Courtesy of Simon Critchley, who teaches philosophy at The New School for Social Research…
Jonathan Lethem on Art & The Digital Future
Jonathan Lethem, the writer behind Motherless Brooklyn (one of my faves) and Fortress of Solitude, has a new book out, Chronic City. Above, he talks about the surreal quality of his work, the future of digital books, and the personal guidelines that determine what he writes, and won’t write. Within this last point, you will find a good lesson for all of us. Find your unique talent, dedicate yourself to it, avoid the work commonly done by others, and you can achieve something notable and worthwhile.
A Smart Guide to Free Magazines
A good find via Lifehacker. Maggwire is a relatively new site that will do two things for you. It will direct you to free magazine content online (a good thing). And (perhaps even better) it will learn what you like to read, and then start feeding you content based on your preferences. If Maggwire can deliver on this promise, it will help you navigate the very large volume of content that you encounter every day. To get started with Maggwire, check out this video.
Paul McCartney on the Cheap
A quick note: Paul McCartney’s album, Memory Almost Full, is going today for $2.99 on Amazon. Supposedly, it’s just a one day deal, so it seemed worth a mention…
Carl Sagan’s Last Interview
Not long before he died in 1996, Carl Sagan was interviewed by Charlie Rose and discussed the troubled state of scientific knowledge in America, and how it threatens our democracy. Before Richard Dawkins came along, Sagan was already out there, making the case for scientific thinking, arguing that it let us make progress and keeps our republic vital. (Whether our republic actually remains vital at this point, it’s certainly hard to say.) We need more figures like Sagan, and we particularly need the American university system to care more about public engagement — an area where it depressingly comes up short. But we’ll talk more about that at some other point. Part 1 is above. Click for Part 2 and Part 3.
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Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan Remixed
Leading Like the Great Conductors
This comes to us courtesy of TED Talks. Here, Itay Talgam, an Israeli conductor, talks about the art of leading an orchestra and shows the styles of six great 20th-century conductors. Ultimately, there are some general lessons here. Lessons about leadership. Give it a few minutes, and it gets going. Meanwhile, on a related note, you might want to check out Yale’s new open course, Listening to Music, which uses classical musical to make sense of music more generally. Thanks Vickie for the great find.
Asteroids: Deadly Impact
Earlier this week, we highlighted Snagfilms.com in our collection “20 Places to Watch Free Movies Online.” When you dig into their collection, you will find some well known, recent films, including Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me and Naomi Wolf’s The End of America. And then you can also stumble upon some worthwhile educational documentaries. Above, we feature “Asteroids: Deadly Impact,” a National Geographic documentary that asks whether the Earth could experience another cosmic collision with an asteroid (as happened 65 million years ago), what the aftermath might look like, and whether can we do anything to prevent it. You can find more documentaries along these lines in SnagFilms’ Science and Nature Channel.
“The Wire” @ Harvard
David 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.
Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss Remembered
News broke today that Claude Lévi-Strauss, one of France’s towering intellectuals, has died. He was 100 years old. The New York Times has a lengthy obit that covers the career of the anthropologist who brought us “structuralism” and helped us look at diverse cultures in new ways. NPR has also aired a short piece (in audio) that highlights Lévi-Strauss’ intellectual accomplishments. You can listen below.
Audible Starter Kit: Get 3 Audiobooks, Plus a Free Phillips Spark 2GB MP3 Player
Film Version of Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire Now Online
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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Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.
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