Culture & entertainment
Discover facts about culture & entertainment. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Culture & entertainment
How Heath Ledger prepared to play the Joker
Going slightly insane to play an insane person is the ultimate actor cliché, but Ledger took it terrifyingly far. He secluded himself in London, keeping a…
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Top Gear's racetrack is an old airfield
That legendary test track where supercars are pushed to their absolute limits is just flat concrete in the middle of nowhere. It is a WWII-era Canadian…
Discover moreWhy Muppets favor their left hands
Have you ever noticed that Kermit the Frog and his felt brethren almost exclusively use their left hands? Because most puppeteers are right-handed, their…
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Magical realist author completely burned early work
Attaining literary perfection occasionally means torching your own creative past. Gabriel García Márquez relentlessly destroyed early manuscripts and personal…
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Godzilla is an official citizen of Japan
Sure, the giant radioactive lizard has decimated the city's infrastructure countless times, but you can't buy that kind of publicity! In 2015, the Shinjuku…
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Why knife-throwing targets spin
Throwing blades at a beautiful assistant strapped to a spinning wheel looks impossible, but the rotation is actually the secret. The spinning motion creates…
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Ed Sheeran releasing a studio album of pure collaborations
Rather than carry the burden of singing every single verse, Ed Sheeran threw a massive musical networking party. His 'No.6 Collaborations Project' features…
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Why the One Ring could become impossibly heavy
Carrying a small piece of jewelry shouldn't be a physically exhausting endeavor. But this specific evil artifact violently manipulates its own weight,…
Discover moreThe fruit-only diet that sent Ashton Kutcher to the ER
Turns out, exclusively consuming fruit is a fantastic way to destroy your pancreas. While preparing to play tech mogul Steve Jobs, Ashton Kutcher adopted…
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John Travolta famously mispronounced Idina Menzel's name as Adele Dazeem at the Oscars
It's one thing to stumble over a name, but it's an absolute art form to invent a completely new human identity on live television. During the 2014 Oscars,…
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Risk originally featured completely different wooden cubes
Because nothing asserts global dominance quite like a tiny, colorful square of wood. When the famous game of global conquest initially launched, it did not…
Discover moreMadonna recorded Like a Virgin with a bad cold
When it was time to record the vocals for 'Like a Virgin,' Madonna was suffering from a brutal sinus infection. Instead of rescheduling, she simply powered…
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The V-chip couldn't actually understand TV content
The mandated V-chip in older televisions didn't analyze the actual content on screen. It purely read encoded demographic metadata hidden inside the broadcast…
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When TV networks shipped shows by airplane
High-speed transmission used to mean buying a plane ticket. Before reliable satellite uplinks, networks literally recorded the East Coast feed onto massive…
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How Hugh Jackman got Wolverine’s veins to stand out
Male body standards in superhero movies are totally normal and not at all a horrific medical hazard. To achieve that vascular, shredded look for his shirtless…
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Sigourney Weaver really made Alien Resurrection’s impossible shot
No CGI, no camera tricks, just pure, unadulterated cinematic witchcraft. Ron Perlman famously nearly ruined the take by breaking character to cheer when…
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Why Wile E. Coyote survives until he looks down
In the animated desert, running off a sheer cliff is perfectly safe as long as the coyote refuses to look down, proving that cartoon physics run entirely on…
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The Sopranos filmed inside a real strip club
You would think a prestige HBO show about brutal mobsters would just build a sterile soundstage, but they opted for the raw authenticity of a thriving adult…
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Threatening death by divine intervention
Fundraising takes a very dark turn when divine threats are involved. A broadcaster declared on live television that the lord would personally end his life if…
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Concert encores are planned before the show
Screaming for ten minutes in pitch darkness to beg the band to come back is an utter waste of breath. The encore is a rigorously scheduled, contractually…
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Why TV characters watch exactly three seconds
In the television universe, attention spans are practically nonexistent. Whenever a character turns on a broadcast to catch a vital news bulletin, they watch…
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Why Starfleet's redshirts rarely survive missions
Putting on a red uniform in this sprawling sci-fi universe is essentially signing your own death warrant. These nameless security officers exist solely to…
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Early silent films were shot in a nearly square ratio
Before the panoramic vistas of modern cinema, everyone was essentially watching giant Instagram posts. The original standard aspect ratio established by…
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Why Mozart wrote music for clocks he hated
Long before automated playlists, Mozart was out here composing bangers for inanimate objects. He was commissioned to write pieces specifically for mechanical…
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