Here’s the moment when Chicago, Obama’s adopted hometown, learned about his victory Tuesday night. It has been a long time since we’ve seen this kind of civic engagement and excitement. Catch the moment below and watch his victory speech here.
This American Life: Another Frightening Show About the Economy
Back in May, This American Life (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) aired an episode called The Giant Pool of Money (stream here). The show, which demystified the mortgage crisis in an unsual way, became a major hit. Now, they have aired a sequel: Another Frightening Show About the Economy (stream here), and it explains the ripple effects of the original mortgage crisis that have pushed the American financial system to the brink. How did commercial paper freeze up, and why does this paper matter? What exactly are credit default swaps, why wasn’t this massive market regulated, and how does this poorly understood market threaten our economic well being? It’s all answered here. Give a listen.
The African-American Freedom Struggle & Barack Obama’s American Dream (Free Stanford Course)
I mentioned this free course back in July, but, given the historic nature of Tuesday’s election, it seems worth giving it another mention.
On Stanford’s YouTube channel, you’ll find a complete series of lectures from an undergraduate course called “African-American History: Modern Freedom Struggle.” Taught by Clayborne Carson, a prominent history professor who has edited and published the papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., the course overviews the struggle for liberty and complete equality, moving from W.E.B. Du Bois (early 20th century), to MLK and Malcolm X, down to Barack Obama today. The lecture below, entitled “Barack Obama’s American Dream,” situates Obama within the larger sweep of African-American history. It’s rather conversational in style, and it does a good job of getting into Obama’s personal biography. The complete lectures can be watched in their entirety on YouTube here, or downloaded in video via iTunes. And be sure to see our larger collection of 250 Free Online Courses from Leading Universities, where you’ll also find this course.
From Nixon to W — The Geography of US Presidential Elections
We’re down to the next to last lecture, taking you from Nixon to Bush. (Next week, this Stanford course ends with a postmortem of Obama’s victory in 2008.) You can access Lecture 4 via Tunes U in high resolution or watch the YouTube version below. If you missed the previous lectures, grab them on iTunes here and YouTube here.
America Redeemed
We’ve had some very low moments during recent years. And now the highs. The present buried the past, and the US elected its first African-American president, proving once again that America is truly the land of opportunity. This moment calls to mind the poignant quote that I heard this week. ‘Rosa sat so Martin could walk, so Obama could run, so our children can fly.’ Now watch them go. A beautiful moment.
Below, we present MLK’s full “I Have a Dream” speech from 1963, which reminds of us how far we’ve come over the past 45 years.
Farewell to Studs Terkel
Studs Terkel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the everyman, has passed away at the ripe old age of 96. (Get the NYTimes obit here.) Below, we have a lengthy conversation with Terkel, recorded when he was 91. As you’ll see, being a nonagenarian did little to slow him down.
From the Civil War to the Vietnam War — The Geography of US Presidential Elections
The Geography of US Presidential Elections keeps rolling along. With his well-crafted lectures, Martin Lewis shows you this week how America’s political map and its political parties changed dramatically following the Civil War. In the space of 90 minutes, he takes you through the Reconstruction period, The Gilded Age, the Depression, World War II and The Cold War, up through the Vietnam War.
You can download Lecture 3 via Tunes U in high resolution or watch the YouTube version below. And, as always, you can join the ongoing conversation with the professor and other students worldwide right here.
There are still two more lectures to come, including one that will offer a postmortem of next week’s election.
Lastly, if you missed the previous lectures, you can grab them on iTunes here and YouTube here.
The 13th Amendment
This week, CNN announced the winners of the iReport Film Festival, the network’s first user-generated short film competition. The festival “challenged filmmakers to document this year’s presidential campaign from their personal vantage point, whether they were volunteering for a campaign or had compelling stories about this election they wanted to document creatively.” And the Grand Jury Award went to a short film called “13th Amendment.” Here, Mike Dennis of Philadelphia, Pa., follows his 90-year-old grandmother, who is African American, on her journey to vote for the first serious black candidate for the American presidency. (And, by the way, in case you were wondering, the 13th Amendment banned slavery in the United States in 1865.) Here it goes:
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