Culture & entertainment
Discover facts about culture & entertainment. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Culture & entertainment
Where moviegoers must stand for the anthem
Buying popcorn isn't the only obligation. In places like India and Thailand, theaters actively play the national anthem before the feature presentation,…
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How Twister sent meteorology enrollments soaring
Running directly into a catastrophic weather event in a dirty tank top looked so fun that atmospheric science programs saw enrollments double. Students…
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The cinema where your seat is a hot tub
Because sitting in a dark room with strangers wasn't intimate enough, an event company in the UK swapped standard seating for inflatable hot tubs. It combines…
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Why VHS tapes began with FBI warnings
Those terrifying blue FBI warning screens at the start of every VHS tape weren't just aggressive requests. They were legally mandated to be unskippable,…
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Urban Cowboy made mechanical bulls a craze
A romance movie inexplicably convinced America that riding a violent piece of bar machinery was the height of sex appeal. Bars across the country frantically…
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Why movie snacks were once considered vulgar
Before the 1930s, theaters were desperate to be seen as high culture. Patrons were expected to sit in perfectly rigid silence. Sneaking a snack into the…
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Why Rocky Horror still plays in theaters
Released in 1975, this bizarre, campy masterpiece has never actually ended its theatrical run. It holds the record for the longest continuous release in…
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How The Matrix's red pill escaped into politics
Leave it to the internet to take an allegory for trans identity and turn it into a weird geopolitical manifesto. The concept of taking the red pill to see the…
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The UK banned The Texas Chain Saw Massacre for 25 years
The British Board of Film Classification was so deeply offended by the sheer implied terror of a specific chainsaw-wielding cannibal film that they refused to…
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The cinemas with soundproof rooms for crying babies
Back in the 1940s, theaters were deeply tired of wailing babies ruining the ambiance. They installed glass-enclosed, soundproof rooms at the back of the…
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Audiences historically threw vegetables at bad movies
Modern audiences might furiously tweet about a bad film, but early cinema patrons kept it wonderfully medieval. If a projection broke or the plot was terribly…
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The cinema that hired ninjas to stop phone users
Fed up with the absolute degradation of public etiquette, a UK cinema actively employed staff dressed in skin-tight, black ninja suits. They lurked in the…
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Why cinema floors feel permanently sticky
That horrifying adhesive grip on your shoes isn't just a lack of mopping. It's the unique chemical composition of spilled high-fructose corn syrup from soda…
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The movie that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan
Proving that media can be historically devastating, this 1915 cinematic abomination didn't just normalize racism; it actively served as a recruitment tool. It…
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Some cinemas put slides inside the auditorium
To combat the sheer agony of forcing toddlers to sit still for two hours, some theaters in South Korea integrated massive colorful slides directly inside the…
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The movie that changed minds about climate change
Forget decades of peer-reviewed scientific journals; all it took was a scientist outrunning freeze-rays to convince the public. Studies showed that viewers of…
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How America edited Godzilla's message away
When a famous 1954 Japanese monster movie was imported, US distributors panicked over its heavy-handed anti-nuclear weapons message. They aggressively chopped…
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How Fight Club inspired real fight clubs
Missing the entire point of the anti-consumerist satire, extremely literal bros watched a film about toxic masculinity ruining society and decided it was a…
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The horror film Britain once banned from video stores
In the 1980s, moral panic swept Britain regarding unregulated VHS tapes. A famous 1973 film about a possessed girl vomiting pea soup was dragged into the…
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Why British dramas can't show real childbirth
British censorship laws are wonderfully specific. It is entirely illegal to distribute fictional entertainment media showing genuine, unsimulated footage of a…
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Greece operates stunning outdoor cinemas with deck chairs
Due to the sweltering Mediterranean heat, traditional closed-room auditoriums were unbearable. Athens pioneered the concept of the open-air summer cinema,…
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The cinema that has been showing films since 1907
Surviving two world wars and multiple regime changes, the Kino Pionier in Szczecin has been continuously operating since 1907. It originally functioned as a…
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A moviegoer was arrested for bringing a badger
Support animals have truly gotten out of hand. In a spectacularly weird incident, a theater patron in the UK caused absolute chaos when they were apprehended…
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The Silence of the Lambs sent women toward the FBI
Watching a brilliant young trainee outsmart a cannibal and a serial killer was apparently excellent career counseling. The FBI saw a massive surge in female…
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