Philosophy Bites

in Philosophy | June 27th, 2007

Back when we start­ed out, we men­tioned a radio show — and now pod­cast — com­ing out of Stan­ford that offers a “down-to-earth and no-non­sense approach” to phi­los­o­phy that’s engag­ing, if not enter­tain­ing. It’s called Phi­los­o­phy Talk, and you can catch some of the old pro­grams on iTunes.

Now, about 6,000 miles and eight time zones away, anoth­er phi­los­o­phy pod­cast, Phi­los­o­phy Bites (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), has been launched in Eng­land by David Edmonds and Nigel War­bur­ton (see bios here). Inter­view­ing top philoso­phers, the two delve into some essen­tial philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions — what is the mean­ing of life? what is the nature of real­i­ty? what is evil?, etc. And then they get into some oth­er good ques­tions: Can philoso­phers con­tribute to pub­lic life, and is wine tast­ing sub­jec­tive?

The lat­est pod­cast (which can be accessed via the feed, but not yet via iTunes) fea­tures an inter­view with Alain de Bot­ton, who has man­aged to write snap­py best­sellers that tack­le philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions. It takes a rare writer to pull that off, and his books are def­i­nite­ly worth a look. After launch­ing his career with How Proust Can Change Your Life, he has more recent­ly pub­lished The Con­so­la­tions of Phi­los­o­phy and The Archi­tec­ture of Hap­pi­ness. And it is this last book that the lat­est pod­cast revolves around.

As a final note, Nigel War­bur­ton has also put out anoth­er pod­cast, Phi­los­o­phy: The Clas­sics (iTunes) in which he reads from a recent­ly pub­lished book with the same title. You may want to give it a lis­ten.

For more pod­casts along these lines, see our Arts & Cul­ture pod­cast col­lec­tion.

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Miles and Coltrane on YouTube: The Jazz Greats

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | June 26th, 2007

One of our read­ers tipped us off to a cou­ple of vin­tage jazz clips on YouTube. First up is footage of Miles Davis and John Coltrane play­ing a nice ren­di­tion of “So What,” the lead­off tune from Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue (1959), an album that ranks at the very top of the jazz canon. There is a rea­son why it has five stars and 649 reviews on Ama­zon. It’s just a damn good album.

Next up, we give you Coltrane play­ing “My Favorite Things,” which was first released in 1960 on an album with the same title. This com­plex rework­ing of the song made famous by The Sound of Music came to be Coltrane’s most request­ed tune. And the video (1961) shows Trane lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly breath­ing new life into the sopra­no sax­o­phone.

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French Podcasts — Learn French

in Uncategorized | June 24th, 2007

Our col­lec­tion of pod­casts will help you start speak­ing Man­darin or Can­tonese. To learn more lan­guages, see our com­plete col­lec­tion of for­eign lan­guage les­son pod­casts.

  • French for Begin­ners iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Fun, effec­tive lessons for begin­ners. Pro­vid­ed by the French Ecole.
  • Le Jour­nal en français facile iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Night­ly news from RFI pre­sent­ed in slow­ly spo­ken French to assist you with your com­pre­hen­sion.
  • Learn French by Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A well-reviewed series of lessons for begin­ners and those who want to brush up on their French.
  • Learn French with Dai­ly Pod­casts iTunes Feed Web Site
    • These lessons are brought to you by French teach­ers from Paris. They are best suit­ed for those who already have some begin­ning French under their belts.
  • Ma France iTunes Feed Web Site
    • The BBC offers 24 video pod­casts that will teach you French.
  • Mali French Feed Web Site
    • The Peace Corps teach­es you some of the French spo­ken in Mali.
  • The French Pod Class iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A very pop­u­lar col­lec­tion that teach­es stu­dents the French lan­guage and dif­fer­ent facets of French cul­ture.
  • The Ver­b­cast — French Verbs by Relax­ation iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A four-week series of lessons that will allow you to refine your knowl­edge of French verbs.

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English Podcasts — Learn English

in Uncategorized | June 24th, 2007

Our col­lec­tion of pod­casts will help you start get­ting com­fort­able in Eng­lish. To learn more lan­guages, see our com­plete col­lec­tion of for­eign lan­guage les­son pod­casts.

  • Busi­ness Eng­lish iTunes Web Site
    • Learn the Eng­lish you will need to func­tion effec­tive­ly in an Amer­i­can busi­ness envi­ron­ment.
  • Eng­lish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A very well liked col­lec­tion of ESL lessons. Over 100 episodes in the col­lec­tion.
  • Eng­lish for Span­ish Speak­ers (’Por Fin Aprende Ingles’) iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Si ust­ed haya asis­ti­do al menos a un cur­so de ingles, y ust­ed nece­si­ta la opor­tu­nidad de escuchar al ingles y hablar el ingles, entonces ‘Por Fin Aprende Ingles’ es el pod­cast per­fec­to para ust­ed. Pre­sen­ta­do por Car­la Staufert-Sauvi­er, una pro­fe­so­ra de Mex­i­co, y Jade Lindquist, una pro­fe­so­ra de los EE UU.
  • ESL Busi­ness News iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A week­ly pod­cast of inter­na­tion­al busi­ness news read in slow, clear Eng­lish. Lis­ten to the pod­cast and fol­low along in the accom­pa­ny­ing script.
  • On Demand Eng­lish iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Dai­ly pod­casts that will teach you Eng­lish and Amer­i­can cus­toms. Well done.
  • The Bob and Rob Show: Week­ly Eng­lish Lessons from a Yan­kee and a Brit iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Tak­ing a more uncon­ven­tion­al approach to teach­ing Eng­lish, this pro­gram uses humor to teach inter­me­di­ate-to-advanced stu­dents idioms, gram­mar, and slang in both Amer­i­can and Eng­lish fla­vors.

