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

in Animation, History | July 25th, 2025

Today, the Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny seems like one of those enti­ties that’s “too big to fail” — but dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, fail it near­ly did. Like the big-think­ing enter­tain­er-busi­ness­man he was, Walt Dis­ney him­self had been re-invest­ing the com­pa­ny’s prof­its into ever more ambi­tious ani­mat­ed films. This prac­tice took an unfor­tu­nate turn with Fan­ta­sia, which may now be regard­ed as a clas­sic even by those of us with­out inter­est in Dis­ney movies, but which did­n’t bring in the expect­ed box-office take when it was ini­tial­ly released in 1940. It fol­lowed the also-under­per­form­ing Pinoc­chio, which could­n’t reach audi­ences in war-torn Europe. The fol­low­ing year, Dis­ney found itself at the edge of bank­rupt­cy.

Then came the Japan­ese attack on Pearl Har­bor, which result­ed in the U.S. Army’s eight-month-long occu­pa­tion of Walt Dis­ney Stu­dios. The idea was to pro­tect a near­by Lock­heed plant, but Dis­ney, who’d already made inquiries about pro­duc­ing war films, used an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a deal that saved his com­pa­ny.

Walt Dis­ney Stu­dios was con­tract­ed to make not just a vari­ety of train­ing films for mil­i­tary use, but also a series of war-themed car­toons for pub­lic exhi­bi­tion. This was “total war,” after all, which required the mobi­liza­tion of the pub­lic at home, and the mobi­liza­tion of the pub­lic at home required domes­tic pro­pa­gan­da. Who bet­ter to stoke Amer­i­can desire for vic­to­ry over the Axis than Dis­ney’s biggest ani­mat­ed star at the time, Don­ald Duck?

In the most acclaimed of these car­toons, the Acad­e­my Award-win­ning Der Fuehrer’s Face from 1943, Don­ald Duck is employed at a muni­tions fac­to­ry in Nutzi­land, some kind of Axis super­state ruled over by Hiro­hi­to, Mus­soli­ni, and espe­cial­ly Hitler. It’s some­thing else to hear the phrase “Heil Hitler!” in Don­ald Duck­’s voice, and through­out his day of humil­i­a­tions and pri­va­tions in Nutzi­land, he has to say it quite a lot. Just when all of this has put him in a tail­spin toward mad­ness, he wakes up in his bed­room back in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, stars-and-stripes cur­tains, minia­ture Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, and all. For Don­ald, the night­mare is over — but in real life, Allied vic­to­ry remained far from a sure thing.

You can watch Der Fuehrer’s Face and sev­en oth­er Dis­ney-pro­duced World War II pro­pa­gan­da car­toons (along with the Looney Tunes short The Duck­ta­tors, from Warn­er Bros.) in the playlist above. To be sure, some of them con­tain ele­ments con­sid­ered crude and even offen­sive here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry. But like all pro­pa­gan­da, they’re all of great his­tor­i­cal val­ue, in the realm of both polit­i­cal his­to­ry and the his­to­ry of ani­ma­tion. Con­sid­er how they found their way into Europe and Rus­sia, find­ing audi­ences there even as the war raged on; con­sid­er, too, how well-loved Don­ald Duck and his com­pa­tri­ots have been by gen­er­a­tions of Ger­man, Ital­ian, and Japan­ese chil­dren. After this total war, no one enjoyed more total a vic­to­ry than Dis­ney.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Edu­ca­tion for Death: The Mak­ing of the Nazi – Walt Disney’s 1943 Film Shows How Fas­cists Are Made

Neu­ro­science and Pro­pa­gan­da Come Togeth­er in Disney’s World War II Film Rea­son and Emo­tion

Before Cre­at­ing the Moomins, Tove Jans­son Drew Satir­i­cal Art Mock­ing Hitler & Stal­in

Pri­vate Sna­fu: The World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Cre­at­ed by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel

“Evil Mick­ey Mouse” Invades Japan in a 1934 Japan­ese Ani­me Pro­pa­gan­da Film

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

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 Nazis’ 10 Control-Freak Rules for Jazz Performers: A Strange List from World War II

in Health, Literature, Music | July 24th, 2025

Like the rock and roll rev­o­lu­tion of the 1950s, which shocked staid white audi­ences with trans­la­tions of black rhythm and blues, the pop­u­lar­i­ty of jazz caused all kinds of racial pan­ic and social anx­i­ety in the ear­ly part of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Long before the rise of Euro­pean fas­cism, many Amer­i­can groups expressed extreme fear and agi­ta­tion over the rise of minor­i­ty cul­tur­al forms. But by World War II, jazz was intrin­si­cal­ly woven into the fab­ric of Amer­i­can major­i­ty cul­ture, albeit often in ver­sions scrubbed of blues under­tones. This was not, of course, the case in Nazi occu­pied Europe, where jazz was sup­pressed; like most forms of mod­ern art, it bore the stig­ma of impu­ri­ty, inno­va­tion, pas­sion… all qual­i­ties total­i­tar­i­ans frown on (even anti-fas­cist the­o­rist Theodor Adorno had a seri­ous beef with jazz).

