Back to School: Free Resources for Lifelong Learners Everywhere

in Audio Books, e-books, Film, Online Courses | September 9th, 2011

With Labor Day behind us, it’s offi­cial­ly time to head back to school. That applies not just to kids, but to you. No mat­ter what your age, no mat­ter where you live, no mat­ter what your pri­or lev­el of edu­ca­tion, you can con­tin­ue deep­en­ing your knowl­edge in areas old and new. And it has nev­er been eas­i­er. All you need is a com­put­er or smart phone, an inter­net con­nec­tion, some free time, and our free edu­ca­tion­al media col­lec­tions. They’re avail­able 24/7 and con­stant­ly updat­ed:

Free Online Cours­es: Right now, you can down­load free cours­es (some in video, some in audio) cre­at­ed by some of the world’s lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties — Stan­ford, Oxford, Yale, Har­vard, UC Berke­ley, MIT and oth­ers. The cours­es cov­er pret­ty much every sub­ject — from phi­los­o­phy, lit­er­a­ture and his­to­ry, to physics, com­put­er sci­ence, engi­neer­ing and psy­chol­o­gy. The col­lec­tion fea­tures about 400 cours­es in total. And while you can’t take these cours­es for cred­it, the amount of per­son­al enrich­ment offered by these lec­tures is end­less.

Free Text­books: Anoth­er tool for the life­long learn­er. This col­lec­tion brings togeth­er rough­ly 150 free text­books authored by pro­fes­sors (and some high school teach­ers) across the globe. The col­lec­tion will par­tic­u­lar­ly ben­e­fit those inter­est­ed in deep­en­ing their knowl­edge in eco­nom­ics, com­put­er sci­ence, math­e­mat­ics, physics and biol­o­gy.

Free Lan­guage Lessons: Ours is an increas­ing­ly glob­al­ized world, and it cer­tain­ly pays to know more than one lan­guage. With the free audio lessons list­ed here, you can learn the basics of Span­ish, French and Ital­ian (the lan­guages tra­di­tion­al­ly taught in Amer­i­can schools). Or you can start bon­ing up on Man­darin, Brazil­ian Por­tuguese and oth­er lan­guages spo­ken by the new world pow­ers. Tak­en togeth­er, you can Learn 40 Lan­guages for Free.

Free Audio Books: This free col­lec­tion gives you the abil­i­ty to down­load audio ver­sions of impor­tant lit­er­ary works. Dur­ing your down­time, you can lis­ten to short sto­ries by Isaac Asi­mov, Ray­mond Carv­er, Jorge Luis Borges, and Philip K. Dick. Or you can set­tle into longer works by Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzger­ald, Friedrich Niet­zsche and James Joyce.

Free eBooks: Once again, it’s free lit­er­ary works. But this time you can down­load e‑texts to your com­put­er or dig­i­tal read­er. Franz Kaf­ka, George Orwell, Gertrude Stein, Edgar Allan Poe, Mar­cel Proust and Kurt Von­negut. They’re all on the list. And so too are The Har­vard Clas­sics, a 51 vol­ume series of endur­ing works.

Great Sci­ence Videos: This list pulls togeth­er some of our favorite sci­ence videos on the web. It fea­tures about 125 videos, cov­er­ing astron­o­my & space trav­el, physics, psy­chol­o­gy and neu­ro­science, reli­gion, tech­nol­o­gy and beyond.

Intel­li­gent YouTube Sites: Have you ever want­ed to sep­a­rate the wheat from the chaff on YouTube? This list will give you a start. It fea­tures over 100 YouTube chan­nels that deliv­er high qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion­al con­tent. Along sim­i­lar lines, you may want to vis­it our col­lec­tion of Intel­li­gent Video Sites. Same con­cept but applied to sites on the web.

Cul­tur­al Icons: If you’ve ever want­ed to see great thinkers, artists and writ­ers speak­ing on video in their own words, this list is for you. It has Borges and Bowie, Coltrane and Cop­po­la, Ayn Rand and Noam Chom­sky, Tol­stoy and Thomas Edi­son, among oth­ers. 275 cul­tur­al icons in total.

Free Movies Online: What bet­ter way to get a cul­tur­al edu­ca­tion than to watch some free cin­e­mat­ic mas­ter­pieces, includ­ing 15 films with Char­lie Chap­lin, 22 ear­ly films by Alfred Hitch­cock, 25 West­erns with John Wayne, and a num­ber of Sovi­et clas­sics by Andrei Tarkovsky. The list of 400+ films goes on. And so does your cul­tur­al edu­ca­tion.…

Get more cul­tur­al nuggets dai­ly by fol­low­ing us on Face­book and Twit­ter.

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Introduction to Political Philosophy: A Free Yale Course

in Online Courses, Philosophy, Politics | July 7th, 2011

Stephen B. Smith, a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty since 1984, has made avail­able a 24-lec­ture course, Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy, which cov­ers Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Machi­avel­li, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Toc­queville.

