William S. Burroughs’ “Writings” on eBay

in Literature | March 1st, 2009

You can now find some new writ­ings of the Beat author William S. Bur­roughs on eBay. What’s up for bid here is not a long lost nov­el, or an ear­ly draft of Naked Lunch. Nope, it’s sim­ply Bur­roughs’ shop­ping list, a lit­tle note remind­ing him to pick up some cans of Coke, cat food, vod­ka, Triscuits, and oth­er banal things. Buy it here for a cool $495.  All cred­it on this one goes to Boing­Bo­ing, which, by the way, is also fea­tur­ing today a free down­load of Sean Williams’ Dar­win­ian reli­gion nov­el Crooked Let­ter.

A quick PS: one of our read­ers claims this is a pho­to of Bur­roughs shop­ping. This has not been ver­i­fied, but if you’re curi­ous what it might have looked like to put the shop­ping list in action, here it goes. :)

The American Future

in Current Affairs, History | February 25th, 2009

Through his books and doc­u­men­taries, Simon Schama, a British born his­to­ri­an, has cov­ered a lot of fer­tile ground. The French Rev­o­lu­tion, the slave trade, the pow­er of art, Rem­brandt, ear­ly mod­ern Dutch cul­ture, the his­to­ry of Britain — Schama has cov­ered it all. And now he has pulled a Toc­queville on us. He spent the bet­ter part of a year trav­el­ing across Amer­i­ca, siz­ing it up, and pro­duc­ing a lengthy TV doc­u­men­tary (now avail­able on DVD) and a relat­ed book (not avail­able in the US yet) called The Amer­i­can Future: A His­to­ry. His analy­sis of Amer­i­ca, of its past and its future, takes into account sev­er­al major themes: reli­gion, immi­gra­tion, land and resources, and war. In this recent con­ver­sa­tion with Bill Moy­ers, Schama talks at length about Amer­i­ca and where it finds itself today. The first 15 min­utes focus on Oba­ma and the chal­lenges he faces. The remain­ing part gets into themes dis­cussed in The Amer­i­can Future. You can access it here: iTunes — Feed — Web Site.

P.S. I am real­ly sor­ry about the frus­trat­ing down­time this morn­ing. My host­ing ser­vice — Dreamhost — had some “issues.” Hope­ful­ly this was an excep­tion.

Decoding the Obama Victory: The Geography of US Presidential Elections

in Uncategorized | November 13th, 2008

We have reached the final week of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions course. This week, Mar­tin Lewis slices and dices the elec­toral results of the ’08 elec­tion and high­lights the big and poten­tial­ly far-reach­ing shifts in US vot­ing pat­terns. No doubt, this is one of the more detailed analy­ses that you’ll find on the web. You can watch the last lec­ture in high­er res­o­lu­tion on iTune­sU here, or watch it below on YouTube. The com­plete course will be per­ma­nent­ly housed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es under Geog­ra­phy and Polit­i­cal Sci­ence.

The 2008 Bailout v. The Great Depression Bailouts

in Current Affairs, History | September 21st, 2008

Key­ing off an opin­ion piece by Paul Krug­man, Eric Rauch­way, an Amer­i­can his­to­ri­an (and also an old grad school col­league of mine), offers an intrigu­ing analy­sis of the Bush/Paulson bailout and how it com­pares to the Hoover and FDR bailouts from the Depres­sion era. The dif­fer­ence between 1932/33 and 2008? In 2008 (get text of leaked plan here), Con­gress will have no over­sight and the exec­u­tive branch will be “behold­en to nobody and sub­ject to no review.” (Sound vague­ly famil­iar?) There will also be no stat­ed restric­tions on how much a giv­en cor­po­ra­tion can be assist­ed, and no require­ment that cor­po­ra­tions give the gov­ern­ment any­thing back in turn. (There’s not even a require­ment that the gov­ern­ment buy the bad debt for fair mar­ket val­ue.) Back in the 30s, how­ev­er,  “All loans had to be secured, couldn’t be made on for­eign secu­ri­ties or accep­tances, no more than 5% of the mon­ey could go to any one com­pa­ny, couldn’t exceed three years’ term, couldn’t pay fees or com­mis­sion to appli­cants for loans, and so forth. Rail­roads accept­ing such loans had to do so under terms accept­able to the reg­u­la­to­ry Inter­state Com­merce Com­mis­sion.”

