Culture & entertainment
Discover facts about culture & entertainment. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Culture & entertainment
Mime thrived when actors were forbidden to speak
When speaking onstage was forbidden to many performers, mime let them tell stories through movement. Speech was reserved for privileged theatrical companies.
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Using tiny wooden dolls to mock the aristocracy
Their slapstick violence gave commoners a way to safely mock strict authority figures.
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The books bound in human skin
Some affluent readers commissioned bookbinders to cover classical literature and poetry with the tanned skin of deceased people.
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Why some streamer reactions are staged
Some streamers stage dramatic reactions to draw clicks and engagement, rather than reacting spontaneously.
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Giant cartoon sweat drops are shortcuts for embarrassment
A giant sweat drop became a quick visual shorthand for embarrassment or discomfort, sparing animators from drawing subtle facial expressions.
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Who writes an influencer's apology
Influencers sometimes hire crisis managers to draft apology statements, shaping the wording and emotional tone before they post.
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How Disney helped shape anime eyes
Osamu Tezuka admired Disney and other Western cartoons, whose expressive faces helped shape his work. His influential manga and animation carried that visual…
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Why Broadway theaters skip Row I
The letter I can look like the number 1 on a seating chart, so theaters skip it to keep patrons from taking the wrong seats.
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The Pulitzer Prize began with yellow journalism
Joseph Pulitzer made his fortune with sensationalized yellow journalism before becoming known for the prize that bears his name.
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Why famous podcasts are recorded in coat closets
Coat closets help absorb echo with their hanging jackets; some hosts even sit on a pile of shoes while recording.
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A Japanese court woman wrote Genji roughly a thousand years ago
Murasaki Shikibu's tale follows relationships, status and court life across a long narrative. Written in the early eleventh century, The Tale of Genji…
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An audiobook booth makes tiny noises into production problems
The microphone must capture a voice without traffic, room echo, or equipment hum. That quiet also exposes mouth clicks, rustling, and breaths the narrator…
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Those furious radio callers may be actors
Some morning shows use hired performers—or interns posing as callers—to stage furious arguments and keep listeners tuned in.
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YouTubers stage elaborate pranks to game engagement metrics
Some elaborate prank videos are scripted, with willing participants and edited reactions designed to look spontaneous and keep viewers watching.
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Crossing the leg line for cash
For stage performers, crossing the curtain's leg line meant they had officially performed—and could collect that night's pay.
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Giant pages avoid strict levies
Early publishers made newspaper sheets larger to avoid taxes charged by page count, fitting more print without adding another taxed page.
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Ten thousand characters without a break
One classical manuscript runs for pages as a single paragraph—about 10,000 characters without a break—making it a serious test of concentration.
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A superhero's death can sell an event as well as tell a story
Publishers can build special issues, publicity, and collectible covers around the loss of a familiar character. Readers buy to discover what happened and…
Discover moreBob Dylan completely revolutionized digital music marketing when his interactive video for Like a Rolling Stone allowed viewers to seamlessly flip through sixteen simulated…
Leave it to a folk rock legend to completely break the internet before half of us even had a decent broadband connection. Dylan’s team engineered a music…
Discover moreGame of Thrones title sequence designers at Elastic built a fully functioning internal clockwork universe mechanism that organically updated the map terrain every week depending…
You would think a simple map zooming in and out would suffice for a fantasy intro, but the designers at Elastic took it to a completely unhinged level of…
Discover moreYouTube editor Robert Ryang completely redefined internet remix culture by re-editing Stanley Kubrick horror masterpiece The Shining into an uplifting family comedy trailer…
One cleverly edited video in the mid-2000s definitively proved that context is absolutely everything. Robert Ryang took a terrifying film about a man…
Discover moreMinority Report director Steven Spielberg actually hired an entire team of MIT researchers to build a scientifically accurate gesture-based interface system that Tom Cruise…
Imagine paying a small fortune to futuristic scientists just to invent fancy hand-waving for a movie. That is exactly what happened when Spielberg realized…
Discover moreTaskmaster creator Alex Horne forces professional comedians to complete genuinely absurd logistical challenges like hiding a whole pineapple on their person while maintaining…
British television realized long ago that the peak of human entertainment is watching moderately famous comedians undergo total psychological breakdowns over…
Discover moreBoutique theaters actively preserve cinema history by hiring heavy metal bands to perform deafening live musical accompaniments during screenings of the 1922 German expressionist…
Watching a hundred-year-old silent movie usually feels like eating unflavored oatmeal, unless you introduce a massive wall of deafening guitar amplifiers.…
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