Death: A Free Online Philosophy Course from Yale Helps You Grapple with the Inescapable

in Online Courses, Philosophy, Yale | September 10th, 2024

It pays to think intel­li­gent­ly about the inevitable. And this course taught by Yale pro­fes­sor Shelly Kagan does just that, tak­ing a rich, philo­soph­i­cal look at death. Here’s how the course descrip­tion reads:

There is one thing I can be sure of: I am going to die. But what am I to make of that fact? This course will exam­ine a num­ber of issues that arise once we begin to reflect on our mor­tal­i­ty. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that death may not actu­al­ly be the end is con­sid­ered. Are we, in some sense, immor­tal? Would immor­tal­i­ty be desir­able? Also a clear­er notion of what it is to die is exam­ined. What does it mean to say that a per­son has died? What kind of fact is that? And, final­ly, dif­fer­ent atti­tudes to death are eval­u­at­ed. Is death an evil? How? Why? Is sui­cide moral­ly per­mis­si­ble? Is it ratio­nal? How should the knowl­edge that I am going to die affect the way I live my life?

Major texts used in this course include Pla­to’s Phae­do, Tol­stoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych, and John Per­ry’sA Dia­logue on Per­son­al Iden­ti­ty and Immor­tal­i­ty. Kagan also lat­er pub­lished a com­pan­ion book–simply called Death–which can be pur­chased online.

You can watch the 26 lec­tures above. Or find them on YouTube and iTunes in video and audio for­mats. For more infor­ma­tion on this course, includ­ing the syl­labus, please vis­it this Yale site.

This course has been added to our list of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy cours­es, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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:

Aldous Hux­ley, Dying of Can­cer, Left This World Trip­ping on LSD (1963)

Alan Watts Explains Why Death is an Art, Adven­ture and Cre­ative Act

J. Robert Oppen­heimer Explains How, Upon Wit­ness­ing the First Nuclear Explo­sion, He Recit­ed a Line from the Bha­gavad Gita: “Now I Am Become Death, the Destroy­er of Worlds”

Zen Mas­ter Alan Watts Dis­cov­ers the Secrets of Aldous Hux­ley and His Art of Dying

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

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Thousands of Pablo Picasso’s Works Now Available in a New Digital Archive

in Art, Museums, Online Courses | June 27th, 2024

If you want to immerse your­self in the world of Pablo Picas­so, you might start at the Museo Picas­so Mála­ga, locat­ed in the artist’s Span­ish birth­place. But to under­stand how his work devel­oped through­out his life, you’ll have to get out of Spain — which is just what Picas­so did to accel­er­ate that devel­op­ment in the first place. At the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, an ambi­tious young Euro­pean painter had to go to Paris, the con­ti­nen­t’s art cap­i­tal. Picas­so end­ed up spend­ing much of his life there, mak­ing it the most suit­able loca­tion for the Musée Picas­so, home to the sin­gle largest col­lec­tion of his art­works, from paint­ings and sculp­tures to draw­ings and engrav­ings, as well as an even larg­er archive of pho­tographs, papers, and cor­re­spon­dence.

Now, you don’t actu­al­ly have to make the trip to Paris to see these col­lec­tions, or at least an increas­ing­ly large por­tion of their hold­ings. As Sarah Kuta reports at Smithsonian.com, thou­sands of Picas­so’s art­works are “now acces­si­ble from any­where with an inter­net con­nec­tion, thanks to a new online archive cre­at­ed by the Picas­so Muse­um. The muse­um has dig­i­tized thou­sands of Picasso’s art­works, essays, poems, inter­views and oth­er mem­o­ra­bil­ia, includ­ing items that have nev­er been seen by the pub­lic before.” The project began last year, with the dig­i­ti­za­tion of “around 19,000 pho­tos”; if all goes accord­ing to plan, the muse­um will even­tu­al­ly make “an addi­tion­al 200,000 doc­u­ments” avail­able online.