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Weekly Wrap — June 24

in Uncategorized | June 24th, 2007

Anoth­er week, anoth­er wrap:

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The Top 25 Educational Podcasts on iTunes — June 22

in Podcasts | June 23rd, 2007

We haven’t vis­it­ed the list of iTunes’ top edu­ca­tion­al pod­casts since April. So it’s time for anoth­er look…What we’ve got here is pret­ty much a case of “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” Or, put dif­fer­ent­ly, even though two months have passed, it is still for­eign lan­guage les­son pod­casts that are rul­ing the day, par­tic­u­lar­ly pod­casts that will teach you Span­ish, French and Ital­ian. Also, the ever pop­u­lar “Gram­mar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Bet­ter Writ­ing” is still hold­ing strong. The one major new addi­tion is a free audio book of Pride and Prej­u­dice. Audio books have almost nev­er appeared on this list, so the #2 posi­tion of this pod­cast tes­ti­fies to the endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of this great Jane Austen work. Last­ly, it’s worth men­tion­ing that no audio from uni­ver­si­ties has made it into the top 25. There is some­thing just a lit­tle bit wrong with this pic­ture, would­n’t you say?

#1. Cof­fee Break Span­ish iTunes Feed Web Site

#2. Pride and Prej­u­dice iTunes

#3. Gram­mar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Bet­ter Writ­ing iTunes Feed Web Site

#4. The French Pod Class iTunes Feed Web Site

#5. LearnItalianPod.com iTunes Feed Web Site

#6. Ins­ta Span­ish Lessons iTunes Feed Web Site

#7. Learn Span­ish Sur­vival Guide iTunes Feed

#8. Learn French by Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site

#9. MyDai­lyPhrase Ital­ian iTunes Web Site

#10. Let’s Speak Ital­ian iTunes Feed Web Site

#11. Span­ish Suc­cess iTunes Web Site

#12. Chinesepod.com iTunes Feed Web Site

#13. JapanesePod101.com iTunes Feed Web Site

#14. French for Begin­ners iTunes Feed Web Site

#15. Learn French with Dai­ly Pod­casts iTunes Feed Web Site

#16. Just Vocab­u­lary iTunes

#17. Final­ly Learn Span­ish — Beyond the Basics iTunes Feed Web Site

#18. Digital Pho­tog­ra­phy Tips from the Top Floor iTunes Feed Web Site

#19. Span­ish Sense iTunes Feed Web Site

#20. Prince­ton Review Vocab­u­lary Minute iTunes Feed Web Site

#21. Learn Ger­man with German-Podcast.de iTunes Feed Web Site

#22. Ma France iTunes Feed Web Site

#23. TEDTalks (Video) iTunes Feed Web Site

#24. Notes in Span­ish (Advanced) iTunes Feed Web Site

#25. Notes in Span­ish (Inter­me­di­ate) iTunes Feed Web Site

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The Trouble with Judas

in Books, Religion | June 22nd, 2007

The trou­ble with Judas is that if he was car­ry­ing out God’s plan, was he real­ly evil? The point has been made every­where from sem­i­nar­ies to Jesus Christ, Super­star, but it sud­den­ly became more urgent with the redis­cov­ery of a puta­tive Gospel of Judas in 2004. Reli­gious schol­ars Elaine Pagels and Karen King have a new book out on the sub­ject (reviewed this week in the New York Times). Read­ing Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shap­ing of Chris­tian­i­ty seems to take a mid­dle-of-the-road approach, argu­ing that the gospel (writ­ten in the third cen­tu­ry AD, not by Judas him­self) takes a crit­i­cal posi­tion against the hege­mo­ny of the ear­ly Chris­t­ian church. Whether that vin­di­cates the most famous betray­al in nar­ra­tive his­to­ry is a tough one–Pagels and King argue that it all depends on how attached Jesus real­ly felt to his body. To find out more, check out this pod­cast Pagels and King gave at San Fran­cis­co’s Grace Cathe­dral, or lis­ten to their inter­view with Ter­ry Gross on NPR.

Got a site or pod­cast to rec­om­mend to Open Cul­ture? Click and send us an email.

