The Unlikely Friendship of Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla

in History, Literature, Technology | December 2nd, 2025

Mark Twain was, in the esti­ma­tion of many, the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca’s first tru­ly home­grown man of let­ters. And in keep­ing with what would be rec­og­nized as the can-do Amer­i­can spir­it, he could­n’t resist putting him­self forth now and again as a man of sci­ence — or, more prac­ti­cal­ly, a man of tech­nol­o­gy. Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his patent­ed inven­tions (includ­ing a bet­ter bra strap), the type­writer of which he made pio­neer­ing use to write a book, and even the inter­net-pre­dict­ing sto­ry he wrote in 1898. Giv­en Twain’s incli­na­tions, his fame, and the time in which he lived, it may come as no sur­prise to hear that he also struck up a friend­ship with the much-roman­ti­cized inven­tor Niko­la Tes­la.

As it hap­pens, Tes­la had become a fan of Twain’s long before they met, hav­ing found solace in the Amer­i­can writer’s books pro­vid­ed dur­ing a long, near-fatal stretch of child­hood ill­ness. He cred­its his recov­ery with the laugh­ter that read­ing mate­r­i­al pro­vid­ed him, and one imag­ines see­ing life in the U.S. through Twain’s eyes played some part in his even­tu­al emi­gra­tion there.

By that point, Twain him­self was liv­ing in Europe, though his fre­quent vis­its to New York meant that he could drop by Tes­la’s lab and see how his lat­est exper­i­ments with elec­tric­i­ty were going. It was there, in 1894, that the two men took the pho­to­graph above, in which Twain holds a vac­u­um lamp engi­neered by Tes­la and pow­ered (out of frame) by the elec­tro­mag­net­ic coil that bears his name.

As Ian Har­vey writes at The Vin­tage News, “Tes­la was a sci­en­tist whose work large­ly revolved around elec­tric­i­ty; at that time, mak­ing your liv­ing as a sci­en­tist and inven­tor could often mean hav­ing to be some­what of a show­man,” a pres­sure Twain under­stood. His­to­ry has record­ed that Tes­la pro­vid­ed Twain with — in addi­tion to an elec­tric­i­ty-based con­sti­pa­tion cure that worked rather too well — advice against putting his mon­ey into an uncom­pet­i­tive auto­mat­ic type­set­ting machine that, unfor­tu­nate­ly, went unheed­ed. The one­time river­boat cap­tain went on to make an even more unsound invest­ment in a pow­der called Plas­mon, which promised to end world hunger. Per­haps Tes­la’s spir­i­tu­al descen­dants are to be found in today’s Sil­i­con Val­ley, invent­ing the future; Mark Twain’s cer­tain­ly are, under­writ­ing any num­ber of far-fetched schemes, if with far less of a sense of humor.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Plays With Elec­tric­i­ty in Niko­la Tesla’s Lab (Pho­to, 1894)

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

Mark Twain’s Patent­ed Inven­tions for Bra Straps and Oth­er Every­day Items

Mark Twain Pre­dicts the Inter­net in 1898: Read His Sci-Fi Crime Sto­ry, “From The ‘Lon­don Times’ in 1904”

Niko­la Tesla’s Pre­dic­tions for the 21st Cen­tu­ry: The Rise of Smart Phones & Wire­less, The Demise of Cof­fee & More (1926/35)

When David Bowie Became Niko­la Tes­la: Watch His Elec­tric Per­for­mance in The Pres­tige (2006)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Talking Heads’ David Byrne Performs a Tiny Desk Concert

in Music | December 2nd, 2025

If you’ve seen a David Byrne con­cert in recent years, you know that he per­forms with a large ensem­ble of musi­cians, each car­ry­ing their own instru­ments across the stage, all while mov­ing in intri­cate­ly chore­o­graphed pat­terns. On his cur­rent tour, Byrne and his band stopped by NPR’s stu­dio and played a very dif­fer­ent kind of show—a show tight­ly squeezed behind NPR’s Tiny Desk. As you will see above, they per­formed two songs (“Every­body Laughs” and “Don’t Be Like That”) from Byrne’s new album, along with two Talk­ing Heads favorites, “(Noth­ing But) Flow­ers” and “Life Dur­ing Wartime.” Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

David Byrne Explains How the “Big Suit” He Wore in Stop Mak­ing Sense Was Inspired by Japan­ese Kabu­ki The­atre

