Fora.TV Goes Mobile

in Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society | October 2nd, 2009

Yes­ter­day, YouTube EDU went inter­na­tion­al, and FORA.TV went mobile. FORA is an excel­lent resource for smart video (you’ll find it in our col­lec­tion of Top Intel­li­gent Video Sites), and now it has launched its new mobile web site. Just point your mobile brows­er to m.fora.tv, and you can start watch­ing smart video on the move. The mobile site works well on the iPhone, and hope­ful­ly that holds true for oth­er smart phones. For more intel­li­gent mobile con­tent, please check out our Free iPhone app, and send it along to a friend. To access the app, you can always use the short­ened link: http://bit.ly/opencultureapp

Fol­low us on Face­book and also Twit­ter, where we tweet and re-tweet extra cul­tur­al good­ies that nev­er make it to the blog.

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For MLK on His Birthday

in Current Affairs, History, Video - Politics/Society | January 18th, 2009

The full “I Have a Dream” speech. The place: The Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al. The Date:  August 28, 1963. The Why: To bring about many small changes in Amer­i­can soci­ety, which even­tu­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly bring us to Tues­day. Take it away Mar­tin:

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The Clash of Civilizations (and the Passing of its Author)

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | December 29th, 2008

When the twin tow­ers were tak­en down in Sep­tem­ber 2001, Amer­i­ca looked to make sense of what hap­pened. And it was­n’t long before many start­ed turn­ing to The Clash of Civ­i­liza­tions and the Remak­ing of World Order, a book writ­ten by Samuel Hunt­ing­ton, the Har­vard poli sci pro­fes­sor who passed on last week.

The book itself was an elab­o­ra­tion upon a con­tro­ver­sial arti­cle that Hunt­ing­ton pub­lished in For­eign Affairs in 1993. In the open­ing lines, he wrote: “World pol­i­tics is enter­ing a new phase… It is my hypoth­e­sis that the fun­da­men­tal source of con­flict in this new world will not be pri­mar­i­ly ide­o­log­i­cal or pri­mar­i­ly eco­nom­ic. The great divi­sions among humankind and the dom­i­nat­ing source of con­flict will be cul­tur­al. Nation states will remain the most pow­er­ful actors in world affairs, but the prin­ci­pal con­flicts of glob­al pol­i­tics will occur between nations and groups of dif­fer­ent civ­i­liza­tions. The clash of civ­i­liza­tions will be the bat­tle lines of the future.” Par­tic­u­lar­ly he sug­gest­ed, it would be the “West ver­sus the Rest,” and with­in the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry, he lumped in Islam.

Below, we have post­ed Hunt­ing­ton’s 1997 appear­ance on the Char­lie Rose show, where he expand­ed on his world view. You can also get Edward Said’s gen­er­al retort, The Myth of the Clash of Civ­i­liza­tions, here and Noam Chom­sky’s thoughts on the con­cept here.

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We Didn’t Start the Fire, or The World From 1949 to 1989

in History, Video - Politics/Society | November 29th, 2008

If you could sync up a pho­to with every name and event men­tioned in Bil­ly Joel’s “We Did­n’t Start the Fire,” you’d have a mon­tage that offers a pret­ty good glimpse into the sec­ond half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. That’s what a Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go grad stu­dent fig­ured out when he put this viral video togeth­er. We’ve added it to our YouTube playlist. Thanks Bob for the tip!

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Woody Allen and the Reverend Billy Graham In Conversation

in Comedy, Religion, Video - Politics/Society | November 9th, 2008

Here we have the odd cou­ple. The agnos­tic film­mak­er and one of Amer­i­ca’s most influ­en­tial reli­gious fig­ures engaged in a live­ly con­ver­sa­tion. It’s actu­al­ly a rather gen­tle­man­ly exchange from the late 1960s, and it’s added to our video col­lec­tion of Cul­tur­al Icons. Part 1 appears below, and you can get Part 2 here.

You can find this video per­ma­nent­ly host­ed in our col­lec­tion of 235 Cul­tur­al Icons.

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Electing a US President in Plain English

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | October 21st, 2008

We’re less than two weeks away (final­ly, at long last) from the next US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, and that means that it’s a good time to deci­pher Amer­i­ca’s con­vo­lut­ed elec­toral sys­tem. So here’s a piece from The Com­mon Craft Show, which does it in a fair­ly cre­ative way:

 

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Noam Chomsky vs. William F. Buckley, 1969

in History, Video - Politics/Society | October 14th, 2008

Is there such a thing as the benign use of inter­na­tion­al force? It’s a ques­tion that Noam Chom­sky and William F. Buck­ley, lead­ing thinkers from the left and right, took up in 1969. And, of course, the whole ques­tion of Viet­nam loomed in the back­ground. As you’ll see below (and in Part 2 here) the debate is remark­ably civ­il. And when Buck­ley threat­ens to punch Chom­sky in the face, it’s said much more lov­ing­ly than when he offered to do the same to Gore Vidal in 1968.

As an inter­est­ing aside, when Buck­ley died ear­li­er this year, Chom­sky revis­it­ed the 1969 debate and Buck­ley’s lega­cy and essen­tial­ly saw him look­ing a lot bet­ter than his con­ser­v­a­tive heirs — although I’m not sure that Chom­sky was real­ly pass­ing along a deeply felt com­pli­ment 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 Brief History of the 1929 Crash

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | October 13th, 2008

With the gyra­tions of the world mar­kets, 1929 was sud­den­ly very present last week. All too present. What real­ly went down in ’29? Below we present “The Crash of 1929,” a doc­u­men­tary that aired as part of PBS’ The Amer­i­can Expe­ri­ence Series. Part 1 appears below. You can get the remain­ing parts here: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Free Pres­i­den­tial Biogra­phies on iTunes: FDR and Beyond

 

 

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