≡ Category: Current Affairs, History, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
The full “I Have a Dream” speech. The place: The Lincoln Memorial. The Date: August 28, 1963. The Why: To bring about many small changes in American society, which eventually and collectively bring us to Tuesday. Take it away Martin:
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≡ Category: Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
When the twin towers were taken down in September 2001, America looked to make sense of what happened. And it wasn’t long before many started turning to The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, a book written by Samuel Huntington, the Harvard poli sci professor who passed on last week.
The book itself was [...]
≡ Category: History, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ 3 Comments
If you could sync up a photo with every name and event mentioned in Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” you’d have a montage that offers a pretty good glimpse into the second half of the twentieth century. That’s what a University of Chicago grad student figured out when he put this viral video [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Religion, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ 2 Comments
Here we have the odd couple. The agnostic filmmaker and one of America’s most influential religious figures engaged in a lively conversation. It’s actually a rather gentlemanly exchange from the late 1960s, and it’s added to our YouTube playlist. Part 1 appears below, and you can get Part 2 here.
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We’re less than two weeks away (finally, at long last) from the next US presidential election, and that means that it’s a good time to decipher America’s convoluted electoral system. So here’s a piece from The Common Craft Show, which does it in a fairly creative way:
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≡ Category: History, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
Is there such a thing as the benign use of international force? It’s a question that Noam Chomsky and William F. Buckley, leading thinkers from the left and right, took up in 1969. And, of course, the whole question of Vietnam loomed in the background. As you’ll see below (and in Part 2 here) the debate is [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
With the gyrations of the world markets, 1929 was suddenly very present last week. All too present. What really went down in ‘29? Below we present “The Crash of 1929,” a documentary that aired as part of PBS’ The American Experience Series. Part 1 appears below. You can get the remaining parts here: Part 2, [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
In case you missed it, here’s a paired down version of last night’s second presidential debate in all of its uninspiring glory:
via Talking Points Memo
≡ Category: History, Religion, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
Jonathan Miller’s Brief History of Disbelief is a BBC production (2005) that offers television’s first sustained look at the hidden history of atheism. The three-part documentary takes you from unbelievers within Ancient Greece, to the re-emergence of disbelief in 15th and 16th century Europe, through to the French Enlightenment, Revolutionary America and the rise of [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
Here’s SNL’s satire of last week’s widely viewed vice presidential debate. Thanks to Tina Fey’s impression of Palin, SNL’s rating are up 40% over last year. Quite a boon for NBC.
You can get Rounds 1 and 2 here and here.
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≡ Category: Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
CNN recently hosted a conversation with several recent Secretaries of State, and they all discussed the major challenges that Barack Obama or John McCain will be facing next year. This is no ordinary time, and it’s rare to find Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Warren Christopher, Colin Powell, and James Baker all sitting on the same [...]
≡ Category: Film, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ 2 Comments
Rather slick trailer. (And got to wonder how filming the pretzel scene didn’t hurt.) “W,” Oliver Stone’s new biopic, hits the theaters this fall.
≡ Category: History, Politics, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
Thanks to PBS, you can now download from iTunes a four-hour definitive biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR guided the US through the Great Depression, then World War II, serving as president for an unprecedented four terms. The video podcast run a good four hours, and it’s part of a series called American Experience: The [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ 2 Comments
File this under comedy/satire, Tina Fey has her Sarah Palin impression nailed. If the video below ceases to work, you can always watch the clip (in better resolution, I might add) right here.
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Film, Politics, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ 1 Comment
Michael Moore is getting wise to the virtues of free/open culture. Starting September 23, you can download his new film - Slacker Uprising - via the web for free. The unfortunate rub is that this download will only be available to US and Canadian residents, and it will remain free via the web for three [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Film, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ 1 Comment
Here’s another good submission (many thanks) that came out of last week’s book giveaway…
It’s an animated film called The Story of Stuff, which offers “a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and [...]
≡ Category: History, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
Howard Zinn, a historian from Boston University, best known for his book People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present, has been brought to YouTube. This video presents an animated version of Zinn’s essay, Empire or Humanity? What the Classroom Didn’t Teach Me about the American Empire. Zinn cartoon-style, here it goes (and you [...]
