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≡ Category: Audio Books, Media, Sci Fi | ≅ 4 Comments
Today, by popular demand, we’re running an updated version of one of our more popular posts to date. Enjoy…
At hastened speeds during the past year, we have seen book lovers recording homegrown audiobooks and posting them on sites like Librivox (see our collection of free audiobooks here). For obvious copyright reasons, these audio texts largely [...]
≡ Category: Harvard, Science, Video - Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
In 2003, the Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson wrote a widely read essay that called for an “Encyclopedia of Life.” Summed up simply, Wilson had in mind “an online reference source and database” that catalogued “every one of the 1.8 million species that are named and known on this planet,” not to mention the many organisms [...]
≡ Category: Literature | ≅ 1 Comment
Every year the folks at the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest celebrate their love for bad prose by running “a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.” They’ve just announced this year’s champion sentences and they’re well worth a read. The contest accepts entries year-round, [...]
≡ Category: Media | ≅ 1 Comment
When you think of The New Yorker, you don’t generally think of a magazine with a substantial digital footprint. But, ever so gradually, under David Remnick’s editorial direction, this institution in American journalism and cultural commentary has launched a series of digital initiatives that complement the traditional print journal. And when you add them all [...]
≡ Category: Film, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 1 Comment
Ingmar Bergman, one of the great filmmakers of the last century, has died at 89. You can read the full obit in the NY Times here, and catch a piece of his masterwork Persona below (or buy the film in full here). Film buffs may also want to check out Bergman’s autobiography, The Magic Lantern.
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Politics, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
What’s gone wrong with America’s democracy? It’s a question that Al Gore takes a hard look at in his recent (and well-reviewed) book, The Assault on Reason. Below, Gore gives you the gist of his argument in a half-hour video. It’s a bit heady. He’s invoking the Ancient Greeks, the Enlightenment, Edward Gibbon, Adam Smith [...]
≡ Category: Audio Books, Books, Literature | ≅ Leave a Comment
The Guardian Books Podcast has started offering an audiobook version of the young adult novel Wolf Brother as a serial podcast. The story is the first in a series of books by Michelle Paver called Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. It makes good audio since it’s gripping and not hard to follow (or get back into [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ Leave a Comment
In 2004, Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America imagined an alternative American history. The year is 1940, and Charles Lindbergh, an American hero and Nazi sympathizer, beats FDR in the presidential election and takes America down the path toward fascism, importing to the US the worst that Europe has to offer.
An implausible historical scenario? Not [...]
≡ Category: Online Courses, Science, Stanford | ≅ Leave a Comment
Last week, we mentioned The Future of the Internet. This week it’s another course available as a free podcast : Straight Talk About Stem Cells (iTunes).
The course was taught by Christopher Scott, the Executive Director of Stanford’s Program on Stem Cells in Society and the author of Stem Cell Now: An Introduction to the Coming [...]
≡ Category: Most Popular, Online Courses | ≅ 43 Comments
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Introduction to Archaeology - Feed - MP3s - Ruth Tringham, UC Berkeley
Architecture
Architecture Studio: Building in Landscapes (Video) - iTunes - Jan Wampler, MIT
Cultural Studies
Foundations of American Cyberculture - iTunes - Feed - Greg Niemeyer, UC Berkeley
Heritage and Cultural Informatics - MP3s, Ian Anderson, University of [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Politics | ≅ 2 Comments
We have hit bottom in Iraq. And you know it because the debates over Iraq (whether the war was just, whether we planned it adequately, whether we have a meaningful exist strategy, etc.) have ground to a halt. The big defenders of the war effort have mostly gone silent, or they’re no longer taken seriously, [...]
≡ Category: Books, Comedy | ≅ 1 Comment
For a little weekend laugh, here is Stephen Colbert speaking at Book Expo America, pumping his new book, I Am America (And So Can You!), sparring with Khaled Hosseini (author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns), trashing Cormac McCarthy, and generally likening books to cigarettes. The clip gets better as it moves [...]
≡ Category: Apple, Media, Technology, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
(Continued from Part II)
The most recent major foray into the world of cultureboxes comes in an entirely different size and market niche: the Apple iPhone. It may look different, but it has all the hallmarks of a culturebox. The iPhone wants to deliver video, audio and the best of the Web; it hopes to revolutionize [...]
≡ Category: Media, Technology, Television, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
The online magazine Slate runs most of its arts and culture stories in a section called “Culturebox.” Ironically, it’s taken the consumer electronics industry several years to catch up, but now it seems like every new gadget is marketed as a culturebox, from the shiny iPhone to the pioneering Tivo to the hot-running Xbox 360. [...]
