An Introduction to George Orwell’s 1984 and How Power Manufactures Truth

in Books, History, Literature, Politics | June 6th, 2025

Soon after the first elec­tion of Don­ald Trump to the pres­i­den­cy of the Unit­ed States, George Orwell’s Nine­teen Eighty-Four became a best­seller again. Shoot­ing to the top of the Amer­i­can charts, the nov­el that inspired the term “Orwellian” passed Danielle Steel’s lat­est opus, the poet­ry of Rupi Kaur, the eleventh Diary of a Wimpy Kid book, and the mem­oir of an ambi­tious young man named J. D. Vance. But how much of its renewed pop­u­lar­i­ty owed to the rel­e­vance of a near­ly 70-year-old vision of shab­by, total­i­tar­i­an future Eng­land to twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca, and how much to the fact that, as far as influ­ence on pop­u­lar cul­ture’s image of polit­i­cal dystopia, no oth­er work of lit­er­a­ture comes close?

For all the myr­i­ad ways one can crit­i­cize his two admin­is­tra­tions, Trump’s Amer­i­ca bears lit­tle super­fi­cial resem­blance to Ocea­ni­a’s Airstrip One as ruled by The Par­ty. But it can hard­ly be a coin­ci­dence that this peri­od of his­to­ry has also seen the con­cept “post-truth” become a fix­ture in the zeit­geist.

There are many rea­sons not to want to live in the world Orwell imag­ines in Nine­teen Eighty-Four: the thor­ough bureau­cra­ti­za­tion, the lack of plea­sure, the unceas­ing sur­veil­lance and pro­pa­gan­da. But none of this is quite so intol­er­a­ble as what makes it all pos­si­ble: the rulers’ claim to absolute con­trol over the truth, a form of psy­cho­log­i­cal manip­u­la­tion hard­ly lim­it­ed to regimes we regard as evil.

As James Payne says in his Great Books Explained video on Nine­teen Eighty-Four, Orwell worked for the BBC’s over­seas ser­vice dur­ing the war, and there received a trou­bling edu­ca­tion in the use of infor­ma­tion as a polit­i­cal weapon. The expe­ri­ence inspired the Min­istry of Truth, where the nov­el­’s pro­tag­o­nist Win­ston Smith spends his days re-writ­ing his­to­ry, and the dialect of Newspeak, a severe­ly reduced Eng­lish designed to nar­row its speak­ers’ range of thought. Orwell may have over­es­ti­mat­ed the degree to which lan­guage can be mod­i­fied from the top down, but as Payne reminds us, we now all hear cul­ture war­riors describe real­i­ty in high­ly slant­ed, polit­i­cal­ly-charged, and often thought-ter­mi­nat­ing ways all day long. Every­where we look, some­one is ready to tell us that two plus two make five; if only they were as obvi­ous about it as Big Broth­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

George Orwell Explains How “Newspeak” Works, the Offi­cial Lan­guage of His Total­i­tar­i­an Dystopia in 1984

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

George Orwell’s Har­row­ing Race to Fin­ish 1984 Before His Death

George Orwell’s Final Warn­ing: Don’t Let This Night­mare Sit­u­a­tion Hap­pen. It Depends on You!

What “Orwellian” Real­ly Means: An Ani­mat­ed Les­son About the Use & Abuse of the Term

Aldous Hux­ley to George Orwell: My Hell­ish Vision of the Future is Bet­ter Than Yours (1949)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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When the State Department Used Dizzy Gillespie and Jazz to Fight the Cold War (1956)

in History, Music, Politics | June 5th, 2025

It’s been said that the Unit­ed States won the Cold War with­out fir­ing a shot — a state­ment, as P. J. O’Rourke once wrote, that doubt­less sur­prised vet­er­ans of Korea and Viet­nam. But it would­n’t be entire­ly incor­rect to call the long stare-down between the U.S. and the Sovi­et Union a bat­tle of ideas. Dwight Eisen­how­er cer­tain­ly saw it that way, a world­view that inspired the 1956 cre­ation of the Pres­i­den­t’s Spe­cial Inter­na­tion­al Pro­gram for Par­tic­i­pa­tion in Inter­na­tion­al Affairs, which aimed to use Amer­i­can cul­ture to improve the coun­try’s image around the world. (That same year, Eisen­how­er also signed off on the con­struc­tion of the Inter­state High­way Sys­tem, such was the coun­try’s ambi­tion at the time.)