Browse the Musée Picas­so’s online archive and you’ll find many works that, assum­ing you haven’t yet achieved full Picas­so immer­sion, you won’t have seen before: Femme couchée lisant from 1953, seen at the top of the post, for instance, or the ear­li­er Mas­sacre en Corée just above. (Despite liv­ing in Korea myself, I had no idea that Picas­so paint­ed a Kore­an War-themed pic­ture, much less an episode of his­to­ry that took place in the very neigh­bor­hood where I used to live.) Not every­thing is by Picas­so, a good deal hav­ing been made by artists with whom he was asso­ci­at­ed, like Man Ray, who took this 1937 pho­to­graph of Picas­so and his His­pano-Suiza car. You can find much more of inter­est in the archive’s themed sec­tions, like “Féminin / Mas­culin” and “Picas­so iconophage,” which are nav­i­ga­ble only in French — a lan­guage that, in any case, every Picas­sophile should learn. Enter the dig­i­tal archive here.

via Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pablo Picasso’s Mas­ter­ful Child­hood Paint­ings: Pre­co­cious Works Paint­ed Between the Ages of 8 and 15

14 Self-Por­traits by Pablo Picas­so Show the Evo­lu­tion of His Style: See Self-Por­traits Mov­ing from Ages 15 to 90

The Mys­tery of Picas­so: Land­mark Film of a Leg­endary Artist at Work, by Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot

A 3D Tour of Picasso’s Guer­ni­ca

Watch Picas­so Cre­ate a Mas­ter­piece in Just Five Min­utes (1955)

The Louvre’s Entire Col­lec­tion Goes Online: View and Down­load 480,00 Works of Art

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Learn to Become a Supply Chain Data Analyst with Unilever’s New Certificate Program

in Business, Online Courses | March 25th, 2024

Sup­ply chains—we nev­er thought too much about them. That is, until the pan­dem­ic, when sup­ply chains expe­ri­enced severe dis­rup­tions world­wide, leav­ing us wait­ing for prod­ucts for weeks, if not months. That’s when we start­ed appre­ci­at­ing the impor­tance of sup­ply chains and their resilience.

Com­pa­nies like Unilever rely on sup­ply chains to man­u­fac­ture their goods (e.g., Dove, Lip­ton, and Ben & Jer­ry’s) and then move them around the globe. For Unilever, it’s essen­tial that their sup­ply chains remain effi­cient and strong. Work­ing in part­ner­ship with Cours­era, the com­pa­ny has cre­at­ed a new Sup­ply Chain Data Ana­lyst Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate to help entry-lev­el pro­fes­sion­als learn more about using data to man­age effec­tive sup­ply chains. Designed to be com­plet­ed in rough­ly four months, the cer­tifi­cate con­sists of four cours­es: 1) Sup­ply Chain Man­age­ment and Ana­lyt­ics, 2) Using Data Ana­lyt­ics in Sup­ply Chain, 3) Imple­ment­ing Sup­ply Chain Ana­lyt­ics, and 4) Sup­ply Chain Soft­ware Tools.

As stu­dents move through the pro­gram, they will learn how to “achieve cost sav­ings, reduce lead times, enhance cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, and adapt to chang­ing mar­ket con­di­tions through data-dri­ven insights and ana­lyt­i­cal approach­es.” They will also learn key skills like demand fore­cast­ing and how to mon­i­tor sup­ply chains for secu­ri­ty risks.

Empha­siz­ing real-world expe­ri­ence, stu­dents will “take on the role of an ana­lyst for a fic­ti­tious con­sumer goods com­pa­ny spe­cial­iz­ing in organ­ic farm to table con­sumer prod­ucts. With over 20 unique assign­ments, [stu­dents will] use spread­sheets and visu­al­iza­tion tools to ana­lyze data and make rec­om­men­da­tions.”

You can audit the four cours­es for free, or sign up to earn a share­able cer­tifi­cate for a fee. Stu­dents who select the lat­ter option will be charged $49 per month. Cours­era esti­mates that the cer­tifi­cate will take four months to com­plete, assum­ing you’re ded­i­cat­ing 10 hours per week. That amounts to about $200 in total. You can enroll here.