A Behind-the-Scenes Tour of NPR’s Tiny Desk Con­cert

Watch a Very Ner­vous, 23-Year-Old David Byrne and Talk­ing Heads Per­form­ing Live in NYC (1976)

Watch David Byrne Prac­tice His Dance Moves for Stop Mak­ing Sense in New­ly Released Behind-the-Scenes Footage

224 Books About Music in David Byrne’s Per­son­al Library

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Inside Disney’s Long, Frustrated Quest to Create Artificial Human Beings: A Six-Hour Documentary

in History, Technology | December 1st, 2025

For young chil­dren today, just as it was for gen­er­a­tions of their pre­de­ces­sors, noth­ing is quite so thrilling about their first vis­it to a Dis­ney theme park as catch­ing a glimpse of Mick­ey Mouse, Don­ald Duck, or anoth­er beloved char­ac­ter greet­ing them in real life. Cre­at­ing this mem­o­rable expe­ri­ence requires noth­ing more advanced than a well-trained employ­ee (or “cast mem­ber,” as the com­pa­ny puts it) in an over­sized cos­tume. Nev­er­the­less, effec­tive though it may be, it was­n’t part of Walt Dis­ney’s long-term vision. A true man of the Space Age, he looked ahead to the time — sure­ly not all too far in the future — when he could instead fill Dis­ney­land with reli­able, untir­ing, per­fect­ly life­like robots in the shape of ani­mals, human beings, or any­thing else besides.

In the event, Dis­ney only lived long enough to see his peo­ple cre­ate a mechan­i­cal ver­sion of Abra­ham Lin­coln, whose abil­i­ties were lim­it­ed to stand­ing up from his chair and deliv­er­ing a short speech. By the time that “audio-ani­ma­tron­ic” res­ur­rec­tion of the Unit­ed States’ six­teenth pres­i­dent was first pub­licly shown at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, its rumored devel­op­ment had already set off a num­ber of eth­i­cal and aes­thet­ic con­tro­ver­sies. Yet it worked so well — at least after its ear­ly, embar­rass­ing tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties were ironed out — that some atten­dees assumed that they were look­ing at an actor dressed up as Lin­coln, and even won­dered if the poor fel­low got tired doing the same rou­tine all day long.

This sto­ry is includ­ed in the video above from Defunct­land, a YouTube chan­nel that focus­es on amuse­ment-park-relat­ed fail­ures, espe­cial­ly those con­nect­ed with the Dis­ney empire. The Great Moments with Mr. Lin­coln show was a suc­cess, as was the all-robot­ic Hall of Pres­i­dents that opened at Dis­ney­land in 1971, a few years after Dis­ney’s death. But try as it might — and spend as much as it will — the com­pa­ny has yet to real­ize the vision that came to obsess its founder: in effect, that of cre­at­ing tech­no­log­i­cal life. Of course, Dis­ney was hard­ly the first to enter­tain such Promethean ambi­tions: mankind had already been try­ing to pull that trick off for quite some time, as evi­denced by the efforts, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, of minds like Leonar­do da Vin­ci and the medieval poly­math Al-Jazari.

To explain Dis­ney’s long, frus­trat­ed quest to cre­ate arti­fi­cial human beings — or mice, as the case may be — requires a good deal of his­tor­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, and even philo­soph­i­cal con­text. That’s just what Defunct­land cre­ator Kevin Per­jur­er does, and then some, in the doc­u­men­tary that com­pris­es the ear­li­er video from last year and its just-released sec­ond part above. Over its col­lec­tive run­time of six hours, he goes deep into a ques­tion of great inter­est to Dis­ney enthu­si­asts: what, exact­ly, has pre­vent­ed the most ambi­tious enter­tain­ment com­pa­ny in the world from per­fect­ing its automa­tons, even here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry? But then, as those of us of a cer­tain age who have fond mem­o­ries of the rel­a­tive­ly crude likes of the Haunt­ed Man­sion and Pirates of the Caribbean (to say noth­ing of  non-Dis­ney oper­a­tions like Chuck. E Cheese) under­stand, per­fec­tion isn’t always the way to a child’s heart.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Medieval Ara­bic Man­u­script Fea­tures the Designs for a “Per­pet­u­al Flute” and Oth­er Inge­nious Mechan­i­cal Devices

The Armored-Knight “Robot” Designed by Leonar­do da Vin­ci (cir­ca 1495)