His approach is high­ly lit­er­ary. In his Repub­lic lec­tures, for instance, he spends a good chunk of the time dis­cussing the metaphors and char­ac­ters involved. One of Smith’s major con­cerns is what cit­i­zen­ship amounts to. The lec­ture above is on Pla­to’s “Apol­o­gy,” and while this may be Pla­to’s most famous work (with its dic­tum that “The unex­am­ined life is not worth liv­ing”), it’s less about polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy than about the vir­tu­ous life. Smith sees these top­ics as inti­mate­ly relat­ed, and in his clos­ing lec­ture, he gives a defense of patri­o­tism, say­ing that in the ivy league envi­ron­ment, express­ing an inter­est in patri­o­tism is like con­fess­ing an inter­est in child pornog­ra­phy.

Despite his engag­ing style, he speaks some­what slow­ly. If your lis­ten­ing device offers a “dou­ble speed” fea­ture, I rec­om­mend using this. You can obtain the whole series on the web: Yale web site — YouTube — iTunes (audio) —  iTunes (video). You can also find the course in the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er runs the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast and blog. He also per­forms with the Madi­son, WI band New Peo­ple.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Oxford’s Free Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy: Stream 41 Lec­tures

Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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Free: European Cultural History in 91 Lectures by Eminent Historian George L. Mosse (1500–1920)

in History, Online Courses | June 2nd, 2011

Dur­ing the 1960s and 1970s, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son put togeth­er one of the finest his­to­ry pro­grams in the Unit­ed States, and it was anchored by George Mosse, a Ger­man-born cul­tur­al his­to­ri­an who authored 25 books cov­er­ing the Eng­lish Ref­or­ma­tion, Luther­an the­ol­o­gy, Jew­ish his­to­ry, and fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy. Though he died in 1999, Mosse still remains a leg­endary fig­ure in Madi­son, and now the uni­ver­si­ty (where I did my under­grad­u­ate work — in his­to­ry, no less) has dust­ed off record­ings of his cours­es and made them freely avail­able online.

Three of his cours­es tie togeth­er into a nice pack­age, offer­ing a long look at Euro­pean Cul­tur­al His­to­ry. The first course takes you from 1500 to 1800, cov­er­ing the Renais­sance, Ref­or­ma­tion, Eng­lish Rev­o­lu­tion, Enlight­en­ment, and French Rev­o­lu­tion. The sec­ond course moves from 1660 to 1880, focus­ing on the ideas that changed Europe. It’s essen­tial­ly an intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry that traces the rise of Enlight­en­ment think­ing, Ger­man Roman­ti­cism and Ide­al­ism (includ­ing Hegelian­ism), the birth of lib­er­al­ism and Marx­ism and beyond.

And, final­ly, the last course focus­es on the crit­i­cal peri­od 1880 — 1920. Here we have a sur­vey of the cul­tur­al revolt against bour­geois soci­ety, the rise of mod­ern cul­ture (fig­ures like Niet­zsche, Freud, & Brecht take cen­ter stage), the dam­age wrought by World War I, and the begin­nings of fas­cism in Europe.

The cours­es, all pre­sent­ed in audio, are usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by text sum­maries. You can down­load a fourth course by Mosse called Mod­ern Jew­ish His­to­ry. They all appear in the His­to­ry sec­tion of our big 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. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

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Leo Strauss: 15 Political Philosophy Courses Online

in Online Courses, Philosophy | May 23rd, 2011

strauss-large

In 1949, Leo Strauss, the Ger­man-Jew­ish emi­gré, land­ed at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, where he spent decades teach­ing and writ­ing on polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy, espe­cial­ly the polit­i­cal thought of the Ancients. Strauss’ think­ing skewed con­ser­v­a­tive, and if he was some­times con­tro­ver­sial while alive, he has become only more so in death (1973). Nowa­days he’s con­sid­ered right­ly or wrong­ly the “intel­lec­tu­al god­fa­ther of the neo-con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal move­ment,” if not an “intel­lec­tu­al force behind the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s plan to invade Iraq.” Although Strauss com­ment­ed occa­sion­al­ly on con­tem­po­rary pol­i­tics (Harper’s has more on that), he spent most of his time work­ing through major philo­soph­i­cal texts, and through his com­men­taries, devel­op­ing his own philo­soph­i­cal posi­tions, which were gen­er­al­ly hos­tile to the Enlight­en­ment project and mod­ern individualism/liberalism.

Strauss was unques­tion­ably an influ­en­tial fig­ure even if he still divides us, and now, cour­tesy of U. Chica­go, you can lis­ten to 15 of his phi­los­o­phy sem­i­nars online. They were record­ed between 1959 and 1973, and some rep­re­sen­ta­tive titles include Montesquieu’s The Spir­it of the Laws (a course that Paul Wol­fowitz took dur­ing the ear­ly 70s), Niet­zsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, Hobbes’ Leviathan, and Hegel’s The Phi­los­o­phy of His­to­ry.