≡ Category: Books, Literature | ≅ Leave a Comment
A quick heads up: You can read an excerpt from J.M. Coetzee’s upcoming novel, Diary of a Bad Year, over at The New York Review of Books. The entire novel will be published in January 2008. And, in case you weren’t already aware of it, Coetzee won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003. You [...]
≡ Category: Business, Media, Technology, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
The online magazine Slate runs most of its arts and culture stories in a section called “Culturebox.” Ironically, it’s taken the consumer electronics industry several years to catch up, but now it seems like every new gadget is marketed as a culturebox, from the shiny iPhone to the pioneering Tivo to the hot-running Xbox 360. [...]
≡ Category: Podcast Articles and Resources, Science | ≅ 2 Comments
RadioLab, a science radio show created by WNYC in New York, is a little unusual for a public radio show. It comes out in short seasons of about five episodes. Each episode addresses a particular question in science through a wide lens–I found their most recently podcast show, on Morality, to be particularly fascinating. We’re [...]
≡ Category: Online Courses, Stanford, Web/Tech | ≅ 2 Comments
Here is a new and free course to come out of a Stanford University program that (full disclosure) I help organize. It’s called The Future of the Internet: Architecture and Policy (iTunes), and it’s taught by Ramesh Johari. The course, designed for non-techies, gets into the important question of whether the internet will remain “neutral” [...]
≡ Category: Uncategorized | ≅ Leave a Comment
It’s a wrap for the week. Here is what we served up:
The Cult of the Amateur: A Short Review (and a Free Book)
Elvis Costello: The First Ten Years Podcast
10 Podcasts to Build Your Vocabulary
Interview with Susanne Dunlap, Author of Liszt’s Kiss
The High and Low Road of the Atheism Debate
How Open Culture Can Enrich Your Summer [...]
≡ Category: Books, Media, Technology, Web/Tech | ≅ 1 Comment
New rule: Books that are short on good ideas should only get short reviews. And so that’s what we’re serving up today — a short review of Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur: How the Democratization of the Digital World is Assaulting Our Culture.
Keen’s argument can essentially be boiled down to this: Web 2.0 [...]
≡ Category: Audio Books, Books, Current Affairs, History, Literature | ≅ 2 Comments
Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – It’s a major work of the Enlightenment, a book that shaped how we moderns write history (and, for that matter, how we aspire to write in the English language), and it’s now available as a free podcast thanks to Librivox. Or at least [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
A quick heads up for Elvis Costello fans: In this ten-part podcast (iTunes - Feed - Web Site), Elvis reflects on the first 10 years of his career, taking listeners on a tour that looks back at “his childhood, musical influences, singing, songwriting, changing his name, recording, Nick Lowe, the Attractions, the hits, the misses, [...]
≡ Category: English Language, Podcast Articles and Resources | ≅ 1 Comment
Recently Merriam-Webster announced that they’re adding “ginormous,” “speed dating” and a few other gems to the latest edition of their dictionary. In their honor, we present ten podcasts to help you expand your vocabulary. Enjoy!
Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day (Feed, Site)
Podictionary (Feed, iTunes, Site)
The Word Nerds (iTunes, Site)
NPR: On Words with John Ciardi (iTunes, [...]
≡ Category: Uncategorized | ≅ Leave a Comment
We’re now in prime vacation season, and so we figured that we’d highlight several ways in which Open Culture can enrich your summer travels — all for free.
First and foremost, if you’re traveling to another country, and if you want to speak the mother tongue, then spend some time with our collection of foreign language [...]
≡ Category: Books, Literature | ≅ Leave a Comment
Today, we’re speaking with Susanne Dunlap, author of Liszt’s Kiss, a recently published novel that brings you back to 1832 Paris and the musical worlds of Franz Liszt and another central character, the Countess Anne de Barbier-Chouant.
DC: Before we begin, please tell us a little bit about who you are as a person, and who [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Religion, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
These days, there is no shortage of public thinkers launching a vigorous defense of atheism. Most recently, Christopher Hitchens has come out with God is Not Great. And, holding true to form, he has used this book and related media campaign as an opportunity to fight out the ugly culture wars once again. All [...]
≡ Category: Books, Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
John Irving published a long defense of German author Günter Grass’s new memoir, Peeling the Onion in the New York Times Book Review yesterday. The book created a storm of when it came out in German last year. Grass, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999, revealed that he spent the last months [...]
≡ Category: Books, Media, Technology, Web/Tech | ≅ 1 Comment
Last weekend’s New York Times Sunday Magazine has declared this the Amateur’s Hour, an era when unpaid hobbyists can edit breaking news, design space technology for NASA, and predict the end of the world. That last article is clearly an outlier, but the first two raise an interesting point—are we getting better service from processes [...]