For those inter­est­ed, Unilever has also recent­ly released a new Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Ana­lyst Cer­tifi­cate, which you can find here.

In addi­tion, until March 31, 2024, Cours­era is offer­ing $100 off of Cours­era Plus, which will let you take 7,000 cours­es (includ­ing the ones above) and not pay for the cer­tifi­cates. If you plan to take a lot of cours­es, and want to earn cer­tifi­cates, it can be a cost effec­tive approach.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Gen­er­a­tive AI for Every­one: A Free Course from AI Pio­neer Andrew Ng

Google Unveils a Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing & E‑Commerce Cer­tifi­cate: 7 Cours­es Will Help Pre­pare Stu­dents for an Entry-Lev­el Job in 6 Months

Google & Cours­era Cre­ate a Career Cer­tifi­cate That Pre­pares Stu­dents for Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Jobs in 6 Months

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Amazon Offers Free AI Courses, Aiming to Help 2 Million People Build AI Skills by 2025

in Artificial Intelligence, Online Courses | January 26th, 2024

Late last year, Ama­zon announced AI Ready, a new ini­tia­tive “designed to pro­vide free AI skills train­ing to 2 mil­lion peo­ple glob­al­ly by 2025.” This includes eight free AI and gen­er­a­tive AI cours­es, some designed for begin­ners, and oth­ers designed for more advanced stu­dents.

As the Wall Street Jour­nal pod­cast notes above, Ama­zon cre­at­ed the AI Ready ini­tia­tive with three goals in mind: 1) to increase the over­all num­ber of peo­ple in the work­force who have a basic under­stand­ing of AI, 2.) to com­pete with Microsoft and oth­er big com­pa­nies for AI tal­ent, and 3.) to expose a large num­ber of peo­ple to Ama­zon’s AI sys­tems.

For those new to AI, you may want to explore these AI Ready cours­es:

You can find more infor­ma­tion (includ­ing more free cours­es) on this AI Ready page. We have oth­er free AI cours­es list­ed in the Relat­eds below.

Note: Until Feb­ru­ary 1, 2024, Cours­era is run­ning a spe­cial deal where you can get $200 off of Cours­era Plus and gain unlim­it­ed access to cours­es & cer­tifi­cates, includ­ing a lot of cours­es on AI. Get details here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence for Every­one: An Intro­duc­to­ry Course from Andrew Ng, the Co-Founder of Cours­era

A New Course Teach­es You How to Tap the Pow­ers of Chat­G­PT and Put It to Work for You

Gen­er­a­tive AI for Every­one: A Free Course from AI Pio­neer Andrew Ng

Google Launch­es a Free Course on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Sign Up for Its New “Machine Learn­ing Crash Course”

How to Learn Data Ana­lyt­ics in 2024: Earn a Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate That Will Help Pre­pare You for a Job in 6 Months

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Stanford Continuing Studies Offering a Course on the History & Music of the Grateful Dead, Taught by David Gans: Starts on Monday, January 22

in Music, Online Courses | January 21st, 2024

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

A quick heads up: On Mon­day, Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies will kick off an online course called Psy­che­delia and Groove: The Music and Cul­ture of the Grate­ful Dead. Taught by David Gans (author of Play­ing in the Band: An Oral and Visu­al Por­trait of the Grate­ful Dead), the course got a nice shout out from drum­mer Mick­ey Hart on Insta­gram. Open to any adult, the course descrip­tion reads:

The Grate­ful Dead­’s ground­break­ing fusion of music, coun­ter­cul­ture, and com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment forged an endur­ing lega­cy that tran­scends gen­er­a­tions while shap­ing the evo­lu­tion of music and cul­tur­al expres­sion. Fresh off the farewell per­for­mance of Dead & Com­pa­ny in San Fran­cis­co in July, this course invites stu­dents to delve into the phe­nom­e­non that is the Grate­ful Dead through a cap­ti­vat­ing explo­ration of the band’s his­to­ry, music, and cul­tur­al impact.