More sem­i­nars will be com­ing online. For now, we have cat­a­logued all 15 exist­ing sem­i­nars in the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of 1100 Free Online Cours­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

Phi­los­o­phy with John Sear­le: Three Free Cours­es

Exis­ten­tial­ism with Hubert Drey­fus: Four Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

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Free Courses “Netted” by the Webbys

in Online Courses | May 3rd, 2011

Worth a quick men­tion. Today our con­stant­ly-grow­ing list, 350 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties, was fea­tured by Net­ted, a dai­ly newslet­ter writ­ten by the Web­bys, the same peo­ple who give awards for excel­lence on the web. I don’t know if we’re achiev­ing excel­lence on the web. But I do know this: It’s hard to find a col­lec­tion of resources that’s more valu­able than this. The cours­es come from insti­tu­tions like Stan­ford, Yale and MIT. They cov­er most every top­ic — from phi­los­o­phy and his­to­ry to com­put­er sci­ence, physics and math. And they’re all FREE. Find the col­lec­tion here. Hope you enjoy.

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Yale Rolls Out 10 New Courses — All Free

in Online Courses, Yale | April 15th, 2011

This week, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty rolled out its lat­est batch of open cours­es. This release, the first since Octo­ber 2009, fea­tures 10 new cours­es, and brings the total num­ber to 35. Find the com­plete list here.

We have list­ed the new addi­tions below, and added them to our ever-grow­ing list of 350 Free Online Cours­es. As always, Yale gives you access to their cours­es in mul­ti­ple for­mats. You can down­load lec­tures (usu­al­ly in audio and video) from iTunes, or direct­ly from the Yale web site. And then, of course, YouTube is a good third option…

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Walter Kaufmann’s Classic Lectures on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

in Online Courses, Philosophy | April 14th, 2011

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Wal­ter Kauf­mann spent 33 years (1947–1980) teach­ing phi­los­o­phy at Prince­ton. And more than any­one else, Kauf­mann intro­duced Niet­zsche’s phi­los­o­phy to the Eng­lish-speak­ing world and made it pos­si­ble to take Niet­zsche seri­ous­ly as a thinker – some­thing there was­n’t always room to do in Amer­i­can intel­lec­tu­al cir­cles.

With­out sim­pli­fy­ing things too much, Kauf­mann saw Niet­zsche as some­thing of an ear­ly exis­ten­tial­ist, which brings us to these vin­tage lec­tures record­ed in 1960 (right around the time that Kauf­mann, a Ger­man-born con­vert to Judaism, also became a nat­u­ral­ized Amer­i­can cit­i­zen). The three lec­tures offer a short primer on exis­ten­tial­ism and the mod­ern crises philoso­phers grap­pled with. Kierkegaard and the Cri­sis in Reli­gion begins the series, fol­lowed by Niet­zsche and the Cri­sis in Phi­los­o­phy and Sartre and the Cri­sis in Moral­i­ty. You can hear them right below:

Kierkegaard and the Cri­sis in Reli­gion

Niet­zsche and the Cri­sis in Phi­los­o­phy

Sartre and the Cri­sis in Moral­i­ty

Kauf­man­n’s talks are now list­ed in the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 1100 Free Online Cours­es. There you will also find cours­es pre­sent­ed by oth­er major fig­ures, includ­ing John Sear­le, Hubert Drey­fus, and Michael Sandel.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, part of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

The Phi­los­o­phy of Kierkegaard, the First Exis­ten­tial­ist Philoso­pher, Revis­it­ed in 1984 Doc­u­men­tary

Lovers and Philoso­phers — Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beau­voir Togeth­er in 1967

The Phi­los­o­phy of Niet­zsche: An Intro­duc­tion by Alain de Bot­ton

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Biology That Makes Us Tick: Free Stanford Course by Robert Sapolsky

in Online Courses, Science, Stanford, Video - Science | March 28th, 2011

First thing you need to know: Before doing any­thing else, you should sim­ply click “play” and start watch­ing the video above. It does­n’t take long for Robert Sapol­sky, one of Stan­ford’s finest teach­ers, to pull you right into his course. Bet­ter to watch him than lis­ten to me.

Sec­ond thing to know: Sapol­sky is a MacArthur Fel­low, a world renowned neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gist, and an adept sci­ence writer best known for his book, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. Much of his research focus­es on the inter­play between the mind and body (how biol­o­gy affects the mind, and the mind, the body), and that rela­tion­ship lies at the heart of this course called “Human Behav­ioral Biol­o­gy.”

Now the third: Human Behav­ioral Biol­o­gy is avail­able on YouTube and iTunes for free. The course, con­sist­ing of 25 videos span­ning 36 hours (watch them all below), is oth­er­wise list­ed in the Biol­o­gy sec­tion of our big list of Free Online cours­es (now 1,700 cours­es in total).

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Athe­ist Stan­ford Biol­o­gist Robert Sapol­sky Explains How Reli­gious Beliefs Reduce Stress

Stanford’s Robert Sapol­sky Demys­ti­fies Depres­sion, Which, Like Dia­betes, Is Root­ed in Biol­o­gy

Robert Sapol­sky Explains the Bio­log­i­cal Basis of Reli­gios­i­ty, and What It Shares in Com­mon with OCD, Schiz­o­phre­nia & Epilep­sy

How Bud­dhism & Neu­ro­science Can Help You Change How Your Mind Works: A New Course by Best­selling Author Robert Wright

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