And while it’s no great sur­prise that Nazis hat­ed jazz, it seems they expressed their dis­ap­proval in a very odd­ly spe­cif­ic way, at least in the rec­ol­lec­tion of Czech writer and dis­si­dent Josef Skvorecky.

On the occa­sion of Skvorecky’s death, J.J. Gould point­ed out in The Atlantic that the writer was him­self one of the char­ac­ters that so inter­est­ed Kubrick. An aspir­ing tenor sax­o­phone play­er liv­ing in Third Reich-occu­pied Czecho­slo­va­kia, Skvorecky had ample oppor­tu­ni­ty to expe­ri­ence the Nazis’ “con­trol-freak hatred of jazz.” In the intro to his short nov­el The Bass Sax­o­phone, he recounts from mem­o­ry a set of ten bizarre reg­u­la­tions issued by a Gauleit­er, a region­al Nazi offi­cial, that bound local dance orches­tras dur­ing the Czech occu­pa­tion.

  1. Pieces in fox­trot rhythm (so-called swing) are not to exceed 20% of the reper­toires of light orches­tras and dance bands;
  2. In this so-called jazz type reper­toire, pref­er­ence is to be giv­en to com­po­si­tions in a major key and to lyrics express­ing joy in life rather than Jew­ish­ly gloomy lyrics;
  3. As to tem­po, pref­er­ence is also to be giv­en to brisk com­po­si­tions over slow ones (so-called blues); how­ev­er, the pace must not exceed a cer­tain degree of alle­gro, com­men­su­rate with the Aryan sense of dis­ci­pline and mod­er­a­tion. On no account will Negroid excess­es in tem­po (so-called hot jazz) or in solo per­for­mances (so-called breaks) be tol­er­at­ed;
  4. So-called jazz com­po­si­tions may con­tain at most 10% syn­co­pa­tion; the remain­der must con­sist of a nat­ur­al lega­to move­ment devoid of the hys­ter­i­cal rhyth­mic revers­es char­ac­ter­is­tic of the bar­bar­ian races and con­ducive to dark instincts alien to the Ger­man peo­ple (so-called riffs);
  5. Strict­ly pro­hib­it­ed is the use of instru­ments alien to the Ger­man spir­it (so-called cow­bells, flex­a­tone, brush­es, etc.) as well as all mutes which turn the noble sound of wind and brass instru­ments into a Jew­ish-Freema­son­ic yowl (so-called wa-wa, hat, etc.);
  6. Also pro­hib­it­ed are so-called drum breaks longer than half a bar in four-quar­ter beat (except in styl­ized mil­i­tary march­es);
  7. The dou­ble bass must be played sole­ly with the bow in so-called jazz com­po­si­tions;
  8. Pluck­ing of the strings is pro­hib­it­ed, since it is dam­ag­ing to the instru­ment and detri­men­tal to Aryan musi­cal­i­ty; if a so-called pizzi­ca­to effect is absolute­ly desir­able for the char­ac­ter of the com­po­si­tion, strict care must be tak­en lest the string be allowed to pat­ter on the sor­dine, which is hence­forth for­bid­den;
  9. Musi­cians are like­wise for­bid­den to make vocal impro­vi­sa­tions (so-called scat);
  10. All light orches­tras and dance bands are advised to restrict the use of sax­o­phones of all keys and to sub­sti­tute for them the vio­lin-cel­lo, the vio­la or pos­si­bly a suit­able folk instru­ment.

As The Atlantic notes, “being a Nazi, this pub­lic ser­vant obvi­ous­ly did­n’t miss an oppor­tu­ni­ty to couch as many of these reg­u­la­tions as he could in racist or anti-Semit­ic terms.” This racial­ized fear and hatred was the source, after all, of the objec­tion. It’s almost impos­si­ble for me to imag­ine what kind of music this set of restric­tions could pos­si­bly pro­duce, but it most cer­tain­ly would not be any­thing peo­ple would want to dance to. And that was prob­a­bly the point.

For more on Josef Skvorecky’s life as a writer under Nazism and his escape from Czecho­slo­va­kia after the Sovi­et inva­sion, read his illu­mi­nat­ing Paris Review inter­view.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 16,000 Art­works the Nazis Cen­sored and Labeled “Degen­er­ate Art”: The Com­plete His­toric Inven­to­ry Is Now Online

Hear the Nazi’s Biz­zaro Pro­pa­gan­da Jazz Band, “Char­lie and His Orches­tra” (1940–1943)

How France Hid the Mona Lisa & Oth­er Lou­vre Mas­ter­pieces Dur­ing World War II

When the Nazis Declared War on Expres­sion­ist Art (1937)

