The open access movement keeps rolling along. See here.

Ne Me Quitte Pas – It’s Jacques Brel’s classic from 1959. It’s a fixture in the French cultural imagination. And it’s been covered left and right, by such singers as Nina Simone (here) and Frank Sinatra (listen). Now, Jacques, take it away. (PS You can find Brel’s video on our YouTube playlist.

Segueing from our last post, I wanted to feature a reading given by Tobias Wolff, a master of the short story, who also happens to teach creative writing at Stanford.
In March, he released a new book, Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories. And below we have posted a clip of him reading from a piece called “The Benefit of the Doubt.

A quick fyi: Yesterday, Stanford Continuing Studies opened up registration for its summer lineup of online writing courses.

The always handy Lifehacker has pulled together resources that will teach you to play guitar, drums and piano. Some of these lessons are taught via video, others with podcasts. And if you’re looking to teach yourself music theory, then head over to Musictheory.net. They’ve got you covered.

As a quick follow up to our post earlier today, I wanted to highlight the Smithsonian Channel’s first broadcast on BlogTalkRadio, which aired tonight.

Here’s a little something for consumers and producers of good cultural media.
BlogTalkRadio gives anyone with a computer and telephone the ability to create their own live radio show, and then later turn the broadcast into a podcast. So far, about 82,000 shows have aired on this free service, and about 2.

Apparently, this is “an authentic wax cylinder recording of Whitman reading from his late poem ‘America’ that appeared in 1888 …”

FirstSounds.org has gathered some of the earliest sound recordings. This clip, dating back to 1860, features someone singing the French folksong “Au Clair de la Lune” on April 9, 1860, and it “is the earliest audibly recognizable record of the human voice yet recovered.

There’s been no shortage of articles trying to explain the ongoing housing and mortgage crisis. But none does a more clear and entertaining job than this recent episode of This American Life, “The Giant Pool of Money” (iTunes – Feed – MP3). Step by step, the show traces how we got into this mess.