≡ Category: Uncategorized | ≅ Leave a Comment
This is just a quick note to let you know that you can now follow Open Culture on Twitter. If you subscribe, you’ll know whenever we post something new on the site. To get going, create a Twitter account (if you don’t already have one), access our Twitter page here, and then click the word “Follow” [...]
≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
Here’s a nice vintage clip that comes out of a YouTube Channel called The Great Performers, which we’ve added to our page: Best YouTube Collections. The video features Arturo Toscanini conducting Beethoven’s 5th at Carnegie Hall in 1952. You can find the second movement here.
For more classical music see:
Free Beethoven and Mozart Recordings via Podcast
Beethoven’s Symphony No. [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ 1 Comment
Abraham Lincoln has never exactly gone out of fashion. More books have been written about him than any other American president. But even so, he has recently dominated our thoughts, our public discourse, in a way that we haven’t seen in some time. And that’s because he started something in American history that ended with the [...]
≡ Category: Film | ≅ Leave a Comment
Here’s a piece from one of my colleagues, Scott Hutchins. Take it away Scott…
Steven Soderbergh was in San Francisco as part of the roll out for his four-and-a-half-hour, two-part epic Che, about the Argentinian doctor turned revolutionary Che Guevara. Guevara is no stranger to American screens, especially after the popular film, The Motorcycle Diaries. So [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
Stephen in the UK highlighted a piece in Guardian that will interest Bob Dylan fans. It begins:
Bob Dylan has given rare permission for his music to be used in a TV commercial.
Protest song Blowin’ in the Wind will be used to reinforce a message of change in a TV campaign for ethical banking and retail [...]
≡ Category: Uncategorized | ≅ 8 Comments
As you probably know, Open Culture launched a new look last week, and it seemed worth devoting a few words to it. With the new design, I was hoping to give the site a more inviting look and streamline the overall navigation. I was also hoping to make it clear that user contributions are always [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
An excellent find by Kottke: “Amazon has hundreds of free mp3s available for download, including tracks by Brian Eno & David Byrne, Ani Difranco, and Reverend Horton Heat.”
Update: A reader informs us that this is US only. My apologies to any readers outside the US.
≡ Category: Comedy, Literature | ≅ 1 Comment
Elizabeth Alexander recited one of her own poems at Obama’s inauguration last week and now talks poetry (both highbrow and lowbrow) with Stephen Colbert. All in all, she does a pretty good job of hanging in there.
≡ Category: Web/Tech | ≅ 2 Comments
The open education movement got a little stronger this week with the launch of Academic Earth. Run by Richard Ludlow, a new social entrepreneur only a couple of years out of Yale, Academic Earth brings video lectures from leading universities into a centralized user-friendly site. What you’ll see here is an impressive early implementation of where Academic Earth [...]
≡ Category: Books | ≅ 1 Comment
Sad news. John Updike, one of the most prolific authors of the last half century, has died at the age of 76. The cause was apparently lung cancer. Get the obit here.
In November, Updike published The Widows of Eastwick, a sequel to The Witches of Eastwick, the bestseller he wrote back in 1984. On [...]
≡ Category: Science, Stanford, Video - Science | ≅ 1 Comment
Back in October, I mentioned that Stanford had posted on iTunes a course called Darwin’s Legacy, which helped commemorate the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species.
The course brings together important scholars from across the US who explore Darwin’s legacy in fields as diverse as anthropology, religion, medicine, [...]
≡ Category: Books, Google, Harvard, Web/Tech | ≅ 1 Comment
In the latest edition of The New York Review of Books, Robert Darnton, a prominent French historian who now runs Harvard’s Library system, puts out a tantalizing idea: “Google can make the Enlightenment dream come true.” Having settled its lawsuit with publishers and authors, Google is now steaming ahead with its effort to digitize millions [...]
≡ Category: Video - Science | ≅ 1 Comment
I’m not sure that it’s quite as intriguing as what happens when waves freeze in Newfoundland, but it’s still pretty neat.
≡ Category: Books | ≅ 2 Comments
Toronto writer Robert Boyczuk has released the short story collection Horror Story and Other Horror Stories in trade paperback. You can purchase it on Amazon, or download it in a free PDF format here. Also now available is a free audio/mp3 version of Boyczuk’s short story, “Falling”. These finds were highlighted by Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing. Doctorow has elsewhere called Boyczuk a ”supremely talented short-story [...]