For an unam­bigu­ous­ly Amer­i­can art form, one could hard­ly do bet­ter than jazz, which also had the advan­tage of coun­ter­bal­anc­ing U.S.S.R. pro­pa­gan­da focus­ing on the U.S.’ trou­bled race rela­tions. And so the State Depart­ment picked a series of “jazz ambas­sadors” to send on care­ful­ly planned world tours, begin­ning with Dizzy Gille­spie and his eigh­teen-piece inter­ra­cial band (with the late Quin­cy Jones in the role of music direc­tor).

Start­ing in March of 1956, Gille­spie’s ten-week tour fea­tured dates all over Europe, Asia, and South Amer­i­ca. These would­n’t be his last State Depart­ment-spon­sored tours abroad: in the videos above, you can see a clip from his per­for­mance in Ger­many in 1960. This tour­ing even result­ed in live albums like Dizzy in Greece and World States­man.

Oth­er jazz ambas­sadors would fol­low: Louis Arm­strong (who quit over the high-school inte­gra­tion cri­sis in Lit­tle Rock), Duke Elling­ton, Ben­ny Good­man, and Dave Brubeck (whose dim view of the pro­gram inspired the musi­cal The Real Ambas­sadors). But none went quite so far in pur­su­ing their cul­tur­al-polit­i­cal inter­ests as Gille­spie, who announced him­self as a write-in can­di­date in the 1964 U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. He promised not only to rename the White House the Blues house, but also to appoint a cab­i­net includ­ing Miles Davis as Direc­tor of the CIA, Charles Min­gus as Sec­re­tary of Peace, Arm­strong as Sec­re­tary of Agri­cul­ture, and Elling­ton as Sec­re­tary of State. This jazzed-up admin­is­tra­tion was, alas, nev­er to take pow­er, but the music itself has left more of a lega­cy than any gov­ern­ment could. Sure­ly the fact that I write these words in a café in Korea sound­tracked entire­ly by jazz speaks for itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dizzy Gille­spie Wor­ries About Nuclear & Envi­ron­men­tal Dis­as­ter in Vin­tage Ani­mat­ed Films

Louis Arm­strong Plays His­toric Cold War Con­certs in East Berlin & Budapest (1965)

When Louis Arm­strong Stopped a Civ­il War in The Con­go (1960)

Louis Arm­strong Plays Trum­pet at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids; Dizzy Gille­spie Charms a Snake in Pak­istan

Dizzy Gille­spie Runs for US Pres­i­dent, 1964. Promis­es to Make Miles Davis Head of the CIA

How the CIA Secret­ly Used Jack­son Pol­lock & Oth­er Abstract Expres­sion­ists to Fight the Cold War

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The 100 Greatest Paintings of All Time: From Botticelli and Bosch to Bacon and Basquiat

in Art, History | June 4th, 2025

It would be a worth­while exer­cise for any of us to sit down and attempt to draw up a list of our 100 favorite paint­ings of all time. Nat­u­ral­ly, those not pro­fes­sion­al­ly involved with art his­to­ry may have some trou­ble quite hit­ting that num­ber. Still, how­ev­er many titles we can write down, each of us will no doubt come up with a mix­ture of the near-uni­ver­sal­ly known and the rel­a­tive­ly obscure, with paint­ings we’ve been see­ing repro­duced in pop­u­lar cul­ture since birth along­side works that made a strong and unex­pect­ed impres­sion on us the one time we came across them in a book or gallery. The 100-favorite-paint­ings list in video form above by Luiza Liz Bond is no excep­tion.

You may rec­og­nize Bond’s name from her work on the YouTube chan­nel The Cin­e­ma Car­tog­ra­phy, many of whose videos — on David Lynch, on Quentin Taran­ti­no, on ani­ma­tion, on cin­e­matog­ra­phy, on the great­est films ever made — we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. Recent­ly rebrand­ed as The House of Tab­u­la, that chan­nel now makes its aes­thet­ic and intel­lec­tu­al explo­rations into not just film but art broad­ly con­sid­ered.

