Brendan Brown

Curiosities

Sylvester Stallone asked Queen for “Another One Bites the Dust” as the Rocky III theme and was turned down — so he called an unknown band called Survivor, and “Eye of the Tiger,” written as a replacement for a song he couldn’t have, outsold almost everything Queen released that decade

A rejected Queen song led Stallone to call an unknown band, launching one of the decade's biggest hits and proving that sometimes the best creative accidents come from being told no.

Aug 13, 2026

Curiosities

“Donnie Darko” was rejected by every major distributor, then released just six weeks after 9/11 with a jet engine crashing into a teenager’s bedroom at the center of its story — it earned barely $500,000, vanished from cinemas and became a generational obsession only after teenagers discovered it on DVD

A haunted teenager, a mysterious rabbit, and a jet engine through a bedroom ceiling arrived in theaters six weeks after 9/11, making one of cinema's most prescient disasters completely unsellable.

Aug 13, 2026

Mind

Why some people feel their safest emotional bond is with an animal

For some people, the safest place to be vulnerable is with a creature that will never disappoint them, betray them, or keep score.

Aug 12, 2026

Curiosities

The Shawshank Redemption failed at the box office and lost all seven Oscars it was nominated for, but VHS gave it a second life: it became the most-rented film of 1995, and years of relentless television reruns turned a movie audiences had ignored into one they now rank among the greatest ever made

How a box office bomb became the most beloved film ever made—not through theaters, but through VCRs and late-night cable reruns.

Aug 12, 2026

Music

Mariah Carey co-wrote “All I Want for Christmas Is You” in 1994, and the song refused to die — it finally hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 in 2019, a quarter-century after release, and it now returns to the charts every December, earning millions annually from a single afternoon of songwriting

A song recorded in a single afternoon has become the most valuable holiday asset in music history, defying the expiration date that usually kills pop hits.

Aug 12, 2026

Mind

I’m 43 and I have no close friends. I finally saw how being guarded kept every relationship at a distance

The walls we build to protect ourselves in childhood often become the prisons we inhabit as adults.

Aug 11, 2026