Long before Coachella, Steve Wozniak attempted a similarly-minded festival

A short-lived dance festival gave a promoter the idea for Coachella

In 1996, Goldenvoice CEO Paul Tollett helped organize the Organic festival, an all-night electronic music festival held at a ski resort east of Los Angeles. Tollett said he was inspired by the way Organic's lineup brought the United Kingdom's burgeoning rave culture to a distinctly picturesque and American venue and environment.

Coachella fashion repurposes looks from Woodstock

Coachella attendees’ flower-forward fashion sense has been widely replicated (and lampooned) since the festival became a mainstay of the cultural calendar. This podcast, featuring a panel of style writers and music reporters, traces the aesthetic back to the 1969 Woodstock festival. In the process, they also look to untangle why festivalgoers fall into certain styles—and what that means for Coachella and its attendees.

Steve Wozniak invented the personal computer

Steve Wozniak's Apple I and Apple II computers launched the personal computer industry, influencing the future of consumer electronics. He was also awarded the National Medal of Technology and the Heinz Award in Technology, the Economy, and Employment because of his invention.

Apple’s third cofounder was its angel investor

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are well-known for cofounding Apple, but the company had a third founder who acted as an angel investor: Mike Markkula, who invested $250K in 1977.

A young Steve Jobs visited India on a spiritual pilgrimage

In 1974, Steve Jobs traveled to India after reading a book by the famous American psychologist Ram Dass. Jobs visited the temple of one of Dass’s influences, Neem Karoli Baba. He stayed in India for seven months before returning to the US to found Apple. Jobs’s trip to India helped shape the tech leader’s vision for Apple.

The Grateful Dead's online bulletin board system inspired the early internet

The legendary countercultural band the Grateful Dead had a popular hub on The Well, an online extension of the Whole Earth Catalog, a popular hippie magazine in the '60s and '70s. Users included Craig Newmark (founder of Craigslist), Steve Case (founder of AOL), and Steve Wozniak (cofounder of Apple).

Sri Swami Satchidananda gave the opening remarks at the first Woodstock

The yoga guru was invited to begin the legendary 1969 festival and told the massive crowd he believed music “is a celestial sound and it is the sound that controls the whole universe, not atomic vibrations.” The speech leaned into yoga as a philosophy, one that the many concertgoers in attendance could use to guide their collective desire for peace.

Read an email Steve Jobs wrote himself in 2010

Steve Jobs apparently liked to email himself to save his thoughts. This archival email, written the year before he died, shows Jobs expressing gratitude and wonder for the world and its creative people.

Burning Man’s countercultural messages have influenced Silicon Valley’s work culture

Burning Man is famous for attracting tech leaders like the CEOs of Tesla, Meta, and Google. Some experts believe the festival's ethos and principles of participation, communal effort and radical inclusion have given rise to Silicon Valley's communal work culture.

Frank Ocean's 2023 appearance was a notorious catastrophe

Ocean's Coachella performance was one of the most anticipated in the festival's 20-plus years. He was an enigmatic but generation-defining artist, so a headlining set on Coachella's legendary stage seemed like the perfect place for him to reveal the next step in his artistic journey. Unfortunately, it was a slipshod and confusing spectacle—rife with technical issues—and left fans disappointed and confused.

See Don Valentine's original 1977 memo for Sequoia's investment into Apple Computer

In honor of Apple's 50-year anniversary, Sequoia Capital recently posted a tweet on X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter) with a photo of the original 1977 memo for Sequoia's investment in Apple.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

In 1984, Dylan began experimenting with punk

When Bob Dylan was asked to appear on David Letterman’s relatively new late-night show, he decided to call an audible. He’d been intrigued by LA’s exploding post-punk scene and had spent time jamming with one of its bands, the Plugz, whom he decided to bring to Letterman as his backing band. The appearance sounds unlike anything else in his catalog and is one of his more fascinating creative reinventions in a career loaded with them.

Gypsy Boots was a proto-hippie and health food entrepreneur

The Southern Californian was an eccentric businessman who opened several health food businesses, wrote books on healthy living, and frequently appeared on late-night television, including 28 appearances on “The Steve Allen Show.” He’d also attend Los Angeles area football games and chant “Don’t panic, go organic.”