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Plato, Aristotle & Other Greek Philosophers in Raphael’s Renaissance Masterpiece, The School of Athens

in Art, History | July 24th, 2025

Among the won­ders to behold at the Vat­i­can Muse­ums are the larg­er-than-life forms of the titans of Greek phi­los­o­phy. It’s wide­ly known that at the cen­ter of Raphael’s fres­co The School of Athens, which dom­i­nates one wall of the twelve Stanze di Raf­fael­lo in the Apos­tolic Palace, stand Pla­to and Aris­to­tle. In real­i­ty, of course, the two were not con­tem­po­raries: more than three decades sep­a­rat­ed the for­mer’s death from the lat­ter’s birth. But in Raphael’s artis­tic vision, great men (and pos­si­bly a great woman) of all gen­er­a­tions come togeth­er under the ban­ner of learn­ing, from Anax­i­man­der to Aver­roes, Epi­cu­rus to Euclid, and Par­menides to Pythago­ras.

Even in this com­pa­ny, the fig­ure sit­ting at the bot­tom of the steps catch­es one’s eye. There are sev­er­al rea­sons for this, and gal­lerist-YouTu­ber James Payne lays them out in his new Great Art Explained video on The School of Athens above.

It appears to rep­re­sent Her­a­cli­tus, the pre-Socrat­ic philoso­pher asso­ci­at­ed with ideas like change and the uni­ty of oppo­sites, and a nat­ur­al can­di­date for inclu­sion in what amounts to a trans-tem­po­ral class por­trait of phi­los­o­phy. But Raphael seems to have added him lat­er, after that sec­tion of the pic­ture was already com­plete. An astute view­er may also notice Her­a­cli­tus’ hav­ing been ren­dered in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent, more mus­cu­lar style than that of the oth­er philoso­phers in the frame — a style more like the one on dis­play over in the Sis­tine Chapel.

In fact, Michelan­ge­lo was at work on his Sis­tine Chapel fres­coes at the very same time Raphael was paint­ing The School of Athens. It’s entire­ly pos­si­ble, as Payne tells it, for Raphael to have stolen a glimpse of Michelan­gelo’s stun­ning work, then gone back and added Michelan­ge­lo-as-Her­a­cli­tus to his own com­po­si­tion in trib­ute. There was prece­dent for this choice: Raphael had already mod­eled Socrates after Leonar­do da Vin­ci (who was, incred­i­bly, also alive and active at the time), and even ren­dered the ancient painter Apelles as a self-por­trait. With The School of Athens, Payne says, Raphael was “posi­tion­ing ancient philoso­phers as pre­cur­sors to Chris­t­ian truth,” in line with the think­ing of the Renais­sance. In sub­tler ways, he was also empha­siz­ing how the genius of the past lives on — or is, rather, reborn — in the present.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel & Explore Michelangelo’s Mas­ter­pieces Up Close

Artist Turns Famous Paint­ings, from Raphael to Mon­et to Licht­en­stein, Into Inno­v­a­tive Sound­scapes

What Makes The Death of Socrates a Great Work of Art?: A Thought-Pro­vok­ing Read­ing of David’s Philo­soph­i­cal & Polit­i­cal Paint­ing

The Sis­tine Chapel: A $22,000 Art-Book Col­lec­tion Fea­tures Remark­able High-Res­o­lu­tion Views of the Murals of Michelan­ge­lo, Bot­ti­cel­li & Oth­er Renais­sance Mas­ters

The Sis­tine Chapel of the Ancients: Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er 8 Miles of Art Paint­ed on Rock Walls in the Ama­zon

Ancient Phi­los­o­phy: Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia

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 The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne: A Free Documentary on the Heavy Metal Pioneer (RIP)

in Music | July 23rd, 2025

“This is sup­posed to be my farewell tour,” says Ozzy Osbourne in a clip includ­ed in the Biog­ra­phy tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary above. He then gives the fin­ger and adds, “We’ll see.” The year was 1993, and indeed, there turned out to have been much more to come for the for­mer front­man of Black Sab­bath, the band that opened the flood­gates — or per­haps hell­gates — of heavy met­al. After an impov­er­ished child­hood spent play­ing in the bomb sites of post­war Birm­ing­ham, Osbourne hopped from job to job, includ­ing one failed stint at a slaugh­ter­house and anoth­er as a crim­i­nal. He then turned singer, receiv­ing a PA sys­tem from his father and form­ing a blues group with a few local musi­cians. Peo­ple pay good mon­ey to see scary movies, they one day reck­oned, so why not make scary music?

The time was the late nine­teen-six­ties, when lis­ten­ers approached record albums as qua­si-cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ences. Tak­ing their name from Mario Bava’s anthol­o­gy hor­ror film, which had come out a few years before, Black Sab­bath deliv­ered on expec­ta­tions many weren’t even aware they had. Today, any­one can put on an ear­ly Black Sab­bath album and iden­ti­fy the music as heavy met­al, not a world apart from any of its new­er vari­ants.