200-Year-Old Robots That Play Music, Shoot Arrows & Even Write Poems: Watch Automa­tons in Action

The First-Ever Look at the Orig­i­nal Dis­ney­land Prospec­tus

Dis­ney­land 1957: A Lit­tle Stroll Down Mem­o­ry Lane

A Map of the Dis­ney Enter­tain­ment Empire Reveals the Deep Con­nec­tions Between Its Movies, Its Mer­chan­dise, Dis­ney­land & More (1967)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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An Immersive, ASMR-Style Look at Japanese Woodblock Printing

in Art | December 1st, 2025

While not every Open Cul­ture read­er dreams of mov­ing to Japan and becom­ing a wood­block print­mak­er, it’s a safe bet that at least a few of you enter­tain just such a fan­ta­sy from time to time. David Bull, a British-Born Cana­di­an who got his first expo­sure to the art of ukiyo‑e in his late twen­ties, actu­al­ly did it. Though he’s been liv­ing in Japan and steadi­ly pur­su­ing his art there since 1986, only in recent years has he become known around the world. That’s thanks to his YouTube chan­nel, which we’ve fea­tured here sev­er­al times before. In the video above, one of his most pop­u­lar, he lets his view­ers expe­ri­ence print­mak­ing from his point of view, see­ing what he sees and even hear­ing what he hears.

Though Bull nor­mal­ly focus­es on the ear­ly stage carv­ing images into the blocks, here he spends about an hour on the final print­ing phase, going through a batch of eight sheets. As even a few min­utes’ view­ing reveals, this is a labor-inten­sive and thor­ough­ly ana­log process.

That impres­sion will be height­ened if you wear head­phones, since, as Bull explains, he shot the video while wear­ing in-ear micro­phones that record the sounds of the job just as he hears them. This par­tic­u­lar aspect of the pro­duc­tion required him to rise con­sid­er­ably ear­li­er than usu­al, in order to avoid the con­sid­er­able day­time noise on the streets of Tokyo right out­side his work­shop — and thus to more ful­ly sat­is­fy the large ASMR crowd.

The term ASMR, or “Autonomous Sen­so­ry Merid­i­an Response,” refers to a set of pleas­ing sen­sa­tions trig­gered by cer­tain kinds of sound, often those pro­duced by soft-spo­ken indi­vid­u­als like Bull or the kind of repet­i­tive, method­i­cal tool work he does. Chances are, many if not most of the almost 950,000 views this video has racked up so far have come from ASMR enthu­si­asts less inter­est­ed in Japan­ese wood­block print­ing per se than in the gen­er­al aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ence of watch­ing and lis­ten­ing to Japan­ese wood­block print­ing — at least at first. We all know how life can go: one day you’re check­ing out YouTube, just look­ing to relax, and the next you’re ensconced in Asakusa, hav­ing whol­ly devot­ed your­self to a three-and-a-half-mil­len­ni­um-year-old tra­di­tion­al art form.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Mak­ing of Japan­ese Wood­block Prints, from Start to Fin­ish, by a Long­time Tokyo Print­mak­er

Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

A Col­lec­tion of Hokusai’s Draw­ings Are Being Carved Onto Wood­blocks & Print­ed for the First Time Ever

Watch an Art Con­ser­va­tor Bring Clas­sic Paint­ings Back to Life in Intrigu­ing­ly Nar­rat­ed Videos

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How the “Marvelization” of Cinema Accelerates the Decline of Filmmaking

in Film | November 28th, 2025

As hard as it may be to believe, some of us have nev­er seen a movie belong­ing to the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse. If you’re one of those unini­ti­at­ed, none of the count­less clips incor­po­rat­ed into the Like Sto­ries of Old video essay above will tempt you to get ini­ti­at­ed. Nor will the laments aired by host Tom van der Lin­den, who, despite once enjoy­ing the MCU him­self, even­tu­al­ly came to won­der why keep­ing up with its releas­es had begun to feel less like a thrill than a chore. As if their CGI-laden sound and fury weren’t try­ing enough, there’s also “the con­stant quip­ping, the annoy­ing self-aware­ness, the fact that every­thing has to be a fran­chise now.”

