25 years after the release of Blade Runner, Ridley Scott has assembled a final and definitive director’s cut of the film, giving audiences the chance to see the film as Scott originally intended it.
Before the film’s original release in 1982, preview screenings went horribly, and the money men stepped in and imposed changes on the [...]
≡ Category: Film, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Comments
Martin Scorsese is on a rock ‘n roll tear.
In 2006, he released No Direction Home, an acclaimed documentary on Bob Dylan (long after he filmed his first rockumentary, The Last Waltz in 1978). Next April, he’s set to release another documentary on The Rolling Stones, tentatively called Shine a Light. (Watch the already released trailer [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ Comments
Social networking is doing some good. In a matter of days, over 110,000 users have joined the Support the Monks’ Protest in Burma group on Facebook, with the larger goal of mobilizing support for the Buddhist monks who have launched a peaceful, “saffron” protest against the military regime that seized power in 1962 and has [...]
≡ Category: Science, Video - Science | ≅ Comments
PBS’s NOVA recently aired a three-hour mini-series, The Elegant Universe, that introduced TV viewers to string theory – a radical “theory of everything” that unites major laws of physics and offers a unified explanation for everything that happens in the universe. The program was hosted by Brian Green, a string theorist who wrote a runaway [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ Comments
The MacArthur Foundation recently announced its latest crop of “genius grant” recipients. Each winner receives $500,000 “with no strings attached” and they can use the money to live, to fund research, or to buy a very modest condo in the Bay Area. As usual, the recipients come from a wide range of fields and [...]
≡ Category: History, Stanford | ≅ Comments
Let me elaborate on an item that we touched upon very briefly earlier this week. Stanford University has rolled out a new free course on iTunes (listen here) that takes you inside the life and adventures of Hannibal, the great Carthaginian military tactician who maneuvered his way across the Alps and stunned Roman armies in [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ Comments
There was a lot of hand-wringing leading up to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s appearance at Columbia University on Monday. But, as it turns out, freedom of speech seemingly worked as it was intended. Ahmadinejad entered the marketplace of ideas and quickly came out the wrong side of the exchange. (You can watch the full video of his [...]
≡ Category: Apple, Web/Tech | ≅ Comments
The digital music market is big, and so far Apple has owned it. But now Amazon may be quickly emerging as a viable competitor.
Tuesday, Amazon launched Amazon MP3, which gives you access to 2 million songs and more soon to come. Amazon’s product has several nice advantages over iTunes. Let’s list them briefly:
It delivers songs [...]
≡ Category: Books | ≅ Comments
David Halberstam’s no stranger to writing big books about big wars, and he reportedly thought of his final work, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, as a “bookend” to his classic on Vietnam, The Best and the Brightest. The book comes out this week with a very unusual publicity blitz.
Halberstam died in a [...]
≡ Category: Film, Google, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Comments
Here’s a little something for the film buffs out there: TheListUniverse has posted a collection of ten classic films from the 1920s, 30s and 40s that you can watch on Google Video. Just click and watch. On the list, you’ll find Fritz Lang’s M, the 1922 German silent film Nosferatu, The Gold Rush with Charlie [...]
≡ Category: Uncategorized | ≅ Comments
Privacy Policy
Open Culture respects each individual’s right to personal privacy. In general, we try to collect as little information about our readers as possible. And we will use information collected through our Web site only in the ways disclosed in this statement.
Part I. Information Collection
Open Culture does not require readers to create user accounts. The [...]
≡ Category: Books, History, Most Popular | ≅ Comments
Here are a few facts to know about the adventurous Patrick Hunt. He’s a Stanford archaeologist who has spent more than a decade trying to unravel the mystery of how Hannibal, the great ancient military leader, crossed the Alps in 218 BCE with 25,000 men and 37 elephants. (Listen on iTunes to the course he [...]
≡ Category: History, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Comments
Mark this on your calendar. Ken Burns, who has produced some of America’s most acclaimed historical documentaries, will air his latest film starting Sunday night on PBS. The War is a seven-part, 15-hour documentary that “tells the story of the Second World War through the personal accounts of a handful of men and women from [...]
≡ Category: Uncategorized | ≅ Comments
Here’s a quick snapshot of what we served up this past week (and the one before that). Have a good weekend.
Bob Dylan Video Goodness
Keeping Wikipedia Honest
NBC Leaves the iTunes Fold
Meet Larry David
The World of Words & Carnal Knowledge
Falling Man – A 9/11 Novel
Life-Changing Books Now on Google’s “My Library”
New Additions to the Podcast Family
iPod Classic [...]
≡ Category: Books | ≅ Comments
Here’s where great writing gets done. The Guardian has posted a nice collection of annotated photos of the working spaces used by famous writers, including Seamus Heaney, AS Byatt, Michael Frayn, and Alain de Botton. (Get the full list here.) My favorite selection is Jonathan Safran Foer’s, the Rose Reading Room of the 42nd Street [...]