But more than half a cen­tu­ry ago, the world had nev­er heard any­thing quite like it: there was the much-inten­si­fied low end of the sound, with its tuned-down, dis­tort­ed gui­tars liable to break into ener­getic riffs, as well as the flam­boy­ant­ly dark themes. On top of it all, Osbourne some­how man­aged to imbue the words, even when deliv­ered in a wal­low­ing or mum­bled man­ner, with a para­dox­i­cal clar­i­ty and exu­ber­ance.

Osbourne’s exist­ing ten­den­cies toward dis­or­der were sent into self-destruc­tive over­drive by suc­cess. Any­one would have put mon­ey on the odds of his ear­ly death, yet he man­aged to come back from dis­as­ters both per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al — many of them inflict­ed by his own sub­stance-fueled Jekyll-and-Hyde per­son­al­i­ty — again and again. Hence the title of the Biog­ra­phy episode, The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne. For fans who missed out on Black Sab­bath’s reign, there was Ozzfest, Osbourne’s rock fes­ti­val that occurred around the world between the mid-nineties and the late twen­ty-tens. The real­i­ty show The Osbournes made him a pop-cul­tur­al icon beloved even by view­ers with no inter­est in his music. Ulti­mate­ly, his real farewell did­n’t come to pass until Black Sab­bath’s final live set, which came as the cul­mi­na­tion of a day-long fes­ti­val put on in his home­town less than three weeks before his death. And though Ozzy Osbourne may now be gone, the Prince of Dark­ness per­sona he cre­at­ed will remain heavy met­al’s ani­mat­ing spir­it.

The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ozzy Osbourne’s Gui­tarist Zakk Wylde Plays Black Sab­bath on a Hel­lo Kit­ty Gui­tar

Who Invent­ed Heavy Met­al Music?: A Search for Ori­gins

Watch Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot, the Cult Clas­sic Film That Ranks as One of the “Great Rock Doc­u­men­taries” of All Time

Kids Orches­tra Plays Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” and Zeppelin’s “Kash­mir”

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are Alright: Sci­en­tif­ic Study Shows That They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

The Sovi­et Union Cre­ates a List of 38 Dan­ger­ous Rock Bands: Kiss, Pink Floyd, Talk­ing Heads, Vil­lage Peo­ple & More (1985)

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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Salvador Dalí Goes to Hollywood & Creates a Wild Dream Sequence for Alfred Hitchcock

in Film | July 23rd, 2025

Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel report­ed­ly car­ried rocks in their pock­ets dur­ing the pre­miere of their first film Un Chien Andalou, antic­i­pat­ing a vio­lent reac­tion from the audi­ence.

It was a fair con­cern. The movie might be almost 90 years old but it still has the pow­er to pro­voke – the film fea­tures a shot of a woman get­ting her eye slashed open with a straight razor after all. As it turned out, rocks weren’t need­ed. The audi­ence, filled with such avant-garde lumi­nar­ies as Pablo Picas­so and André Bre­ton liked the film. A dis­ap­point­ed Dalí lat­er report­ed that the night was “less excit­ing” than he had hoped.

Un Chien Andalou fea­tured many of Dalí’s visu­al obses­sions – eye­balls, ants crawl­ing out of ori­fices and rot­ting ani­mals. Dalí delight­ed in shock­ing and incit­ing peo­ple with his gor­geous, dis­turb­ing images. And he loved grandiose spec­ta­cles like a riot at a movie the­ater.

Dalí and Buñuel’s next movie, the caus­tic L’Age d’or, exposed the dif­fer­ences between the two artists and their cre­ative part­ner­ship implod­ed in pre-pro­duc­tion. Buñuel went on to make a string of sub­ver­sive mas­ter­pieces like Land With­out Bread, The Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel and The Dis­creet Charm of the Bour­geoisie; Dalí large­ly quit film in favor of his beau­ti­ful­ly craft­ed paint­ings.

Then Hol­ly­wood came call­ing.

Alfred Hitch­cock hired Dalí to cre­ate a dream sequence for his 1945 movie Spell­bound. Dalí craft­ed over 20 min­utes of footage of which rough­ly four and a half min­utes made it into the movie. “I want­ed to con­vey the dream with great visu­al sharp­ness and clarity–sharper than film itself,” Hitch­cock explained to Fran­cois Truf­faut in 1962. The sequence, which you can see up top, is filled with all sorts of Daliesque motifs – slashed eye­balls, naked women and phan­tas­magoric land­scapes. It is also the most mem­o­rable part of an oth­er­wise minor work by Hitch­cock.

Dalí’s fol­low-up film work was for, of all things, the Vin­cente Min­nel­li com­e­dy Father of the Bride (1950). Spencer Tra­cy plays Stan­ley Banks whose beau­ti­ful daugh­ter (Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor, no less) is get­ting mar­ried. As Stanley’s anx­i­ety over the impend­ing nup­tials spi­rals, he has one very weird night­mare. Cue Dalí. Stan­ley is late to the wed­ding. As he rush­es down the aisle, his clothes mys­te­ri­ous­ly get shred­ded by the tiled floor that bounces and con­torts like a piece of flesh.

