Film Version of Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire Now Online

≡ Category: Science, Television |5 Comments

Michael Pollan’s best-selling book, Botany of Desire, is now a film, and you can watch it online, courtesy of PBS. (Click to watch complete film.) The film takes you inside our relationship with the plant world, and shows “how four familiar species — the apple, the tulip, cannabis and the potato — evolved to satisfy [...]

Stephen Colbert on Particle Physics

≡ Category: Comedy, Science |2 Comments

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Sita Sings the Blues Now on YouTube

≡ Category: Film |4 Comments

Nina Paley, a self-taught animator, released in 2008 an 82-minute animated film, Sita Sings the Blues, that mingles the classic Indian myth, The Ramayana, with contemporary autobiographical events, and it’s all set to the 1920’s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw. The film, which launched the San Francisco International Animation Festival, has won awards and gathered [...]

Free Philip Glass Album (Act Today)

≡ Category: Music |7 Comments

A quick note: Amazon will let you download a Philip Glass sampler that contains 21 tracks. You can get them as mp3s, and they’re all free. But the deal ends (it seems) by the end of the day. So act quickly. via Lifehacker

This American Life Demystifies the American Healthcare System

≡ Category: Business, Current Affairs, Politics |1 Comment

Share tweetmeme_style = ‘compact’; When the global financial system collapsed last year, This American Life and its sister program, Planet Money (iTunes - RSS Feed - Web Site) began doing something that few others could pull off. They took very complex problems and made them understandable, often demystifying difficult concepts in a reliably engaging way. Now, they’re at it again. [...]

Galapagos Rap: 3.5* ’til infinity…

≡ Category: Music, Science |Leave a Comment

Stanford students head to the Galapagos Islands, then rap about what they’ve learned. Evolutionary rap. What a concept… Meanwhile, the professor whose voice you hear at the outset, Bill Durham, taught a course in Stanford Continuing Studies (my day job) last year, and we have made it available as a free podcast. It’s called Darwin’s Legacy, [...]

Richard Dawkins v. Bill O’Reilly: Round 2

≡ Category: Media, Science |5 Comments

Back when Richard Dawkins (Oxford University) published The God Delusion in 2007, he made a fairly unexpected appearance on Bill O’Reilly’s show. Quite the contrast in characters. Now that he has published his latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth, it was time for Dawkins to meet up with the bumptious one again. Here it goes. [...]

Yale Adds New Batch of Free Open Courses

≡ Category: Online Courses, Yale |4 Comments

A quick update for you. Yale University has added its third batch of courses to its open education initiative, bringing the total number of courses to 25. (Find the complete list here.) The latest round is slightly bigger than previous ones, which bucks the trend that we’re generally seeing. (Open Courses have been in a [...]

Barnes & Noble’s Answer to the Kindle

≡ Category: Amazon Kindle, e-books |1 Comment

The marketing around the Nook, Barnes & Noble’s Answer to the Kindle, has begun, even though the product won’t be sold (for $259) until November. Above, you’ll find a B&N video that demos the features of the new e-book reader. Gizmodo is already giving the Nook some nice reviews. See 8 Reasons You Can Finally [...]

Ira Glass on the Art of Story Telling

≡ Category: Art, Media, Radio |2 Comments

No one tells a better story than This American Life, the award-winning radio program coming out of Chicago. And no one is better positioned to explain the art of great story telling than the show’s host, Ira Glass. Above, Glass gives you his thoughts. And this clip comes in 4 acts. For more, get Act [...]

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    Open Culture editor Dan Colman scours the web for the best educational media. He finds the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & movies you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.

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