And though paint­ing may not be the art form with which we spend most of our time these days, it’s still one of the first art forms that comes to our minds, per­haps thanks to its twen­ty or so mil­len­nia of his­to­ry. It’s from a rel­a­tive­ly nar­row but enor­mous­ly rich slice of that his­to­ry, span­ning the four­teenth cen­tu­ry to the twen­ti­eth, that Bond makes her 100 selec­tions.

Among them are more than a few paint­ings that long­time Open Cul­ture read­ers will remem­ber us hav­ing cov­ered before: Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights, Michelan­gelo’s Sis­tine Chapel ceil­ing, Diego Velázquez’s Las Meni­nas, Frag­o­nard’s The Swing, Goy­a’s The Dog, Manet’s Lun­cheon on the Grass, Sar­gen­t’s Car­na­tion, Lily, Lily, Rose, van Gogh’s The Star­ry Night, Klimt’s The Kiss, Matis­se’s The Dance, Magrit­te’s The Lovers, Dalí’s The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry, Picas­so’s Guer­ni­ca, Wyeth’s Christi­na’s World, and Basquiat’s Unti­tled. These works and many oth­ers con­sti­tute a jour­ney through the “world of high sym­bol­ism and reli­gios­i­ty to a pri­vate space where painters tell their per­son­al sto­ries through images on can­vas,” as Bond puts it. Wher­ev­er art’s next major des­ti­na­tion may be, only human cre­ativ­i­ty can take us there.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Gallery of 1,800 Gigapix­el Images of Clas­sic Paint­ings: See Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Ear­ring, Van Gogh’s Star­ry Night & Oth­er Mas­ter­pieces in Close Detail

14 Self-Por­traits by Pablo Picas­so Show the Evo­lu­tion of His Style: See Self-Por­traits Mov­ing from Ages 15 to 90

The Evo­lu­tion of Kandinsky’s Paint­ing: A Jour­ney from Real­ism to Vibrant Abstrac­tion Over 46 Years

Take a Jour­ney Through 933 Paint­ings by Sal­vador Dalí & Watch His Sig­na­ture Sur­re­al­ism Emerge

1540 Mon­et Paint­ings in a Two Hour Video

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 490,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Wim Wenders’ New Short Film Reminds Europe of the Lessons of World War II

in Film, History | June 2nd, 2025

World War II offi­cial­ly end­ed on Sep­tem­ber 2, 1945. It fol­lowed, by less than three weeks, an equal­ly momen­tous event, at least in the eyes of cinephiles: the birth of Wim Wen­ders. Though soon to turn 80 years old, Wen­ders has remained both pro­duc­tive and capa­ble of draw­ing great crit­i­cal acclaim. Wit­ness, for exam­ple, his Tokyo-set 2023 film Per­fect Days, which made it to the run­ning for both the Palme d’Or and a Best Inter­na­tion­al Fea­ture Film Acad­e­my Award. Back on V‑J Day, it sure­ly would’ve been dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a Japan­ese-Ger­man co-pro­duc­tion seri­ous­ly com­pet­ing for the most pres­ti­gious prizes in cin­e­ma — even one direct­ed by a known Amer­i­caphile.

Wen­ders has long worked at reveal­ing inter­sec­tions of his­to­ry and cul­ture. Seen today, Wings of Desire seems for all the world to express the spir­it about to be lib­er­at­ed by the fall of the Sovi­et Union, but by Wen­ders’ own admis­sion, nobody work­ing on the movie would have cred­it­ed the idea of the Berlin Wall com­ing down any time in the fore­see­able future.

In his new short film “The Keys to Free­dom,” he com­mem­o­rates the 80th anniver­sary of the Sec­ond World War’s con­clu­sion by pay­ing a vis­it to a school in Reims. Comman­deered for the secret all-night meet­ing in which Ger­man gen­er­als signed the doc­u­ments con­firm­ing their coun­try’s total sur­ren­der to the Allies, it host­ed the end of what Wen­ders called “the dark­est peri­od in the his­to­ry of Europe.”