This dream sequence, which you can see imme­di­ate­ly above, has few of the visu­al flour­ish­es of Spell­bound, but it still has plen­ty of Dalí’s trade­mark weird­ness. Those float­ing accusato­ry eyes. The way that Tracy’s leg seems to stretch. That floor.

Father of the Bride marked the end of Dalí’s work in Hol­ly­wood, though there were a cou­ple poten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tions that would have been amaz­ing had they actu­al­ly hap­pened. Dalí had an idea for a movie with the Marx Broth­ers called Giraffes on Horse­back Sal­ad. The movie would have “includ­ed a scene of giraffes wear­ing gas masks and one of Chico sport­ing a deep-div­ing suit while play­ing the piano.” Though Har­po was report­ed­ly enthu­si­as­tic about the pro­posed idea, Grou­cho wasn’t and the idea sad­ly came to noth­ing.

Lat­er in life, Dalí became a fix­ture on the talk show cir­cuit. On the Dick Cavett Show in 1970, he flung an anteater at Lil­lian Gish.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound: “No, You Can’t Pour Live Ants All Over Ingrid Bergman!”

Sal­vador Dalí Strolls onto The Dick Cavett Show with an Anteater, Then Talks About Dreams & Sur­re­al­ism, the Gold­en Ratio & More (1970)

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound

37 Hitch­cock Cameo Appear­ances Over 50 Years: All in One Video

Two Vin­tage Films by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

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

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A New 20-Minute Supercut of David Letterman Slamming CBS: “You Can’t Spell CBS Without BS”

in Current Affairs, Television | July 22nd, 2025

The can­cel­la­tion of The Late Show with Stephen Col­bert—CBS insists it was pure­ly a “finan­cial deci­sion,” the result of declin­ing ad rev­enue in late night tele­vi­sion. While some buy this argu­ment, oth­ers see it as a dif­fer­ent kind of “finan­cial deci­sion,” a deci­sion by Para­mount (the par­ent com­pa­ny of CBS) to sac­ri­fice Col­bert so that the Amer­i­can pres­i­dent won’t can­cel a lucra­tive $28-bil­lion merg­er. Yes­ter­day, David Let­ter­man, the pre­vi­ous host of CBS’ The Late Show, released a 20-minute super­cut fea­tur­ing the many times he took CBS to task over the years. The sub­text? He does­n’t seem to buy CBS’s talk­ing points. Nor does Jon Stew­art. More direct than Let­ter­man, Stew­art gives his own take on why CBS can­celed Col­bert: “I think the answer is in the fear and pre-com­pli­ance that is grip­ping all of Amer­i­ca’s insti­tu­tions at this very moment, insti­tu­tions that have cho­sen not to fight the venge­ful and vin­dic­tive actions of our pubic-hair-doo­dling com­man­der-in-chief. This is not the moment to give in. I’m not giv­ing in. I’m not going any­where.” Note to read­er: Jon Stew­art’s The Dai­ly Show airs on Com­e­dy Cen­tral, which is owned by Para­mount.

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 

Stephen Col­bert Reads Flan­nery O’Connor’s Dark­ly Comedic Sto­ry, “The Endur­ing Chill”

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts the Future on The David Let­ter­man Show (1980)

Hunter S. Thompson’s Many Strange, Unpre­dictable Appear­ances on The David Let­ter­man Show

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The Iconic Glass House Built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe—and the Lawsuit That Cast a Shadow Over It

in Architecture, History | July 22nd, 2025

It’s tempt­ing, in telling the sto­ry of the Edith Farnsworth House, to break out clichés like “Peo­ple who live in glass hous­es should­n’t throw stones.” For the res­i­dence in ques­tion is made pre­dom­i­nant­ly of glass, or rather glass and steel, and its first own­er turned out to have more than a few stones for its archi­tect: Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe, the last direc­tor of the Bauhaus, who’d immi­grat­ed from Nazi Ger­many to the Unit­ed States in the late nine­teen-thir­ties. It was at a din­ner par­ty in 1945 that he hap­pened to meet the for­ward-think­ing Chica­go doc­tor Edith Farnsworth, who expressed an inter­est in build­ing a whol­ly mod­ern retreat well out­side the city. Asked if one of his appren­tices could do the job, Mies offered to take it on him­self.

The task, as Mies con­ceived of archi­tec­ture in his time, was to build for an era in which high and rapid­ly advanc­ing indus­tri­al tech­nol­o­gy was becom­ing unavoid­able in ordi­nary lives. Such lives, prop­er­ly lived, would require new frames, and thor­ough­ly con­sid­ered ones at that. The shape ulti­mate­ly tak­en by the Farnsworth House is one such frame: order­ly, and to a degree that could be called extreme, while on anoth­er lev­el max­i­mal­ly per­mis­sive of human free­dom.

That was, in any case, the idea: in phys­i­cal real­i­ty, Farnsworth her­self had a long list of prac­ti­cal com­plaints about what she began to call “my Mies-con­cep­tion,” not least to do with its attrac­tion of insects and green­house-like heat reten­tion (uncom­pen­sat­ed for, in true Euro­pean style, by air con­di­tion­ing).

