Understanding Modern Physics: Download Leonard Susskind Video Lectures

in Online Courses, Physics, Science, Stanford, Video - Science | July 20th, 2008

What’s the “the­o­ret­i­cal min­i­mum” for think­ing intel­li­gent­ly about mod­ern physics? Here’s your chance to find out. Below, you will find three cours­es (the first of even­tu­al­ly six) pre­sent­ed by Leonard Susskind, a Stan­ford physi­cist who helped con­cep­tu­al­ize string the­o­ry and has waged a long-run­ning “Black Hole War” with Stephen Hawk­ing (see his new book on that sub­ject here). Freely avail­able on iTunes and YouTube (see below), these video lec­tures trace the begin­nings of mod­ern the­o­ret­i­cal physics, tak­ing you from Isaac New­ton (or New­ton­ian Mechan­ics) to Albert Ein­stein’s work on the gen­er­al and spe­cial the­o­ries of rel­a­tiv­i­ty. Notably, these cours­es were orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed with­in Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram, which means that the con­tent was pitched to an audi­ence much like you — that is, smart peo­ple who don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have an exten­sive knowl­edge of physics. Watch the video below — the first lec­ture that kicks off the series of cours­es — and you will see what I mean.

Final­ly, in case you’re won­der­ing, the next three cours­es (cov­er­ing quan­tum mechan­ics, elec­tro­mag­net­ism, cos­mol­o­gy, black holes, and more) will be pre­sent­ed this com­ing aca­d­e­m­ic year and, once taped, we will give you a heads up. Sign up for our RSS Feed and you will be sure to get an update. Also see our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es for many more cours­es along these lines.

Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum

Bonus Mate­r­i­al

In 2006–2007, Susskind taped a sep­a­rate series of lec­tures on Quan­tum Mechan­ics. You can down­load them as free video lec­tures as well:

Sub­scribe to our feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 22 ) |

When the Flintstones Peddled Cigarettes

in Random | July 20th, 2008

What can you say about this? A quick trip back to the 1950s… File this under Ran­dom …

(For for­eign read­ers, all you need to know is that The Flint­stones was a clas­sic Amer­i­can car­toon.)

Sub­scribe to our feed

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rewind the Video­tape: Mike Wal­lace Inter­views 1950s Celebri­ties

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Watch Complete Documentary Films For Free (Featuring Super-Size Me)

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | July 17th, 2008

Joerg, one of our read­ers, wrote us rather joy­ful­ly and declared: “Today I found the site of my dreams: Sup­pos­ed­ly most of the great­est new doc­u­men­taries can be watched online” and they’re “financed by ads.” The site is called Snag­Films, and indeed, it finds “the world‘s most com­pelling doc­u­men­taries, whether from estab­lished heavy­weights or first-time film­mak­ers, and mak[es] them avail­able to the wide audi­ence these titles deserve.” In exchange for mak­ing the films free, you do have to sit through some ads, but it is per­haps a small price to pay. Below we have post­ed Super Size Me, the 2004 doc­u­men­tary by Mor­gan Spur­lock, which offers some star­tling com­men­tary on the fast food indus­try. Oth­er notable titles include the 2004 rock doc­u­men­tary Dig!, Under Our Skin, and Run Granny Run. You can see their full col­lec­tion here.

NOTE: You can find this film in our col­lec­tion of free online movies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

YouTube’s New Screen­ing Room (Free Indie Films)

Sub­scribe to our feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Neuroscience and the 2008 Election

in Current Affairs, Science, UC Berkeley | July 17th, 2008

How does mod­ern neu­ro­science make sense of the cur­rent McCain-Oba­ma race? Have a lis­ten to Christo­pher Lydon’s fas­ci­nat­ing con­ver­sa­tion with George Lakoff, a pro­fes­sor of cog­ni­tive lin­guis­tics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley (iTunes — MP3 — Feed — Web Site).

Lakoff is the author of the new book, The Polit­i­cal Mind: Why You Can’t Under­stand 21st-Cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can Pol­i­tics with an 18th-Cen­tu­ry Brain, and he’s essen­tial­ly argu­ing here that the Democ­rats have tra­di­tion­al­ly framed their argu­ments with a cold ratio­nal­ism .… and lost … while the Repub­li­cans have ground­ed theirs in a kind of emo­tion­al­ism that squares with how the brain func­tions. But, with Oba­ma, things are start­ing to change…

Sub­scribe to our feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Radiohead: Making Videos Without Cameras (or Lights)

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | July 17th, 2008

In Radio­head­’s new video for “House of Cards”, no cam­eras or lights were used. Instead “3D plot­ting tech­nolo­gies col­lect­ed infor­ma­tion about the shapes and rel­a­tive dis­tances of objects.” And the video was made entire­ly with visu­al­iza­tions of that data. You can watch the video below and find out more about the mak­ing of the video here.

Sub­scribe to our feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

What Email Subscribers Missed Over the Past Week

in Uncategorized | July 16th, 2008

I want to send a quick apol­o­gy to our email sub­scribers. Long sto­ry short, we encoun­tered some prob­lems with our email sub­scrip­tion list over the past week (prob­lems that we’re beyond our con­trol). But things are work­ing again, and I want­ed to high­light some of the posts you may have missed. Sor­ry again. And here it goes:

Sub­scribe to our feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

School of Life: An Award-Winning Short Indie Film

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture, YouTube | July 15th, 2008

Now fea­tured in The YouTube Screen­ing Room: Jake Polon­sky’s School of Life. “The film may be set in an ele­men­tary school, but it tells a poignant­ly iron­ic sto­ry that any adult will relate to. School of Life won the 2004 British Inde­pen­dent Film Award for Best Short.” A high­er qual­i­ty ver­sion can be watched here. But make sure you have a high speed con­nec­tion.

