How Brunelleschi Engineered Florence’s Iconic Dome

in Architecture, History | February 11th, 2026

No one who trav­els to Flo­rence can help see­ing the dome of the Cathe­dral of Saint Mary of the Flower. That’s true not just because of its sheer loom­ing phys­i­cal pres­ence over the rest of the city, but also because of its impor­tance as an achieve­ment in var­i­ous kinds of his­to­ry, from that of engi­neer­ing to archi­tec­ture to reli­gion. Its sto­ry is told by art his­to­ri­ans Beth Har­ris and Steven Zuck­er in their new Smarthis­to­ry video above, which begins in the year 1417. At the time, Zuck­er explains, Flo­rence had a “huge” prob­lem: the ground­work for its ambi­tious­ly large cathe­dral had been laid a cen­tu­ry before, but nobody knew how to build the dome for which its plans called.

The assump­tion, says Har­ris, was that “by the time they had to build it, they would fig­ure out how to do it,” a reflec­tion of both the more relaxed speed of con­struc­tion in the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry, as well as a pace of inno­va­tion that must have felt rapid­ly on the increase.

Such a struc­ture had­n’t been built since the Pan­theon in antiq­ui­ty, the out­do­ing of which would, at least in the­o­ry, con­firm Florence’s recep­tion of the torch of civ­i­liza­tion from Rome. But none of the tra­di­tion­al tech­niques could sup­port a dome of this size, atop so high a tow­er, dur­ing con­struc­tion. Sal­va­tion even­tu­al­ly came in the unpromis­ing form of Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi, an archi­tect, sculp­tor, and gold­smith with­out much of a résumé — but, cru­cial­ly, with a deep under­stand­ing of the Pan­theon.

“Brunelleschi real­ized that hemi­spher­i­cal domes func­tion in a self-sup­port­ing man­ner if they’re con­struct­ed out of self-sup­port­ing con­cen­tric cir­cles,” Zuck­er says, and his chal­lenge was to use that knowl­edge to build an octag­o­nal dome. This involved design­ing two domes, a thick inner one cov­ered by a thin out­er one. Drop €30 on a tick­et, and you can ascend the stairs through the inter-dome gap your­self. There the walls reveal the her­ring­bone brick pat­tern that kept the struc­ture sta­ble; at a larg­er scale, those bricks form struc­tur­al ele­ments, much like over­sized ver­sions of the stones used to build arch­es since time immemo­r­i­al. Regard­ing almost any pic­ture of Flo­rence, your eye may go straight to the cathe­dral, drawn both to the dome and to the splen­dor of its oth­er era-mix­ing archi­tec­tur­al fea­tures. But only from the inside can you under­stand how it all works.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the World’s Biggest Dome Was Built: The Sto­ry of Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi and the Duo­mo in Flo­rence

How Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi, Untrained in Archi­tec­ture or Engi­neer­ing, Built the World’s Largest Dome at the Dawn of the Renais­sance

The Beau­ty & Inge­nu­ity of the Pan­theon, Ancient Rome’s Best-Pre­served Mon­u­ment: An Intro­duc­tion

Why Hasn’t the Pantheon’s Dome Col­lapsed?: How the Romans Engi­neered the Dome to Last 19 Cen­turies and Count­ing

How Design­ing Build­ings Upside-Down Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Archi­tec­ture, Mak­ing Pos­si­ble St. Paul’s Cathe­dral, Sagra­da Família & More

His­to­ri­an Answers Burn­ing Ques­tions About The Renais­sance

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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Jack Kerouac Lists 9 Essentials for Writing Spontaneous Prose

in Uncategorized | February 11th, 2026

Image by  Tom Palum­bo, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Jack Ker­ouac wants you to turn writ­ing into “free devi­a­tion (asso­ci­a­tion) of mind into lim­it­less blow-on-sub­ject seas of thought, swim­ming in sea of Eng­lish with no dis­ci­pline, oth­er than rhythms of rhetor­i­cal exha­la­tion and expos­tu­lat­ed state­ment….” Think you can do that? Find out by fol­low­ing Kerouac’s “Essen­tials of Spon­ta­neous Prose.” He pub­lished this doc­u­ment in Black Moun­tain Review in 1957 and wrote it in response to a request from Allen Gins­berg and William S. Bur­roughs that he explain his method for writ­ing The Sub­ter­raneans in three days time.

And for a the­o­ry of Kerouac’s not quite the­o­ry, vis­it the site of Maris­sa M. Juarez, for­mer­ly a pro­fes­sor of Rhetoric, Com­po­si­tion, and the Teach­ing of Eng­lish at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona. Juarez rais­es some salient points about why Kerouac’s “Essen­tials” bemuse the Eng­lish teacher: His method “dis­cour­ages revi­sion… chas­tis­es gram­mat­i­cal cor­rect­ness, and encour­ages writer­ly flex­i­bil­i­ty.” Read Kerouac’s full “Essen­tials of Spon­ta­neous Prose” here or below. [Note: If you see what looks like typos, they are not errors. They are part of Ker­ouac’s orig­i­nal, spon­ta­neous text.]