Chron­i­clers of the Farnsworth House saga tend to men­tion that the cen­tral rela­tion­ship appears to have exceed­ed that of archi­tect and client, at least for a time. But what­ev­er affec­tion had once exist­ed between them had sure­ly evap­o­rat­ed by the time they were suing each oth­er toward the end of con­struc­tion, with Mies alleg­ing non-pay­ment and Farnsworth alleg­ing mal­prac­tice. In the event, Farnsworth lost in court and used the house as a week­end retreat for a cou­ple of decades before sell­ing it to the British devel­op­er and archi­tec­tur­al enthu­si­ast Peter Palum­bo, who espe­cial­ly enjoyed its ambi­ence dur­ing thun­der­storms. Today it oper­ates as a muse­um, as explained by its exec­u­tive direc­tor Scott Mahaf­fey in the new Open Space video above. Hear­ing about all the tur­moil behind the Farnsworth House­’s con­cep­tion, the atten­dees of its tours might find them­selves think­ing that hell hath no fury like a client scorned.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Quick Ani­mat­ed Tour of Icon­ic Mod­ernist Hous­es

An Oral His­to­ry of the Bauhaus: Hear Rare Inter­views (in Eng­lish) with Wal­ter Gropius, Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe & More

The Mod­ernist Gas Sta­tions of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe

How a 1930s Archi­tec­tur­al Mas­ter­piece Har­ness­es the Sun to Keep Warm in the Win­ter & Cool in the Sum­mer

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

How This Chica­go Sky­scraper Bare­ly Touch­es the Ground

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 Life & Death of an Espresso Shot in Super Slow Motion

in Food & Drink | July 22nd, 2025

Some YouTu­ber post­ed online a pret­ty nice clip of an espres­so shot being pulled from a La Mar­zoc­co FB80 espres­so machine at 120 frames per sec­ond. They rec­om­mend mut­ing the sound, then putting on your own music. I gave it a quick shot with the famous sound­track for Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. And I’ll be damned, it syncs up pret­ty well. Have a bet­ter sound­track to rec­om­mend? Feel free to let us know in the com­ments sec­tion below.

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.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Birth of Espres­so: The Sto­ry Behind the Cof­fee Shots That Fuel Mod­ern Life

Under­stand­ing Espres­so: A Six-Part Series Explain­ing What It Takes to Pull the Ide­al Shot

Cof­fee Entre­pre­neur Rena­to Bialet­ti Gets Buried in the Espres­so Mak­er He Made Famous

How William S. Bur­roughs Used the Cut-Up Tech­nique to Shut Down London’s First Espres­so Bar (1972)

The Hertel­la Cof­fee Machine Mount­ed on a Volk­swa­gen Dash­board (1959): The Most Euro­pean Car Acces­so­ry Ever Made

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

 

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The Real Science Experiments That Inspired Frankenstein

in History, Literature, Science | July 21st, 2025

With the Hal­loween sea­son mere months away, the time has come to start think­ing about what fright­en­ing reads to line up for our­selves this year. Some of us may reach for Mary Shel­ley’s Franken­stein; or, The Mod­ern Prometheus, a sto­ry we all think we know. But a look into its con­text reveals that what’s now regard­ed as a time­less clas­sic was, in its day, quite a top­i­cal nov­el. Intro­duc­ing the 1931 James Whale film adap­ta­tion, the reg­u­lar hor­ror-movie play­er Edward Van Sloan describes Franken­stein as deal­ing with “the two great mys­ter­ies of cre­ation: life and death” — which, when Shel­ley’s nov­el was pub­lished more than a cen­tu­ry ear­li­er, were yet more mys­te­ri­ous still.

“Wor­ried by the poten­tial inabil­i­ty to dis­tin­guish between the states of life and death, two doc­tors, William Hawes and Thomas Cogan, set up the Roy­al Humane Soci­ety in Lon­don in 1774,” writes Sharon Rus­ton at The Pub­lic Domain Review. At the time, it was actu­al­ly called the Soci­ety for the Recov­ery of Per­sons Appar­ent­ly Drowned, a name that would’ve dou­bled neat­ly as a mis­sion state­ment. Falling into the rivers and canals of Lon­don was, it seems, a com­mon occur­rence in those days, and few mem­bers of the pub­lic pos­sessed the swim­ming skills to save them­selves. Thus the Soci­ety’s mem­bers took it upon them­selves to devise meth­ods of reviv­ing those “per­sons appar­ent­ly drowned,” whether their plunges were acci­den­tal­ly or delib­er­ate­ly tak­en.

