Michael Sandel: The Lost Art of Democratic Debate

If you think that civic dis­course & engage­ment still mat­ter, then Michael Sandel, the Har­vard philoso­pher, has a lit­tle some­thing for you: a refresh­er (pre­sent­ed at TED) that gets you back into the prac­tice of civic debate. Some of the top­ics cov­ered here dove­tail with themes cov­ered in Jus­tice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, a huge­ly pop­u­lar Har­vard course that Sandel has now made freely avail­able online. You can find the course on YouTube, iTunes and Har­vard’s web site. It’s also list­ed in our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. You’ll find it list­ed with oth­er free phi­los­o­phy cours­es.

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Lawrence Lessig Speech Streamed Live Today

A quick heads up…

Flu­mo­tion and the Open Video Alliance will be stream­ing a live event on Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 25th fea­tur­ing Lawrence Lessig, the foun­da­tion­al voice of the free cul­ture move­ment. The 45-minute speech will be deliv­ered live from Har­vard Law School via Flumotion’s Stream­ing Plat­form, and will explore the rela­tion­ship between copy­right, fair use, pol­i­tics and online video. The speech takes place at 6:00 PM local time (23:00 GMT) and [can be watched live here.]

Get more details from Flu­mo­tion here.

PS On a relat­ed note, TEDxNYED will stream talks live on March 6th.  Speak­ers will include Lawrence Lessig, Hen­ry Jenk­ins, Jeff Jarvis, Michael Wesch and oth­ers. Looks like a great event. Get more details here.

The Science/Liberty Nexus

You can’t get good democ­ra­cy with­out sci­ence, and you can’t get good sci­ence with­out democ­ra­cy. That’s why great polit­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tions have his­tor­i­cal­ly gone hand-in-hand. It’s an intrigu­ing argu­ment that Tim­o­thy Fer­ris (UC Berke­ley) makes in his new book, The Sci­ence of Lib­er­ty, and debates in an inter­view with Michael Kras­ny, aired last week on KQED in San Fran­cis­co. You can stream the inter­view below, or access it via mp3 or iTunes.

Lessig on Political Corruption in America

Pub­lic con­fi­dence in the U.S. House and Sen­ate is at an all-time low, and, after last week’s Supreme Court deci­sion, it’s bound to sink even low­er. On Jan­u­ary 19th (the day before the deci­sion), Har­vard law pro­fes­sor Lawrence Lessig returned to Stan­ford and high­light­ed the degree to which “insti­tu­tion­al cor­rup­tion” — in the form of lob­by­ists and cor­po­rate influ­ence — per­vades Con­gress, dic­tates leg­is­la­tion, and brings large sums of mon­ey to cam­paigns and, yes, even rep­re­sen­ta­tives’ per­son­al bank accounts. (Rough­ly 50% of U.S. Sen­a­tors become lob­by­ists, work­ing for indus­tries they once assist­ed polit­i­cal­ly, and earn sub­stan­tial incomes.) The talk, accom­pa­nied by a rapid fire Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion, runs a sol­id hour and details var­i­ous instances in which lob­by­ists have shaped unfath­omably bad leg­is­la­tion. Hap­pi­ly, the talk also ends with Lessig out­lin­ing pos­si­ble solu­tions. Pol­i­cy changes can offer some answers. But, a lot of it comes down to this: get­ting the pas­sive priv­i­leged to rein in a cor­rupt­ed elite.

Note: To see Lessig’s imme­di­ate response to the SCOTUS deci­sion, look here.

Faith and Globalization: Tony Blair Teaches at Yale

After he left office in 2007, Tony Blair went across the pond and spent time teach­ing at Yale. Exit Prime Min­is­ter Blair. Enter Pro­fes­sor Blair. Dur­ing the 2008-09 aca­d­e­m­ic year, Blair and Miroslav Volf co-taught “Faith and Glob­al­iza­tion,” a course designed to help stu­dents under­stand the two inter­twined forces shap­ing our world. In some ways, reli­gion is the real focus here, and it is Blair’s argu­ment (above, for exam­ple) that “If you can­not under­stand the world of faith, whether you are in busi­ness, or in pub­lic affairs, or in pol­i­tics, then you actu­al­ly can­not under­stand the world.” The full course can be accessed on iTunes, and we have also added it to our large col­lec­tion of free cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties. For more infor­ma­tion on this course, please vis­it Yale’s Faith and Glob­al­iza­tion web­site and also be sure to access Yale’s Open Course ini­tia­tive.

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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This American Life Demystifies the American Healthcare System

When the glob­al finan­cial sys­tem col­lapsed last year, This Amer­i­can Life and its sis­ter pro­gram, Plan­et Mon­ey (iTunes â€” RSS Feed â€” Web Site) began doing some­thing that few oth­ers could pull off. They took very com­plex prob­lems and made them under­stand­able, often demys­ti­fy­ing dif­fi­cult con­cepts in a reli­ably engag­ing way. Now, they’re at it again. This time, they’re break­ing down the Amer­i­can health­care sys­tem and get­ting at the core ques­tion. Why can’t we con­trol ever-ris­ing health­care costs? That’s what the rag­ing health­care debate is effec­tive­ly all about. And, if you want to be an informed par­tic­i­pant in the debate, it’s worth lis­ten­ing to these two episodes that tease things out. The first episode, called More is Less, looks at doc­tors, patients, insur­ance com­pa­nies and their tan­gled rela­tion­ship. (Click here, then scroll down and find the “Full Episode” icon.) The sec­ond episode, Some­one Else’s Mon­ey, gets you inside the world of drug and insur­ance com­pa­nies and patients. Have a lis­ten, and thanks to Bob in Brook­lyn for the tip here.

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A New Politics of the Common Good

A quick heads up: The BBC is fea­tur­ing a series of lec­tures with Michael Sandel (Har­vard Pro­fes­sor of Gov­ern­ment) that will col­lec­tive­ly talk about “the prospects of a new pol­i­tics of the com­mon good.” Sandel is a very pop­u­lar pro­fes­sor at Har­vard. Some 15,000 stu­dents have tak­en his cours­es over 30 years. In the first lec­ture, Sandel takes a look at the moral­i­ty of the mar­kets (a time­ly top­ic, to be sure) and “con­sid­ers the expan­sion of mar­kets and how we deter­mine their moral lim­its.” You can lis­ten here.

Also, note that you can find anoth­er mini-course by Sandel on the Har­vard web­site.  Jus­tice: A Jour­ney in Moral Rea­son­ing (Video) is one of the very few cours­es that Har­vard has pro­duced and made avail­able to the pub­lic. You can find it oth­er­wise list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es.

Free Presidential Biographies on iTunes: FDR and Beyond

Thanks to PBS, you can now down­load from iTunes a four-hour defin­i­tive biog­ra­phy of Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt. FDR guid­ed the US through the Great Depres­sion, then World War II, serv­ing as pres­i­dent for an unprece­dent­ed four terms. The video pod­cast run a good four hours, and it’s part of a series called Amer­i­can Expe­ri­ence: The Pres­i­dents. Oth­er pres­i­dents fea­tured in this series include Har­ry Tru­man, Lyn­don John­son, Richard Nixon, Jim­my Carter, and Ronald Rea­gan. You can watch more videos from The Amer­i­can Expe­ri­ence series online by click­ing here.

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