The idea of hand­ing the Bush admin­is­tra­tion anoth­er blank check is hard­ly a hap­py one. We’ve been down that road before and things did­n’t exact­ly go smooth­ly.  But then again I’m not sure that the 1930s offers won­der­ful mod­els for cat­a­stro­phe man­age­ment (not that Rauch­way is say­ing that). Let’s hope that our lead­ers take a lit­tle time to think things through.

And, by the way, New Rule: No one on Wall Street should be allowed to make more than six fig­ures until they’ve cleaned up their mess and reim­bursed the tax­pay­ers. Yes, wish­ful think­ing I know, since appar­ent­ly Lehman, even hav­ing gone bank­rupt, has found a way to a share a $2.5 bil­lion bonus pool.

Will Google Kill Science?

in Google, Science | July 1st, 2008

Not an obvi­ous con­clu­sion, I’ll agree. How­ev­er, Chris Ander­son, edi­tor of Wired, presents the argu­ment like this: as all sorts of data accu­mu­late into a vast ocean of petabytes, our abil­i­ty to syn­the­size it all into ele­gant the­o­ries and laws will dis­ap­pear. The sto­ry is the cov­er of this mon­th’s issue of Wired but I came across it in a newslet­ter from The Edge, a group of thinkers try­ing to pro­mote a “third cul­ture” of online intel­lec­tu­al thought.

Ander­son­’s argu­ment isn’t real­ly that the sci­en­tif­ic method will dis­ap­pear, but rather that cor­re­la­tion will become as good as it gets in terms of ana­lyz­ing real-world data. Every­thing will be too messy, noisy and chang­ing too quick­ly for prop­er hypothe­ses and the­o­rems. As Ander­son puts it, it will be “the end of the­o­ry.”

The nice thing about read­ing this on Edge is that the newslet­ter comes with sev­er­al crit­i­cal respons­es includ­ed from “The Real­i­ty Club,” which includes thinkers like George Dyson, Kevin Kel­ly and Stu­art Brand. But I say that as the con­sumers and pro­duc­ers of most of these mass­es of data, the vote should lie with you, read­er: does Google’s brute force approach to data hord­ing spell the end sci­en­tif­ic ele­gance?

HBO Revisits 2000 Election with “Recount”

in Television | May 26th, 2008

On Sun­day night, HBO aired its new film “Recount,” which delved back into the con­tro­ver­sial Flori­da recount that deter­mined the out­come of Amer­i­ca’s 2000 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Days before the film (watch the trail­er here) hit the air­waves, Char­lie Rose con­duct­ed an inter­view with Kevin Spacey (actor in the film), Jef­frey Toobin (Senior Legal Ana­lyst at CNN) and David Boies (who argued Bush v. Gore on behalf of Al Gore). In watch­ing the film and inter­view, my first reac­tion was to think: yes, it’s been eight long years, but it’s per­haps not been long enough. Per­haps anoth­er eight years is what it takes before polit­i­cal trau­ma can be trans­formed into pure enter­tain­ment. Or maybe it will nev­er quite get there. But that says noth­ing about the mer­its of the film or the inter­view below. If you missed “Recount,” it re-airs tonight on HBO.