≡ Category: Google, Most Popular, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science, YouTube | ≅ 6 Comments
Smart video collections keep appearing on YouTube. But rather antithetical to the ethos of its parent company (Google), YouTube unfortunately makes these collections difficult to find. So we’ve decided to do the job for them. These enriching/educational videos come from media outlets, cultural institutions, universities and non-profits. There are about 70 collections in total, and [...]
≡ Category: Media, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
Late in the week, TEDTalks named its top ten videos. Whether this is a quantitative or qualitative judgment, I am not sure. On the list, you’ll find Al Gore talking about how to avert a climate crisis, David Gallo showing amazing underwater creatures, and Ken Robinson describing why schools kill creativity (we’ve posted that one [...]
≡ Category: Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science, YouTube | ≅ 21 Comments
Also, feel free to check out our list of YouTube favorites.
General
@GoogleTalks
Google has lots of famous visitors speaking at its headquarters, and they’re all recorded and neatly presented here.
Al Jazeera English
The Middle Eastern news service, which has generated its share of controversy, now airs broadcasts in English and presents them here.
Amnesty International
The leading human rights organization brings [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ 7 Comments
Here’s a nice counterpoint to our post last week covering Susan Jacoby’s new book The Age of American Unreason and her lament that America has declined into a morass of anti-intellectualism and low expectations.
Let’s set the scene: A reporter selects a young Barack Obama supporter at a rally and starts peppering him with questions about [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Law, Stanford, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
Below we have posted the last lecture that Lawrence Lessig will ever present on Free Culture. It’s an area where he has spent the past decade working, and this talk offers an excellent introduction to Lessig’s thought and work on this issue. Given at Stanford on January 31, the presentation is one that Steve Jobs [...]
≡ Category: History, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
What set the stage for Silicon Valley to change the entire landscape of technology? What made companies like Google, Yahoo and Hewlett Packard possible? According to this talk presented at Google by Steve Blank, it all goes back to the aftermath of World War II. It starts when Stanford University and its engineering/electronics department began [...]
≡ Category: Politics, Video - Politics/Society, YouTube | ≅ Leave a Comment
If you’re a resident of a Super Tuesday state, we hope you can find some time to pull the lever tomorrow. Also, we hope you’ll forgive (at least) one more political post before Super Tuesday. Whatever your political affiliations, the video below is a compelling example of new media at work. According to the New [...]
≡ Category: Law, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ 2 Comments
What does the Second Amendment mean? It’s something that the Supreme Court has never really said. In this hour long video, Cass Sunstein, a very well known law professor from the University of Chicago, takes a crack at interpreting this amendment and seeing whether its original meaning actually confers the right to bear arms. Originalists/conservatives [...]
≡ Category: History, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ 1 Comment
We love finding these vintage media gems. Below, we have Malcolm X speaking at Oxford University in 1964. In this classic speech, you get a good feel for Malcolm X’s presence and message and also the social issues that were alive during the day. You’ll hear X’s famous claim that liberty can be attained by [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Politics, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ 2 Comments
Again, no commentary needed. Informative in many ways, Bhutto’s talk was taped at the Council on Foreign Relations in August. More info here.
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≡ Category: Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
YouTube gets smarter one painfully small step at a time. First courses from Berkeley; next videos of Nobel Prize winners. More coming?
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≡ Category: Religion, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ 1 Comment
Mitt Romney, a Mormon, looked yesterday to set aside lingering concerns about his religion in a highly publicized speech. Immediately, the speech revived memories of John F. Kennedy’s attempt, during the 1960 campaign, to ease concerns about his Catholicism. We’ve posted both speeches below. The similarities are there. But the differences are more profound. I’ll [...]
≡ Category: Television, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
As the weeks go on, more and more of us are starting to notice that Hollywood’s writers are on strike. One by one new television shows are running out of fresh material. But if you’re a fan of The Daily Show, (and, well, we are) you were hit practically on day one, since the topical [...]
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