Clos­ing up the tem­po­rary head­quar­ters, Allied com­man­der-in-chief Dwight D. Eisen­how­er returned its keys to the may­or of Reims, say­ing, “These are the keys to the free­dom of the world.” As much as these words move Wen­ders, he also fears that, even as the Rus­sia-Ukraine war roils on, younger gen­er­a­tions of Euro­peans no longer grasp their mean­ing. Born into soci­eties pro­tect­ed by the Unit­ed States, they nat­u­ral­ly take peace for grant­ed. “We have to be aware of the fact that Uncle Sam isn’t doing our job for very much longer, and we might have to defend this free­dom our­selves,” Wen­ders explains in a New York Times inter­view. The end of World War II marked the begin­ning of the so-called “Amer­i­can cen­tu­ry.” If that cen­tu­ry is well and tru­ly draw­ing to its close, who bet­ter to observe it than Wen­ders?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wim Wen­ders Explains How Polaroid Pho­tos Ignite His Cre­ative Process and Help Him Cap­ture a Deep­er Kind of Truth

Wim Wen­ders Cre­ates Ads to Sell Beer (Stel­la Artois), Pas­ta (Bar­il­la), and More Beer (Car­ling)

Film­mak­er Wim Wen­ders Explains How Mobile Phones Have Killed Pho­tog­ra­phy

36 Artists Give Advice to Young Cre­ators: Wim Wen­ders, Jonathan Franzen, Lydia Davis, Pat­ti Smith, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco & More

Wern­er Herzog’s New Nov­el The Twi­light World Tells the Sto­ry of the WWII Japan­ese Sol­dier Who Famous­ly Refused to Sur­ren­der

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Leonardo da Vinci’s Elegant Design for a Perpetual Motion Machine

in History, Science | May 28th, 2025

Is per­pet­u­al motion pos­si­ble? In the­o­ry… I have no idea…. In prac­tice, so far at least, the answer has been a per­pet­u­al no. As Nicholas Bar­ri­al writes at Mak­ery, “in order to suc­ceed,” a per­pet­u­al motion machine “should be free of fric­tion, run in a vac­u­um cham­ber and be total­ly silent” since “sound equates to ener­gy loss.” Try­ing to sat­is­fy these con­di­tions in a noisy, entrop­ic phys­i­cal world may seem like a fool’s errand, akin to turn­ing base met­als to gold. Yet the hun­dreds of sci­en­tists and engi­neers who have tried have been any­thing but fools.

The long list of con­tenders includes famed 12th-cen­tu­ry Indi­an math­e­mati­cian Bhāskara II, also-famed 17th-cen­tu­ry Irish sci­en­tist Robert Boyle, and a cer­tain Ital­ian artist and inven­tor who needs no intro­duc­tion. It will come as no sur­prise to learn that Leonar­do da Vin­ci turned his hand to solv­ing the puz­zle of per­pet­u­al motion. But it seems, in doing so, he “may have been a dirty, rot­ten hyp­ocrite,” Ross Pomery jokes at Real Clear Sci­ence. Sur­vey­ing the many failed attempts to make a machine that ran for­ev­er, he pub­licly exclaimed, “Oh, ye seek­ers after per­pet­u­al motion, how many vain chimeras have you pur­sued? Go and take your place with the alchemists.”

In pri­vate, how­ev­er, as Michio Kaku writes in Physics of the Impos­si­ble, Leonar­do “made inge­nious sketch­es in his note­books of self-pro­pelling per­pet­u­al motion machines, includ­ing a cen­trifu­gal pump and a chim­ney jack used to turn a roast­ing skew­er over a fire.” He also drew up plans for a wheel that would the­o­ret­i­cal­ly run for­ev­er. (Leonar­do claimed he tried only to prove it couldn’t be done.) Inspired by a device invent­ed by a con­tem­po­rary Ital­ian poly­math named Mar­i­ano di Jacopo, known as Tac­co­la (“the jack­daw”), the artist-engi­neer refined this pre­vi­ous attempt in his own ele­gant design.

Leonar­do drew sev­er­al vari­ants of the wheel in his note­books. Despite the fact that the wheel didn’t work—and that he appar­ent­ly nev­er thought it would—the design has become, Bar­ri­al notes, “THE most pop­u­lar per­pet­u­al motion machine on DIY and 3D print­ing sites.” (One mak­er charm­ing­ly com­ments, in frus­tra­tion, “Per­pet­u­al motion doesn’t seem to work, what am I doing wrong?”) The gif at the top, from the British Library, ani­mates one of Leonardo’s many ver­sions of unbal­anced wheels. This detailed study can be found in folio 44v of the Codex Arun­del, one of sev­er­al col­lec­tions of Leonardo’s note­books that have been dig­i­tized and pre­vi­ous­ly made avail­able online.