One such attempt­ed sui­cide, writes Rus­ton, “seems to have been Mary Shelley’s moth­er, the fem­i­nist, Mary Woll­stonecraft,” who lat­er com­plained about how, after leap­ing into the Thames, she was “inhu­man­ly brought back to life and mis­ery.” That inci­dent could well have done its part to inspire Franken­stein, though notions of reviv­ing the dead were very much in the air at the time, not least due to the atten­tion being paid to the prac­tice of “Gal­vanism,” which involved stim­u­lat­ing the mus­cles of dead ani­mals and human bod­ies to move­ment using the then-nov­el phe­nom­e­non of elec­tric­i­ty. In the Eng­land of that his­tor­i­cal moment, it was­n’t entire­ly far-fetched to believe that the dead real­ly could be brought back to life.

You can learn more about the sci­en­tif­ic devel­op­ments, social changes, and human anx­i­eties (includ­ing about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of being buried alive) that formed Franken­stein’s cul­tur­al back­ground from the Vox His­to­ry Club video above. In a way, it seems inevitable that some­one in the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry would write about a sci­en­tist avant la let­tre who dares to cre­ate life from death. It just hap­pened to be the teenage Shel­ley, to whom the idea came while engaged in a com­pe­ti­tion with Lord Byron, the writer-physi­cian John Poli­dori, and her soon-to-be hus­band Per­cy Bysshe Shel­ley to see who could write the scari­est sto­ry. Two cen­turies lat­er, the sto­ry of Franken­stein may no longer scare us, but as told by Shel­ley, it still has a way of sound­ing strange­ly plau­si­ble.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Read­ing Mary Shelley’s Franken­stein on Its 200th Anniver­sary: An Ani­mat­ed Primer to the Great Mon­ster Sto­ry & Tech­nol­o­gy Cau­tion­ary Tale

Read a Huge Anno­tat­ed Online Edi­tion of Franken­stein: A Mod­ern Way to Cel­e­brate the 200th Anniver­sary of Mary Shelley’s Clas­sic Nov­el

Mary Shelley’s Hand­writ­ten Man­u­script of Franken­stein: This Is “Ground Zero of Sci­ence Fic­tion,” Says William Gib­son

The Very First Film Adap­ta­tion of Mary Shelley’s Franken­stein, a Thomas Edi­son Pro­duc­tion (1910)

The First Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Mary Shel­ley & Her Lit­er­ary Cre­ation Franken­stein Opens in Bath, Eng­land

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 Devilish History of the 1980s Parental Advisory Sticker: When Heavy Metal & Satanic Lyrics Collided with the Religious Right

in Music | July 21st, 2025

Frank Zap­pa called them the “Moth­ers of Pre­ven­tion,” the group of wives mar­ried to mem­bers of Con­gress who decid­ed in the mid-80s to go to war against rock lyrics and whip up some good ol’ con­ser­v­a­tive hys­te­ria.

We’ve talked about this time before on this site, espe­cial­ly as Zap­pa him­self tes­ti­fied in front of Con­gress and sparred on the Sun­day Belt­way shows like Cross­fire.

Vox’s Ear­worm series tack­les this moment in a time that would have lit­tle ram­i­fi­ca­tion before the design-ugly “Parental Advi­so­ry: Explic­it Con­tent” stick­er. (Just an aside: I know their head­line is click-baity, but real­ly? Heavy met­al and Satan gave us this stick­er? More like Tip­per Gore and their family’s pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions gave us it. Oy.)

Any­way, Gore’s Par­ents Music Resource Cen­ter (PMRC) gave us a list of the “Filthy Fif­teen,” includ­ing songs like Sheena Easton’s “Sug­ar Walls” and Madonna’s “Dress You Up,” which either con­tained lyrics “pro­mot­ing” vio­lence, sex­u­al ref­er­ences, drugs and alco­hol, and Satan’s favorite, the “occult.”

Estelle Caswell explores that last cat­e­go­ry and dives into the increas­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty dur­ing the ‘80s of heavy met­al music, which was often invok­ing Satan in its lyrics, or cre­at­ing occult-like atmos­pheres in its pro­duc­tion.

This campy, hor­ror­show cul­ture ran right into the grow­ing pow­er of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians and evan­gel­i­cal preach­ers who made a *lot* of mon­ey whip­ping up “Satan­ic Pan­ic” among their nation­al flock. They lis­tened to rock records back­wards, believ­ing they heard sub­lim­i­nal mes­sages.

Of course, none of this would have gone much fur­ther than church­es if it wasn’t for the major net­works turn­ing a noth­ing sto­ry into headlines–the Vox video reminds us how com­plic­it Ted Kop­pel, Bar­bara Wal­ters, Ger­al­do Rivera, et al were in pro­mot­ing it. They also looked at the ris­ing teenage sui­cide rate and used heavy met­al as a scape­goat, instead of–as the video explains–family breakups, drug abuse, eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty, and increas­ing access to guns.

The warn­ing label itself appeared in 1990, just as rap was tak­ing off and a new lyri­cal boogey­man appeared. Dig­i­tal media and file shar­ing, along with YouTube and oth­er sites, mut­ed this kind of cen­sor­ship. And par­ents, in the end, still need to do the job over what their chil­dren see or don’t.

