From the Civil War to the Vietnam War — The Geography of US Presidential Elections

in Current Affairs, History, Online Courses, Stanford | October 30th, 2008

The Geog­ra­phy of US Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tions keeps rolling along. With his well-craft­ed lec­tures, Mar­tin Lewis shows you this week how Amer­i­ca’s polit­i­cal map and its polit­i­cal par­ties changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly fol­low­ing the Civ­il War. In the space of 90 min­utes, he takes you through the Recon­struc­tion peri­od, The Gild­ed Age, the Depres­sion, World War II and The Cold War, up through the Viet­nam War.

You can down­load Lec­ture 3 via Tunes U in high res­o­lu­tion or watch the YouTube ver­sion below. And, as always, you can join the ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion with the pro­fes­sor and oth­er stu­dents world­wide right here.

There are still two more lec­tures to come, includ­ing one that will offer a post­mortem of next week’s elec­tion.

Last­ly, if you missed the pre­vi­ous lec­tures, you can grab them on iTunes here and YouTube here.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

“Angels We Have Heard On High” Played with Broccoli

in Music, Random | October 30th, 2008

Clas­sic!

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The 13th Amendment

in Current Affairs, Film | October 30th, 2008

This week, CNN announced the win­ners of the iRe­port Film Fes­ti­val, the network’s first user-gen­er­at­ed short film com­pe­ti­tion. The fes­ti­val “chal­lenged film­mak­ers to doc­u­ment this year’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign from their per­son­al van­tage point, whether they were vol­un­teer­ing for a cam­paign or had com­pelling sto­ries about this elec­tion they want­ed to doc­u­ment cre­ative­ly.” And the Grand Jury Award went to a short film called “13th Amend­ment.” Here, Mike Den­nis of Philadel­phia, Pa., fol­lows his 90-year-old grand­moth­er, who is African Amer­i­can, on her jour­ney to vote for the first seri­ous black can­di­date for the Amer­i­can pres­i­den­cy. (And, by the way, in case you were won­der­ing, the 13th Amend­ment banned slav­ery in the Unit­ed States in 1865.) Here it goes:

Sub­scribe to Our Feed


by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

The Political Wire

in Current Affairs, Television | October 29th, 2008

I’ve spent the past sev­er­al months work­ing through The Wire on DVD. A sim­ply bril­liant show. (Here’s a recap of Sea­son 1 in case you don’t know what you’re miss­ing. And for even more recaps click here.) Now some mem­bers of the cast, the good guys and the bad, have rolled out a com­mer­cial encour­ag­ing North Car­oli­na res­i­dents to get out the vote on Tues­day. It’s a good idea for all Amer­i­can vot­ers, no mat­ter who you sup­port in this race. Thanks to Kot­tke for point it out. Here it goes:

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Darwin’s Legacy

in Science, Stanford | October 28th, 2008

For weeks, it’s been one of the most pop­u­lar pod­casts on iTunes: Cre­at­ed by the Cas­siopeia Project, “Evo­lu­tion” (iTune­sU) offers a series of video pod­casts that explains what sci­en­tists know about evo­lu­tion in a visu­al­ly appeal­ing for­mat. (If you don’t have an iPod, you can always watch the series on your com­put­er by down­load­ing iTunes here.)

This all gives me a good excuse to high­light anoth­er pod­cast com­ing out of my pro­gram at Stan­ford. To com­mem­o­rate the 200th anniver­sary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of On the Ori­gin of Species, we’re pre­sent­ing a course called Dar­win’s Lega­cy. (Access for free on iTunes here.) Led by Bill Durham, a MacArthur (“genius grant”) Prize Win­ner and Pro­fes­sor of Anthro­pol­o­gy, the course brings togeth­er lead­ing Dar­win schol­ars from around the coun­try and explores Darwin’s lega­cy in fields as diverse as anthro­pol­o­gy, reli­gion, med­i­cine, psy­chol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy, lit­er­a­ture, and biol­o­gy. Among oth­ers, you will find here talks (cap­tured in video) by Daniel Den­nett and Janet Browne (author of the defin­i­tive two-vol­ume Dar­win biog­ra­phy.) To access the com­plete course via iTunes, which is being rolled out in week­ly install­ments, sim­ply click here. Down the road, we will also be mak­ing the course avail­able on YouTube. For many oth­er free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, click here. 