Teaching on YouTube

in Most Popular, YouTube | April 22nd, 2008

Today, we have a guest fea­ture by Alexan­dra Juhasz, Pro­fes­sor of Media Stud­ies at Pitzer Col­lege, in Clare­mont, CA. This piece con­sol­i­dates length­i­er blog entries about a course she ran on YouTube, called “Learn­ing from YouTube,” in Fall 2007. The whole goal was to bet­ter under­stand this new media/cultural phe­nom­e­non, and how it can be used in the class­room. How did she set up this class? And what did she learn? Find out below. Take it away Alexan­dra (and feel free to check out our YouTube playlist as well as our piece, 60 Smart Video Col­lec­tions on YouTube) .…

I decid­ed to teach a course about YouTube to bet­ter under­stand this recent and mas­sive media/cultural phe­nom­e­non, giv­en that I had been stu­dious­ly ignor­ing it (even as I rec­og­nized its sig­nif­i­cance) because every time I went there, I was seri­ous­ly under­whelmed by what I saw: inter­change­able, bite-sized, for­mu­la­ic videos refer­ring either to pop­u­lar cul­ture or per­son­al pain/pleasure. I called them video slo­gans: pithy, pre­cise, rous­ing calls to action or con­sump­tion, or action as con­sump­tion. I was cer­tain, how­ev­er, that there must be video, in this vast sea, that would sat­is­fy even my lofty stan­dards, and fig­ured my stu­dents (giv­en their greater facil­i­ty with a life-on-line) prob­a­bly knew bet­ter than I how to nav­i­gate the site.

Learn­ing From YouTube was my first tru­ly “stu­dent led” course: we would deter­mine the impor­tant themes and rel­e­vant meth­ods togeth­er. I had decid­ed that I want­ed the course to pri­mar­i­ly con­sid­er how web 2.0 (in this case, specif­i­cal­ly YouTube) is rad­i­cal­ly alter­ing the con­di­tions of learn­ing (what, where, when, how we have access to infor­ma­tion). Giv­en that col­lege stu­dents are rarely asked to con­sid­er the meta-ques­tions of how they learn, on top of what they are learn­ing, I thought it would be ped­a­gog­i­cal­ly use­ful for the form of the course to mir­ror YouTube’s struc­tures for learn­ing, like its ama­teur-led ped­a­gogy. Yes, on YouTube there is a great deal of user con­trol, but this is with­in a lim­it­ed and also high­ly lim­it­ing set of tools. So, I did set forth the rule that all the learn­ing for the course had to be on and about YouTube. While this con­straint was clear­ly arti­fi­cial, and per­haps mis­lead­ing about how YouTube is used in con­nec­tion with a host of oth­er media plat­forms which com­ple­ment its func­tion­al­i­ty, it did allow us to become crit­i­cal­ly aware of the con­straints of its archi­tec­ture for our atyp­i­cal goals of high­er edu­ca­tion. Thus, all assign­ments had to be pro­duced as YouTube com­ments or videos, all research had to be con­duct­ed with­in its pages, and all class­es were taped and put on to YouTube. This gim­mick, plus a press release, made the course sexy enough to catch the eye of the media, main­stream and oth­er­wise, allow­ing for an exhaust­ing, but self-reflex­ive les­son in the role and val­ue of media atten­tion with­in social net­work­ing. Beyond this, stu­dents quick­ly real­ized how well trained they actu­al­ly are to do aca­d­e­m­ic work with the word—their expertise—and how poor is their media-pro­duc­tion lit­er­a­cy (there were no media pro­duc­tion skills required for the course as there are not on YouTube). (more…)

