For nearly a decade 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 2,600 so far, and here are ten of my favorites from the more than 250 I wrote in 2021:
- Alfred Hitchcock Meets Jorge Luis Borges Borges in Cold War America: Watch Double Take (2009) Free Online
- The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson & Beatles Producer George Martin Break Down “God Only Knows,” the “Greatest Song Ever Written”
- Critics Celebrate Two-Lane Blacktop, the 1971 Existential Road-Movie Masterpiece by Monte Hellman (RIP), Starring James Taylor & Dennis Wilson
- The Decay of Cinema: Susan Sontag, Martin Scorsese & Their Lamentations on the Decline of Cinema Explored in a New Video Essay
- How Eating Kentucky Fried Chicken Became a Christmas Tradition in Japan
- How West Magazine Created a Southern-California Pop-Culture Aesthetic with the Help of Milton Glaser, Gahan Wilson, and Others (1967-1972)
- Quentin Tarantino Gives a Tour of Video Archives, the Store Where He Worked Before Becoming a Filmmaker
- The Story of the Edsel, Ford’s Infamously Failed Car Brand of the 1950s
- The Story of the MiniDisc, Sony’s 1990s Audio Format That’s Gone But Not Forgotten
- Two Haruki Murakami Stories Adapted into Short Films: Watch Attack on a Bakery and A Girl, She Is 100%
See also my ten favorite Open Culture posts of 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.