SET-UP: The object is set before the mind, either in real­i­ty. as in sketch­ing (before a land­scape or teacup or old face) or is set in the mem­o­ry where­in it becomes the sketch­ing from mem­o­ry of a def­i­nite image-object.

PROCEDURE: Time being of the essence in the puri­ty of speech, sketch­ing lan­guage is undis­turbed flow from the mind of per­son­al secret idea-words, blow­ing (as per jazz musi­cian) on sub­ject of image.

METHOD: No peri­ods sep­a­rat­ing sen­tence-struc­tures already arbi­trar­i­ly rid­dled by false colons and timid usu­al­ly need­less com­mas-but the vig­or­ous space dash sep­a­rat­ing rhetor­i­cal breath­ing (as jazz musi­cian draw­ing breath between out­blown phras­es)– “mea­sured paus­es which are the essen­tials of
our speech”– “divi­sions of the sounds we hear”- “time and how to note it down.” (William Car­los Williams)

SCOPING: Not “selec­tiv­i­ty” of expres­sion but fol­low­ing free devi­a­tion (asso­ci­a­tion) of mind into lim­it­less blow-on-sub­ject seas of thought,
swim­ming in sea of Eng­lish with no dis­ci­pline oth­er than rhythms of rhetor­i­cal exha­la­tion and expos­tu­lat­ed state­ment, like a fist com­ing down on a table with each com­plete utter­ance, bang! (the space dash)- Blow as deep as you want-write as deeply, fish as far down as you want, sat­is­fy your­self first, then read­er can­not fail to receive tele­path­ic shock and mean­ing-excite­ment by same laws oper­at­ing in his own human mind.

LAG IN PROCEDURE: No pause to think of prop­er word but the infan­tile pile­up of scat­o­log­i­cal buildup words till sat­is­fac­tion is gained, which will turn out to be a great append­ing rhythm to a thought and be in accor­dance with Great Law of tim­ing.

TIMING: Noth­ing is mud­dy that runs in time and to laws of time-Shake­spear­i­an stress of dra­mat­ic need to speak now in own unal­ter­able way or for­ev­er hold tongue-no revi­sions (except obvi­ous ratio­nal mis­takes, such as names or cal­cu­lat­ed inser­tions in act of not writ­ing but insert­ing).

CENTER OF INTEREST: Begin not from pre­con­ceived idea of what to say about image but from jew­el cen­ter of inter­est in sub­ject of image at moment of writ­ing, and write out­wards swim­ming in sea of lan­guage to periph­er­al release and exhaus­tion-Do not after­think except for poet­ic or P. S. rea­sons. Nev­er after­think to “improve” or defray impres­sions, as, the best writ­ing is always the most painful per­son­al wrung-out tossed from cra­dle warm pro­tec­tive mind-tap from your­self the song of your­self, blow!-now!-your way is your only way- “good”-or “bad”-always hon­est (“ludi- crous”), spon­ta­neous, “con­fes­sion­als’ inter­est­ing, because not “craft­ed.” Craft is craft.

STRUCTURE OF WORK: Mod­ern bizarre struc­tures (sci­ence fic­tion, etc.) arise from lan­guage being dead, “dif­fer­ent” themes give illu­sion of “new” life. Fol­low rough­ly out­lines in out­fan­ning move­ment over sub­ject, as riv­er rock, so mind­flow over jew­el-cen­ter need (run your mind over it, once) arriv­ing at piv­ot, where what was dim-formed “begin­ning” becomes sharp-neces­si­tat­ing “end­ing” and lan­guage short­ens in race to wire of time-race of work, fol­low­ing laws of Deep Form, to con­clu­sion, last words, last trick­le-Night is The End.

MENTAL STATE: If pos­si­ble write “with­out con­scious­ness” in semi-trance (as Yeats’ lat­er “trance writ­ing”) allow­ing sub­con­scious to admit in own unin­hib­it­ed inter­est­ing nec­es­sary and so “mod­ern” lan­guage what con­scious art would cen­sor, and write excit­ed­ly, swift­ly, with writ­ing-or-typ­ingcramps, in accor­dance (as from cen­ter to periph­ery) with laws of orgasm, Reich’s “becloud­ing of con­scious­ness.” Come from with­in, out-to relaxed and said.

Oh, and for authenticity’s sake, you should try Kerouac’s “Essen­tials” on a type­writer. It’s all he had when he wrote The Sub­ter­raneans. No gram­mar robots to dis­tract him.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

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:

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road: The Only Known Footage of the Beat Icon Read­ing His Work (1959)

Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Map of the Hitch­hik­ing Trip Nar­rat­ed in On the Road

Jack Kerouac’s 30 Beliefs and Tech­niques For Writ­ing Mod­ern Prose

Cor­mac McCarthy’s Three Punc­tu­a­tion Rules, and How They All Go Back to James Joyce

Allen Ginsberg’s “Celes­tial Home­work”: A Read­ing List for His Class “Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats”

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

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Were the Egyptian Pyramids Not Built Up, But Carved Down?: A Bold New Theory Explains Their Construction

in Architecture, History | February 10th, 2026

We know more or less every­thing we could pos­si­bly know about ancient Egypt­ian civ­i­liza­tion. That owes in large part to the advanced state of record-keep­ing it achieved, and how many of its writ­ings have sur­vived, up to and includ­ing — as pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture — a home­work assign­ment and a list of excus­es giv­en by builders who missed work. There just hap­pens to be one espe­cial­ly glar­ing gap in our knowl­edge: exact­ly how the ancient Egyp­tians built the Pyra­mids of Giza. This inter­sec­tion of rel­a­tive igno­rance and extreme fas­ci­na­tion has, as archi­tec­ture YouTu­ber Dami Lee acknowl­edges in the video above, inspired no end of crack­pot-ism. Noth­ing could be as unpromis­ing as unso­licit­ed con­tact from some­one claim­ing to have dis­cov­ered the secret of the pyra­mids.