In his book The Inno­va­tors Behind Leonar­do, Plinio Inno­cen­zi describes these devices, con­sist­ing of “12 half-moon-shaped adja­cent chan­nels which allow the free move­ment of 12 small balls as a func­tion of the wheel’s rota­tion…. At one point dur­ing the rota­tion, an imbal­ance will be cre­at­ed where­by more balls will find them­selves on one side than the oth­er,” cre­at­ing a force that con­tin­ues to pro­pel the wheel for­ward indef­i­nite­ly. “Leonar­do rep­ri­mand­ed that despite the fact that every­thing might seem to work, ‘you will find the impos­si­bil­i­ty of motion above believed.’”

Leonar­do also sketched and described a per­pet­u­al motion device using flu­id mechan­ics, invent­ing the “self-fill­ing flask” over two-hun­dred years before Robert Boyle tried to make per­pet­u­al motion with this method. This design also didn’t work. In real­i­ty, there are too many phys­i­cal forces work­ing against the dream of per­pet­u­al motion. Few of the attempts, how­ev­er, have appeared in as ele­gant a form as Leonardo’s.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonar­do Da Vinci’s To-Do List from 1490: The Plan of a Renais­sance Man

Leonar­do da Vin­ci Designs the Ide­al City: See 3D Mod­els of His Rad­i­cal Design

The Inge­nious Inven­tions of Leonar­do da Vin­ci Recre­at­ed with 3D Ani­ma­tion

How Leonar­do da Vin­ci Drew an Accu­rate Satel­lite Map of an Ital­ian City (1502)

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Hand­writ­ten Resume (Cir­ca 1482)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The World’s Oldest Homework: A Look at Babylonian Math Homework from 4,000 Years Ago

in Education, History, Math | May 27th, 2025

Home­work has late­ly become unfash­ion­able, at least accord­ing to what I’ve heard from teach­ers in cer­tain parts of the Unit­ed States. That may com­pli­cate var­i­ous fair­ly long-stand­ing edu­ca­tion­al prac­tices, but it does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect an absolute drop in stan­dards and expec­ta­tions. Those of us who went to school around the turn of the mil­len­ni­um may remem­ber feel­ing entombed in home­work, an inten­si­fied ver­sion of what the gen­er­a­tion that came of age amid the ear­ly Cold War’s pres­sure for “more sci­ence,” would have dealt with. But late baby boomers and ear­ly Gen-Xers in the six­ties and sev­en­ties had a much lighter load, as did the gen­er­a­tion edu­cat­ed under John Dewey’s reforms of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.

We can fol­low this line all the way back to the times of the Baby­lo­ni­ans, 4,000 years ago. In the video above from her chan­nel Tibees, sci­ence YouTu­ber Toby Hendy shows us a few arti­facts of home­work from antiq­ui­ty and explains how to inter­pret them.

Inscribed in a clay tablet, their sim­ple but numer­ous marks reveal them to be exam­ples of math home­work, that most loathed cat­e­go­ry today, and per­haps then as well. (Even when inter­pret­ed in mod­ern lan­guage, the cal­cu­la­tions may seem unfa­mil­iar, per­formed as they are not in our base ten, but base 60 — shades of the “new math” to come much lat­er.) That the Baby­lo­ni­ans had fair­ly advanced math­e­mat­ics, which Hendy demon­strates using some clay of her own, may be as much of a sur­prise as the fact that they did home­work.

Not that they all did it. Uni­ver­sal school­ing itself dates only from the indus­tri­al age, and for the Baby­lo­ni­ans, indus­try was still a long way off. They did, how­ev­er, take the con­sid­er­able step of cre­at­ing civ­i­liza­tion, which they could­n’t have done with­out writ­ing. The ancient assign­ment Hendy shows would’ve been done by a stu­dent at an edu­ba, which she describes as a “scribe school.” Scribe, as we know, means one who writes — which, in Baby­lon, meant one who writes in Sumer­ian. That skill was trans­mit­ted through the net­work of edu­ba, or “house where tablets are passed out,” which were usu­al­ly locat­ed in pri­vate res­i­dences, and which turned out grad­u­ates lit­er­ate and numer­ate enough to keep the empire run­ning, at least until the sixth cen­tu­ry BC or so. From cer­tain destruc­tive forces, it seems, no amount of home­work can pro­tect a civ­i­liza­tion for­ev­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ancient Egypt­ian Home­work Assign­ment from 1800 Years Ago: Some Things Are Tru­ly Time­less