≡ Category: Apple, Television | ≅ Comments
Apple took the world of digital entertainment by storm when it started offering new television shows on iTunes in 2005. The big networks signed on (eventually) and it was suddenly possible to catch an episode of The Office or Lost for $1.99 on a video iPod or a PC.
NBC was one of the early adopters, [...]
≡ Category: Music, Uncategorized, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Comments
Mark October 1 on your calendar. That’s when Bob Dylan will release a new box set of his “greatest songs.” Now, cut over to the website designed to market the album, and you’ll find a couple notable pieces of video. First up, you can watch the video that accompanies Mark Ronson’s remixing of “Most Likely [...]
≡ Category: Apple | ≅ Comments
Robert X. Cringley’s weekly article/podcast (iTunes – Feed – Web Site) may make you think twice about buying an iPod Classic … at least for now. Despite the name, the guts of the iPod Classic are actually new, and the bugs haven’t been fully worked out. The list of problems experienced by users includes [...]
≡ Category: Books, Podcast Articles and Resources | ≅ Comments
Grammar is in vogue. The statistics don’t lie. The Grammar Girl (iTunes – Feed – Web Site) remains one of the most popular podcasts on iTunes, and The Grammar Grater (iTunes – Feed – Web Site) is holding its own. From grammar, it’s just a short step to words, to etymology. And, today, we want [...]
≡ Category: Media | ≅ Comments
Effective at midnight, The New York Times will make the “TimesSelect” section of its website entirely free. (It used to cost subscribers $49.95 a year.) And it will also free up “its archives from 1987 to the present … , as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain.”
In [...]
≡ Category: Web/Tech | ≅ Comments
Wikipedia is now the 9th most frequented site on the web, and it hosts over 7 million articles in over 200 languages. Like it or not, Wikipedia is here to stay.
Recognizing this, some innovative programmers have started developing ways to shore up Wikipedia’s sometimes shaky foundations. In particular, they’re finding ways to monitor Wikipedia entries [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
at least according to Rolling Stone. (Get the list here). Yes, these lists are always highly subjective. But if I were the arbiter of musical taste, I’d pick many of the same, so here it is.
≡ Category: Current Affairs, History | ≅ Comments
Stewart Brand, the creator of the iconic Whole Earth Catalog, heads up the The Long Now Foundation, an organization committed to cultivating “slower/better” thinking and fostering greater responsibility over “the next 10,000 years.” (Yes, they’re ambitious.) To help bring this about, Brand hosts a monthly speaking series that you can download as a podcast (iTunes [...]
≡ Category: Uncategorized | ≅ Comments
Below, we have some links recommended by our readers. Feel free to send other good bits our way. The more we give, the more we get. Just click here to send:
Sean Penn reads an excerpt from Bob Dylan’s autobiography, Chronicles, here. (Or check out the full audiobook version.)
Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, History, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Comments
Lenny Bruce (born Leonard Alfred Schneider) introduced a strongly satirical, taboo-breaking form of comedy during the 1950s and 1960s, which paved the way for some of America’s great comedians — Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Chris Rock, even John Stewart. And for ushering in this new era of comedy, Bruce paid a heavy personal price. In [...]
≡ Category: Apple, Web/Tech | ≅ Comments
Since we talk a lot here about podcasts and mp3 files, it seems worth flagging this Yahoo gadget review that pits the new iPod lineup against its rivals. Here, we’ve got the new iPod Touch v. the Samsung Yepp YP-P2; the new Nano (with video) v. the Sansa View, and the iPod Classic v. Microsoft’s [...]
≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Comments
Below we have “R.E.M. Live, recorded on the Around the World Tour, which promoted Around the Sun, a studio album from 2004. It is to be released October 16.” (Thanks to Justin for the clarification.)
Source: Stereogum. (For more music, check out our collection of MP3 Blogs.)
For more smart media, subscribe to our feed
≡ Category: Uncategorized | ≅ Comments
We got a nice little mention in the October edition of Smart Money (The Wall Street Journal Magazine), which highlighted our collection of university courses available as free podcasts. If you’re a Smart Money reader, you’ll want to focus on our collection of 75 University Courses as well as on our general University Podcast Collection. [...]
≡ Category: Books | ≅ Comments
On the anniversary of the September 11th attacks, it seems fitting to call attention to Don DeLillo’s Falling Man, a recent addition to the growing body of fiction now known as “9/11 novel.” However you may feel about DeLillo’s writing style (we often find that it grates), Falling Man adeptly captures the emotional [...]
Get updates as soon as they go live, via RSS feed, email and now Twitter!
Get the latest from our Twitter Stream.
Why can't we be friends?
Got a link we should post? Send it to mail@openculture.com