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James Joyce’s Ulysses: A Free Podcast

in Audio Books, Books, Literature | June 21st, 2007

This is a book that needs no intro­duc­tion, but we will give it a short one any­way. Pub­lished in ser­i­al for­mat between 1918 and 1920, James Joyce’s Ulysses was ini­tial­ly reviled by many and banned in the US and UK until the 1930s. Today, it’s wide­ly con­sid­ered a clas­sic in mod­ernist lit­er­a­ture, and The Mod­ern Library went so far as to call it the most impor­tant Eng­lish-lan­guage nov­el pub­lished dur­ing the 20th cen­tu­ry. Although chron­i­cling one ordi­nary day in the life of Leopold Bloom in 1904 Dublin, Ulysses is no small work. It sprawls over 750 pages, using over 250,000 words, and takes over 32 hours to read aloud. Or, at least that’s how long it took the folks over at Lib­rivox. In the Blooms­day tra­di­tion, a cast of read­ers par­tic­i­pat­ed in the project, offer­ing cre­ative read­ings with “pub-like back­ground noise.” The audio files can be down­loaded as many indi­vid­ual mp3 files here, or as one big zip file here.This is not the only free audio ver­sion of Ulysses. There is anoth­er not quite tra­di­tion­al ver­sion put out by “Paigerel­la” (iTunes — Feed). And, while you’re at it, you might as well check out a read­ing of “Ara­by” (iTunes — Feed), a short sto­ry from Joyce’s col­lec­tion, Dublin­ers. It’s pro­vid­ed cour­tesy of Miette’s Bed­time Sto­ry Pod­cast. Next up, we hope is a nice read­ing of Finnegan’s Wake.For more free audio books, includ­ing many good ones from Lib­rivox, see our Audio Book Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

Apple iTunes

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The Salman Rusdie Affair: Part II

in Books, Literature | June 19th, 2007

Almost 20 years ago, Salman Rushdie pub­lished his fourth nov­el, The Satan­ic Vers­es, nev­er real­iz­ing how this lit­er­ary event would change his life. The Aya­tol­lah Khome­i­ni, the spir­i­tu­al leader of Iran’s reli­gious and polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion, saw in the book “blas­phe­mous” depic­tions of the prophet Muham­mad, and then hand­ed down a fat­wa call­ing for Rushdie’s death. For the next decade, Rushdie was dri­ven under­ground, mak­ing only infre­quent appear­ances in pub­lic. And it wasn’t until the late 90s that things sim­mered down, the death threats sub­sided, and the writer returned to liv­ing a semi-nor­mal life. Then came this past week …Buck­ing­ham Palace announced Queen Elizabeth’s plans to knight Rushdie, mak­ing him Sir Salman, and it all began again. Recall­ing the Dan­ish car­toon con­tro­ver­sy that swept the Mus­lim world in 2005, rank­ing polit­i­cal offi­cials, from Iran to Pak­istan, have revived the threats against the British-Indi­an nov­el­ist as well as Britain, tak­ing the Queen’s knight­ing as an inten­tion­al slight against Islam. The mere fact that Rushdie is a splen­did writer whose body of work goes well beyond The Satan­ic Vers­es nev­er quite fig­ures into the pic­ture, how­ev­er. (Try giv­ing Midnight’s Chil­dren a read to see what I mean.) You can get more on Part II of the Rushdie Affair here and here, and you can also watch Rushdie read­ing from The Satan­ic Vers­es below. 

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New Look on WordPress

in Uncategorized | June 17th, 2007

No, you came to the right site. We’ve sim­ply moved to Word­Press and we’ll be spend­ing the com­ing day doing some last minute fix ups. If you see any big prob­lems, please don’t hes­i­tate to let us know. Thanks for your patience. And a big word of thanks goes out to Eric “Herr Dok­tor” Ober­le for his help on mak­ing this switch hap­pen, and to Emma Hip­kens for her design work.

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Did Tony Get Whacked? (And The First Full Episode of John From Cincinnati)

in Television | June 17th, 2007

If you haven’t quite got­ten the last episode of The Sopra­nos out of your head (clear­ly, I haven’t) … if you’re still mulling over what hap­pened dur­ing those clos­ing moments, then you may want to peruse a TV writer’s intrigu­ing and informed take on whether Tony got whacked in the last episode. There’s a lot of good analy­sis and inter­pre­ta­tion here. For an alter­na­tive view, you can also lis­ten to this week’s pod­cast from TV Talk Machine. Here, Tim Good­man, who writes for The San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle, and Joe Garo­foli mull over which inter­pre­ta­tions hold water, and which don’t. Plus, you can also read Good­man’s blog entry — “Sopra­nos” finale: What real­ly hap­pened” — and the many read­er com­ments, reac­tions and the­o­ries at the bot­tom of the page.Now, with this chap­ter of tele­vi­sion his­to­ry closed, HBO is hop­ing to start anoth­er new and impor­tant one with John From Cincin­nati. If you don’t have cable, you can watch the first episode here in its entire­ty. Good think­ing HBO. Have they found anoth­er Sopra­nos? I’m not too opti­mistic. Have a look and see what you think.

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