Josh Jones
Open Culture
Durham, NC, United States
Contact Josh
Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
| Recent: |
|
| Past: |
|
Past articles by Josh:
Hear the Radical Musical Compositions of Marcel Duchamp (1912-1915)
Abstract art, spurred into being by the emergence of photography, had by 1912 begun to face an even more technically adroit competitor for the public’s eye: film. → Read More
F. Scott Fitzgerald Reads From Shakespeare’s Othello (c.1940)
When F. → Read More
Moebius Draws Adventurous Ads for Maxwell House Coffee (1989)
What do you do after you’ve helped create one of the “first anti-heroes in Western comics”; pioneered the underground comics industry and heavy metal album covers; won the enduring admiration of Federico Fellini, Stan Lee, and Hayao Miyazaki; and brought your distinctive creative style to the look of sci-fi classics like Blade Runner, Alien, Tron, and The Abyss? → Read More
How Pink Floyd Built The Wall: The Album, Tour & Film
The making of Pink Floyd’s 1979 rock opera The Wall is rife with the kind of rock star ironies exploited a few years later by This Is Spinal Tap. → Read More
Watch Roxy Music Play Live with Brian Eno in Early Groundbreaking Performances (1972)
Just what, exactly, is Roxy Music? Those encountering the band for the first time when their self-titled debut came out in 1972 had questions. Were these 50s R&B throwbacks? Ziggy Stardust/Slade/T-Rex like glam rockers? Experimental art-rock-retro-futurists dressed like a Stax funk band on acid? → Read More
Watch World War II Unfold Day by Day: An Animated Map
In the story of World War II we all know, a handful of murderous villains and flawed yet capable defenders of democracy drive the narrative. The authors of a Kings College London project argue that this conventional history shows 'a preoccupation with the culpability of statesmen..... → Read More
Very Early Concert Footage of the B-52s, When New Wave Music Was Actually New (1978)
I recall with uncharacteristic clarity the first time I heard the B-52s. Forced on a youth-group ski trip by my parents, I arrived an angry thirteen-year-old wanna-be punk: mohawk, ripped jeans, patched leather jacket, disaffected scowl, and feigned air of adolescent cynical world-weariness. → Read More
The Earliest Known Appearance of the F-Word, in a Bizarre Court Record Entry from 1310
Medieval historian Paul Booth of Keele University discovered a use of the word dating back to 1310. It appears in a court record. → Read More
Two Million Wondrous Nature Illustrations Put Online by The Biodiversity Heritage Library
Are we truly in the midst of a human-caused sixth mass extinction, an era of “biological annihilation”? → Read More
The British Museum is Full of Looted Artifacts
As critics and fans wrote excitedly upon its release, Marvel’s Black Panther did an excellent job of creating sympathy for its villain. → Read More
700 Years of Persian Manuscripts Now Digitized and Available Online
Too often those in power lump thousands of years of Middle Eastern religion and culture into monolithic entities to be feared or persecuted. But at least one government institution is doing exactly the opposite. → Read More
7 Tips from Edgar Allan Poe on How to Write Vivid Stories and Poems
There may be no more a macabrely misogynistic sentence in English literature than Edgar Allan Poe’s contention that “the death… of a beautiful woman” is “unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.” (His perhaps ironic observation prompted Sylvia Plath to write, over a hundred years later, “The woman is perfected / Her dead / Body wears the smile of accomplishment.”) The sentence comes… → Read More
Harold Bloom Creates a Massive List of Works in The "Western Canon": Read Many of the Books Free Online
I have little desire to rehash the politics, but the facts are plain: by the time I arrived in college as an undergraduate English major in the mid-90s, the idea of the “Western Canon” as a container of—in the words of a famous hymn—“all that’s good, and great, and true” was seriously on the wane, to put it mildly. → Read More
View 250,000 British Paintings & Sculptures Free Online
A little over four years ago, discriminatory and arbitrarily confusing travel bans descended on the U.S., tearing refugee families apart and leaving thousands in diplomatic limbo. This seemed nightmarish enough at the time. → Read More
See Stevie Wonder Play “Superstition” and Banter with Grover on Sesame Street in 1973
In 1969, Sesame Street debuted and introduced America’s children—growing up in the midst of intense disputes over integration—to its urban sensibilities and multicultural cast, all driven by the latest in childhood development research and Jim Henson wizardry. → Read More
Why Butt Trumpets & Other Bizarre Images Appeared in Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts
In illuminated manuscripts, Medieval Europe can seem more like Monty Python and the Holy Grail than the grim tales of grey-faced, mildewed kings, monks, knights, and peasants turned out by the Hollywood dozen. → Read More
When Albert Einstein Championed the Creation of a One World Government (1945)
The concept of one-world government has long been a staple of violent apocalyptic prophecy and conspiracy theories involving various popes, the UN, FEMA, the Illuminati, and lizard people. → Read More
When Mikhail Gorbachev, the Last Soviet Leader, Starred in a Pizza Hut Commercial (1998)
The first response reflects poorly on the teaching of history: journalists reporting on Gorbachev’s death have been obliged to explain his significance to many American readers just a few decades after his name filled U.S. headlines. → Read More
Elton John Presents 14 of His Iconic Looks: From 1968 to Now
Elton John is packing up his fabulous outfits and hitting stages for the last time, making a graceful exit from the road at age 75 with his 'Farewell Yellow Brick Road' tour. → Read More
Simone de Beauvoir's Philosophy on Finding Meaning in Old Age
Image via Wikimedia Commons In the legend of the Buddha, prince Siddhartha encounters the poor souls outside his palace walls and sees, for the first time, the human condition: debilitating illness, aging, death. He is shocked. → Read More