The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
Courtesy of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, we’re zooming into a “majestic disk of stars and dust lanes” and getting a stunning view of the spiral galaxy NGC 2841, which lies 46 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). But wait, it gets even better. This high resolution still photo shows [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ Leave a Comment
A little ways back, Christopher Hitchens fielded questions for 30 minutes from Reddit.com users, answering any and every question they threw his way. What historical figures, events or books have been underemphasized in American public education? Has the Iraq War (something Hitchens supported) had a positive or negative impact on Islamic extremism? What do socialism [...]
≡ Category: Music, Science, Video - Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
File under Everything is a Remix. Ben Hillman offers a creative little riff on “All Things Bright and Beautiful” (listen here), an Anglican hymn inspired by William Paley’s 1802 treatise, Natural Theology, which positions God as the designer of the natural world … in an Enlightenment kind of way. You can catch more Hillman videos [...]
≡ Category: Art, Film | ≅ 1 Comment
Since 1995, Pixar has released a steady stream of award-winning animated films. First came Toy Story, then Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc., The Incredibles, and most recently Toy Story 3. (You can revisit Pixar’s classics in this wonderful little tribute video.) Getting inside Pixar Studios has never been easy. But last week The New York Times [...]
≡ Category: Radio, Technology | ≅ 2 Comments
Back in the early 1990s, while most of us were still trying to wrap our heads around this new thing called the internet (don’t miss this amusing bit), NPR’s Science Friday started pushing the envelope and hosting the first internet-based radio talk show. This marked the first time that listeners could “phone into” a program via [...]
≡ Category: Literature, Television | ≅ 2 Comments
Another chapter from America’s long history of incivility. Today, we rewind the videotape to December 1971, when Gore Vidal (already known for his televised spat with William F. Buckley) got into a verbal brawl with the always mercurial (and, on this occasion, sauced) novelist Norman Mailer. What the television audience sees is just the tip [...]
≡ Category: Life, Psychology | ≅ Leave a Comment
RSA has rolled out its latest animated video, and it’s a good one. This time we have Steven Pinker, the famed Harvard linguist and cognitive scientist, trying to make sense of innuendo. Why do we often say things in veiled terms, especially when everyone knows what’s really being said? Pinker breaks it all down, and [...]
≡ Category: Film | ≅ Leave a Comment
Back in 1962, François Truffaut, the inspiration behind French New Wave cinema, sat down to talk with another legendary director, Alfred Hitchcock. Conducted with the help of a translator, Truffaut’s interviews worked systematically through Hitchcock’s life and vast filmography, moving from his early films shot it Britain (Blackmail, The 39 Steps, Secret Agent), to his [...]
≡ Category: Online Courses | ≅ Leave a Comment
Last summer, NYU announced that it will join the open courseware movement by making free courses available online, all in video. Fast forward several months, and you can now see the first fruits of NYU’s labor. The Open Education pilot features four courses, the first of ten courses that will eventually appear online. History of New [...]
≡ Category: Language Lessons | ≅ 1 Comment
In 2010, the folks who publish the Macmillan Dictionary launched the ‘What’s your English?’ campaign. They then spent a good year traveling across the globe, visiting nations where English is spoken, and asking experts and everyday speakers to talk about their regional dialects. The United States, Australia, Ireland, Scotland and Canada were obvious stops. But [...]
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