Van der Lin­den labels a cen­tral fac­tor in the decline of the MCU “sto­ry­telling entropy.” Clas­sic films, you may have noticed, con­cen­trate prac­ti­cal­ly all the ener­gy in every facet of their pro­duc­tion toward the expres­sion of spe­cif­ic themes, sto­ries, and char­ac­ters; at their best, their every line, ges­ture, cut, and inven­tion rep­re­sents the tip of an artis­tic ice­berg. Take, to use a pop­u­lar exam­ple, the lightsaber intro­duced in Star Wars, which Van der Lin­den calls “not just a weapon, but a metaphor” that “sym­bol­i­cal­ly com­mu­ni­cates a lot about the phi­los­o­phy of its wield­er, and about the larg­er world that it exists in,” con­dens­ing “a mul­ti­tude of mean­ings and ideas into a sim­ple, sin­gu­lar object.”

It does so in the first two or three movies, at any rate. In the decades since, as the Star Wars uni­verse has grown ever vaster, more com­plex, and con­cep­tu­al­ly unwieldy, so the pro­lif­er­a­tion and mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the once-mar­velous lightsaber has turned it into some­thing mun­dane, even banal. So it goes with sto­ry­telling entropy, a phe­nom­e­non that afflicts every nar­ra­tive fran­chise com­mer­cial­ly com­pelled to grow with­out end. That process of expan­sion even­tu­al­ly turns even the most cap­ti­vat­ing orig­i­nal mate­ri­als dif­fuse and unin­volv­ing to all but the hard­est-core fans — by which point it has usu­al­ly become obvi­ous that cre­ators them­selves have long since lost their own pas­sion for the sto­ries.

Most MCU view­ers will admit that it has pro­duced miss­es as well as hits. But Mar­veliza­tion, as Van der Lin­den calls it, has also inspired oth­er, imi­ta­tive cor­po­rate fran­chis­es to pump out glob­al­ly mar­ketable con­tent fierce­ly pro­tect­ed by intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty lawyers — and has even drained the inter­est out of realms of film and tele­vi­sion that have noth­ing to do with super­heroes, swords, or sci-fi. Hol­ly­wood has always been about the bot­tom line, of course, but only in recent decades have mar­ket sat­u­ra­tion, cross-plat­form strat­e­gy, and max­i­mum crossover poten­tial come to dom­i­nate its pri­or­i­ties so com­plete­ly. From the MCU or oth­er­wise, a Mar­velized movie is one that, at bot­tom, has no press­ing need to be made — and that we, ulti­mate­ly, feel no press­ing need to see.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why Movies Don’t Feel Real Any­more: A Close Look at Chang­ing Film­mak­ing Tech­niques

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Illustrated Version of “Alice’s Restaurant”: Watch Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving Counterculture Classic

in Music | November 27th, 2025

Alice’s Restau­rant. It’s now a Thanks­giv­ing clas­sic, and some­thing of a tra­di­tion around here. Record­ed in 1967, the 18+ minute coun­ter­cul­ture song recounts Arlo Guthrie’s real encounter with the law, start­ing on Thanks­giv­ing Day 1965. As the long song unfolds, we hear all about how a hip­pie-bat­ing police offi­cer, by the name of William “Obie” Oban­hein, arrest­ed Arlo for lit­ter­ing. (Cul­tur­al foot­note: Obie pre­vi­ous­ly posed for sev­er­al Nor­man Rock­well paint­ings, includ­ing the well-known paint­ing, “The Run­away,” that graced a 1958 cov­er of The Sat­ur­day Evening Post.) In fair­ly short order, Arlo pleads guilty to a mis­de­meanor charge, pays a $25 fine, and cleans up the thrash. But the sto­ry isn’t over. Not by a long shot.

Lat­er, when Arlo (son of Woody Guthrie) gets called up for the draft, the pet­ty crime iron­i­cal­ly becomes a basis for dis­qual­i­fy­ing him from mil­i­tary ser­vice in the Viet­nam War. Guthrie recounts this with some bit­ter­ness as the song builds into a satir­i­cal protest against the war: “I’m sit­tin’ here on the Group W bench ’cause you want to know if I’m moral enough to join the Army, burn women, kids, hous­es and vil­lages after bein’ a lit­ter­bug.” And then we’re back to the cheery cho­rus again: “You can get any­thing you want, at Alice’s Restau­rant.”

We have fea­tured Guthrie’s clas­sic dur­ing past years. But, for this Thanks­giv­ing, we give you the illus­trat­ed ver­sion.