The case of a Kore­an inde­pen­dent researcher called Huni Choi proved to be dif­fer­ent, for rea­sons Lee uses the video to lay out. Con­ven­tion­al assump­tions about how the pyra­mids were built hold that work­ers would have had to drag the stones up one or more ramps, though the dimen­sions of the struc­tures dic­tate that the project would neces­si­tate huge, com­plex, or huge and com­plex ramp sys­tems — whose own con­struc­tion has some­how left behind not a trace of evi­dence.

Accord­ing to Choi, “the Great Pyra­mid was­n’t built on its own, but through a chain of ‘sac­ri­fi­cial’ struc­tures” designed to be “can­ni­bal­ized.” The idea is that the pyra­mids were “over­built,” start­ing with a gigan­tic “trape­zoidal mass” with an inte­grat­ed ramp sys­tem, which, after being topped out, was then carved down into the pyra­mid shape we still find so famil­iar and com­pelling.

If true, Choi’s the­o­ry would solve the long-intractable prob­lem of the point­ed tops, which posed such a thorny engi­neer­ing prob­lem that even oth­er pyra­mid-build­ing civ­i­liza­tions seem­ing­ly avoid­ed even attempt­ing them. It also accounts for how the Egypt­ian design­ers and builders could have kept an eye on the angles all the while, in order to make sure the things were going up straight. And what of the left­over stone cut away from each pyra­mid? Why, it would sim­ply have been re-used for the con­struc­tion of the next one. This all squares not just with the esti­mat­ed mass of the Giza com­plex, but also with appar­ent ancient Egypt­ian atti­tudes toward the nat­ur­al and built envi­ron­ment. Alas, unlike in, say, physics, an archae­o­log­i­cal the­o­ry like this one remains dif­fi­cult to prove dis­pos­i­tive­ly, bar­ring anoth­er tech­no­log­i­cal break­through that enables a new form of analy­sis of the pyra­mids them­selves. Still, it’s a lot more sat­is­fy­ing than just assum­ing some ancient aliens did it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pyra­mids of Giza: Ancient Egypt­ian Art and Archaeology–a Free Online Course from Har­vard

A Walk­ing Tour Around the Pyra­mids of Giza: 2 Hours in Hi Def

Who Real­ly Built the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids — and How Did They Do It?

How Did They Build the Great Pyra­mid of Giza?: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Ancient Egypt­ian Pyra­mids May Have Been Built with Water: A New Study Explore the Use of Hydraulic Lifts

Isaac New­ton The­o­rized That the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Revealed the Tim­ing of the Apoc­a­lypse: See His Burnt Man­u­script from the 1680s

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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Rare Video: Vince Guaraldi’s First Televised Performance of “Linus and Lucy” (1964)

in Music, Television | February 10th, 2026

In 1964—a year before the release of A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas—Vince Guaral­di gave the first tele­vised per­for­mance of “Linus and Lucy.” Filmed for pub­lic tele­vi­sion, the per­for­mance fea­tured Guaral­di on piano, Tom Bee­son on bass, and John Rae on drums. Long unseen, this 1964 per­for­mance cap­tures the piece in its ear­li­est tele­vised form, well before A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas became the sec­ond-best-sell­ing jazz album in his­to­ry. Sit back, take a deep breath, and enjoy this groovy, his­toric per­for­mance.

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 Inno­v­a­tive Jazz Pianist Vince Guaral­di Became the Com­pos­er of Beloved Char­lie Brown Music

The Vel­vet Under­ground as Peanuts Char­ac­ters: Snoopy Morphs Into Lou Reed, Char­lie Brown Into Andy Warhol

An Intro­duc­tion to Vince Guaral­di, the Jazz Com­pos­er Who Cre­at­ed the Best Christ­mas Album Ever, A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas

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Why Some People Think in Words, While Others Think in Pictures & Feelings

in Psychology | February 9th, 2026

The age of social media has shown human­i­ty a fair few truths about itself, not all of them flat­ter­ing. But once in a while, one of the waves of dis­course that roll through the inter­net real­ly does help us bet­ter under­stand one anoth­er. Take the sur­prise some have expressed in recent years upon find­ing out that the expres­sion to “pic­ture” some­thing in one’s head isn’t just a fig­ure of speech. You mean that peo­ple “pic­tur­ing an apple,” say, haven’t been just think­ing about an apple, but actu­al­ly see­ing one in their heads? The inabil­i­ty to do that has a name: aphan­ta­sia, from the Greek word phan­ta­sia, “image,” and pre­fix -a, “with­out.”

