Culture & entertainment
Discover facts about culture & entertainment. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Culture & entertainment
Movies get drowning resuscitation wildly wrong
Forget aggressive chest compressions that crack ribs. Reviving someone who just drowned requires only two extremely gentle presses on the collarbone and…
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A squeaky wallet can sound like a haunted door
That massive, terrifying haunted mansion door opening in your imagination was aggressively small in reality. Sound artists simply twisted a heavily worn,…
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Wolverine was almost a literal wolverine
Because nothing screams 'gritty antihero' quite like a literal angry woodland critter granted magical human consciousness. In his very early conceptual…
Discover moreNicolas Cage had healthy teeth pulled for a role
Because merely pretending to be injured is for amateurs, Nicolas Cage decided to permanently alter his skull. For the 1984 film 'Birdy', Cage had two of his…
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The video game crunch that broke EA employees
The magic of video game development is mostly just sleep deprivation and destroyed marriages. In the 2000s, the 'EA Spouse' blog exposed the company for…
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Why people used pencils to rewind cassettes
Before the luxury of instant digital skipping, audio consumers relied on basic geometry to save their precious tape players. To prevent aggressive wear on the…
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Why Enya invented a language for her songs
When standard English fails to capture your ethereal vibe, the logical step is to invent your own dialect. Enya enlisted her lyricist to develop 'Loxian,' a…
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How magazines erased cigarettes from history
Modifying history is perfectly acceptable if it removes a bad habit. Magazines routinely airbrushed cigarettes out of historical photographs of famous…
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When Mark Wahlberg and Leonardo DiCaprio couldn’t stand each other
Hollywood loves pretending everyone on set is family, but these two actively tried to get each other fired. DiCaprio thought Wahlberg was an untalented former…
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MTV began with a perfectly fitting music video
They warned us right out of the gate, and we simply didn't listen. On August 1, 1981, MTV went live and completely revolutionized the music industry. The very…
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Explicit lyrics dramatically increase adolescent streaming
Placing a crude parental warning on an album is the greatest gift the industry ever received. It functions as an incredibly efficient homing beacon for…
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Barbie and Ken once broke up
In a deeply cynical publicity stunt in the early two thousands, the toy company announced that their premiere plastic couple had broken up. They even…
Discover moreTaylor Swift trademarked everyday phrases
Because singing a catchy chorus isn't enough, you have to legally own the colloquial phrase so nobody can put 'this sick beat' on a coffee mug without facing…
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Film crews spray mirrors to erase reflections
Mirrors are the absolute nemesis of a film crew, constantly reflecting the boom operators and lighting stands back into the shot. Instead of relying purely on…
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A crumpled sheet of paper can sound like a crowd
Why hire a hundred extras when you can just violently harass stationery? Golden Age producers realized that rapidly crinkling thick paper near a mic sounded…
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Facial slaps are prescribed as instant panic attack cures
Psychological distress is easily cured with minor physical violence. When a character is hyperventilating in sheer terror, violently striking them across the…
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Wristband adhesives break permanently when peeled
That annoying sticky band cutting off circulation to your hand is an engineering marvel designed entirely around paranoia. The adhesive strip features…
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A theater hired a doctor for fainting audience members
The French theater of the macabre was so dedicated to excessive, realistic stage gore that audience members routinely passed out. Instead of toning it down,…
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Dramatic pauses artificially inflate episode runtimes
A thirty-minute quiz program actually contains about four minutes of actual trivia. The rest of the runtime is mercilessly padded out by hosts staring…
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Intellectual superiority requires pushing glasses up
There is only one universal method for signaling that you have outsmarted everyone in the room. The smartest character must delicately press the bridge of…
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Street magicians make pedestrians think they’re levitating
Defying gravity on a random sidewalk is incredibly unsettling for passersby. Street magicians frequently terrify completely random pedestrians by appearing to…
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Banjo bodies act essentially like tightly stretched drums
Unlike an acoustic guitar, which relies on a hollow wooden chamber to project sound, a banjo uses a thin membrane stretched tightly over a circular hoop. The…
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Why Leonardo DiCaprio was named Leonardo
If his mother had been looking at a bowl of fruit, we might be watching 'Apple DiCaprio' date twenty-five-year-olds. According to legend, his pregnant mother…
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Lanyards feature breakaway clips for safety reasons
That plastic clasp on the back of your exclusive access badge isn't there because the manufacturer ran out of continuous fabric. It is a strictly mandated…
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