The course will start by trac­ing the band’s evo­lu­tion, from its hum­ble begin­nings to its leg­endary sta­tus as one of the most influ­en­tial bands in music his­to­ry. We will explore the band’s for­ma­tion, the ear­ly San Fran­cis­co music scene, its unique approach to tour­ing, and the var­i­ous eras of its exis­tence. We’ll next embark on a son­ic jour­ney through the band’s diverse and ever-evolv­ing musi­cal cat­a­log. Stu­dents will dis­sect the dis­tinc­tive blend of rock, folk, blues, and impro­vi­sa­tion that defined the Grate­ful Dead­’s sound.

Final­ly, we’ll exam­ine the band’s cul­tur­al impact on soci­ety, div­ing into the band’s con­nec­tion to art, lit­er­a­ture, and social change, as well as its unique fan cul­ture and the phe­nom­e­non of the “Dead­head.” By the end of the course, stu­dents will have a well-round­ed appre­ci­a­tion for the roots, strug­gles, and mile­stones that shaped the Grate­ful Dead’s tra­jec­to­ry, an under­stand­ing of its pro­found impact on music and cul­ture, and insight into a lega­cy that still res­onates deeply today.

Guest speak­ers for this course will include Steve Sil­ber­man, who was fea­tured in the doc­u­men­tary Long Strange Trip and is a reg­u­lar voice on the Good Ol’ Grate­ful Dead­cast. He is also a co-author of Skele­ton Key: A Dic­tio­nary for Dead­heads.

Again, the course starts on Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 22. Tuition is $405. You can enroll here.

Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies also offers many oth­er cours­es online, across many dis­ci­plines, at a rea­son­able price. Check out the cat­a­logue here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Stream a Mas­sive Archive of Grate­ful Dead Con­certs from 1965–1995

The Grate­ful Dead Movie: Watch It Free Online

How the Grate­ful Dead’s “Wall of Sound”–a Mon­ster, 600-Speak­er Sound System–Changed Rock Con­certs & Live Music For­ev­er

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How to Learn Data Analytics in 2024: Earn a Professional Certificate That Will Help Prepare You for a Job in 6 Months

in Data, Online Courses | January 11th, 2024

We’re liv­ing in the age of data. Every sec­ond, mas­sive amounts of data are being gen­er­at­ed, processed, ana­lyzed and, yes, mon­e­tized. Com­pa­nies, gov­ern­ments, and individuals–they’re all awash in data and try­ing to make sense of it. That makes Data Ana­lyt­ics a valu­able skill for pro­fes­sion­als of all ages.

Enter Google, which has launched a pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cate in Data Ana­lyt­ics–one that will “have you job-ready in less than 6 months.” Offered on the Cours­era plat­form, the Data Ana­lyt­ics Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate con­sists of eight cours­es, includ­ing “Foun­da­tions: Data, Data, Every­where,” “Pre­pare Data for Explo­ration,” “Data Analy­sis with R Pro­gram­ming,” and “Share Data Through the Art of Visu­al­iza­tion.” Over­all this pro­gram “includes over 180 hours of instruc­tion and hun­dreds of prac­tice-based assess­ments, which will help you sim­u­late real-world data ana­lyt­ics sce­nar­ios that are crit­i­cal for suc­cess in the work­place. The con­tent is high­ly inter­ac­tive and exclu­sive­ly devel­oped by Google employ­ees with decades of expe­ri­ence in data ana­lyt­ics.”

Upon com­ple­tion, students–even those who haven’t pur­sued a col­lege degree–can direct­ly apply for jobs (e.g., junior or asso­ciate data ana­lyst, data­base admin­is­tra­tor, etc.) with Google and over 150 U.S. employ­ers, includ­ing Deloitte, Tar­get, and Ver­i­zon. You can start a 7‑day free tri­al and explore the cours­es here. If you con­tin­ue beyond the free tri­al, Google/Coursera will charge $49 USD per month. That trans­lates to about $300 after 6 months, the time esti­mat­ed to com­plete the cer­tifi­cate.

