Culture & entertainment
Discover facts about culture & entertainment. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Culture & entertainment
Why cartoons suddenly started preaching
Historically, Saturday mornings were just non-stop colorful chaos completely devoid of value. Eventually, network standards forced these broadcasts to…
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Why so many Kitchen Nightmares restaurants still close
Yelling at restaurant owners makes for great TV, but it terrible for long-term business. Despite the dramatic renovations and simplified menus, the vast…
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Ninja Turtle suits weighed more than 70 pounds
Cowabunga takes on a grim new meaning when you're trapped inside a reptilian sauna. The original 1990s Ninja Turtle suits weighed over seventy pounds each and…
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Tom Cruise was once considered for Edward Scissorhands
Picture the guy from Top Gun moping around a suburban gothic nightmare with garden shears for hands. Tim Burton had to endure horrific studio meetings where…
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Bob Ross once filmed a whole season for free
Because inner peace and happy little trees don't actually pay the rent. The soft-spoken artist did The Joy of Painting for free, using the television…
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Paramount once let Iron Man slip away
Nothing hurts quite like fumbling a multi-billion dollar cinematic universe. Paramount let the film rights to Iron Man lapse because executives believed the…
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Epcot grows food inside the park
While tourists are eating giant turkey legs, a slow-moving boat ride silently floats them through an actual agricultural facility growing the very vegetables…
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A balloon can sound like a dolphin
Getting a marine mammal into a recording studio is a logistical nightmare. Instead, audio experts recreate those adorable, majestic ocean clicks by rubbing…
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Paramount Pictures trademarked the mountain logo making it the oldest Hollywood emblem
Before they were busy ruining and subsequently fixing Sonic the Hedgehog, Paramount was out here claiming geographical features. Created in 1914 as a quick…
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Why war documentaries reuse the same footage
Finding high-quality archival clips for every minor skirmish is too expensive. Networks routinely use the exact same black-and-white explosion clips to…
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FM radio was ignored for decades
Despite offering a dramatically clearer, completely static-free listening experience, the superior broadcasting frequency was actively suppressed for decades.…
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Dark mode shifts interface colors to reduce screen glare
Because staring into a localized sun at 2 AM is generally frowned upon. App developers benevolently allowed us to invert our background colors, wrapping our…
Discover moreJohn Travolta donning thirty pounds of latex fat
When playing the eccentric mother in 'Hairspray', a simple dress just wouldn't suffice. John Travolta wore a staggering thirty-pound fat suit combined with…
Discover moreGwyneth Paltrow wore a 25-pound fat suit
Nothing screams early 2000s comedy like throwing an A-list actress into a gigantic pile of foam. For 'Shallow Hal', Paltrow endured four hours of makeup…
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Modern grand pianos feature 88 individual keys
Because apparently, 88 is the exact threshold before human hearing gives up. Modern pianos stopped adding keys here because anything lower than the bottom A…
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Radio shows were performed twice for different time zones
Because recording audio to tape was considered too complicated and degraded the quality, entire casts of actors had to report to the studio and perform a…
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Viggo Mortensen really deflected a knife on set
When you hire an actor who takes method acting so seriously he practically lives in the woods, magic happens. An actor playing an Uruk-hai slipped and…
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The romance film that began as a bleak thriller
Before it became a beloved fairytale about a rich man saving a beautiful escort, the script was an incredibly bleak cautionary tale. Only after realizing that…
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Subtitles were initially branded as intertitles in cinema
Before you could read dialogue directly on top of the actors' faces, you had to endure mandatory reading breaks. During the silent film era, dialogue and…
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Why classical musicians rejected the saxophone
Adolphe Sax invented his iconic hybrid to perfectly bridge the gap between woodwinds and brass. Instead of embracing it, classical purists fiercely rejected…
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Christopher Lee met Tolkien before playing Saruman
When you have the ultimate nerd flex, you make sure everybody knows it. Sir Christopher Lee, who played the dark wizard Saruman, bumped into the legendary…
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Widespread panic over spreading information
New forms of mass communication always terrify the public. The advent of the printing press caused massive societal panic, with critics claiming that…
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Why political cartoons keep reusing the same symbols
Thinking up a clever visual metaphor every single morning is exhausting work. Consequently, political artists lean aggressively on overused symbols like…
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Elevators function solely to create awkward social pauses
Elevators serve absolutely no logistical transportation purpose; they are purely narrative compression chambers. Their only job is to trap two characters who…
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