The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Science, Television | ≅ 1 Comment
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 [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Science | ≅ 2 Comments
The Colbert Report
Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
≡ Category: Film | ≅ 1 Comment
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 [...]
≡ 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
≡ Category: Business, Current Affairs, Politics | ≅ Leave a Comment
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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 [...]
≡ 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, and [...]
≡ 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. [...]
≡ 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 [...]
≡ 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 [...]
≡ Category: Art, Media | ≅ 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 [...]
≡ Category: Literature | ≅ Leave a Comment
This little collection gives you access to Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), one of America’s great poets, reading his own poetry. Among the poems, you will hear “The Idea of Order at Key West,” “The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain,” “Vacancy in the Park,” and “To an Old Philosopher in Rome.” For more, you should [...]
≡ Category: Podcast Articles and Resources | ≅ 2 Comments
Earlier this week, one of our readers, Scott Dumont, offered up some excellent thoughts on a few podcasts that we’ve previously overlooked. Since he put things so well, I figured why not pass along his thoughts directly to you. Here they go, and thanks Scott …
I’d like to make three suggestions for additions to your [...]
≡ Category: Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 4 Comments
Back in June, we first posted a handy list of web sites where you will find free intelligent videos — documentaries, classic films, public television programs, university courses & lectures, interviews with big thinkers, etc. The collection has now grown to 50 sites. Below, you can find the first ten sites on the list, and you [...]
≡ Category: Film | ≅ Leave a Comment
A nice tip from Lifehacker. Canada’s National Film Board makes 1000s of films (including documentaries, animated films, trailers and some Oscar winners) freely available via the web and now the iPhone. Visit the NFB collection here, and get the free iPhone app here.
via Lifehacker
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
According to the LA Times, U2 will live stream its concert this coming Sunday night on YouTube. Some 95,000 people have tickets for the Rose Bowl show in LA. If you’re not one of them, then you can watch the YouTube stream starting at 8:30 pm Pacific time. The footage will also be archived for [...]
≡ Category: Film, Music | ≅ 2 Comments
In 2008, Martin Scorsese brought the Rolling Stones to film with “Shine a Light.” (Watch the trailer here.) But a good forty years before that, another giant of modern film had a similar idea. Jean-Luc Godard, one of the founders of New Wave French cinema, directed “Sympathy for the Devil” during the tumultuous summer [...]
≡ Category: Math | ≅ 2 Comments
Updated post: It’s rare that we get to cover math here. So here it goes: Adrian Banner, a lecturer at Princeton, has put together a lecture series (in video) that will help students master calculus, a subject that has traditionally frustrated many students. The 24 lectures (click here and scroll down) were originally presented as [...]
≡ Category: Art, History | ≅ 5 Comments
The Bayeux Tapestry famously offers a pictorial interpretation of the Norman Conquest of England (1066), a pivotal moment in medieval history, and the events leading to the invasion itself. Currently residing in France, the tapestry measures 20 inches by 230 feet, and you can now see an animated version of the story it narrates. The [...]
≡ Category: Art, Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
This year, Nikon held a contest and selected the best “photomicrographs,” essentially pictures taken through the microscope. 20 finalists were selected in total, and you can view them on Nikon’s web site, or even more easily on Wired’s web site. Among the finalists, you’ll find the picture above. Nope, it isn’t a Van Gogh. It’s [...]
≡ Category: Education | ≅ Leave a Comment
Another video brought to you by cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch, who previously brought you Information R/evolution and The Machine is Us/ing Us. You may also want to see his talk, An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube.
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