Morgan Spurlock: The Greatest TED Talk Ever Sold

in Film, Media, TED Talks | April 19th, 2011

Mor­gan Spur­lock­’s newest doc­u­men­tary, The Great­est Movie Ever Sold, expos­es the myr­i­ad ways in which pop­u­lar media is almost whol­ly spon­sored, leased, bought and brand­ed by pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tions. Iron­i­cal­ly — and inten­tion­al­ly — Spur­lock made sure his doc­u­men­tary would also be almost whol­ly spon­sored, leased, bought and brand­ed by pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tions. In his very fun­ny TED talk, Spur­lock (Super Size Me, 30 Days) explains how he fur­thered his exper­i­ment in “pure trans­paren­cy” by encour­ag­ing spon­sor­ships of, you guessed it, his very fun­ny TED talk.

Con­fused? That’s because pure trans­paren­cy is a lot eas­i­er to envi­sion than exe­cute. Find out why start­ing at minute 6:18.

via TED

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Every Step You Take, They’ll Be Tracking You

in Media, Technology | April 12th, 2011

Malte Spitz, a mem­ber of the Green Par­ty in Ger­many, sued Deutsche Telekom and forced the com­pa­ny to hand over six months of record­ed cell phone data. The results were fair­ly eye open­ing.

Dur­ing a five month peri­od, DT tracked Spitz’s loca­tion and phone usage 35,000 times. If that sounds like a lot, you’re right. And it looks even worse when you visu­al­ize the data. Zeit Online took this geolo­ca­tion data and com­bined it with pub­licly-avail­able infor­ma­tion relat­ing to Spitz’s polit­i­cal life (e.g., his Twit­ter feeds and blog entries) and pro­duced a screen­cast that doc­u­ments two days in the life of the Green Par­ty politi­cian. The YouTube video above traces his steps. But the visu­als on the Zeit site let you track Spitz’s move­ments around Ger­many with fin­er pre­ci­sion. The moral of the sto­ry: Every step you take, your tel­co is like­ly track­ing you, whether you give con­sent or not. The New York Times has more on the sto­ry…

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Gay Talese: Drinking at New York Times Put Mad Men to Shame

in Life, Media, Television | February 28th, 2011

Mad Men brings us back to a bygone era, the ear­ly 60s, when alco­hol flowed freely through­out the work­ing day. (Watch this mon­tage to get up to speed.) An act of his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism, many might think. But, appar­ent­ly not so. Accord­ing to a piece in The New York Times, the show basi­cal­ly gets it right. Alco­hol was as com­mon in offices as office sup­plies. And then we have this: Gay Talese, the best­selling author and jour­nal­ist, remem­ber­ing the Times news­room dur­ing the same era – a crew bare­ly fit to pub­lish the news that’s fit to print.

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What’s the Internet? That’s So 1994…

in Media, Technology | January 31st, 2011

Now mak­ing its way around the inter­nets, a lit­tle semi-vin­tage clip of Bryant Gum­bel and Katie Couric, then hosts of The Today Show, try­ing to sort out the new, new thing called “The Inter­net.” This bit was record­ed on Jan­u­ary 24, 1994, just months before Justin Bieber came into the world and Kurt Cobain exit­ed stage left…

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Ira Glass, the Host of This American Life, Breaks Down the Fine Art of Storytelling

in Literature, Media, Radio | January 27th, 2011

Since 1995, Ira Glass has host­ed and pro­duced This Amer­i­can Life (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), the award-win­ning radio show that presents mas­ter­ful­ly-craft­ed sto­ries to almost 2 mil­lion lis­ten­ers each week. What’s the secret sauce that goes into mak­ing a great sto­ry, par­tic­u­lar­ly one primed for radio or TV? Glass spells it out in four parts. Watch them all above.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Ira Glass’ 10 Favorite Episodes of This Amer­i­can Life

Ira Glass’ Advice on Achiev­ing Cre­ative Excel­lence Pre­sent­ed in Two Art­ful, Typo­graph­ic Videos

Ira Glass on the Art and Craft of Telling Great Radio Sto­ries

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Norman Mailer & Marshall McLuhan Debate the Electronic Age

in History, Literature, Media, Technology | January 18th, 2011

There’s noth­ing new about it. Major peri­ods of tech­no­log­i­cal change have always engen­dered dis­lo­ca­tion and debate. Some resist the changes wrought by new tech­nol­o­gy, and oth­ers embrace them. 1968 brings us back to one such moment, when the Amer­i­can nov­el­ist Nor­man Mail­er and com­mu­ni­ca­tion the­o­rist Mar­shall McLuhan appeared on the CBC pro­gram, The Sum­mer Way, to debate the rel­a­tive mer­its of our Electronic/Information Age. Are we alien­at­ing our­selves as we push the elec­tron­ic enve­lope? Or have we entered a val­ue neu­tral state (if not some­thing bet­ter)? The two big thinkers hash out the ques­tion for 28 min­utes. You can watch the con­ver­sa­tion in its entire­ty (28 min­utes) on YouTube.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nor­man Mail­er & Mar­shall McLuhan Debate the Elec­tron­ic Age

The Vision­ary Thought of Mar­shall McLuhan, Intro­duced and Demys­ti­fied by Tom Wolfe

Mar­shall McLuhan’s 1969 Deck of Cards, Designed For Out-of-the-Box Think­ing

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How to See the World Like Malcolm Gladwell

in Media | January 12th, 2011

This ques­tion ran through my mind just yes­ter­day. No, not how does Mal­colm Glad­well see the world? But, rather, what does it feel like to inhab­it the mind of peo­ple who think and see the world in entire­ly dif­fer­ent ways? The ques­tion can be a big exis­ten­tial thought exper­i­ment. Or, it turns out, it can be the impulse guid­ing Mal­colm Glad­well’s var­ied, often unex­pect­ed, and usu­al­ly best­selling inquiries.

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Howard Cosell Breaks the News: John Lennon is Dead (1980)

in History, Media, Music | December 8th, 2010

On Decem­ber 8, 1980, the New Eng­land Patri­ots-Mia­mi Dol­phins game was wind­ing down, the end of anoth­er Mon­day Night Foot­ball game. Then, Howard Cosell, Amer­i­ca’s leg­endary sports­cast­er, broke the news to unsus­pect­ing view­ers: “An unspeak­able tragedy con­firmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, out­side of his apart­ment build­ing on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, per­haps, of all of The Bea­t­les, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roo­sevelt Hos­pi­tal, dead on arrival.” Soon enough, more for­mal news reports fol­lowed on the BBC and ABC’s Night­line, and you can still hear what New York­ers heard on the radio the night the music died. Howard Cosell inter­viewed John Lennon on Mon­day Night Foot­ball back in 1974. Revis­it the short con­ver­sa­tion right here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Lennon Sings Bud­dy Hol­ly

John Lennon (and Yoko Ono) on the Dick Cavett Show

I Met the Wal­rus: An Ani­mat­ed Short Film with John Lennon

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