For nearly nine years now, I’ve written a post every weekday at Open Culture, usually to do with literature, film, music, art, architecture, television, radio, or language. The total comes to more than 2,300 so far, and here are ten of my favorites from the more than 250 I wrote in 2020:
- Errol Morris Makes His Groundbreaking Series, First Person, Free to Watch Online: Binge Watch His Interviews with Geniuses, Eccentrics, Obsessives & Other Unusual Types
- How France Invented a Popular, Profitable Internet of Its Own in the 80s: The Rise and Fall of Minitel
- A Look into the Wondrous Life & Expansive Work of the Late Jan Morris, Who Wrote the Entire World
- Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock & Other Jazz Musicians Sell Whisky & Spirits in Classic Japanese TV Commercials
- Roald Dahl Gives a Tour of the Small Backyard Hut Where He Wrote All of His Beloved Children’s Books
- The Story of the SynthAxe, the Astonishing 1980s Guitar Synthesizer: Only 100 Were Ever Made
- Take a Digital Drive Along Ed Ruscha’s Sunset Boulevard, the Famous Strip That the Artist Photographed from 1965 to 2007
- Understanding Chris Marker’s Radical Sci-Fi Film La Jetée: A Study Guide Distributed to High Schools in the 1970s
- When Billy Idol Went Cyberpunk: See His Tribute to Neuromancer, His Recording Session with Timothy Leary, and His Limited-Edition Floppy Disk (1993)
- Why David Sedaris Hates “The Santaland Diaries,” the NPR Piece that Made Him Famous
See also my ten favorite Open Culture posts of 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019.