That same tem­plate has late­ly been used to cre­ate anoth­er term, anen­dopha­sia, whose roots endo and pha­sia mean “inner” and “speech.” As you might expect, the word refers to the lack of an inter­nal mono­logue. That sounds bizarre to many who hear it for the first time: some because they can’t imag­ine think­ing in words, and oth­ers because they can’t imag­ine think­ing in any­thing else.

These, as explained in the Void­ed Thoughts video above, are just some of the ways the expe­ri­ences inside our heads dif­fer. Some 40 per­cent of us hear and even have con­ver­sa­tions with “inter­nal voic­es,” about 50 per­cent of us see things in our mind’s eye instead, and some 20 per­cent report think­ing exclu­sive­ly in feel­ings. Those who belong to one of those groups will have trou­ble imag­in­ing what life is like for any­one in the oth­ers.

This owes to the inher­ent inac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of one human being’s sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence to anoth­er, a con­di­tion that has bedev­iled philoso­phers prac­ti­cal­ly since the emer­gence of their pro­fes­sion. But sci­en­tif­ic researchers have also been look­ing into it, and their stud­ies have sug­gest­ed that the capac­i­ty for inter­nal mono­logues and men­tal pic­tures makes more than a triv­ial dif­fer­ence in one’s life. Visu­al thinkers, the video notes, tend to be bet­ter at mem­o­riza­tion; ver­bal thinkers “usu­al­ly have an edge when it comes to plan­ning, prob­lem-solv­ing, and rehears­ing,” but they’re also “more prone to loop­ing thoughts.” In prac­tice, most of us use both forms of think­ing in dif­fer­ent pro­por­tions depend­ing on the sit­u­a­tion, and thus, to an extent, enjoy both sets of advan­tages — and should watch out for both sets of dis­ad­van­tages.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How to Silence the Neg­a­tive Chat­ter in Our Heads: Psy­chol­o­gy Pro­fes­sor Ethan Kross Explains

How to Improve Your Mem­o­ry: Four TED Talks Explain the Tech­niques to Remem­ber Any­thing

The Secret to High Per­for­mance and Ful­fil­ment: Psy­chol­o­gist Daniel Gole­man Explains the Pow­er of Focus

Why You Do Your Best Think­ing In The Show­er: Cre­ativ­i­ty & the “Incu­ba­tion Peri­od”

What a Lack of Social Con­tact Does to Your Brain

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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Frank Gehry Designed His Own Home, and What It Teaches About Creative Risk

in Architecture | February 9th, 2026

Few pro­fes­sion­als tend to live as long, or mature as slow­ly, as archi­tects. Frank Gehry died late last year at the for­mi­da­ble age of 96, with sev­er­al projects still under con­struc­tion. But he’d only real­ly been Frank Gehry for the past half-cen­tu­ry or so: not in the sense of hav­ing changed his name from Frank Gold­berg (a choice he made in his twen­ties and lat­er came to regret), but in hav­ing plant­ed his first rec­og­niz­able flag in the built envi­ron­ment. The envi­ron­ment was a qui­et mid­dle-class res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hood in San­ta Mon­i­ca; the flag was his own home, a mod­est Dutch Colo­nial fix­er-upper orig­i­nal­ly built in 1920, and trans­formed by Gehry into what resem­bled a high­ly con­trolled indus­tri­al dis­as­ter.

“He for­ti­fied parts of the pas­tel-paint­ed, shin­gled exte­ri­or with cor­ru­gat­ed steel, wrapped lay­ers of chain-link fenc­ing over oth­er por­tions in angu­lar planes not seen since Russ­ian Con­struc­tivism, and slammed a tilt­ed cubic sky­light, which looked as if it had fall­en from out­er space, into the kitchen,” writes New York Review of Books archi­tec­ture crit­ic Mar­tin Filler in his remem­brance of the archi­tect.

“In the inte­ri­or he exposed walls down to the wood­en studs and treat­ed ves­ti­gial white plas­ter patch­es as though they were Robert Ryman paint­ings. Para­dox­i­cal­ly, this messy mash-up also exud­ed a cozy domes­tic­i­ty,” a qual­i­ty on dis­play in Beyond Utopia: Chang­ing Atti­tudes in Amer­i­can Archi­tec­ture, a 1983 doc­u­men­tary co-writ­ten by Filler that includes an inter­view with Gehry in the house­’s kitchen.

About fif­teen years before the Guggen­heim Bil­bao, and two decades before Dis­ney Con­cert Hall, the star­chi­tect-to-be sits in the kitchen of his rad­i­cal­ly ren­o­vat­ed home with his two young sons. “I like that when you look through the top you can see down here in the kitchen,” says one of them. Now, here to speak more expan­sive­ly on the pro­jec­t’s virtues, and how they fit into the longer arc of Gehry’s career, is archi­tect and star of Archi­tec­tur­al Design’s Youtube chan­nel star Michael Wyet­zn­er, with a new video called “What Frank Gehry’s Per­son­al Home Teach­es Us About Cre­ative Risk.” And indeed, such risk-tak­ing stood out in his own gen­er­a­tion, most of whose major archi­tects adhered one way or anoth­er to mod­ernist or post­mod­ernist trends. As his home ren­o­va­tion sig­naled, Gehry decid­ed to go his own way.

