Open Culture » Josh Jones

The making of Pink Floyd’s 1979 rock opera The Wall is rife with the kind of rock star ironies exploited a few years later by This Is Spinal Tap. Their fall into fractiousness and bloat began w...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/11/how-pink-floyd-built-the-wall-the-album-tour-film.html

In the story of World War II we all know, a handful of murderous villains and flawed yet capable defenders of democracy drive the narrative. The authors of a Kings College London project argue th...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/11/watch-world-war-ii-unfold-day-by-day-an-animated-map.html

“There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich, there is only Louise Brooks.” — Henri Langlois On this side of the 20th century, it’s hard to imagine a time in cinema history when Louise Brooks...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/09/revisit-louise-brooks-most-iconic-role-in-the-too-sexy-for-weimar-silent-film-pandoras-box-1928.html

Yale professor and historian Timothy Snyder has sounded alarm bells about autocracy and fascism for several years now, in both his scholarly and popular books about Russian and German history. Wh...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/09/historian-timothy-snyder-presents-20-lessons-for-defending-democracy-against-tyranny.html

Nearly every Civil Rights icon becomes more of a symbol than a complex human being over time, a consequence of iconography in general. This has certainly been the case with opera singer Marian An...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/09/watch-opera-legend-marian-andersons-historic-performance-on-the-steps-of-the-lincoln-memorial-1939.html

No one person can take credit for the invention of American Sign Language. Its history reaches back to the early 19th century, when forms of sign developed among Deaf communities in New England. ...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/09/the-hidden-history-of-hand-talk-the-native-american-sign-language-that-predated-asl-by-centuries.html

Mikhail Gorbachev, the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union, died last month at age 91, a news event that triggered responses ranging from “Who?” to “Wow, was he still alive?” The fir...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/09/when-mikhail-gorbachev-the-last-soviet-leader-starred-in-a-pizza-hut-commercial-1998.html

If you’re just starting out on acoustic guitar, buying your first instrument might seem simple enough…. Head to your local music shop (or ecommerce retailer), thrust out your hand, and say so...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/09/the-ultimate-acoustic-guitar-guide.html

Elton John is packing up his fabulous outfits and hitting stages for the last time, making a graceful exit from the road at age 75 with his “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour. He will, of cour...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/09/elton-john-presents-14-of-his-iconic-looks-from-1968-to-now.html

Image via Wikimedia Commons In the legend of the Buddha, prince Siddhartha encounters the poor souls outside his palace walls and sees, for the first time, the human condition: debilitating illne...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/08/simone-de-beauvoirs-philosophy-on-finding-meaning-in-old-age.html

John Coltrane talked about his playing in educational terms, seeing himself as a student and, through his playing, as a teacher of new musical forms and possibilities. His most enduring lesson ma...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/08/watch-a-jaw-dropping-visualization-of-john-coltranes-giant-steps-solo.html

Though my shocked soul recoils, my tongue shall tell. — Pliny the Younger A great deal of what we know — or think we know — about the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 AD comes f...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/08/the-only-written-eye-witness-account-of-pompeiis-destruction.html

Kate Bush has been lying in wait for us on this side of the millennium – especially for those of us on the U.S. side of the pond, who paid too little attention when she became pop royalty in th...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/08/why-80s-british-pop-queen-kate-bush-owns-2022.html

I have often been asked if Christopher defended me because he was my close friend. The truth is that he became my close friend because he wanted to defend me. –Salman Rushdie Salman Rushdie rem...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/08/when-christopher-hitchens-vigilantly-defended-salman-rushdie-after-the-fatwah-it-was-a-matter-of-everything-i-hated-versus-everything-i-loved.html

If you don’t believe chairs can be art, you’ll have to take it up with the curators, gallerists, collectors, architects, and designers around the world who spend their lives obsessing over ch...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/08/how-a-simple-bauhaus-designed-chair-ended-up-everywhere-in-the-past-100-years.html