≡ Category: Comedy, Current Affairs | ≅ Leave a Comment
Al Franken, the former SNL comedian, the Harvard graduate, and now US Senator, has a special talent. He can draw the map of America, state-by-state, while chatting up a crowd. Almost makes me feel the 4th of July spirit…
Thanks for Eric for this one.
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Music | ≅ 35 Comments
Yes, Jacko had undeniable talent. And, yes, Thriller drove more sales than any other album ever. But, Jacko released Thriller back in 1982 — roughly 27 years ago. And, what has he accomplished since? Creatively very little, and the personal story is very mixed. Despite that, his death is the big news story everywhere, both in [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ 2 Comments
Bernard-Henri Lévy, one of France’s leading intellectuals (you can tell by the way he buttons his shirt) pays dramatic homage to the uprising in Iran. The rhythm of the speech is vaguely MLK’esque. But the content is distinctly French intello. (Somehow Michel Foucault gets worked into an analysis of what’s happening on the streets of [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ 2 Comments
Another helpful primer that does a good job of explaining what’s happening with the Iranian protests, who the cast of characters are, and where things might be headed. Produced by NPR’s Fresh Air, the interview features Karim Sadjadpour, a political analyst from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The conversation gets quite informative, especially during the second [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ Leave a Comment
Steve Carson, one of the senior members of MIT’s OpenCourseWare team, has put together a handy list of educational materials that contextualizes what’s happening in Iran right now. The materials come from various opencourseware collections (actually the bulk are from MIT’s collection) and they’re organized by the following headings — Iranian History, Democracy & Political [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ Leave a Comment
Andrew Sullivan continues to provide the most up-to-the-minute coverage of what’s happening inside Iran. Today, this page offers a running account of the Iranian government’s crackdown on the democratic movement . The details — the tactics of the government — are simply sickening. (If you can stomach it, here’s footage of two cold-blooded murders by [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ Leave a Comment
If you’re looking to get more context for what’s happening right now in Iran, let me direct you to two pieces of media. First, you’ll find above a talk by Abbas Milani, the director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University. It was given last August at Google’s HQ in Mountain View, CA, and it [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Twitter | ≅ Leave a Comment
Andrew Sullivan has been embarrassing America’s traditional mass media. With his one man blog, he has provided richer and more immediate insight into what’s happening on the ground in Iran than even The New York Times. (I ask, somewhat facetiously, would we really miss the beleaguered newspaper industry if it went away? Not this week, we [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ 2 Comments
Check out Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish. He’s doing a great job of watching things unfold in Tehran. More good blogging coming from the NYTimes Lede blog. Meanwhile CNN has dropped the ball big time, and is taking a beating on Twitter. Check out the new website, CNNfail.com.
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Film | ≅ 1 Comment
Here we have Yann Arthus-Bertrand talking at the TED Conference and displaying his recent photographic and cinematographic work that focuses on humanity and our habitat. The work is as visually stunning as the story it tells is disheartening. Definitely worth giving this one some time. We’ll be following up later today with some more media from Arthus-Bertrand. Stay tuned [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Current Affairs | ≅ Leave a Comment
In case you missed Colbert’s trip to the war zone, here’s a funny clip.
You can find the link to this video and more here.
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Philosophy, Politics | ≅ Leave a Comment
A quick heads up: The BBC is featuring a series of lectures with Michael Sandel (Harvard Professor of Government) that will collectively talk about “the prospects of a new politics of the common good.” Sandel is a very popular professor at Harvard. Some 15,000 students have taken his courses over 30 years. In the first lecture, [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ Leave a Comment
Michael Eric Dyson, the Georgetown sociology professor and public intellectual, talks here about how civil rights movements have historically built upon one other. MLK took pieces from Gandhi, and the gay rights movement is now drawing on the black civil rights movement of the 60s. The clip runs about 7 minutes, and you can watch the [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Education | ≅ 5 Comments
From The Chronicle of Higher Education:
Is it possible that higher education might be the next bubble to burst? Some early warnings suggest that it could be.