At a glance, the jagged, almost aggres­sive look of the Gehry res­i­dence may hard­ly bring to mind the gleam­ing metal­lic curves, almost invari­ably described as “undu­lat­ing,” of the Guggen­heim Bil­bao and Dis­ney Hall. But Wyet­zn­er finds deep­er res­o­nances with var­i­ous ele­ments of the aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty that Gehry cul­ti­vat­ed in his work from his mid­dle-age self-rein­ven­tion through his nona­ge­nar­i­an emi­nence, not least empha­siz­ing the impres­sion of move­ment and the “noisy ver­sus qui­et” visu­al dynam­ic. Con­trast is pow­er, as all artists under­stand on one lev­el or anoth­er — and, per­haps, as Frank Gehry came to under­stand that while hang­ing out with Los Ange­les artists before he made his name. Though he nev­er exact­ly joined their ranks, it is as an “artist-archi­tect,” in Wyet­zn­er’s words, that he will be remem­bered.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Frank Gehry (RIP) and the Guggen­heim Muse­um Bil­bao Changed Archi­tec­ture

Gehry’s Vision for Archi­tec­ture

Vis­it the Homes That Great Archi­tects Designed for Them­selves: Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Cor­busier, Wal­ter Gropius & Frank Gehry

On the Impor­tance of the Cre­ative Brief: Frank Gehry, Maira Kalman & Oth­ers Explain its Essen­tial Role

Take an Online Course on Design & Archi­tec­ture with Frank Gehry

A Walk­ing Tour of Los Ange­les Archi­tec­ture: From Art Deco to Cal­i­for­nia Bun­ga­low

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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Discover Khipu, the Ancient Incan Record & Writing System Made Entirely of Knots

in Design, History, Language | February 6th, 2026

Khi­pus, the portable infor­ma­tion archives cre­at­ed by the Inca, may stir up mem­o­ries of 1970s macrame with their long strands of intri­cate­ly knot­ted, earth-toned fibers, but their func­tion more close­ly resem­bled that of a dense­ly plot­ted com­put­er­ized spread­sheet.

As Cecil­ia Par­do-Grau, lead cura­tor of the British Museum’s cur­rent exhi­bi­tion Peru: a jour­ney in time explains in the above Cura­tors Cor­ner episode, khi­pus were used to keep track of every­thing from inven­to­ries and cen­sus­es to his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tives, using a sys­tem that assigned mean­ing to the type and posi­tion of knot, spaces between knots, cord length, fiber col­or, etc.

Much of the infor­ma­tion pre­served with­in khi­pus has yet to be deci­phered by mod­ern schol­ars, though the Open Khipu Repos­i­to­ry — com­pu­ta­tion­al anthro­pol­o­gist Jon Clin­daniel’s open-source data­base — makes it pos­si­ble to com­pare the pat­terns of hun­dreds of khi­pus resid­ing in muse­um and uni­ver­si­ty col­lec­tions.

Even in the Incan Empire, few were equipped to make sense of a khipu. This task fell to quipu­ca­may­ocs, high­born admin­is­tra­tive offi­cials trained since child­hood in the cre­ation and inter­pre­ta­tion of these organ­ic spread­sheets.

Fleet mes­sen­gers known as chask­is trans­port­ed khipus on foot between admin­is­tra­tive cen­ters, cre­at­ing an infor­ma­tion super­high­way that pre­dates the Inter­net by some five cen­turies. Khi­pus’ stur­dy organ­ic cot­ton or native camelid fibers were well suit­ed to with­stand­ing both the rig­ors of time and the road.

A 500-year-old com­pos­ite khipu that found its way to the British Muse­um organ­ics con­ser­va­tor Nicole Rode pri­or to the exhi­bi­tion was intact, but severe­ly tan­gled, with a brit­tle­ness that betrayed its age. Below, she describes falling under the khipu’s spell, dur­ing the painstak­ing process of restor­ing it to a con­di­tion where­by researchers could attempt to glean some of its secrets.

Vis­it Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino’s web­site to learn more about khipu in a series of fas­ci­nat­ing short arti­cles that accom­pa­nied their ground­break­ing 2003 exhib­it QUIPU: count­ing with knots in the Inka Empire.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2022.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How the Incas Per­formed Skull Surgery More Suc­cess­ful­ly Than U.S. Civ­il War Doc­tors

How the Inca Used Intri­cate­ly-Knot­ted Cords, Called Khipu, to Write Their His­to­ries, Send Mes­sages & Keep Records

Explore the Flo­ren­tine Codex: A Bril­liant 16th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­script Doc­u­ment­ing Aztec Cul­ture Is Now Dig­i­tized & Avail­able Online

Ancient Maps that Changed the World: See World Maps from Ancient Greece, Baby­lon, Rome, and the Islam­ic World

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist in NYC.

