Colin Marshall

OpenCulture

How Phone Addiction Keeps You from Achieving a Productive “Flow State”

By: Colin Marshall

If you have an iPhone, try pushing its side button three times in a row. Just like magic, the screen should turn from color into black-and-white, or

OpenCulture

How Leonardo da Vinci's Procrastination Contributed to His Creativity

By: Colin Marshall

At the height of their productivity as Beatles, neither Paul McCartney nor John Lennon could read or write music notation.

OpenCulture

Wes Anderson Picks Nine of His Favorite Criterion Films

By: Colin Marshall

Many an internet cinephile has wondered aloud if the Criterion Closet is a real place, or just a set thrown together to make videos when famous

OpenCulture

Why Inventing Color TV Was So Difficult

By: Colin Marshall

Many who read this will remember watching television on a black-and-white set at some point in their lives. Fewer will remember doing so because only black-and-white sets existed.

OpenCulture

Discover the Lost Early Computer Art of Telidon, Canada's TV Proto-Internet from the 1970s

By: Colin Marshall

Most of us got hooked up to the internet in the 1990s or thereabouts, though the true early adopters did it when personal computers first blew up in the 1980s.

OpenCulture

Bertrand Russell Explains Why Karl Marx's Philosophy Produced the Disaster of Communism

By: Colin Marshall

In 1927, Bertrand Russell delivered a lecture titled “Why I Am Not a Christian.” At the time, such a declaration was still fairly bold, as was the reasoning he provided for it.

OpenCulture

Frank Lloyd Wright's Secret Career as a Japanese Art Dealer & How It Shaped His Architecture

By: Colin Marshall

Frank Lloyd Wright was often strapped for cash. In that respect, he had something in common with Vincent van Gogh, who passed most of his much shorter life in more dire circumstances.

OpenCulture

The Ancient Greek Water Clock That Kept the Most Accurate Time for 1,800 Years

By: Colin Marshall

Today, we're surrounded by technologies we could justifiably describe as time thieves.

OpenCulture

Route 66 Turns 100 This Year: Take a Tour of America's Most Famous Highway

By: Colin Marshall

This past summer, the United States of America celebrated 250 years of independence. But for a great many Americana-lovers around the world, this

OpenCulture

Download Digitized Copies of The Negro Travelers' Green Book , the Pre-Civil Rights Guide to Traveling Safely in the U.S. (1936–66)

By: Colin Marshall

As an American living outside America, I'm often asked how best to see my homeland by people wanting to visit it.