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:

The Sto­ry Behind “Alice’s Restau­rant,” Arlo Guthrie’s Song That’s Now a Thanks­giv­ing Tra­di­tion

What Amer­i­cans Ate for Thanks­giv­ing 200 Years Ago: Watch Re-Cre­ations of Recipes from the 1820s

Read 1,000+ Thanks­giv­ing Books Free at the Inter­net Archive

William S. Bur­roughs’ Scathing “Thanks­giv­ing Prayer,” Shot by Gus Van Sant

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 13 Tips for What to Do with Your Left­over Thanks­giv­ing Turkey

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What Was the Most Revolutionary Painting of the 20th Century?: The Case for Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

in Art, History | November 26th, 2025

Prac­ti­cal­ly any­one could take one glance at Les Demoi­selles d’Av­i­gnon and iden­ti­fy it as a Picas­so, even if they’ve nev­er seen it before and could­n’t say any­thing else about it. That alone goes some way to explain­ing why the paint­ing would end up ranked as the most impor­tant art­work of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, at least accord­ing to a study by Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go econ­o­mist David W. Galen­son. For that title it beat out the likes of Robert Smith­son’s Spi­ral Jet­ty, Richard Hamil­ton’s Just what is it that makes today’s homes so dif­fer­ent, so appeal­ing?, Mar­cel Ducham­p’s Foun­tain and Nude Descend­ing a Stair­case, No. 2, and Picas­so’s own Guer­ni­ca.

With Les Demoi­selles d’Av­i­gnon, Galen­son writes, “the great­est artist of the cen­tu­ry ini­ti­at­ed the century’s most impor­tant artis­tic move­ment. Art schol­ars debate whether the Demoi­selles should be con­sid­ered a Cubist paint­ing, but there is no ques­tion that it dif­fered pro­found­ly from all of the art that pre­ced­ed it, and that it began the devel­op­ment of Cubism.”

Paint­ed in ambi­tious response to Hen­ri Matis­se’s Le Bon­heur de vivre, its rejec­tion of tra­di­tion­al for­mal­i­ty and beau­ty shocked even Picas­so’s for­ward-think­ing col­leagues: “Not only did Matisse denounce the paint­ing as an attempt to dis­cred­it mod­ern art, but even Georges Braque, who would lat­er join forces with Picas­so in devel­op­ing Cubism, was ini­tial­ly so shocked by the paint­ing that he com­pared Picas­so to the fair­ground fire-eaters who drank kerosene to spit flames.”

Of course, there was also the mat­ter of the paint­ing’s sub­ject, five nude pros­ti­tutes in a Barcelona broth­el. But as explained by Beth Har­ris and Steven Zuck­er in the Smarthis­to­ry video above, the Demoi­selles was­n’t always about the demoi­selles alone. “In the orig­i­nal sketch­es, the women were focus­ing on a male that was includ­ed, a sailor,” says Zuck­er. “There was also a med­ical stu­dent.” At some stages, Har­ris empha­sizes, the lat­ter car­ried a human skull, a piece of pro­fes­sion­al equip­ment but also “a reminder of death, a memen­to mori. And so there seems to be some ten­sion here between the sen­su­al­i­ty that the sailor is indulging in and a mor­al­iz­ing reminder that the plea­sures of life are short”: an unusu­al per­spec­tive to be expressed by a 26-year-old, but then, Picas­so was­n’t the usu­al artist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pablo Picasso’s Child­hood Paint­ings: Pre­co­cious Works Paint­ed Between the Ages of 8 and 15

14 Self-Por­traits by Pablo Picas­so Show the Evo­lu­tion of His Style: See Self-Por­traits Mov­ing from Ages 15 to 90

Watch Pablo Picasso’s Cre­ative Process Unfold in Real-Time: Rare Footage Shows Him Cre­at­ing Draw­ings of Faces, Bulls & Chick­ens

Thou­sands of Pablo Picasso’s Works Now Avail­able in a New Dig­i­tal Archive

What Makes Picasso’s Guer­ni­ca a Great Paint­ing?: Explore the Anti-Fas­cist Mur­al That Became a World­wide Anti-War Sym­bol

How to Under­stand a Picas­so Paint­ing: A Video Primer

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Thanksgiving Menu at the Plaza Hotel in New York City (1899)

in Food & Drink, History | November 26th, 2025

Above, we have the menu for an 1899 Thanks­giv­ing din­ner at the Plaza Hotel in New York. If you were a turkey, you had it rel­a­tive­ly easy. But the ducks? Not so much. On the menu, you’ll find Mal­lard duck and Rud­dy duck. But also Red-head duck, Long Island duck­ling, Teal duck and Can­vas-back duck, too. A duck in NYC was not a good place to be.