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The Largest Historical Dictionary of English Slang Now Free Online: Covers 500 Years of the “Vulgar Tongue”

in English Language | February 6th, 2026

“The three vol­umes of Green’s Dic­tio­nary of Slang demon­strate the sheer scope of a life­time of research by Jonathon Green, the lead­ing slang lex­i­cog­ra­ph­er of our time. A remark­able col­lec­tion of this often reviled but end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing area of the Eng­lish lan­guage, it cov­ers slang from the past five cen­turies right up to the present day, from all the dif­fer­ent Eng­lish-speak­ing coun­tries and regions. Total­ing 10.3 mil­lion words and over 53,000 entries, the col­lec­tion pro­vides the def­i­n­i­tions of 100,000 words and over 413,000 cita­tions. Every word and phrase is authen­ti­cat­ed by gen­uine and ful­ly-ref­er­enced cita­tions of its use, giv­ing the work a lev­el of author­i­ty and schol­ar­ship unmatched by any oth­er pub­li­ca­tion in this field.”

If you head over to Ama­zon, that’s how you will find Green’s Dic­tio­nary of Slang pitched to con­sumers. The dic­tio­nary is an attrac­tive three-vol­ume, hard-bound set. But it comes at a price. $1,327.78.

Now comes the good news. Green’s Dic­tio­nary of Slang has become avail­able as a free web­site, giv­ing you access to an even more updat­ed ver­sion of the dic­tio­nary. Col­lec­tive­ly, the web­site lets you trace the devel­op­ment of slang over the past 500 years. And, as Men­tal Floss notes, the site “allows lookups of word def­i­n­i­tions and ety­molo­gies for free, and, for a well-worth-it sub­scrip­tion fee, it offers cita­tions and more exten­sive search options.” If you’ve ever won­dered about the mean­ing of words like kid­ly­wink, gol­lier, and lint­head, you now know where to begin.

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:

Cab Calloway’s “Hep­ster Dic­tio­nary,” A 1939 Glos­sary of the Lin­go (the “Jive”) of the Harlem Renais­sance

When J.R.R. Tolkien Worked for the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary and “Learned More … Than Any Oth­er Equal Peri­od of My Life” (1919–1920)

Oh My God! Win­ston Churchill Received the First Ever Let­ter Con­tain­ing “O.M.G.” (1917)

Dic­tio­nary of the Old­est Writ­ten Language–It Took 90 Years to Com­plete, and It’s Now Free Online

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The Rohonc Codex: Hungary’s Mysterious Manuscript That No One Can Read

in Books, History | February 5th, 2026

Image by Klaus Schmeh, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Mag­yar, which is spo­ken and writ­ten in Hun­gary, ranks among the hard­est Euro­pean lan­guages to learn. (The U.S. For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute puts it in the sec­ond-to-high­est lev­el, accom­pa­nied by the dread­ed aster­isk label­ing it as “usu­al­ly more dif­fi­cult than oth­er lan­guages in the same cat­e­go­ry.”) But once you mas­ter its vow­el har­mo­ny sys­tem, its def­i­nite and indef­i­nite con­ju­ga­tion, and its eigh­teen gram­mat­i­cal cas­es, among oth­er noto­ri­ous fea­tures, you can final­ly enjoy the work of writ­ers like Nobel Lau­re­ates Imre Kertész and Lás­zló Krasz­na­horkai in the orig­i­nal. Alas, no degree of mas­tery will be much help if you want to under­stand a much old­er — and, in its way, much more noto­ri­ous — Hun­gar­i­an text, the Rohonc Codex.

“Lit­tle is known about this book before it was bequeathed to the Hun­gar­i­an Acad­e­my of Sci­ences in 1838,” writes The Art News­pa­per’s Gar­ry Shaw. “Its 448 pages bear illus­tra­tions cov­er­ing Bib­li­cal themes and an as yet unread­able text, writ­ten using around 150 dif­fer­ent sym­bols.”

Like the famous­ly cryp­tic Voyn­ich Man­u­script, much cov­ered here on Open Cul­ture, “there has been much spec­u­la­tion over what lan­guage, if any, is encod­ed — rang­ing from old Hun­gar­i­an to San­skrit, or even a spe­cial­ly invent­ed one — as well as debate over the book’s ori­gin and date of cre­ation.” Most col­or­ful­ly, some attribute it to the noto­ri­ous nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry forg­er Sámuel Literáti Nemes.

Down­load this PDF scan of the Rohonc Codex, and you can behold for your­self both its often charm­ing­ly sim­ple medieval-style illus­tra­tions — many of which exhib­it a mix­ture of Chris­t­ian, Pagan, and Mus­lim sym­bol­ism — and the fiendish­ly reg­u­lar-look­ing script against which gen­er­a­tions of would-be deci­pher­ers have banged their heads. Here in the twen­ty-twen­ties, per­haps arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence can do its part, as has been attempt­ed with the Voyn­ich Man­u­script, to build upon ear­li­er analy­ses. One of those, con­duct­ed in the ear­ly nine­teen-sev­en­ties, deter­mined that, what­ev­er the lan­guage in which the Rohonc Codex was writ­ten, it shows no traces of case end­ings. To enthu­si­asts of bizarre man­u­scripts, that dis­cov­ery prob­a­bly means lit­tle, but to stu­dents of Mag­yar, noth­ing could come as a greater relief.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore a Dig­i­tized Edi­tion of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script, “the World’s Most Mys­te­ri­ous Book”