A 4,000-Year-Old Stu­dent ‘Writ­ing Board’ from Ancient Egypt (with Teacher’s Cor­rec­tions in Red)

3,200-Year-Old Egypt­ian Tablet Records Excus­es for Why Peo­ple Missed Work: “The Scor­pi­on Bit Him,” “Brew­ing Beer” & More

Archae­ol­o­gists Think They’ve Dis­cov­ered the Old­est Greek Copy of Homer’s Odyssey: 13 Vers­es on a Clay Tablet

Behold the Old­est Writ­ten Text in the World: The Kish Tablet, Cir­ca 3500 BC

Hear the Ear­li­est Record­ed Cus­tomer Com­plaint Let­ter: From Ancient Sume­ria 1750 BC

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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They Study Authoritarianism. And They’re Leaving the U.S.: Why Three Yale Professors Have Moved to U. Toronto

in Current Affairs, History | May 27th, 2025

Three Yale pro­fes­sors—Tim­o­thy Sny­der, Jason Stan­ley and Mar­ci Shore–have spent their careers study­ing fas­cism and author­i­tar­i­an­ism. They know the signs of emerg­ing author­i­tar­i­an­ism when they see it. Now, they’re see­ing those signs here in the Unit­ed States, and they’re not sit­ting by idly. They’ve moved to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to where they can speak freely, with­out fear­ing per­son­al or insti­tu­tion­al ret­ri­bu­tion. Above, they share their views in the NYTimes Op-Doc. It comes pref­aced with the text below:

Legal res­i­dents of the Unit­ed States sent to for­eign pris­ons with­out due process. Stu­dents detained after voic­ing their opin­ions. Fed­er­al judges threat­ened with impeach­ment for rul­ing against the administration’s pri­or­i­ties.

In this Opin­ion video, Mar­ci Shore, Tim­o­thy Sny­der and Jason Stan­ley, all pro­fes­sors at Yale and experts in author­i­tar­i­an­ism, explain why Amer­i­ca is espe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to a demo­c­ra­t­ic back­slid­ing — and why they are leav­ing the Unit­ed States to take up posi­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to.

Pro­fes­sor Stan­ley is leav­ing the Unit­ed States as an act of protest against the Trump administration’s attacks on civ­il lib­er­ties. “I want Amer­i­cans to real­ize that this is a demo­c­ra­t­ic emer­gency,” he said.

Pro­fes­sor Shore, who has spent two decades writ­ing about the his­to­ry of author­i­tar­i­an­ism in Cen­tral and East­ern Europe, is leav­ing because of what she sees as the sharp regres­sion of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. “We’re like peo­ple on the Titan­ic say­ing our ship can’t sink,” she said. “And what you know as a his­to­ri­an is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”

She bor­rows from polit­i­cal and apo­lit­i­cal Slav­ic motifs and expres­sions, argu­ing that the Eng­lish lan­guage does not ful­ly cap­ture the demo­c­ra­t­ic regres­sion in this Amer­i­can moment.

Pro­fes­sor Snyder’s rea­sons are more com­pli­cat­ed. Pri­mar­i­ly, he’s leav­ing to sup­port his wife, Pro­fes­sor Shore, and their chil­dren, and to teach at a large pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty in Toron­to, a place he says can host con­ver­sa­tions about free­dom. At the same time, he shares the con­cerns expressed by his col­leagues and wor­ries that those kinds of con­ver­sa­tions will become ever hard­er to have in the Unit­ed States.

“I did not leave Yale because of Don­ald Trump or because of Colum­bia or because of threats to Yale — but that would be a rea­son­able thing to do, and that is a deci­sion that peo­ple will make,” he wrote in a Yale Dai­ly News arti­cle explain­ing his deci­sion to leave.

Their motives dif­fer but their analy­sis is the same: ignor­ing or down­play­ing attacks on the rule of law, the courts and uni­ver­si­ties spells trou­ble for our democ­ra­cy.

To delve deep­er into their work, see Stan­ley and Sny­der’s respec­tive works: How Fas­cism Works: The Pol­i­tics of Us and Them and On Tyran­ny: Twen­ty Lessons from the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Actor John Lith­gow Reads 20 Lessons on Tyran­ny, Penned by His­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der

Yale Pro­fes­sor Jason Stan­ley Iden­ti­fies 10 Tac­tics of Fas­cism: The “Cult of the Leader,” Law & Order, Vic­tim­hood and More

Umber­to Eco’s List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

The Sto­ry of Fas­cism: Rick Steves’ Doc­u­men­tary Helps Us Learn from the Hard Lessons of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Toni Mor­ri­son Lists the 10 Steps That Lead Coun­tries to Fas­cism (1995)

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A 3D Model Reveals What the Parthenon and Its Interior Looked Like 2,500 Years Ago

in Architecture, History, Religion | May 23rd, 2025

Stand­ing atop the Acrop­o­lis in Athens as it has for near­ly 2,500 years now, the Parthenon remains an impres­sive sight indeed. Not that those two and a half mil­len­nia have been kind to the place: one of the most famous ruins of the ancient world is still, after all, a ruin. But it does fire up vis­i­tors’ imag­i­na­tions, fill­ing their heads with visions of how it must have looked back in the fifth cen­tu­ry BC, when it was a func­tion­ing tem­ple and trea­sury. One enthu­si­ast in par­tic­u­lar, an Oxford archae­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor named Juan de Lara, has spent four years using 3D mod­el­ing tools to cre­ate a 3D dig­i­tal recon­struc­tion of the Parthenon at the height of its glo­ry, of which you can get glimpses in the video above and at the pro­jec­t’s offi­cial site.

Image by Juan de Lara/The Parthenon 3D

The mate­ri­als pro­mot­ing Parthenon 3D, as it’s called, empha­size one ele­ment above all: its almost 40-foot-tall stat­ue of the god­dess Athena Parthenos, bet­ter known mononymi­cal­ly as Athena. The work of the renowned sculp­tor Phidias, who also han­dled the rest of the struc­ture’s sculp­tur­al dec­o­ra­tion, it end­ed up cost­ing twice as much as the build­ing itself.

Though now long lost, the Athena stat­ue was well doc­u­ment­ed enough for de Lara to mod­el its every detail, down to the folds in her gold­en robes and the cracks in her ivory skin. Dur­ing the Pana­thenaic Fes­ti­val, which came around every four years, sun­light would enter the Parthenon at just the right angle to cause a super­nat­ur­al-look­ing illu­mi­na­tion of the god­dess against the sur­round­ing dark­ness.

Image by Juan de Lara/The Parthenon 3D

Of course, that effect was­n’t acci­den­tal. Even if we con­sid­er the cre­ation of the Parthenon to have been divine­ly inspired, we can best under­stand it as a work of man — and a metic­u­lous­ly thought-out work at that. For ancient Greek vis­i­tors, the illu­mi­na­tion of Athena would have been enhanced by the place­ment of roof aper­tures, reflect­ing water pools, and reflec­tive mate­ri­als, whose orig­i­nal incor­po­ra­tion into the space would come as a sur­prise to most mod­ern vis­i­tors. At present, Parthenon 3D offers the clos­est expe­ri­ence we have to a time machine set to the Parthenon as Phidias and archi­tects Ikti­nos and Cal­l­i­crates orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed. But as de Lara’s research notes, the build­ing also con­tained numer­ous incense burn­ers, so per­fect real­ism won’t be achieved until smells can go through the inter­net. Vis­it the Parthenon 3D site here.

Image by Juan de Lara/The Parthenon 3D

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Parthenon Mar­bles End­ed Up In The British Muse­um

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Athens: Fly Over Clas­si­cal Greek Civ­i­liza­tion in All Its Glo­ry

Robots Are Carv­ing Repli­cas of the Parthenon Mar­bles: Could They Help the Real Ancient Sculp­tures Return to Greece?

Explore Ancient Athens 3D, a Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tion of the Greek City-State at the Height of Its Influ­ence

The City of Nashville Built a Full-Scale Repli­ca of the Parthenon in 1897, and It’s Still Stand­ing Today

Artist is Cre­at­ing a Parthenon Made of 100,000 Banned Books: A Mon­u­ment to Democ­ra­cy & Intel­lec­tu­al Free­dom

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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