With tuitions, fees, and room and board at dozens of colleges now reaching $50,000 a year, the ability to sustain private higher education for all but the very well-heeled is [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ Leave a Comment
If you’re wondering what the much-discussed waterboarding experience is all about, you can watch it in real time. Above, the public intellectual, Christopher Hitchens, goes through the real deal. Although often known for taking left-wing positions, Hitchens supported aggressive action in the Middle East and particularly the war in Iraq. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ Leave a Comment
The media wanted to turn this into a bitter controversy. But it turned out to be far less than that. Aside from a few hecklers, the crowd at Notre Dame’s graduation gave Barack Obama, the commencement speaker, a genuinely warm reception. And what the president gave back is a speech whose moral content is hard [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
Daniel Goleman has followed up his previous bestsellers, Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence, with a new one — Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything. Ecological intelligence is a way for us to avert environmental catastrophe, and it depends on our knowing whether products are truly environmentally friendly or [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Current Affairs | ≅ Leave a Comment
From last night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. (Also get Wanda Sykes’ standup appearance here. Rather funny.)
These clips come from CSPAN’s YouTube Channel, which is included in our Intelligent YouTube Video Collection
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ 7 Comments
The most popular article in yesterday’s New York Times was an Op-Ed calling for a thoroughgoing overhaul of the traditional university. For Mark Taylor (chairman of the religion department at Columbia University), it’s time to get rid of the mass-production university model — the university that builds walls between disciplines, encourages academics to work on often [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Current Affairs | ≅ Leave a Comment
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
M - Th 11p / 10c
We Don’t Torture
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes
Economic Crisis
Political Humor
Here’s Jon Stewart talking Monday night about the revelation that America’s “extreme interrogation” techniques actually amount to torture. Somehow he manages to work The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s and The Utne Reader into the discussion. You’ll [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ Leave a Comment
A quick heads up: The three-day Aspen Environment Forum is now underway, and it has gathered an impressive number of speakers (energy experts, government & business leaders, writers, photographers, and other thinkers) to take a serious look at our environmental challenges and the possible solutions. You can find video highlights from each day here, and [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Economics | ≅ Leave a Comment
It’s not often than a song gets written for an economics professor. It’s so bad that it’s actually good. Add that to the soundtrack for the Collapse.
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Economics | ≅ 1 Comment
Once the Fed’s toolbox proved unable to stop the cascading global financial meltdown, the US government turned to the one strategy that it had left. It dusted off the old economic playbook of John Maynard Keynes and began introducing massive stimulus plans and other forms of government intervention. Since our collective fate now depends on [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Life | ≅ Leave a Comment
It’s time to put a human face on the disheartening economic statistics that we’re hearing almost daily. This video features students from a Southern California high school talking candidly (and without scripts) about how the economic collapse has affected their day-to-day lives. Unemployment, parents leaving the family, homelessness, scarce food — it’s all part of the [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ 1 Comment
Stay with me conservatives on this one. It’s not as bad as you think…
NPR’s Intelligence Squared (iTunes - Feed - Web Site) has a rather unique format. It brings Oxford-style debates to America, and it features leading thinkers taking different positions on hot-button issues of our day. (Get more precise details on the debate format here.) Recent debates have centered on the following questions: [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Current Affairs | ≅ Leave a Comment
Courtesy of Stephen Colbert, we get a little history lesson that reminds us how we fixed problems once upon a time in America. Get the full episode here.
≡ Category: Comedy, Current Affairs | ≅ 2 Comments
Or watch it here.
≡ Category: Comedy, Current Affairs | ≅ 5 Comments
A pretty brilliant saga played out over the last week on The Daily Show. It started when Jon Stewart tweaked Rick Santelli and his widely-publicized rant against homeowner bailouts. Apparently Santelli’s network, CNBC, couldn’t take a little joke and fought back, which only provided The Daily Show with more comic fodder. (You can watch the [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Economics | ≅ 2 Comments
Last week, we created a handy list of blogs & podcasts that regularly cover the financial crisis. And so it seemed worth flagging the latest episode of This American Life. It’s called “Bad Bank” (MP3 - iTunes - Feed). It just came out this weekend. And it takes a close and entertaining look at what [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Economics, Most Popular | ≅ 8 Comments
There’s no doubt about it. We’re living in interesting times, as the Chinese curse goes, and they won’t be going away any time soon. Most of us can’t afford to ignore what’s happening here. So, below, I have highlighted a number of blogs and podcasts that help make intelligent sense of this economic debacle. Here they [...]
Get updates as soon as they go live, via RSS feed, email and now Twitter!
Get the latest from our Twitter Stream.
Why can't we be friends?
Got a link we should post? Send it to mail@openculture.com