An Intro­duc­tion to the Voyn­ich Man­u­script, the World’s Most Mys­te­ri­ous Book

The Strangest Books in the World: Dis­cov­er The Madman’s Library, a Cap­ti­vat­ing Com­pendi­um of Pecu­liar Books & Man­u­scripts

An Intro­duc­tion to the Codex Seraphini­anus, the Strangest Book Ever Pub­lished

Solv­ing a 2,500-Year-Old Puz­zle: How a Cam­bridge Stu­dent Cracked an Ancient San­skrit Code

The Foot-Lick­ing Demons & Oth­er Strange Things in a 1921 Illus­trat­ed Man­u­script from Iran

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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Cats in Medieval Manuscripts & Paintings

in Art, History, Religion | February 5th, 2026

Renais­sance artist Albrecht Dür­er  (1471–1528) nev­er saw a rhi­no him­self, but by rely­ing on eye­wit­ness descrip­tions of the one King Manuel I of Por­tu­gal intend­ed as a gift to the Pope, he man­aged to ren­der a fair­ly real­is­tic one, all things con­sid­ered.

Medieval artists’ ren­der­ings of cats so often fell short of the mark, Youtu­ber Art Deco won­ders if any of them had seen a cat before.

Point tak­en, but cats were well inte­grat­ed into medieval soci­ety.

Roy­al 12 C xix f. 36v/37r (13th cen­tu­ry)

Cats pro­vid­ed medieval cit­i­zens with the same pest con­trol ser­vices they’d been per­form­ing since the ancient Egyp­tians first domes­ti­cat­ed them.

Ancient Egyp­tians con­veyed their grat­i­tude and respect by regard­ing cats as sym­bols of divin­i­ty, pro­tec­tion, and strength.

Cer­tain Egypt­ian god­dess­es, like Bastet, were imbued with unmis­tak­ably feline char­ac­ter­is­tics.

The Vin­tage News reports that harm­ing a cat in those days was pun­ish­able by death, export­ing them was ille­gal, and, much like today, the death of a cat was an occa­sion for pub­lic sor­row:

When a cat died, it was buried with hon­ors, mum­mi­fied and mourned by the humans. The body of the cat would be wrapped in the finest mate­ri­als and then embalmed in order to pre­serve the body for a longer time. Ancient Egyp­tians went so far that they shaved their eye­brows as a sign of their deep sor­row for the deceased pet.

Aberdeen Uni­ver­si­ty Library, MS 24  f. 23v (Eng­land, c 1200)

The medieval church took a much dark­er view of our feline friends.

Their close ties to pagan­ism and ear­ly reli­gions were enough for cats to be judged guilty of witch­craft, sin­ful sex­u­al­i­ty, and frat­er­niz­ing with Satan.

In the late 12th-cen­tu­ry, writer Wal­ter Map, a soon-to-be archdea­con of Oxford, declared that the dev­il appeared before his devo­tees in feline form:

… hang­ing by a rope, a black cat of great size. As soon as they see this cat, the lights are turned out. They do not sing or recite hymns in a dis­tinct way, but they mut­ter them with their teeth closed and they feel in the dark towards where they saw their lord, and when they find it, they kiss it, the more humbly depend­ing on their fol­ly, some on the paws, some under the tail, some on the gen­i­tals. And as if they have, in this way, received a license for pas­sion, each one takes the near­est man or woman and they join them­selves with the oth­er for as long as they choose to draw out their game.

Pope Inno­cent VIII issued a papal bull in 1484 con­demn­ing the “devil’s favorite ani­mal and idol of all witch­es” to death, along with their human com­pan­ions.

13th-cen­tu­ry Fran­cis­can monk Bartholo­maeus Angli­cus refrained from demon­ic tat­tle, but nei­ther did he paint cats as angels:

He is a full lech­er­ous beast in youth, swift, pli­ant, and mer­ry, and leapeth and reseth on every­thing that is to fore him: and is led by a straw, and playeth there­with: and is a right heavy beast in age and full sleepy, and lieth sly­ly in wait for mice: and is aware where they be more by smell than by sight, and hunteth and reseth on them in privy places: and when he taketh a mouse, he playeth there­with, and eateth him after the play. In time of love is hard fight­ing for wives, and one scratch­eth and ren­deth the oth­er griev­ous­ly with bit­ing and with claws. And he maketh a ruth­ful noise and ghast­ful, when one prof­fer­eth to fight with anoth­er: and unneth is hurt when he is thrown down off an high place. And when he hath a fair skin, he is as it were proud there­of, and goeth fast about: and when his skin is burnt, then he bideth at home; and is oft for his fair skin tak­en of the skin­ner, and slain and flayed.

Pigs and rats also had a bad rep, and like cats, were tor­tured and exe­cut­ed in great num­bers by pious humans.

