro­duce ultra-high def­i­n­i­tion 3D com­put­er graph­ics of nation­al trea­sures and oth­er impor­tant art­works,” with “fur­ther edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming and poten­tial con­tent using these cut­ting-edge, best-in-class mod­els” in the off­ing. For now, though, the archive offers us more than enough to behold from any pos­si­ble angle. To do so, just click the “View in 3D” but­ton below the image on the page of your arti­fact or art­work of choice. It may not be the same as hold­ing the object in your hands, but it’s as close as you’re going to get — unless, of course, you find your­self inspired to pur­sue the dream of becom­ing a cura­tor at the Met.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed con­tent:

Take a New Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tour of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

See Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring in 3D in a New 108-Gigapix­el Scan

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

Explore Metic­u­lous 3D Mod­els of Endan­gered His­tor­i­cal Sites in Google’s “Open Her­itage” Project

Open­Ver­te­brate Presents a Mas­sive Data­base of 13,000 3D Scans of Ver­te­brate Spec­i­mens

The Earth Archive Will 3D-Scan the Entire World & Cre­ate an “Open-Source” Record of Our Plan­et

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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