The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Audio Books, Media, Sci Fi | ≅ 5 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 | ≅ 3 Comments
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 | ≅ 1 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 | ≅ 78 Comments
Get free online courses from the world’s leading universities. This collection includes over 250 free courses in the liberal arts and sciences. Download these audio & video courses straight to your computer or mp3 player.
Humanities & Social Sciences
Archaeology
Introduction to Archaeology – Feed – MP3s – Ruth Tringham, UC Berkeley
Architecture
Architecture Studio: Building in Landscapes [...]
≡ 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 | ≅ 3 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” [...]
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