And, oh, those prices!  Not one item above a few dol­lars. But let’s account for infla­tion, shall we? In 2021, one Red­di­tor not­ed: “I found a cal­cu­la­tor and it turns out that $.30 in 1899 equals $10.00 now. The Fried oys­ter crabs would be $24.99 now and a Philadel­phia chick­en would be $66.65. So, the cheap­est thing on the menu is Sweet but­ter­milk for $.10, but today would be $3.33.”

For our U.S. read­ers, enjoy your hol­i­day tomor­row…

Relat­ed Con­tent 

A Relax­ing, ASMR Re-Cre­ation of Peo­ple Cook­ing Thanks­giv­ing Din­ner in the 1820s

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe

Read 900+ Thanks­giv­ing Books Free at the Inter­net Archive

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 13 Tips for What to Do with Your Left­over Thanks­giv­ing Turkey

Bob Dylan’s Thanks­giv­ing Radio Show: A Playlist of 18 Delec­table Songs

 

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How to Improve Your Attention Span: Daniel Pink’s Strategies for the Digital Age

in Psychology | November 25th, 2025

In his new video above, the writer Daniel Pink pro­pos­es the fol­low­ing exer­cise: “Grab a book and time your­self. How long can you read with­out get­ting up or check­ing your phone? Real­ly try to push your­self, but don’t judge your­self if it’s only a few min­utes. Write down your time; that’s your base­line.” From there, you “train your atten­tion like a mus­cle: build it by start­ing small and grad­u­al­ly stretch­ing it.” This is just one of five strate­gies he rec­om­mends to “fix your atten­tion span,” a repair of which more and more of us feel in need the deep­er we get into the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry. If even open­ing up a book sounds like a bit much, first take up Pink’s chal­lenge of watch­ing this four-and-a-half minute video “on full screen, 1x speed, with no dis­trac­tions.”

As with any endeav­or, it’s impor­tant to start small. Once you have your base­line, how­ev­er you’ve mea­sured it, you can set about improv­ing it. In order to place your­self well to do so, Pink rec­om­mends elim­i­nat­ing dis­trac­tions from your imme­di­ate envi­ron­ment, which has already been “rigged against you,” not least by social media com­pa­nies: hence the impor­tance of cre­at­ing a “no phone zone,” or at least per­ma­nent­ly turn­ing off noti­fi­ca­tions.

Draw­ing on the work of Cal New­port (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture), he also sug­gests cre­at­ing cues — using cer­tain phys­i­cal move­ments, cer­tain music, cer­tain scents — that sig­nal your brain to go into work mode. But even in work mode, you should make sure to take breaks, delib­er­ate­ly, every 90 min­utes, or at what­ev­er inter­val your brain starts per­form­ing like a tod­dler in a melt­down.

On the high­est lev­el of all, we must “recon­nect atten­tion to mean­ing.” In oth­er words, we have to under­stand the rea­sons we’re doing a task, if any, before we can hope to con­cen­trate on it. “I learned this myself on my last book,” Pink says. “I was strug­gling. I was dis­tract­ed. I was on my phone and watch­ing sports high­lights rather than my work, and I real­ized the prob­lem was that I did­n’t know why I was writ­ing this book. I did­n’t have a pur­pose.” Only when he final­ly artic­u­lat­ed the ben­e­fit of doing that work, and then post­ed that artic­u­la­tion above his desk, did it start to flow. When next you find your­self unable to stick to a task on the job, a per­son­al project, or a book — whether you’re read­ing or writ­ing one — ask your­self: Why am I doing this? Maybe the answer will empow­er you to attend to it. Or maybe you’ll be bet­ter off doing some­thing else entire­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Focus: Five Talks Reveal the Secrets of Con­cen­tra­tion

The Case for Delet­ing Your Social Media Accounts & Doing Valu­able “Deep Work” Instead, Accord­ing to Com­put­er Sci­en­tist Cal New­port

The Sur­pris­ing Pow­er of Bore­dom: It Lets You Con­front Big Ques­tions & Give Life Mean­ing

Why You Should Only Work 3–4 Hours a Day, Like Charles Dar­win, Vir­ginia Woolf & Adam Smith

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

Medieval Monks Com­plained About Con­stant Dis­trac­tions: Learn How They Worked to Over­come Them

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch Winsor McCay’s The Sinking of the Lusitania, the First Major Animated Propaganda Film (1918)

in Animation, History | November 25th, 2025

You might know Win­sor McCay (1867? ‑1934) for the gor­geous­ly sur­re­al Lit­tle Nemo com­ic strip or for his ear­ly ani­mat­ed short Ger­tie the Dinosaur (1914). But did you know that he also cre­at­ed some of the ear­li­est exam­ples of ani­mat­ed pro­pa­gan­da ever?

