Fimoculous has nicely highlighted a series of good films that Hulu has made freely available. The one obvious downside is that, unless something has changed at Hulu, the flicks will only be available to viewers in the US. (Hulu needs to do better than this!) Nonetheless, here they are, and thanks to Kotkke.org for helping flag these.

Speaking at the 2008 TED conference, physicist Stephen Hawking asks some Big Questions about our universe: How did the universe begin? How did life begin? Are we alone? And, during his ten minute talk, he offers some thoughts on how we might go about answering these big enchilada questions. (We’ve added the clip to our YouTube playlist.

Is it Bay-jing? Or Bay-zhing, as some American broadcasters are inclined to say it? Below, you’ll find the answer according to Two Chinese Characters, a video team composed of Carsey Yee from China, and John B. Weinstein who teaches Chinese at an American university. Give a watch. It’s intentionally campy and amusing.

Filmed in 1986, Meetin’ WA is a short (26 minute) film that not many have seen. What you get is Godard, one of the driving forces behind La Nouvelle Vague, in conversation with Woody Allen. The trademark Godard approach to film, the expected dose of Woody Allen neuroses – they’re all there.

Here’s another free, downloadable course coming out Stanford, which will tell you how regenerative medicine can keep your body parts almost new. You can access it here on iTunesU, and below we have posted the course description.

Produced at the request of the International Olympics Committee (and not at the behest of the Nazi propaganda machine), Leni Riefenstahl’s 1938 documentary, Olympia, is considered one of the more important sports documentaries of the 20th century.

Over the past week, we’ve discovered a number of good items being put together by some of our readers.
The first is a new popular podcast called “Robots” (iTunes – RSS Feed – Web Site).

PsychCentral has posted its list of the ten best psychology videos available on the web. Below, we have posted links to the videos themselves. But if you want a quick description of each clip, then definitely read through the original post. Thanks to Kottke.org for bringing this to light.
1.

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 Volumes 1, 2, 3, and 4 are.

We lost another good one: