Dave Eggers’ Real and Imagined Sudan

in Literature | November 14th, 2006

Dave Eggers entered the lit­er­ary world with a big bang. His first book, A Heart­break­ing Work of Stag­ger­ing Genius (2000), came out of nowhere and sat on the best­seller list for 14 weeks. It also made Eggers a Pulitzer Prize final­ist and almost the recip­i­ent of a rich movie deal — had he not turned it down.

This wun­derkind’s ear­ly suc­cess nat­u­ral­ly cre­at­ed high expec­ta­tions, and his next efforts, a nov­el in 2002 and a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries in 2004, nev­er quite cap­tured read­ers’ imag­i­na­tion in the same way. Now, with What Is the What, we see Eggers com­ing back home to non-fic­tion, albeit a very dif­fer­ent form of non-fic­tion than the one we dis­cov­ered in AHWOSG. Here, the post-mod­ern devices drop out of sight, and what we get is more the imag­i­nary jour­nal­ism that we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly encoun­tered in the works of Tru­man Capote and Nor­man Mail­er.

The What is the What recounts the long jour­ney of Valenti­no Achak Deng, one of the 20,000 “Lost Boys,” who fled the Sudanese Civ­il War (1983–2005) and, though most­ly younger than than 10, trav­eled alone to Ethiopia, Kenya and, in some cas­es, the Unit­ed States. (About 4,000 end­ed up in the US in 2001.) Because Valenti­no began his odyssey as a mere six year-old, the whole ques­tion of mem­o­ry get raised. How much does a child remem­ber? Broad out­lines maybe. But how many facts, details and con­ver­sa­tions fade away? As Eggers explains in a recent inter­view , the cre­ative ele­ments added to this oth­er­wise fac­tu­al account serve to fill in these gaps in rec­ol­lec­tion, and the ele­ments, them­selves, are based on his­tor­i­cal records and Valenti­no’s gen­er­al sense of things. It is here that Eggers’ notion of imag­i­na­tive jour­nal­ism sets itself apart from many oth­er attempts at new jour­nal­ism. The point of imag­i­na­tion for Eggers isn’t so much to dress up dry facts and dri­ve the nar­ra­tive along, but to make the his­tor­i­cal record more com­plete and, in a gen­uine way, give a fuller account of a per­son­al expe­ri­ence. Per­haps this comes off as a mean­ing­less shade of dif­fer­ence. But, when you get down to it, it’s more sub­stan­tive than not.

Arti­cles and Reviews:

This hour-long radio inter­view with Eggers and Valenti­no is def­i­nite­ly worth a lis­ten.

NPR Fact Page: Ded­i­cat­ed to Eggers’ new book, this page includes links to a recent NPR inter­view, excerpts from the new book, and his­tor­i­cal infor­ma­tion about the Lost Boys.

You can get more con­tex­tu­al infor­ma­tion from the PBS site, which accom­pa­nies its film, Lost Boys of Sudan.

Plus check out the reviews in New York Mag­a­zine and The New York Times.

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State of Denial: How Woodward Took Down Rumsfeld

in Current Affairs | November 13th, 2006

As Bob Wood­ward’s lat­est book climbed the best­seller charts last week, the per­son­al for­tunes of Don Rums­feld tum­bled. The one man’s rise and the oth­er man’s fall were not total­ly dis­con­nect­ed. Pub­lished weeks before the mid-term elec­tions, State of Denial effec­tive­ly rehashed the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s many mis­takes made before and after 9–11, and before and after the Iraq inva­sion. If Wood­ward sees a par­tic­u­lar weak link in the admin­is­tra­tion, it’s Don Rums­feld. Tar­get­ing him for the bet­ter part of the book, Wood­ward por­trays the Defense Sec­re­tary as a micro­man­ag­er who brow­beat his sub­or­di­nates and cut strong mil­i­tary thinkers out of the war plan­ning process, and who went to war with 140,000 troops (instead of the 600,000 rec­om­mend­ed by Gen­er­al Tom­my Franks), and then over­saw the ill-planned occu­pa­tion. Now #5 on the New York Times best­seller list, Wood­ward helped inten­si­fy the crit­i­cism of Rums­feld through­out Octo­ber, and, when the elec­tions went the Democ­rats’ way, the Sec. of Defense was gone. (If you don’t own the book, check out Wood­ward’s piece in Newsweek, which gives you the short ver­sion of how Rum­my dropped the ball.)

One of the big­ger rev­e­la­tions in State of Denial is that Rums­feld almost got cut back in 2004, when Bush won his sec­ond term. Andrew Card, Bush’s for­mer Chief of Staff, qui­et­ly tried to engi­neer a shuf­fle, but polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions ulti­mate­ly got in the way. (Wood­ward sum­ma­rizes this part of his book in a recent Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle.) What you get here is trade­mark Wood­ward. He gives you an intrigu­ing insid­er view of how pol­i­tics gets played out in Wash­ing­ton — how Rums­feld won’t return Con­di Rice’s phone calls, how the Chief of Staff tries to sack Rum­my, how no one will tell Bush the prob­lems they see in Iraq, etc.

Wood­ward’s account is all very inter­est­ing. But it’s also trou­bling in a way. The third install­ment of a tril­o­gy called Bush at War, State of Denial re-exam­ines some of the same ground that Wood­ward already cov­ered in first two books, but it turns a pre­vi­ous­ly enthu­si­as­tic analy­sis of the war effort into a crit­i­cal one. You can’t help but feel that Wood­ward, like so many oth­ers now, wants to dis­tance him­self from this pres­i­dent and his war. And he’s more than will­ing to make his case by inter­view­ing for­mer admin­is­tra­tion mem­bers (Andrew Card) who are look­ing to do the same. So, what you get here is a case where a cred­i­bil­i­ty gap unfor­tu­nate­ly casts doubt on the sub­stance.

Resources:

You can read the full first chap­ter of Wood­ward’s book here.

Franklin Foer reviews Wood­ward in the New York Times, Nov 12, 2006.

Final­ly, you can also catch Wood­ward on Let­ter­man:

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50 Film Classics in a Box: Truffaut, Kurosawa and more

in Film | November 9th, 2006

Janusimage4
Janus Films has spent the last 50 years bring­ing clas­sic for­eign films to Amer­i­can audi­ences, expos­ing them to the works of Ing­mar Bergman, Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, Jean-Luc Godard, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, and François Truf­faut, among oth­ers. To cel­e­brate its half-cen­tu­ry anniver­sary, the film dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny has done some­thing pret­ty remark­able. It has released on DVD a col­lec­tion of 50 clas­sic films, which include Black Orpheus (Camus), M (Fritz Lang), The 400 Blows (Truf­faut), Grand Illu­sion (Renoir), Sev­en Samu­rai (Kuro­sawa), The Sev­enth Seal (Bergman), La Stra­da (Felli­ni), and The 39 Steps (Hitch­cock). You’ll love the Essen­tial Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films if you’re a diehard film buff, but not if you’re light in the wal­let. Even when bought at a dis­count of $650, the col­lec­tion still runs a hefty hunk of change. But it’s noth­ing that a home equi­ty loan can’t fix.

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A Democrat Congress: Where Barak Obama & Richard Rorty’s Thinking Might Take Us

in Uncategorized | November 7th, 2006

When we wake up tomor­row morn­ing, a new polit­i­cal era will have begun. The Democ­rats will have tak­en con­trol of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and per­haps amaz­ing­ly the Sen­ate, sud­den­ly find­ing them­selves polit­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant for the first time in six very long years. And they’ll have the unusu­al lux­u­ry of decid­ing how they will exer­cise polit­i­cal pow­er. The Pres­i­dent, on the oth­er hand, will now find him­self oper­at­ing in a dif­fi­cult polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment. At best, he can no longer expect Con­gress to rub­ber stamp his poli­cies. At worst, by Wednes­day after­noon, after his post-elec­tion news con­fer­ence, he might find him­self a full-blown lame duck.

How the Pres­i­dent and the Democ­rats move for­ward is a the­o­ret­i­cal­ly open ques­tion. How­ev­er, in prac­tice, the ques­tion of what the Democ­rats will do is a far more inter­est­ing one, part­ly because Bush will real­is­ti­cal­ly be con­strained by a dif­fi­cult war and his gen­er­al inabil­i­ty to adapt, and part­ly because the Demo­c­rat slate is clean, and the pos­si­bil­i­ties for defin­ing their direc­tion are very real.

Mov­ing into pow­er, the Democ­rats will have three choic­es before them. Obstruct­ing reflex­ive­ly (a very real pos­si­bil­i­ty); accom­mo­dat­ing (a very unlike­ly pos­si­bil­i­ty); and devel­op­ing a well rea­soned, defined and pos­i­tive posi­tion some­where in between obstruc­tion and accom­mo­da­tion (a smart but not nec­es­sar­i­ly inevitable pos­si­bil­i­ty). Obstruc­tion seems most like­ly because it’s the eas­i­est thing to do, and because the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s style of rul­ing invites thoughts of revenge. But it’s not the best way to go. The Democ­rats came back to rel­e­vance not on the strength of their ideas, but on the weak­ness of their oppo­nents. And if they hope to con­vince Amer­i­ca that they gen­uine­ly deserve this pow­er, they’ll need to devel­op a sub­stan­tive plat­form and a smart approach to gov­er­nance in gen­er­al, and the Iraq war in par­tic­u­lar.

Obama
Barak Oba­ma is emerg­ing as a very real­is­tic can­di­date for the pres­i­den­cy because, unlike so many of oth­ers, he’s devel­op­ing a con­vinc­ing argu­ment that our nation should come before pol­i­tics, and ideas before par­ty. Right now, his new book, The Audac­i­ty of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaim­ing the Amer­i­can Dream, is #5 on the Ama­zon top sell­er list, when most politi­cians’ books come and go with very lit­tle notice. (The New York Times actu­al­ly just ran a sto­ry on this.) And what makes Oba­ma stand out, beyond his charis­ma, is his will­ing­ness to find a think­ing cen­ter. When asked “How do you make peo­ple pas­sion­ate about mod­er­ate and com­plex ideas?” Oba­ma answers:

I think the coun­try rec­og­nizes that the chal­lenges we face aren’t amenable to sound-bite solu­tions. Peo­ple are look­ing for seri­ous solu­tions to com­plex prob­lems. I don’t think we need more mod­er­a­tion per se… We just need to under­stand that actu­al­ly solv­ing these prob­lems won’t be easy, and that what­ev­er solu­tions we come up with will require con­sen­sus among groups with diver­gent inter­ests. That means every­body has to lis­ten, and every­body has to give a lit­tle. That’s not easy to do.

That kind of mod­er­ate, prag­mat­ic, and not reflex­ive­ly ide­o­log­i­cal approach is more of what the Democ­rats need. They need more sub­stance and, even more than that, some more mag­na­nim­i­ty. It gets back, I think, to how Richard Rorty, one of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing philoso­phers, starts out his short book, Achiev­ing Our Coun­try. There, he talks about how “nation­al pride,” an “emo­tion­al involve­ment with one’s coun­try,” is “nec­es­sary if polit­i­cal delib­er­a­tion is to be imag­i­na­tive and pro­duc­tive.” At this point, the Democ­rats bad­ly need to put the coun­try before par­ti­san­ship and gen­uine­ly deal with the impor­tant issues that face it. That’s the only way that they will take this oppor­tu­ni­ty — one that is per­haps unde­served — and do some­thing with it that will build a sus­tain­able future for the par­ty and our nation.

Lis­ten here to New York­er edi­tor, David Rem­nick, recent­ly inter­view­ing Barak Oba­ma

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Google, Copyright and the Courts

in Law | November 6th, 2006

The Google Book Search project ran into anoth­er road­block last week when a group rep­re­sent­ing 400 French pub­lish­ers joined anoth­er law­suit brought ear­li­er this year in French courts. The upshot of the law­suit is essen­tial­ly the same as the suit brought by a con­sor­tium of Amer­i­can pub­lish­ers last year: They’re look­ing to put a quick end to Google’s bid to make the book uni­verse as search­able as it has made the world­wide web. Actu­al­ly, to be clear, it’s not the project itself that’s mak­ing pub­lish­ers run to the courts. Rather, it’s Google’s assump­tion that it can scan and index mil­lions of copy­right­ed books — just as it has cached bil­lions of web pages — with­out first get­ting per­mis­sion. That,
the law­suit claims, is clear copy­right infringe­ment.

Google’s defense rais­es a series of fas­ci­nat­ing (and com­pli­cat­ed) legal ques­tions about copy­right in the dig­i­tal age. The com­pa­ny’s first line of defense is to argue that the pro­gram falls under the fair use doc­trine. Here’s the basic log­ic: Although Google Book Search must index com­plete copies of books to make the print uni­verse search­able, users only get small snip­pets of copy­right­ed text in their search results, which fall under “fair use.” The key assump­tion here is that there’s a crit­i­cal dis­tinc­tion between what hap­pens on the back end and the front end. It does­n’t mat­ter that Google has indexed full digi­tial copies of text on its servers. The only thing that counts is what users see, and if users only see small snip­pets, fair use applies and no pub­lish­er per­mis­sion is required. But, just to be safe, Google will hon­or explic­it pub­lish­er requests not to include con­tent in the book search pro­gram.

Along­side the fair use defense, Google has also put for­ward a larg­er argu­ment that gets to issues we dis­cussed in the Lawrence Lessig piece. After being hit with the first major law­suit, Google took the PR offen­sive, and Eric Schmidt, the com­pa­ny’s CEO, wrote an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Jour­nal, which con­clud­ed with this:

“Imag­ine the cul­tur­al impact of putting tens of mil­lions of pre­vi­ous­ly
inac­ces­si­ble vol­umes into one vast index, every word of which is
search­able by any­one, rich and poor, urban and rur­al, First World and
Third, en toute langue — and all, of course, entire­ly for free. … This egal­i­tar­i­an­ism
of infor­ma­tion dis­per­sal is pre­cise­ly what the Web is best at;
… pre­cise­ly what copy­right law is ulti­mate­ly intend­ed to
sup­port.”

Here, Schmidt offers the reminder that copy­right law exists for the ben­e­fit of soci­ety first and fore­most. Yes, copy­right law pro­tects the rights
of authors and pub­lish­ers. But only as a means to anoth­er end — that is, pro­mot­ing cul­tur­al devel­op­ment and the growth of the cre­ative
com­mons. Schmidt’s pas­sage gives some insight into the very large ben­e­fits that Google Book Search can deliv­er. But, there is obvi­ous­ly
much more to it, and I’d high­ly rec­om­mend read­ing this lengthy fea­ture sto­ry — Scan This Book! — that appeared ear­li­er this year in the New York Times Mag­a­zine.

Some­where in the legal process, it seems, a judge will need to look at how things net out. Does it mat­ter that Google makes full dig­i­tal
copies with­out per­mis­sion if it shows only snip­pets to users? (In oth­er words, does the tra­di­tion­al taboo against mak­ing full copies of texts get over­rid­den by the prac­ti­cal fact that full copies won’t be giv­en away to users?) And does this uncon­ven­tion­al move get trumped by the fact that Google’s project offers so much social promise? The judge will take a look at this, but some­where along the way, I sus­pect, he might focus on this one issue: Ama­zon already has a sim­i­lar pro­gram under way. It index­es book con­tent to allow cus­tomers to review books
before mak­ing a pur­chase deci­son. The only dif­fer­ence is that it gets pub­lish­er per­mis­sion first. Giv­en that Ama­zon has rolled out its
“Search Inside” pro­gram fair­ly suc­cess­ful­ly, the obvi­ous ques­tion gets raised: Why can’t Google also get per­mis­sion first and sim­ply avoid putting a judge in a posi­tion to make a rul­ing that risks ful­ly open­ing up Pan­do­ra’s box? One of Google’s sec­ondary argu­ments for its pro­gram
is that, with its huge mar­ket share, Google Book Search will bring atten­tion to pub­lish­ers’ books and help them gen­er­ate new sales. If
that’s true (and it almost sure­ly is), it seems no less true that pub­lish­ers will have every incen­tive to con­tribute their works to Book
Search and get on board with the project. Mean­while, Google Book Search will grad­u­al­ly ful­fill most of its promise. Under this sce­nario,
pub­lish­ers and authors win, as does Google and soci­ety. It seems like a com­pro­mise posi­tion that makes a lot of sense.

Resources:

Copy­right’s High­way: From Guten­berg to the Celes­tial Juke­box — Excel­lent book on the his­to­ry of copy­right law and its evo­lu­tion with new tech­nolo­gies.

Stan­ford Copy­right and Fair Use — Anoth­er thor­ough resource for under­stand­ing copy­right and fair use.

The Google Print Con­tro­ver­sy: A Bib­li­og­ra­phy — You can get a range of impor­tant texts and opin­ions on this sub­ject here.

More Google inter­nal views on Book Search:

Final­ly, I would def­i­nite­ly check out Lawrence Lessig’s 30-minute pre­sen­ta­tion on the Google Book Search con­tro­ver­sy. This will get you more than up to speed.

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A Harvard Free Ride

in Harvard | November 3rd, 2006

What do sleep­ing and com­put­ing have in com­mon? Not a whole lot (nor real­ly should they), except for this. We sleep and use com­put­ers a good chunk of our lives, and yet we gen­er­al­ly have no idea how either works. Sleep is the 33% of our lives that we hard­ly give a thought to. And com­put­ing, well, few of us know what’s going on inside that box when we turn it on, open a pro­gram, surf the web or, alas, get a virus.

As usu­al, Har­vard has answers, at least for the techies among us. But instead of ask­ing stu­dents to go into hock to get them, this time the uni­ver­si­ty is giv­ing the answers away. (Con­sid­er it a gift from the school’s $29.2 bil­lion endow­ment.) Cour­tesy of the Har­vard Exten­sion School, any stu­dent who can’t make it to Cam­bridge can freely access the online course Under­stand­ing Com­put­ers and the Inter­net. The course, which revolves around a series of 14 lec­tures, is con­ve­nient­ly deliv­ered in sev­er­al for­mats — one ver­sion that down­loads to your com­put­er, anoth­er that down­loads to the Ipod/iTunes, and final­ly one that streams over the web, which you can find at Google Video and Youtube. To get start­ed, to get your lit­tle piece of Har­vard for free, click here.

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Ideas & Culture Podcasts

in Podcasts | November 1st, 2006

Ideas/Issues

  • Alan Watts Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Alan Watts helped inter­pret and pop­u­lar­ize Asian philosophies/religions for West­ern audi­ences. These pod­casts give you access to his archived talks/public lec­tures.
  • Big Ideas iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Big Ideas offers lec­tures on a vari­ety of thought-pro­vok­ing top­ics which range across pol­i­tics, cul­ture, eco­nom­ics, art his­to­ry, sci­ence. The pro­gram is pro­duced by TVO, Canada’s largest edu­ca­tion­al broad­cast­er.
  • Bill Moy­ers Jour­nal iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Vet­er­an jour­nal­ist Bill Moy­ers returns to PBS with Bill Moy­ers Jour­nal, a week­ly pro­gram that takes a deep look at a wide range of sub­jects, includ­ing pol­i­tics, arts and cul­ture, the media, the econ­o­my, and impor­tant issues fac­ing democ­ra­cy.
  • Bri­an Lehrer Show iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A sol­id pub­lic radio broad/podcast with excel­lent inter­views with many impor­tant thinkers. Comes out WNYC in NYC.
  • CBC: The Best of Ideas iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A Cana­di­an pro­gram that explores every­thing from cul­ture and the arts to sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy.
  • Com­mon Sense with Dan Car­lin iTunesFeedWeb Site
    • A blend of audio com­men­tary and news analy­sis by one of the lead­ing thinkers among today’s polit­i­cal­ly inde­pen­dent crowd. A fis­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, social­ly lib­er­al approach to solv­ing prob­lems.
  • Com­mon­wealth Club Radio Pro­gram iTunes Feed Web Site
    • The old­est radio pro­gram in the coun­try — dat­ing back to 1924 — this week­ly pro­gram fea­tures some of the most promi­nent speak­ers in the coun­try.
  • Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions (Video) iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions (Audio) iTunes Feed Web Site
    • You can get inside this elite body and hear some of what the world’s lead­ing politi­cians and polit­i­cal thinkers have to say.
  • Deutsche Welle
    • Inspired Minds iTunes Feed Web Site
      • A col­lec­tion of por­traits on the world’s great thinkers.
  • Enti­tled Opin­ions (About Life and Lit­er­a­ture) iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Host­ed by Robert Har­ri­son, a Stan­ford pro­fes­sor, this pod­cast is a week­ly lit­er­ary talk show that ranges broad­ly on issues relat­ed to lit­er­a­ture, ideas, and lived expe­ri­ence.
  • FORA.tv Dai­ly FORA­cast
    • Audio: iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Video: iTunes Feed Web Site
      • In French, this pod­cast, led by the well known philoso­pher Alain Finkielkraut, fea­tures a pan­el dis­cus­sion on a dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al top­ic each week.France Cul­ture: RĂ©pliques iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Get Illu­mi­nat­ed iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Boing Boing’s edi­tors inter­view cre­ative peo­ple with­in fringe cul­ture.
  • Guardian Unlim­it­ed
    • Cul­ture on Guardian Unlim­it­ed iTunes Feed
    • Media on Guardian Unlim­it­ed iTunes Feed
  • Forum with Michael Kras­ny iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Com­ing out of San Fran­cis­co, this pub­lic radio broad/podcast fea­tures excel­lent inter­views with major cul­tur­al fig­ures.
  • In Our Time iTunes Feed Web Site
    • On this BBC pro­gram, the best minds explore the big issues that form the intel­lec­tu­al agen­da of our time.
  • Leonard Lopate Show iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Com­ing out of WNYC in New York City, this pub­lic radio pod­cast offers dai­ly inter­views with a diverse col­lec­tion of great thinkers and talk­ers.
  • Morn­ing Sto­ries iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Pre­sent­ed by WGBH in Boston, this pro­gram presents “unfor­get­table sto­ries by every­day peo­ple.”
  • My His­to­ry Can Beat Up Your Pol­i­tics iTunesFeedWeb Site
    • Exact­ly what it sounds like; it puts cur­rent polit­i­cal events in a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive and ana­lyzes the his­to­ry to allow us to under­stand our pol­i­tics.
  • New York Pub­lic Library iTunes Web Site
    • An exten­sive col­lec­tion of cul­tur­al media pro­duced by one of the world’s great libraries.
  • NPR: Intel­li­gence Squared iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Intel­li­gence Squared U.S. brings Oxford-style debat­ing to Amer­i­ca– one motion, one mod­er­a­tor, three pan­elists for the motion and three against. Past top­ics have includ­ed reli­gion in Amer­i­ca, Hamas, and Hol­ly­wood.
  • NPR: Fresh Air iTunes Feed Web Site
    • The NPR favorite with Ter­ry Gross.
  • NPR: Kop­pel on the News iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Like Night­line, but bet­ter.
  • NPR Shuf­fle iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A dai­ly sam­pling of dif­fer­ent NPR pro­gram­ming.
  • NPR Talk of the Nation Opin­ion Page iTunes Web Site
  • Open Source iTunes Feed Web Site
    • This dai­ly pro­gram, host­ed by Christo­pher Lydon, uses the inter­net and inter­ac­tive tech­nol­o­gy to talk about the world. One of our favorites.
  • Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life - iTunes — Feed — Web Site
    • A phi­los­o­phy pod­cast by some guys who were at one point set on doing phi­los­o­phy for a liv­ing but then thought bet­ter of it.
  • PBS Pod­casts iTunes Feeds
    • This gen­er­al col­lec­tion gives you access to all PBS pod­casts.
  • Phi­los­o­phy Bites iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A British pod­cast fea­tur­ing inter­views of top philoso­phers and that delves into some essen­tial philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions — what is the mean­ing of life? what is the nature of real­i­ty? what is evil?, etc.
  • Philoso­phers’ Cafe Feed Web Site
    • Com­fort­able sur­round­ings for vibrant street lev­el dis­cus­sions on burn­ing issues of the day. No for­mal phi­los­o­phy train­ing required; real life expe­ri­ence desired. Come ear­ly, stay late. Pre­sent­ed by Simon Fras­er Uni­ver­si­ty.
  • Pub­lic Radio Pod­cast Cat­a­logue Web Site
    • This web site con­tains links to feeds for over 900 pub­lic radio pro­grams avail­able via pod­cast.
  • ResearchChan­nel iTunes — Web Site
    • Based out of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, the Research Chan­nel aggre­gates con­tent from many uni­ver­si­ties and research insti­tu­tions.
  • Salon.com Con­ver­sa­tions iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Salon has a nice col­lec­tion of audio con­ver­sa­tions with fig­ures from the high­er ech­e­lons of the pop cul­ture world. David Lynch, Pedro Almod­ó­var, Amy Sedaris, the list goes on.
  • SALT — Sem­i­nars About Long Term Think­ing iTunes Feed Web Site
    • An award win­ning month­ly speak­ing series host­ed by Stew­art Brand and orga­nized by the Long Now Foun­da­tion, which hopes to pro­vide a coun­ter­point to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set and pro­mote “slower/better” think­ing. The pod­casts fea­tures many well known thinkers.
  • Start the Week iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A BBC pro­duc­tion, Start The Week “sets the cul­tur­al agen­da for the week ahead, with high-pro­file guests dis­cussing the ideas behind their work in the fields of art, lit­er­a­ture, film, sci­ence, his­to­ry, soci­ety and pol­i­tics.”
  • TED Talks Video iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Talks from an annu­al con­fer­ence that brings togeth­er major thinkers and doers.
  • The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion: Inter­views iTunes
  • The Econ­o­mist iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Audio con­tent from one of the high­er qual­i­ty jour­nals out there.
  • The New York Review of Books iTunes Feed Web Site
    • The pod­cast from the biweek­ly book review and jour­nal of intel­lec­tu­al cur­rents.
  • The New York Times Pod­casts (Main) iTunes Web Site (see web site for indi­vid­ual feeds)
    • A fair­ly large col­lec­tion of dai­ly and week­ly pod­casts from the major US dai­ly.
  • The New York Times — TimesTalks iTunes Feed
    • Con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple of note as well as NYTimes jour­nal­ists and edi­tors.
  • The New York­er: Com­ment (iTunes — Feed)
    • A week­ly read­ing of the magazine’s well-known “Com­ment” essay.
  • The Sound of Young Amer­i­ca iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Inter­views with impor­tant fig­ures in the world of pop cul­ture, arts, lit­er­a­ture and com­e­dy. A high­ly-regard­ed pod­cast.
  • This Amer­i­can Life iTunes Feed Web Site
    • First-per­son sto­ries and short fic­tion from the award-win­ning show host­ed by Ira Glass.
  • To the Best of Our Knowl­edge iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Inter­views with nation­al­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly-known guests with a pas­sion for ideas.
  • Yes­ter­day is Gone iTunes Feed Web Site
    • “Yes­ter­day Is Gone” is Charles Binder’s per­son­al per­spec­tive about pol­i­tics, art, sci­ence, health, the past, the present, and what will prob­a­bly happen…now that Yes­ter­day Is Gone.

Books & Writ­ing

  • Ama­zon Book Clips iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Lets you keep tabs on best­selling and up-and-com­ing authors.
  • Barnes & Noble: Meet the Writ­ers iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A wide range of writ­ers dis­cuss their favorite books, influ­ences, and the rea­sons they write.
  • C‑Span — After Words iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Inter­views with impor­tant authors of recent­ly pub­lished hard­back non-fic­tion.
  • Gar­ri­son Keil­lor’s The Writer’s Almanac iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Each day Keil­lor reads a short poem or two and recounts what hap­pened on this day in his­to­ry.
  • Gram­mar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Bet­ter Writ­ing iTunes Feed Web Site
    • I think the title says it all.
  • Guardian Unlim­it­ed — Books iTunes Feed Web Site
  • NPR Books iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A col­lec­tion of NPR author inter­views and book reviews.
  • NPR Sto­ry of the Day iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Poet­ry Foun­da­tion iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A dai­ly pod­cast fea­tur­ing high-qual­i­ty record­ings of poems, inter­views with poets, and poet­ry doc­u­men­taries.
  • Ran­dom House Pod­cast iTunes Web Site
    • Lets lis­ten­ers check out excerpts from new book releas­es.
  • Shake­speare-upon-iPod iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A series of 9 dis­cus­sions on, and read­ings from, Shake­speare.
  • Simon Says iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A week­ly pod­cast on the books and audio books from Simon & Schus­ter.
  • Slate Audio Book Club iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Crit­ics dis­cuss impor­tant and pop­u­lar books.
  • The New York Times Book Review iTunes Feed Web Site
    • This fledg­ling pod­cast fea­tures the edi­tor of the NYT Book Review speak­ing about new­ly reviewed books.
  • The New York­er: Fic­tion iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Each month, a New York­er fic­tion writer choos­es a sto­ry from the magazine’s archives for a New York­er Out Loud pod­cast.
  • The Poet­ic Voice iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Houghton Mif­flin presents a month­ly poet­ry pod­cast.
  • The Wash­ing­ton Post Book Review iTunes Feed Web Site
  • The Writer’s Block iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Aired on KQED in San Fran­cis­co, this week­ly read­ing series fea­tur­ing writ­ers and per­form­ers of all stripes read­ing the lat­est short fic­tion, non-fic­tion, the­ater and poet­ry.
  • Times Online Book Pod­casts iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Book pod­casts from anoth­er British dai­ly.
  • Word for Word iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Pre­sent­ed by Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media, this pod­cast reviews the best of the nation’s recent speech­es.
  • World Book Club iTunes Feed Web Site
    • World Book Club invites the globe’s great authors to dis­cuss their best known nov­el. This month­ly pro­gramme, pre­sent­ed by Har­ri­ett Gilbert, includes ques­tions by World Ser­vice lis­ten­ers.

Film

  • BBC: Mark Ker­mod­e’s Film Reviews iTunes Feed Web Site
    • From the BBC, this pod­cast takes a no-punch­es-pulled look at UK cin­e­ma.
  • The Treat­ment iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Film crit­ic Elvis Mitchell turns the tables and gives the “treat­ment” to some of the most influ­en­tial and inno­v­a­tive forces cre­at­ing movies and pop­u­lar art and enter­tain­ment.

Muse­ums

  • Art Insti­tute of Chica­go Muse­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Expe­ri­ence the Art Insti­tute of Chicago’s muse­um through the words of artists, cura­tors, musi­cians, and edu­ca­tors.
  • Met­ro­pol­i­tain Muse­um of Art iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A sol­id col­lec­tion of pod­casts from Amer­i­ca’s finest art muse­um. Includes read­ing by well known actors.
  • MoMa iTunes Feed Web Site
    • The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art gives you pod­casts that let you hear artists and cura­tors dis­cuss mod­ern and con­tem­po­rary art.
  • MoMA Think Mod­ern Lec­tures iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Offers record­ings of artists, crit­ics, schol­ars and writ­ers shar­ing their knowl­edge of the muse­um’s art col­lec­tions as well as their views on comtem­po­rary art issues.
  • Nation­al Muse­ums Liv­er­pool Feed Web Site
  • Philadel­phia Muse­um of Art iTunes Web Site
    • The muse­um offers mul­ti­ple pod­casts. They’re all cen­tral­ized in iTunes, or you can find the indi­vid­ual rss feeds on the muse­um web site.
  • SFMOMA iTunes Site
    • A notably strong col­lec­tion of muse­um pod­casts.
  • Smith­son­ian Muse­ums
  • The Nation­al Gallery Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Pod­casts from the Nation­al Gallery art muse­um in Lon­don.

Sundry

  • Car Talk iTunes Feed Web Site
    • An NPR clas­sic.
  • The New York­er Car­toons iTunes Feed.
    • Catch ani­mat­ed ver­sions of The New York­er’s famous car­toons.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.