On May 7, 1915, the RMS Lusi­ta­nia was just off the coast of Ire­land, head­ing towards its des­ti­na­tion of Liv­er­pool, when a Ger­man U‑boat attacked the ship with­out warn­ing. Eigh­teen min­utes after two tor­pe­does slammed into the ship, it was under water. 1,198 died. The furor over the inci­dent even­tu­al­ly led to the Unit­ed States enter­ing WWI.

At the time of the sink­ing, McCay was employed by William Ran­dolph Hearst as an edi­to­r­i­al car­toon­ist. Though McCay was incensed by the attack, Hearst was an iso­la­tion­ist and demand­ed that he draw anti-war car­toons. This grat­ed on the artist more and more until final­ly he decid­ed to fol­low up on his huge­ly suc­cess­ful Ger­tie the Dinosaur by mak­ing The Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia (1918), which you can see above.

The movie took two years of painstak­ing effort to make and con­sist­ed of over 25,000 drawings—all done by hand and most done by McCay him­self dur­ing his free time after work.

Com­pared to oth­er ani­ma­tion done around this time, the film is both stark and seri­ous, lend­ing it the air of a doc­u­men­tary. The piece, which isn’t much short­er than the actu­al time it took for the Lusi­ta­nia to sink, gives a blow-by-blow account of the attack. Though the inci­dent is depict­ed large­ly from afar, as if from a cam­era on anoth­er ship, McCay doesn’t shy away from show­ing some real­ly gut-wrench­ing moments of the tragedy up close. At one point, there is a shot of a des­per­ate moth­er try­ing to keep her baby above the waves. At anoth­er point, dozens of peo­ple are seen bob­bing in the chop­py seas like drift­wood.

And, just in case you haven’t quite grasped the thrust of the film, McCay includes some inter­ti­tles, which are, even by the stan­dards of war pro­pa­gan­da, pret­ty heavy-hand­ed.

The babe that clung to his mother’s breast cried out to the world – TO AVENGE the most vio­lent cru­el­ty that was ever per­pe­trat­ed upon an unsus­pect­ing and inno­cent peo­ple.

And

The man who fired the shot was dec­o­rat­ed for it by the Kaiser! – AND YET THEY TELL US NOT TO HATE THE HUN.

The curi­ous thing about the movie, con­sid­er­ing its sub­ject mat­ter, is how beau­ti­ful it is. Just look at the styl­ized lines of the ocean, the baroque arabesques of the smoke com­ing off the ship’s smoke­stacks, the ele­gant use of neg­a­tive space. Each and every cel of the movie is wor­thy of get­ting framed. How many war pro­pa­gan­da movies can you say that about?

You can find The Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia Ani­mat­ed in Real Time (1915)

Watch Win­sor McCay’s Lit­tle Nemo and Ger­tie the Dinosaur, and Wit­ness the Birth of Mod­ern Ani­ma­tion (1911–1914)

How Dis­ney Fought Fas­cism with Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Dur­ing World War II & Avert­ed Finan­cial Col­lapse

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. 

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200 Ansel Adams Photographs Expose the Rigors of Life in Japanese Internment Camps During WW II

in History, Photography | November 24th, 2025

Intern5

Images cour­tesy of the Library of Con­gress.