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Elephant Jumping On Trampoline

in Random | October 28th, 2008

This is half art/half ran­dom, or maybe it’s bet­ter to say half random/half art. Any­way, it calls to mind one of our pop­u­lar posts (Ele­phant Paint­ing) from months to go. So here it is, an ani­mat­ed short by Nico­las Deveaux.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

What Makes a Poem a Poem in 60 Seconds

in Literature | October 27th, 2008

A rather clever mini, mini-lec­ture from Charles Bern­stein, poet and pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, would­n’t you say?

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi Explains Why the Source of Happiness Lies in Creativity and Flow, Not Money

in Psychology | October 26th, 2008

Speak­ing at the TED Con­fer­ence, famed psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Czik­szent­mi­ha­lyi asks what’s the source of hap­pi­ness? And his answer comes down to this: Beyond a cer­tain point (and it’s not very far), mon­ey does­n’t affect hap­pi­ness too much. Rather, as his research shows, we tend to be most hap­py when we get immersed, almost lost in, being cre­ative and per­form­ing at our best. It’s an ecsta­t­ic state that he calls “flow.” The video runs about 19 min­utes, and is well worth your time. Some book titles worth check­ing out include: Flow: The Psy­chol­o­gy of Opti­mal Expe­ri­ence or Find­ing Flow: The Psy­chol­o­gy of Engage­ment with Every­day Life.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese, Mon­ty Python Icon, on How to Be Cre­ative

Mal­colm McLaren: The Quest for Authen­tic Cre­ativ­i­ty

Amy Tan: The Sources of Cre­ativ­i­ty

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

Ali G and Noam “Norman” Chomsky Talk Linguistics

in Comedy | October 25th, 2008

Here it goes, and it’s added to our YouTube playlist.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

From Washington to Lincoln — The Geography of US Presidential Elections

in Uncategorized | October 23rd, 2008

We have now post­ed Lec­ture 2 of our ongo­ing course, The Geog­ra­phy of US Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tions, pre­sent­ed by Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram. You can down­load it via Tune­sU here (in high res) or you can watch it embed­ded below. This week, Pro­fes­sor Mar­tin Lewis takes you through Amer­i­ca’s ear­ly for­ma­tive elec­tions, start­ing with Wash­ing­ton and Jef­fer­son­’s elec­toral vic­to­ries and mov­ing through the trans­for­ma­tive Civ­il War. To watch the first lec­ture, click here. And to ask Pro­fes­sor Lewis ques­tions about the sec­ond lec­ture, just click here. And keep in mind, this is all free. For more free cours­es, check out our big col­lec­tion here.

 

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Ninth Circuit Judge on The Dating Game Way Back When

in Law, Random | October 23rd, 2008

The name Alex Kozin­s­ki prob­a­bly won’t mean much to many of you. But if you’re a lawyer, or a Supreme Court watch­er, you’ll know that he’s the Chief Judge of the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Cir­cuit (a real­ly pres­ti­gious posi­tion). Rather recent­ly, he’s been asso­ci­at­ed with a high­ly vis­i­ble pornog­ra­phy scan­dal relat­ed to one of his cas­es, and now this. A video doc­u­ment­ing his appear­ance long ago on The Dat­ing Game, a won­der­ful piece of Amer­i­cana. And the best part is that he beat Squig­gy from the oth­er slice of Amer­i­cana, Lav­erne & Shirley. Oh, the end­less wealth of YouTube:

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |


« Newer Entries | Older Entries »

  • Great Lectures

  • About Us

    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.


    Advertise With Us

  • Great Recordings

  • Book Lists By

  • Syllabi

  • Favorite Movies

  • Archives

  • Search

    • Quantcast