Conan O’Brien @ Google

in Comedy, Google, Media, Television | May 8th, 2010

Conan O’Brien’s Sil­i­con Val­ley tour winds up at Google as part of his “Legal­ly Pro­hib­it­ed From Being Fun­ny on Tele­vi­sion Tour.” In this set­ting, you can real­ly see his comic/improvisational tal­ents come alive (more so than on late night TV). Give it a watch and tell me if you don’t get a good laugh…

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Bill Murray Reads Poetry at a Construction Site: Emily Dickinson, Billy Collins & More

in Film, Literature, Poetry, Television | May 4th, 2010

Anoth­er great New York City moment. In the spring of 2009, con­struc­tion work­ers build­ing the new home for Poets House were treat­ed to a short poet­ry read­ing by the actor Bill Mur­ray. We ini­tial­ly encounter Mur­ray (at the 59 sec­ond mark) read­ing lines from Bil­ly Collins’ Anoth­er Rea­son I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House. Next up? Lorine Niedeck­er’s very pithy poem, Poets Work, and then, of course, a lit­tle Emi­ly Dick­in­son.

For more free poet­ry, vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray Gives a Delight­ful Read­ing of Twain’sHuckleberry Finn (1996)

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

Watch Bill Mur­ray Per­form a Satir­i­cal Anti-Tech­nol­o­gy Rant (1982)

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James Dean and Ronald Reagan Clash in Newly Discovered Video

in Television | April 26th, 2010

Recent­ly a friend of John Meroney at The Atlantic dis­cov­ered this 1954 episode of Gen­er­al Elec­tric The­ater fea­tur­ing Ronald Rea­gan and James Dean.

Dean’s per­for­mance is superb, and the episode (edit­ed to 6 min­utes) is a para­ble of the cul­tur­al ten­sions of the time — with drugged up, beat­nik delin­quents invad­ing the home of a decent cou­ple to sub­ject them at gun­point to jazz and slang: “man,” “fake it, Dad,” “you dig me,” “that’s crazy,” “don’t goof on me now.” It’s a quite fit­ting scene, espe­cial­ly giv­en that Rea­gan went on to be the icon of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, while Dean became emblem­at­ic of the rebel­lious youth cul­ture to which Rea­gan’s move­ment was a reac­tion. But while the overt moral les­son of this episode is anti-rebel, there’s no doubt that pow­er­ful depic­tions like these–in which Dean’s expres­sive­ness is as charis­mat­ic as it is frightening–only con­tributed to mak­ing rebel­lion cool.

Wes Alwan lives in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, where he works as a writer and researcher and attends the Insti­tute for the Study of Psy­cho­analy­sis and Cul­ture. He also par­tic­i­pates in The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, a pod­cast con­sist­ing of infor­mal dis­cus­sions about philo­soph­i­cal texts by three phi­los­o­phy grad­u­ate school dropouts.

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Philosophy on Late Night TV

in Philosophy, Television | April 5th, 2010

Last week, Craig Fer­gu­son prob­a­bly made a lit­tle tele­vi­sion his­to­ry when he invit­ed a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor to appear on The Late Late Show. The guest is Jonathan Dan­cy, a prof at UT-Austin, who also hap­pens to be the father of actor Hugh Dan­cy, and the father-in-law of actress Claire Danes. And the unlike­ly top­ic of dis­cus­sion? Moral par­tic­u­lar­ism, which argues that moral­i­ty is con­tex­tu­al, not objec­tive­ly defined. The con­ver­sa­tion runs 11 min­utes, and it’s intrigu­ing to see how Fer­gu­son and Dan­cy nav­i­gate the inter­view, try­ing to bring phi­los­o­phy and com­e­dy togeth­er. Mean­while, if you’re a reg­u­lar Open Cul­ture read­er, you’ll note that Dan­cy’s think­ing stands in sharp con­trast to the con­tro­ver­sial vision of moral phi­los­o­phy out­lined by Sam Har­ris at the recent TED Con­fer­ence.

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Bernstein Breaks Down Beethoven

in Music, Television | February 23rd, 2010


In the mid-1950s, the Amer­i­can com­pos­er Leonard Bern­stein made sev­er­al appear­ances on Omnibus, a tele­vi­sion show ded­i­cat­ed to cov­er­ing the sci­ences, arts and human­i­ties. Dur­ing his vis­its, Bern­stein walked audi­ences through the art of mak­ing music. Take for exam­ple the clip above where he breaks down the mak­ing of Beethoven’s Fifth Sym­pho­ny. Just how did Beethoven craft it? And what deci­sions did he need to make along the way? What parts to include? And not to include? You can see the pro­gram here. Oth­er episodes focus on the work of Bach, and also the worlds of Jazz, Opera, Amer­i­can Musi­cals, and the con­duc­tor’s craft. Hap­pi­ly, all sev­en of Bern­stein’s appear­ances have been col­lect­ed in a new­ly released DVD col­lec­tion, which you can find on Ama­zon. Hat tip to Mike.

via The New York Times

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Carl Sandburg on “What’s My Line?”

in Literature, Poetry, Television | February 17th, 2010

What’s My Line? aired on CBS from 1950 to 1967, mak­ing it the longest-run­ning game show in Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion his­to­ry. Dur­ing its eigh­teen sea­sons, the show fea­tured hun­dreds of celebri­ties, includ­ing some of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing cul­tur­al fig­ures. The clip above dusts off the 1960 appear­ance made by Carl Sand­burg, the poet, writer, and three time win­ner of the Pulitzer Prize. And now for a video that’s not all fun and games: here’s audio of Sand­burg read­ing his anti­war poem Grass. (You can also get more free audio record­ings of Sand­burg’s poet­ry over at the Inter­net Archive.)

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Rod Serling: Where Do Ideas Come From? (1972)

in Literature, Television | January 18th, 2010

Rod Ser­ling, the Amer­i­can screen­writer & tele­vi­sion pro­duc­er best known for The Twi­light Zone, field­ed ques­tions from stu­dents about the whole art of writ­ing for tele­vi­sion. In the clip above, he gives a rather dra­mat­ic response to the ques­tion, “Where do ideas come from?” (They come from the Earth… They’re in the air. And, to put them on paper, you bleed!) If you keep watch­ing, the con­ver­sa­tion with Ser­ling con­tin­ues for a good while.

This con­tri­bu­tion was sent to us by Elan, who dates the clip to around 1972. You can always write us and sug­gest a link here.

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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A New TV Guide for Internet Television

in Television | November 12th, 2009

Today, Clicker.com comes out of beta and promis­es to become the com­plete guide to Inter­net Tele­vi­sion. Cur­rent­ly, the site “con­tains more than 450,000 episodes, from over 6,000 shows, from over 1,200 net­works, tens of thou­sands of movies, and 50,000 music videos from 20,000 artists.” The con­tent (all appar­ent­ly legal) is gen­er­al­ly sup­plied by oth­er con­tent providers, and then aggre­gat­ed by Click­er. Although the con­tent is often quite pop, you can find some uni­ver­si­ty con­tent (Berke­ley, Yale, Prince­ton, Stan­ford, etc.) in the mix, much of it sup­plied by Aca­d­e­m­ic Earth. Oth­er qual­i­ty con­tent appears in the Art & Artists sec­tion here and the Doc­u­men­tary sec­tion here.

Thanks Denise for the tip.

via USA Today

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