Actor George Takei was once best known as Star Trek’s Mr. Sulu. He still is, of course, but over the last cou­ple decades his friend­ly, intel­li­gent, and wicked­ly fun­ny pres­ence on social media has land­ed him a new pop­u­lar role as a civ­il lib­er­ties advo­cate. Takei’s activist pas­sion is informed not only by his sta­tus as a gay man, but also by his child­hood expe­ri­ences. At the age of 5, Takei was round­ed up with his Amer­i­can-born par­ents and tak­en to a Japan­ese intern­ment camp in Arkansas, where he would live for the next three years. In an inter­view with Democ­ra­cy Now, Takei spoke frankly about this his­to­ry:

We’re Amer­i­cans…. We had noth­ing to do with the war. We sim­ply hap­pened to look like the peo­ple that bombed Pearl Har­bor. But with­out charges, with­out tri­al, with­out due process—the fun­da­men­tal pil­lar of our jus­tice system—we were sum­mar­i­ly round­ed up, all Japan­ese Amer­i­cans on the West Coast, where we were pri­mar­i­ly res­i­dent, and sent off to 10 barb wire intern­ment camps—prison camps, real­ly, with sen­try tow­ers, machine guns point­ed at us—in some of the most des­o­late places in this coun­try.

Takei and his fam­i­ly were among over 100,000 Japanese-Americans—over half of whom were U.S. cit­i­zens—interned in such camps.

Intern3

Into one of these camps, Man­za­nar, locat­ed in the foothills of the Sier­ra Nevadas, cel­e­brat­ed pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ansel Adams man­aged to gain entrance through his friend­ship with the war­den. Adams took over 200 pho­tographs of life inside the camp.

In 1965, he donat­ed his col­lec­tion to the Library of Con­gress, writ­ing in a let­ter, “The pur­pose of my work was to show how these peo­ple, suf­fer­ing under a great injus­tice, and loss of prop­er­ty, busi­ness and pro­fes­sions, had over­come the sense of defeat and dis­pair [sic] by build­ing for them­selves a vital com­mu­ni­ty in an arid (but mag­nif­i­cent) envi­ron­ment.”

adams 2

Adams had anoth­er pur­pose as well—as schol­ar of the peri­od Frank H. Wu describes it—“to doc­u­ment some aspects of the intern­ment camp that the gov­ern­ment didn’t want to have shown.” These include “the barbed wire, and the guard tow­ers, and the armed sol­diers.” Pro­hib­it­ed from doc­u­ment­ing these con­trol mech­a­nisms direct­ly, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er “cap­tured them in the back­ground, in shad­ows,” says Wu: “In some of the pho­tos when you look you can see just faint­ly that he’s tak­ing a pho­to of some­thing, but in front of the pho­to you can see barbed wire, or on the ground you can see the shad­ow of barbed wire. Some of the pho­tos even show the blur­ry out­line of a soldier’s shad­ow.”

Intern4

The pho­tographs doc­u­ment the dai­ly activ­i­ties of the internees—their work and leisure rou­tines, and their strug­gles to main­tain some sem­blance of nor­mal­cy while liv­ing in hasti­ly con­struct­ed bar­racks in the harsh­est of con­di­tions.

adams camp

Though the land­scape, and its cli­mate, could be des­o­late and unfor­giv­ing, it was also, as Adams couldn’t help but notice, “mag­nif­i­cent.” The col­lec­tion includes sev­er­al wide shots of stretch­es of moun­tain range and sky, often with pris­on­ers star­ing off long­ing­ly into the dis­tance. But the major­i­ty of the pho­tos are of the internees—men, women, and chil­dren, often in close-up por­traits that show them look­ing var­i­ous­ly hope­ful, hap­py, sad­dened, and resigned.

Intern1

You can view the entire col­lec­tion at the Library of Con­gress’ online cat­a­log. Adams also pub­lished about 65 of the pho­tographs in a book titled Born Free and Equal: The Sto­ry of Loy­al Japan­ese Amer­i­cans in 1944. The col­lec­tion rep­re­sents an impor­tant part of Adams’ work dur­ing the peri­od. But more impor­tant­ly, it rep­re­sents events in U.S. his­to­ry that should nev­er be for­got­ten or denied.

Intern2

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Dis­ney Fought Fas­cism with Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Dur­ing World War II & Avert­ed Finan­cial Col­lapse

Dr. Seuss’ World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Films: Your Job in Ger­many (1945) and Our Job in Japan (1946)

Ansel Adams Reveals His Cre­ative Process in 1958 Doc­u­men­tary

Dis­cov­er Ansel Adams’ 226 Pho­tos of U.S. Nation­al Parks (and Anoth­er Side of the Leg­endary Pho­tog­ra­ph­er)

Dr. Seuss Draws Anti-Japan­ese Car­toons Dur­ing WWII, Then Atones with Hor­ton Hears a Who!

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

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