Sub­scribe to our feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

The African-American Freedom Struggle & Barack Obama’s American Dream (Free Stanford Course)

in Current Affairs, History, Online Courses, Video - Science | July 15th, 2008

How about a blog post that does­n’t deal with the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing The New York­er’s clum­sy attempt at sat­i­riz­ing Barack and Michelle Oba­ma .… ? (Update: See the imag­ined, right-wing satir­i­cal car­toon of John McCain.)

When Stan­ford launched its new YouTube channel sev­er­al weeks ago, it debuted with a com­plete series of lec­tures from an under­grad­u­ate course called “African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Mod­ern Free­dom Strug­gle.” Taught by Clay­borne Car­son, a promi­nent his­to­ry pro­fes­sor who has edit­ed and pub­lished the papers of Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., the course overviews the strug­gle for lib­er­ty and com­plete equal­i­ty, mov­ing from W.E.B. Du Bois (ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry), to MLK and Mal­colm X, down to Barack Oba­ma today. The lec­ture below, enti­tled “Barack Oba­ma’s Amer­i­can Dream,” sit­u­ates Oba­ma with­in the larg­er sweep of African-Amer­i­can his­to­ry. It’s rather con­ver­sa­tion­al in style, and it does a good job of get­ting into Oba­ma’s per­son­al biog­ra­phy. The com­plete lec­tures can be watched in their entire­ty on YouTube here, or down­loaded in video via iTunes. And be sure to see our larg­er col­lec­tion of 250 Free Online Cours­es from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties, where you will also find this course.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

E=mc²: Einstein Explains His Famous Formula

in Physics, Science | July 14th, 2008

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Craphound: Download Cory Doctorow’s Short Story via Free MP3 (and other Goodies)

in Audio Books | July 12th, 2008

Here’s a free audio ver­sion of Craphound, the first short sto­ry pub­lished by Cory Doc­torow, who is oth­er­wise known for his new book, Lit­tle Broth­er, and for his work on the very pop­u­lar Boing­Bo­ing blog. (As an fyi, you can find an alter­na­tive read­ing of the same sto­ry here.)

Look­ing for more free down­loads? Try the items below.

George Orwell’s 1984: Down­load Free Audio Book Ver­sion

Down­load Paul Coelho’s Best­seller, “The Alchemist,” for Free on iTunes

Scott Sigler’s Infect­ed: Free via Pod­cast, $16.47 on Ama­zon

Free Audio Book Col­lec­tion

Sub­scribe to our feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

70 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube

in Google, Most Popular, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science, YouTube | July 11th, 2008

Smart video col­lec­tions keep appear­ing on YouTube. But rather anti­thet­i­cal to the ethos of its par­ent com­pa­ny (Google), YouTube unfor­tu­nate­ly makes these col­lec­tions dif­fi­cult to find. So we’ve decid­ed to do the job for them. These enriching/educational videos come from media out­lets, cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions, uni­ver­si­ties and non-prof­its. There are about 70 col­lec­tions in total, and the list will grow over time. If we’re miss­ing any­thing good, feel free to let us know, and we’ll hap­pi­ly add them. You can find the com­plete list below the jump.

Also, feel free to check out our YouTube playlist.

Gen­er­al

  • @GoogleTalks
    • Google has lots of famous vis­i­tors speak­ing at its head­quar­ters, and they’re all record­ed and neat­ly pre­sent­ed here.
  • Al Jazeera Eng­lish
    • The Mid­dle East­ern news ser­vice, which has gen­er­at­ed its share of con­tro­ver­sy, now airs broad­casts in Eng­lish and presents them here.
  • Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al
    • The lead­ing human rights orga­ni­za­tion brings you var­i­ous videos out­lin­ing human rights con­cerns across the globe, and the work they’re doing to improve con­di­tions.
  • BBC
    • A series of videos pro­mot­ing pro­grams com­ing out of Britain’s main media out­let. Unfor­tu­nate­ly many of these videos are short and not entire­ly sub­stan­tive. A missed oppor­tu­ni­ty.
  • BBC World­wide
    • Dit­to.
  • Big Think
    • This col­lec­tion brings you videos fea­tur­ing some of today’s lead­ing thinkers, movers and shak­ers.
  • Boing­Bo­ingTV
  • Brook­lyn Muse­um
    • A fair­ly rich line­up of videos explor­ing the col­lec­tions at Brook­lyn’s main art muse­um.
  • Char­lie Rose
    • PBS inter­view­er Char­lie Rose presents seg­ments of his night­ly inter­views.
  • Cit­i­zen Tube
    • YouTube’s own chan­nel presents videos deal­ing with the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal process and the 2008 elec­tion.
  • Com­put­er His­to­ry Muse­um
    • A good num­ber of videos that delve into com­put­ers, net­work­ing, and semi­con­duc­tors.
  • Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions
    • A resource designed to pro­vide insight into the com­plex inter­na­tion­al issues chal­leng­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers and cit­i­zens alike. (more…)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 8 ) |


« 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