The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 6 Comments
Great find by Robert B., who captions this clip: “the teenage Glenn Gould at his Canadian home.” Gould is playing here J.S.Bach’s Partita #2. Give this a minute to get going. It’s a pretty awesome display of Gould’s talents. Thanks for sharing Robert…
≡ Category: Physics, Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, Bohr and many other great scientists appear on paper currencies from around the world. Note that you can click on each image to see it in a higher resolution.
via @olfus
≡ Category: Media, Web/Tech | ≅ 19 Comments
Nina Paley and Jaron Lanier are facing off in a friendly, public radio smackdown, debating the pros and cons of open/free culture. (Listen to the audio below). As a quick refresher, Nina Paley got a good amount of press last year when she created Sita Sings the Blues, a prize-winning animated film, and then released it to [...]
≡ Category: Amazon Kindle, Apple, Books, e-books | ≅ 7 Comments
Today we have a guest post by William Rankin, director of educational innovation, associate professor of medieval literature, and Apple Distinguished Educator, Abilene Christian University. ACU was the first university in the world to announce a comprehensive one-to-one initiative based on iPhones and iPod touches designed to explore the impact of mobility in education. For [...]
≡ Category: Books, Life, Literature | ≅ 1 Comment
More sad news. J.D. Salinger, who brought us The Catcher in the Rye, has died at 91. Here’s the initial news release.
Boy, when you’re dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in [...]
≡ Category: Economics | ≅ 2 Comments
Russ Roberts, the George Mason University economist and host of EconTalk (iTunes – RSS Feed – Web Site) recently teamed up with John Papola, a television exec, to produce “Fear the Boom and Bust.” It’s a rap song/video with intellectual substance that follows this premise:
John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek, two of the great economists of [...]
≡ Category: Life, Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
Apparently, the Swedes call when they know you’ll be home. Worth a listen.
≡ Category: History | ≅ 1 Comment
Sad news. Howard Zinn, the American historian best known for his book, A People’s History of the United States, died today of a heart attack at the age of 87. The Boston Herald has more on his life and passing here. If you’re familiar with Zinn’s biography, you’ll know that he served in World War II [...]
≡ Category: Amazon Kindle, Apple | ≅ 2 Comments
Welcome the new Kindle competitor. Above, you’ll find some of the first pictures showing the ebook capabilities of Apple’s new iPad. We should have more thoughts on the iPad coming later today. Pictures come via gdgt.com, which has been providing excellent live coverage of the Apple event.
≡ Category: Art, History | ≅ 5 Comments
Working with the BBC, Neil MacGregor, the Director of the British Museum, has launched a downright smart project. A History of the World in 100 Objects uses important pieces from the museum’s collections to recount the long history of humanity. Throughout the year, the serialized radio program will air 100 episodes, each averaging 15 minutes, and [...]
≡ Category: History, Stanford, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
The Chinese language has tens of thousands of characters, and many have considered it nearly impossible to fit these characters onto a single workable typewriter. But that hasn’t stopped inventors from trying … and, to a certain degree, succeeding. Stanford historian Thomas Mullaney is now writing the first history of the Chinese typewriter, and he [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Law, Politics | ≅ Leave a Comment
Public confidence in the U.S. House and Senate is at an all-time low, and, after last week’s Supreme Court decision, it’s bound to sink even lower. On January 19th (the day before the decision), Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig returned to Stanford and highlighted the degree to which “institutional corruption” — in the form of [...]
≡ Category: Comedy | ≅ Leave a Comment
For those not old enough to remember (or not familiar with American comedy), Father Guido Sarducci was a character from Saturday Night Live’s heyday in the 1970s. He’s the brainchild of the comedian Don Novello, and here we have him offering a new model of university education. We haven’t aired this bit in 2+ years. So [...]
≡ Category: Science | ≅ 1 Comment
Here’s some vintage Richard Dawkins. Back in 1991, the Oxford University biologist presented a series of lectures for the Royal Institution. In the very first lecture (presented above), Dawkins forces his audience to confront some big questions. (What’s the origin of life? Where do we fall in the scheme of life on planet Earth? What’s [...]
≡ Category: Religion, Yale | ≅ Leave a Comment
A quick fyi: The BBC posted a piece this past week highlighting two Yale courses that collectively offer an introduction to the Bible. One course covers the Old Testament, and the other the New. I’ve listed both below, and they otherwise appear in our online collection of Free Courses from leading universities.
Introduction to the Old Testament [...]
≡ Category: Life | ≅ Leave a Comment
So how did you do?
Thanks Scott for the tip on that one.
≡ Category: Current Affairs, History | ≅ Leave a Comment
Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs & Steel (and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed), offers some timely thoughts on why Haiti, once a fairly prosperous country, has sunk into enduring poverty — a condition not comparatively shared by its neighbor on the same island, the Dominican Republic. According to Diamond, Haiti’s [...]
≡ Category: Online Courses | ≅ 2 Comments
This week, Bill Gates joined the rest of the world and launched his personal blog, The Gates Notes. And, without wasting any time, he started talking about an issue near and dear to my heart — the resources (both paid and free) available to lifelong learners everywhere. In a very down-to-earth kind of way, Gates [...]
≡ Category: Science, Stanford | ≅ 3 Comments
Starting this past fall, Stanford’s School of Medicine and Stanford Continuing Studies (my day job) teamed up to offer The Stanford Mini Med School. Featuring more than thirty distinguished faculty, scientists, and physicians, this yearlong series of courses (three in total) offers students a dynamic introduction to the world of human biology, health and disease, and [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
As we’ve mentioned in the past, Archive.org hosts some wonderful free, public domain media. Many of their classic films appear in our collection of Free Online Movies. And they also provide access to lots of free public domain music (including a large Grateful Dead concert archive). Thanks to a new site, Dewey Music, you can [...]
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