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.

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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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“The Wire” @ Harvard

in Current Affairs, Life, Television | November 3rd, 2009

bubblesDavid Simon once called his HBO series, The Wire, “a polit­i­cal tract mas­querad­ing as a cop show.” Think of it as a five sea­son, 3600 minute, artis­tic depic­tion of the esca­lat­ing break­down of urban soci­ety. The show is art. But it is also life in the biggest sense. And it’s why some thinkers have likened the epic series to (or even ele­vat­ed it above) Tol­stoy’s War & Peace. Now comes this… Accord­ing to The Har­vard Crim­son, William J. Wil­son, a Har­vard soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor, will teach a new course that uses The Wire as “a case study for pover­ty in Amer­i­ca,” say­ing that “The Wire has done more to enhance our under­stand­ing of the sys­temic urban inequal­i­ty that con­strains the lives of the poor than any pub­lished study.” If you haven’t seen this series, and if this whets your appetite, you can find a nice deal on Ama­zon. The full series now goes for $125.00, 50% off the list price.

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Film Version of Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire Now Online

in Science, Television | October 31st, 2009

Michael Pol­lan’s best-sell­ing book, Botany of Desire, is now a film, and you can watch it online, cour­tesy of PBS. (Click to watch com­plete film.) The film takes you inside our rela­tion­ship with the plant world, and shows “how four famil­iar species — the apple, the tulip, cannabis and the pota­to — evolved to sat­is­fy our yearn­ings for sweet­ness, beau­ty, intox­i­ca­tion and con­trol.” Accord­ing to a piece in The San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle, it took eight years to pull togeth­er the fund­ing for the film, and that’s sim­ply because mar­i­jua­na was in the mix. The film runs close to two hours. The pre­view is above, the full film is here. For more films, please vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

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John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the Dick Cavett Show

in Music, Television | October 9th, 2009

A lit­tle birth­day present. John Lennon would have been 69 years old today. This mem­o­rable inter­view, record­ed in 1971, fea­tures John and Yoko in a can­did, relaxed and wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion with one of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing talk show hosts at the time. To watch the full inter­view, see  Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6. These inter­views, and oth­er Lennon inter­views with Cavett, are all part of a DVD that you pur­chase at Ama­zon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les Remas­tered: An Inside Look

What New York­ers Heard on the Radio the Night John Lennon was Shot

The Bea­t­les: Pod­casts from Yes­ter­day

The Grey Video: Mix­ing the Bea­t­les with Jay‑Z

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