In antic­i­pa­tion of the 2008 Olympic Games in Bei­jing, The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny has made avail­able two free lec­tures that sur­vey the ancient Greek ori­gins of the Olympics. Pre­sent­ed by Jere­my McIn­er­ney, a pro­fes­sor of Clas­sics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, these talks, each run­ning about 30 min­utes, bring you back to 776 BC, to the ancient Greeks, who com­pet­ed in order to demon­strate their alle­giance to the Home­r­ic ideals of hero­ism, hon­or and man­hood. You can lis­ten to Lec­ture 1 here (MP3 — MP4) and Lec­ture 2 here (MP3 — MP4) LINKS HAVE BEEN REMOVED AT THE REQUEST OF THE TEACHING COMPANY. And, as a quick fyi, you can down­load a com­plete MP3 course on Ancient Greece by the same pro­fes­sor. (It’s on sale for $35.) I’ve actu­al­ly lis­tened to it, and found it to be quite good.

For more good edi­fy­ing lec­tures, see our big col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es here.

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With­out Thomas Jef­fer­son and John Adams, Amer­i­cans would­n’t have the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence. Rather strange­ly, both men died on the same day, exact­ly fifty years after the sign­ing of the Dec­la­ra­tion — July 4, 1826.

I’m watch­ing the new HBO minis­eries “John Adams” and find­ing it fas­ci­nat­ing. The series is based on a book by Pulitzer Prize win­ning his­to­ri­an David McCul­lough (also author of 1776 and Tru­man). And below we have McCul­lough giv­ing us, if you will, the quick ele­va­tor pitch for Adams — that is, two min­utes on what made Adams a par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy found­ing father. (The video, by the way, is pro­duced by Big­Think, a fair­ly new site that posi­tions itself as the “think­ing man’s YouTube.” They’re backed by Har­vard’s ex-pres­i­dent, Lar­ry Sum­mers, and oth­er folks with deep pock­ets. Whether they’ll be able to turn a prof­it on intel­lec­tu­al media, I’m sad­ly doubt­ful. But that’s not meant to take any­thing away from what they’re doing. And if any­one wants to throw a few mil­lion dol­lars our way, we’ll con­sid­er tak­ing it.)

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Dith Pran, a pho­to­jour­nal­ist and polit­i­cal activist who sur­vived The Killing Fields in Cam­bo­dia, and whose expe­ri­ence was nar­rat­ed in the 1984 film by the same name, has died at 65. You can revis­it his pho­to­graph­ic work here, and watch a talk he gave in 2006. Here, Pran recounts what hap­pened in Cam­bo­dia — how The Viet­nam War spread to Cam­bo­dia, empow­er­ing the mur­der­ous Khmer Rouge — and ques­tions whether we’re gen­er­al­ly get­ting clos­er to mak­ing geno­cide a thing of the past.

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William F. Buck­ley, Jr., the intel­lec­tu­al force behind the strand of con­ser­vatism that peaked with Ronald Rea­gan, died yes­ter­day. (See NY Times obit.) Here, we have some vin­tage Buck­ley. The video clip below fea­tures Buck­ley and Gore Vidal going at it, almost com­ing to blows, dur­ing the con­test­ed pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of 1968. It offers a good reminder that Amer­i­can polit­i­cal dis­course has­n’t been agree­able for quite some time. Com­par­a­tive­ly, things look down­right civ­il today.

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