The Work­sop Bes­tiary Mor­gan Library, MS M.81 f. 47r (Eng­land, c 1185)

Not every medieval city was anti-cat. As the Aca­d­e­m­ic Cat Lady Johan­na Feen­stra writes of the above illus­tra­tion from The Work­sop Bes­tiary, one of the ear­li­est Eng­lish bes­tiaries:

Some would have inter­pret­ed the image of a cat pounc­ing on a rodent as a sym­bol for the dev­il going after the human soul. Oth­ers might have seen the cat in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent light. For instance, as Eucharis­tic guardians, mak­ing sure rodents could not steal and eat the Eucharis­tic wafers.

Bodleian Library Bod­ley 764 f. 51r (Eng­land, c 1225–50)

St John’s Col­lege Library, MS. 61 (Eng­land (York), 13th cen­tu­ry)

It took cat lover Leonar­do DaVin­ci to turn the sit­u­a­tion around, with eleven sketch­es from life por­tray­ing cats in char­ac­ter­is­tic pos­es, much as we see them today. We’ll delve more into that in a future post.

Con­rad of Megen­berg, ‘Das Buch der Natur’, Ger­many ca. 1434. Stras­bourg, Bib­lio­thèque nationale et uni­ver­si­taire, Ms.2.264, fol. 85r

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2022.

Relat­ed Con­tent

What Peo­ple Named Their Cats in the Mid­dle Ages: Gyb, Mite, Méone, Pan­gur Bán & More

Cats Migrat­ed to Europe 7,000 Years Ear­li­er Than Once Thought

Cats in Japan­ese Wood­block Prints: How Japan’s Favorite Ani­mals Came to Star in Its Pop­u­lar Art

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist in NYC.

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How the Beatles Wrote Their Songs: From Early Demos to Final Recordings

in Music | February 4th, 2026

More than a few of us can claim, with some con­fi­dence, to know every Bea­t­les song. And indeed it may be true, in that we’ve heard every track of all their stu­dio albums. But as decade after decade of Bea­t­les schol­ar­ship has demon­strat­ed, there’s know­ing their songs, and then there’s know­ing their songs. Musi­cian and YouTu­ber David Ben­nett has made it his project to attain the sec­ond kind of knowl­edge, and on his ded­i­cat­ed series UnBea­t­led, to share it with the pub­lic. In each UnBea­t­led video he ana­lyzes just one song — “Help!,” “Here Comes the Sun,” “Pen­ny Lane,” and so on — at a lev­el of detail fine enough to neces­si­tate not just break­ing it down to its com­po­nent tracks, but also exam­in­ing the demos and unre­leased takes record­ed in the stu­dio.

This process can reveal a great deal about the Bea­t­les’ song­writ­ing process, as Ben­nett explains in the video at the top of the post. In the course of twen­ty min­utes, he cov­ers eleven songs, a selec­tion not nec­es­sar­i­ly lim­it­ed to the group’s uni­ver­sal­ly praised com­po­si­tions.

Take the first, “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine,” whose ear­ly record­ings dif­fer both lyri­cal­ly, melod­i­cal­ly, and in time sig­na­ture from the ver­sion we know (and may or may not love), begin­ning with an idea of John’s and being fur­ther shaped by Paul through its iter­a­tions. Anoth­er of John’s musi­cal seeds is “Every­body Had a Hard Year,” whose fin­ger­pick­ing pat­tern (orig­i­nal­ly learned from Dono­van in India) is also heard in “Julia” and “Dear Pru­dence,”  and which evolved, with dif­fer­ent chords, into the mid­dle sec­tion of “I’ve Got a Feel­ing.”

Such inter­con­nec­tions come as rewards of close and deep lis­ten­ing to the Bea­t­les canon. And cer­tain songs turn out to be worlds of their own: “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er,” for instance, was assem­bled out of two com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent record­ings, then adjust­ed in tem­po and pitch to match in the mid­dle. One of those takes includes the voice of pro­duc­er George Mar­tin count­ing in the orches­tra, the pitch of which sug­gests that its mem­bers had orig­i­nal­ly played in a dif­fer­ent key than the one we hear. As Ben­nett notes, using the then rel­a­tive­ly nov­el tech­nol­o­gy of “vari-speed” had become prac­ti­cal­ly stan­dard in the Bea­t­les’ stu­dio process, as such tech­no­log­i­cal lay­er­ing and adjust­ment itself became a key part of their song­writ­ing process. It con­tributed much to their sig­na­ture “vibey, psy­che­del­ic, uncan­ny sound”: sought after by many bands over the past six decades, but nev­er tru­ly repli­cat­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How John Lennon Wrote the Bea­t­les’ Best Song, “A Day in the Life”

“Tomor­row Nev­er Knows”: How The Bea­t­les Invent­ed the Future With Stu­dio Mag­ic, Tape Loops & LSD

Is “Rain” the Per­fect Bea­t­les Song?: A New Video Explores the Rad­i­cal Inno­va­tions of the 1966 B‑Side

The “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” Demos: The Mak­ing of a Bea­t­les Clas­sic (1966)

How the Bea­t­les Exper­i­ment­ed with Indi­an Music & Pio­neered a New Rock and Roll Sound

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

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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