Every actor has to start somewhere, and Morgan Freeman (Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption, and Million Dollar Baby) could have done worse than joining the cast of The Electric Company, the PBS children’s television series that aired from 1971 to 1977.

The Belgians take their cycling seriously. After all, it’s the birthplace of Eddy Merckx, the five time champion of the Tour de France. And it’s a country that plays host to some of the great short races in the sport: La Flèche Wallonne, E3 Harelbeke, Gent–Wevelgem, and Liège–Bastogne–Liège.

In 1961, Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, the jazz saxophonist best known for his work on Miles Davis’ epic album Kind of Blue (listen here), narrated a children’s introduction to jazz music.

Usually the young cover songs by the old. But these days, it’s often the other way around. Perhaps you remember Johnny Cash covering U2′s song “One.” Now, we have the great Willie Nelson singing a version of Pearl Jam’s “Just Breathe” with his sons Lukas and Micah.

During the late 1980s, two short films – Luxo Jr. and Tin Toy – saved Pixar from bankruptcy. During the late 1990s, another film, Toy Story 2, almost created a financial catastrophe for the company.

It’s easy to sell books and other commodities on the web. It’s not easy to deliver a quality education. But two converging trends point toward a future when we will see the traditional university give way to an online alternative — something I wasn’t willing to bank on two years ago.

Whenever you bring together Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins — one the public face of astrophysics, the other the public face of biology — you’re pretty much guaranteed a good crowd and a spirited conversation.

If you’re a regular reader of Open Culture, and if you live in the United States, then chances are you listen to Terry Gross’ Fresh Air interviews on NPR, at least occasionally.

A quick fyi for TED heads. In early 2011 we mentioned that someone put together a handy online spreadsheet that lists 875 TED Talks, with handy links to each individual video. It’s worth mentioning the spreadsheet again because this evolving Google doc has now grown beyond 1200 talks.

Over in Nate Lewis’ Caltech lab, they’re working on developing an “electronic nose” that can sniff out diseases, bombs, dangerous toxins and beyond. And then they want to put that e-nose right in your smartphone.
Need to find out if you have a little tuberculosis? No problem, there’s an app for that.