≡ Category: Books | ≅ 5 Comments
What are the 1000 best novels? The Guardian thinks it knows. This list was put together by The Guardian’s review team and a panel of experts. As you’ll see, the definitive list is helpfully subdivided into themes: love, crime, comedy, family and self, state of the nation, science fiction and fantasy, war and travel.
On that note, [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
At least in my mind, Aretha Franklin stole the show on Tuesday. It’s hard to top her singing My Country, ‘Tis of Thee — the beauty of the voice, the obvious poignant symbolism of the moment, and then her hat. Yes, the hat that has captured the public imagination. Just days later, we have a [...]
≡ Category: Technology, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
What’s My Line? aired on CBS from 1950 to 1967, making it the longest-running game show in American television history. During its eighteen seasons, the show featured hundreds of celebrities & VIPs. Above, you can watch Salvador Dali in action. You can also rewind the video tape and check out Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Lloyd Wright, Eleanor [...]
≡ Category: Art, Current Affairs | ≅ 7 Comments
The story behind the artwork that defined the Obama campaign is a fascinating one. Shepard Fairey’s posters achieved prominence much in the same way that Obama did. They rose from the ground up. Everyday people supported and promoted his imaginative posters on the web, until they became something of a public phenomenon. And they [...]
≡ Category: Psychology | ≅ 1 Comment
Speaking at the TED conference in 2007, Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and now Outliers: The Story of Success) introduces you to the food industry’s pursuit of the perfect spaghetti sauce, which ultimately tells you something essential about human choice and happiness.
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ 1 Comment
If you didn’t see how the inauguration of the 44th American president went down, here it goes.
≡ Category: History | ≅ 1 Comment
A good find over at Metafilter. Here you’ll find 22 inauguration speeches, starting with McKinley’s 1901 address. There’s some great footage in this series of videos.
Along similar lines, The New York Times has posted an interactive feature that covers every inaugural address. You can read the full text of each speech, and see which words [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ Leave a Comment
In 2008, our attention was mostly focused on the long American presidential campaign and the dramatic crash of the global financial system. These two stories overshadowed many other important ones. And so Foreign Policy has put together a collection of the most overlooked foreign affairs stories of ‘08. Russia’s move into Africa, the beginning of [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, History, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
The full “I Have a Dream” speech. The place: The Lincoln Memorial. The Date: August 28, 1963. The Why: To bring about many small changes in American society, which eventually and collectively bring us to Tuesday. Take it away Martin:
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≡ Category: Film, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 5 Comments
Slacker was shot in Austin, Texas in 1991. Its budget? A mere $23,000. But that didn’t stop it from becoming a cult hit and an overall important indie film. Here you have it free on YouTube, all 100 minutes of it…
Update: it appears that YouTube has placed some geographical restrictions on who can see this [...]
≡ Category: Most Popular | ≅ 3 Comments
Every now and then, we like to remind those who subscribe to Open Culture via rss feed or email that our site hosts large collections of cultural and educational media. In total, these collections offer thousands of hours of enriching audio and video, and it’s all free. You can download most all of it [...]
≡ Category: Online Courses, Physics, Science, Stanford, Video - Science | ≅ 3 Comments
This week, Stanford has started to roll out a new course, Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Taught by Leonard Susskind, one of America’s leading physics minds, this course is the fourth of a six-part sequence – Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum – that traces the development of modern physics, moving from Newton to Black Holes. As the [...]
≡ Category: Art, Google, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 3 Comments
Thankfully, it’s not all bad news here in Silicon Valley. Yesterday, Google and the Prado (the major art museum in Madrid) announced that you can launch Google Earth from wherever you live, travel virtually to Spain, and then take a close look at fourteen of the museum’s finest paintings. And, by “close,” I mean close. [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
Imagine you’re surfing YouTube and come across a clip of Leonard Bernstein conducting Shostakovich’s Fifth. It looks and sounds great. Now imagine that you layer on top a series of YouTube comments that accompany the video. Suddenly things get a little different and bizarre. This piece comes from the YouTube Commentary Project developed by Artists Space, which [...]
≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 1 Comment
What happens when you take Ben King’s 1961 hit, Stand By Me, and then travel around the world, having different international artists offer their own interpretations, and finally you stitch them all together in one seamless tune? The clip below starts in California, moves to New Orleans, then heads off to Amsterdam, France, Brazil, Moscow, [...]
≡ Category: History, Online Courses | ≅ 5 Comments
For lifelong learners, courses on Ancient Greece and Rome always remain in steady demand. While these courses are poorly represented in undergraduate programs (at least in the States), they seem to make a comeback in continuing education programs designed for older students. Eventually, it seems, many come to the conclusion that you can’t skip over [...]
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