WeWork held controversial ‘summer camp’ retreats for employees

Step inside one of WeWork’s “summer camp” retreats full of drugs, alcohol, and exorbitant company spending.

Springsteen played in several groups in Asbury Park, including one massive jam band

Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom featured between 15 and 20 people on stage at any given time, including future E Street Band members like Steven Van Zandt and Jersey Shore mainstay Southside Johnny. The band was not entirely serious, sometimes featuring someone who "played Monopoly" rather than an instrument.

Arthur Russell's avant-garde music spanned many genres

The classically trained cellist moved to San Francisco in the early 1970s, mingling with the hippie movement and the Beat Generation. After arriving in New York in 1973, he began exploring the nascent punk and disco scenes, infusing them with his classical training; however, his eclectic style might've been part of the reason he never broke through during his lifetime. That variety, though, is what draws so many devoted listeners to his work today.

How Apple's GarageBand changed music

Apple's preinstalled, easy-to-use software GarageBand was first released in 2004. Since then, it's changed the way artists write and record music. The program's accessibility and ease of use have allowed beginner artists to experiment and find their voice, while major artists like Rihanna, Grimes, and Bjork have used the program to record hit singles and perform live. This article from the Red Bull Music Academy explains how the basic interface reshaped an industry.

Hear the story of the police crackdown on a Stonehenge festival in 1985

This documentary revisits the 1985 police crackdown on a massive free festival at Stonehenge, when the UK government under Margaret Thatcher blocked access and deployed 1,300 riot police—an event that reshaped public access to the site.

Mark Zuckerberg's 2024 rebrand was dubbed the 'Zuckassaince'

Zuckerberg, like Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, wore the same, simple T-shirts and outfits for most of his early career to decrease the decisions he'd have to make on a daily basis. In 2024, Zuckerberg started wearing chunky gold chains around his neck and oversized T-shirts with slogans on them. Some say the "Zuckassaince" is an effort to rebrand Meta as a futuristic company, not just an old social media company for millennials.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

Learn about the relationship between Thomas Edison and Henry Ford

Despite their 16-year age difference, legendary inventor Thomas Edison and Henry Ford developed a close relationship after meeting at a convention in New York. The two—alongside environmentalist John Burroughs and Harvey Firestone, the founder of Firestone Tire—were known as the "Four Vagabonds" and were famous for their long roadtrips, which were often highly publicized.

The Airstream surged in a postwar road trip boom

Wally Byam invented the Airstream in the late 1920s, but it took off following World War II, when more affordable automobiles allowed families to venture out into an expanding network of state and national parks. Airstream enthusiasts sometimes traveled in caravans, camping in front of famous scenery, like the Pyramids at Giza.

The 1973 ‘back to school jam’ was the night hip-hop was born

Hip-hop began in New York’s Bronx borough with the “back to school jam,” an August 1973 dance party hosted by Cindy Campbell and her brother, DJ Kool Herc, in their apartment building’s recreation room.

Marc Maron helped define the modern podcast with 'WTF'

In 2009, Marc Maron began the "WTF" podcast, hosting a wide range of interesting celebrities in his garage studio. The extended format and unscripted conversations helped define the modern podcast.

The story of the debut 1967 Consumer Electronics Show

Read an account of the origins of the first CES in New York in 1967, a story which is surprisingly difficult to find information about.

Watch Johnny Cash’s 1969 concert at San Quentin

Johnny Cash is one of the most recognizable names in country music, but by the 1960s, he was also a rock icon. Part of that status was due to his outlaw identity and willingness to play for true outsiders. This documentary from one of his most famous performances shows why.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which dates back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

The use of fungi to detoxify land and water—a process known as mycoremediation—has been used to clean up natural resources affected by the 2025 California wildfires.

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

Dorothy's famous entrance into Oz in 'The Wizard of Oz' relied on analog tricks, including a body double and sepia-toned paint, as much as it did on technology

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Before humans, the Soviet Union and the United States sent animals—including apes, dogs, and cats—to space during the Space Race.

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.