Explore the Data Ana­lyt­ics Cer­tifi­cate by watch­ing the video above. Learn more about the over­all Google career cer­tifi­cate ini­tia­tive here. And find oth­er Google pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cates here.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

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A Busy Person’s Introduction to Large Language Models (LLMs)

in Online Courses, Technology | December 7th, 2023

You’re busy. You don’t have much time to fig­ure out the deal with Large Lan­guage Mod­els (aka LLMs). But you have some curios­i­ty. Enter Andrej Karpa­thy and his pre­sen­ta­tion, “A Busy Per­son­’s Intro­duc­tion to Large Lan­guage Mod­els.” It’s a one-hour tuto­r­i­al that explains “the core tech­ni­cal com­po­nent behind sys­tems like Chat­G­PT, Claude, and Bard.” Designed for a gen­er­al audi­ence, the video explains what Large Lan­guage Mod­els (LLMs) are, and where Karpa­thy sees them going. Andrej knows what he’s talk­ing about. He cur­rent­ly works for Ope­nAI (the mak­er of Chat­G­PT), and, before that, he served as the direc­tor of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence at Tes­la.

As one YouTube com­menter put it, “Andrej is hands-down one of the best ML [Machine Learn­ing] edu­ca­tors out there.” At Stan­ford, he was the pri­ma­ry instruc­tor for the first deep learn­ing class, which has become one of the largest cours­es at the uni­ver­si­ty. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Gen­er­a­tive AI for Every­one: A Free Course from AI Pio­neer Andrew Ng

Neur­al Net­works for Machine Learn­ing: A Free Online Course Taught by Geof­frey Hin­ton

Google Launch­es a Free Course on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Sign Up for Its New “Machine Learn­ing Crash Course”

Stephen Fry Reads Nick Cave’s Stir­ring Let­ter About Chat­G­PT and Human Cre­ativ­i­ty: “We Are Fight­ing for the Very Soul of the World”

Noam Chom­sky on Chat­G­PT: It’s “Basi­cal­ly High-Tech Pla­gia­rism” and “a Way of Avoid­ing Learn­ing”

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Generative AI for Everyone: A Free Course from AI Pioneer Andrew Ng

in Artificial Intelligence, Online Courses, Stanford, Technology | November 29th, 2023

Andrew Ng–an AI pio­neer and Stan­ford com­put­er sci­ence professor–has released a new course called Gen­er­a­tive AI for Every­one. Designed for a non-tech­ni­cal audi­ence, the course will “guide you through how gen­er­a­tive AI works and what it can (and can’t) do. It includes hands-on exer­cis­es where you’ll learn to use gen­er­a­tive AI to help in day-to-day work.”  The course also explains “how to think through the life­cy­cle of a gen­er­a­tive AI project, from con­cep­tion to launch, includ­ing how to build effec­tive prompts,” and it dis­cuss­es “the poten­tial oppor­tu­ni­ties and risks that gen­er­a­tive AI tech­nolo­gies present to indi­vid­u­als, busi­ness­es, and soci­ety.” Giv­en the com­ing preva­lence of AI, it’s worth spend­ing six hours with this course (the esti­mat­ed time need­ed to com­plete it). You can audit Gen­er­a­tive AI for Every­one for free, and watch all of the lec­tures at no cost. If you would like to take the course and earn a cer­tifi­cate, it will cost $49.

Gen­er­a­tive AI for Every­one will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Google Launch­es a Free Course on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Sign Up for Its New “Machine Learn­ing Crash Course”

Com­put­er Sci­en­tist Andrew Ng Presents a New Series of Machine Learn­ing Courses–an Updat­ed Ver­sion of the Pop­u­lar Course Tak­en by 5 Mil­lion Stu­dents

Stephen Fry Reads Nick Cave’s Stir­ring Let­ter About Chat­G­PT and Human Cre­ativ­i­ty: “We Are Fight­ing for the Very Soul of the World”

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