How­ev­er, cen­sor­ship is back, but there are no Wash­ing­ton Wives act­ing as scolds. Now it is the whims of cap­i­tal, or it is a faulty algo­rithm that cen­sors old mas­ter paint­ings filled with nudi­ty, just as guilty as porn, that are our new decen­cy guardians. Where are those con­gres­sion­al hear­ings?

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Young Pat­ti Smith Rails Against the Cen­sor­ship of Her Music: An Ani­mat­ed, NSFW Inter­view from 1976

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are Alright: Sci­en­tif­ic Study Shows That They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

A Brief His­to­ry of Hol­ly­wood Cen­sor­ship and the Rat­ings Sys­tem

Frank Zap­pa Debates Whether the Gov­ern­ment Should Cen­sor Music in a Heat­ed Episode of Cross­fire: Why Are Peo­ple Afraid of Words? (1986)

Watch Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot, the Cult Clas­sic Film That Ranks as One of the “Great Rock Doc­u­men­taries” of All Time

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.

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Revisit One of the Most Polarizing Albums in Rock History: Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, Which Came Out 50 Years Ago

in Music | July 18th, 2025

Fifty years ago this month, Lou Reed near­ly destroyed his own career with one dou­ble album. Met­al Machine Music sold 100,000 copies dur­ing the three weeks of sum­mer 1975 between its release and its removal from the mar­ket. More than a few of the many buy­ers who prompt­ly returned it would have been expect­ing some­thing like Sal­ly Can’t Dance, Reed’s solo album from the pre­vi­ous year, whose slick­ly pro­duced songs went down eas­i­er than any­thing he’d record­ed with the Vel­vet Under­ground. What they heard when they put the new album on their turnta­bles (or insert­ed the Quadro­phon­ic 8‑track tape into their decks) was “noth­ing, absolute­ly noth­ing but scream­ing feed­back noise record­ed at var­i­ous fre­quen­cies, played back against var­i­ous oth­er noise lay­ers, split down the mid­dle into two total­ly sep­a­rate chan­nels of utter­ly inhu­man shrieks and hiss­es.”

That descrip­tion comes from vol­u­ble Creem rock crit­ic and avowed enthu­si­ast of deca­dence Lester Bangs, who also hap­pened to be one of Met­al Machine Music’s most fer­vent defend­ers. At one point he declared it “the great­est record ever made in the his­to­ry of the human eardrum.” (“Num­ber Two: Kiss Alive!”)

Much of what we know about the inten­tions behind this baf­fling album come from Bangs’ writ­ings, includ­ing those that pur­port to tran­scribe con­ver­sa­tions with Reed him­self, who’d been one of the crit­ic’s read­i­est ver­bal spar­ring part­ners. The inspi­ra­tion, as Reed explained to Bangs, came from lis­ten­ing to com­posers Ian­nis Xenakis and La Monte Young, who dared to go beyond the bound­aries of what most lis­ten­ers would con­sid­er music at all. Reed also insist­ed that he’d delib­er­ate­ly insert­ed bits and pieces of Mozart, Beethoven, and oth­er clas­si­cal mas­ters into his son­ic mael­strom, though Bangs clear­ly did­n’t buy it.

“Met­al Machine Music does­n’t seem so weird now, does it?” asked an inter­view­er on Night Flight just a decade or so after the album’s release. “No, it does­n’t, does it?” Reed says. “In light of Eno and all this stuff that came out now, it’s not near­ly as insane and crazy as they said it was then.” Indeed, it sounds almost of a piece with an influ­en­tial work of ambi­ent music like Bri­an Eno’s Music for Air­ports, though that album was meant to calm its lis­ten­ers rather than dri­ve them from the room. Over the half-cen­tu­ry since its release, Met­al Machine Music has accrued enough appre­ci­a­tion to be paid trib­utes like the live per­for­mances by Ger­man ensem­ble Zeitkratzer that have con­tin­ued long after Reed’s death. The lega­cy of his “elec­tron­ic instru­men­tal com­po­si­tion,” as he said after one such con­cert in 2007, also includes a name­sake clause in record­ing con­tracts stip­u­lat­ing that “the artist must turn in a record that sound like the artist that the record com­pa­ny signed — not come in with Met­al Machine Music.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Huge Anthol­o­gy of Noise & Elec­tron­ic Music (1920–2007) Fea­tur­ing John Cage, Sun Ra, Cap­tain Beef­heart & More

Teenage Lou Reed Sings Doo-Wop Music (1958–1962)

Hear Ornette Cole­man Col­lab­o­rate with Lou Reed, Which Lou Called “One of My Great­est Moments”

David Bowie and Lou Reed Per­form Live Togeth­er for the First and Last Time: 1972 and 1997

Lou Reed Cre­ates a List of the 10 Best Records of All Time

Lou Reed Album With Demos of Vel­vet Under­ground Clas­sics Get­ting Released: Hear an Ear­ly Ver­sion of “I’m Wait­ing for the Man”

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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