Global Geopolitics: A New Stanford Course on iTunes

in Online Courses, Stanford | April 17th, 2008

Today we’re high­light­ing for you a new course post­ed on Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s iTunes site. Orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed by Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies (where I hap­pi­ly spend my days), Glob­al Geopol­i­tics is taught by geog­ra­phy expert Mar­tin Lewis, and “exam­ines the glob­al polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion from a geo­graph­i­cal per­spec­tive. Top­ics include: how the coun­tries of the world were formed and came to occu­py their present ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­fig­u­ra­tions; bor­der con­flicts and oth­er spa­tial­ly based inter­na­tion­al issues; strug­gles for seces­sion from estab­lished states and move­ments for ter­ri­to­ri­al­ly based auton­o­my; and the devel­op­ment and enlarge­ment of supra­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions such as the Euro­pean Union (EU) and the Asso­ci­a­tion of South­east Asian Nations (ASEAN). While the course is glob­al­ly com­pre­hen­sive, spe­cial atten­tion will be giv­en to cur­rent sites of geo-polit­i­cal ten­sion. Maps will be used exten­sive­ly for both descrip­tive and ana­lyt­i­cal pur­pos­es.”

[NOTE: This is an enchanced pod­cast that allows you to see images and maps ref­er­enced in the lec­tures. To view them, click on View, then Show Art­work, in iTunes. This will let you see them on your com­put­er.]

You can now down­load the first lec­ture. Addi­tion­al lec­tures will be released in week­ly install­ments. The course is also list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties.

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Bush’s War

in Current Affairs | March 27th, 2008

To mark the fifth anniver­sary of the Iraq inva­sion, PBS’s Front­line is air­ing “Bush’s War,” which offers “the defin­i­tive doc­u­men­tary analy­sis of one of the most chal­leng­ing peri­ods in the nation’s his­to­ry.” Draw­ing on an exten­sive archive, the pro­gram lays out the “entire nar­ra­tive,” show­ing how “the war began and how it has been fought, both on the ground and deep inside the gov­ern­ment.” If you can’t catch it on TV, you can watch it online. Click here and then click “Watch Online.”

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Intelligent YouTube Channels

in Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science, YouTube | March 13th, 2008

Below, we have gath­ered togeth­er some of the most intel­li­gent video col­lec­tions on YouTube. A great place to find cul­tur­al­ly enrich­ing video…

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.
• Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry
  • Includes the excel­lent “Known Uni­verse” video.
• 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.
• Artists Space
  • Artists Space sup­ports con­tem­po­rary artists work­ing in the visu­al arts, video and elec­tron­ic media, per­for­mance, archi­tec­ture and design, and it pro­motes artis­tic exper­i­men­ta­tion and dia­log in con­tem­po­rary cul­ture.
• Aspen Insti­tute
  • An inter­na­tion­al non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to fos­ter­ing enlight­ened lead­er­ship and open-mind­ed dia­logue.
• Bad Astron­o­my
  • Bad Astron­o­my is devot­ed to debunk­ing myths and mis­con­cep­tions about astron­o­my, and also to slap down with­out apol­o­gy bad think­ing in all its forms.
• 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
  • These videos are brought to you by the mak­ers of the very pop­u­lar Boing­Bo­ing blog.
• British Film Insti­tute Nation­al Archive
  • The BFI (British Film Insti­tute) pro­motes under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of Britain’s rich film and tele­vi­sion her­itage and cul­ture. And it claims to have the “world’s largest and most diverse film and TV archive.”
• Brook­lyn Muse­um
  • A fair­ly rich line­up of videos explor­ing the col­lec­tions at Brook­lyn’s main art muse­um.
• Canal Edu­catif
  • CED is a phil­an­thropic pro­duc­er of free high-qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion­al videos in the domains of arts, eco­nom­ics and sci­ence.
• Char­lie Rose
  • PBS inter­view­er Char­lie Rose presents seg­ments of his night­ly inter­views.
• Cinet­ic
  • Cinet­ic brings audi­ences the lat­est, great­est and clas­sic fes­ti­val favorites from around the globe. From award-win­ners by vet­er­an film­mak­ers to up-and-com­ing tal­ent telling new sto­ries, Cinet­ic prides itself on being at the fore­front of qual­i­ty indie film in the dig­i­tal space.
• 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.
• CSPAN
  • Videos that keep a close eye on the inner-work­ings of the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal process.
• Dai­ly­Hitchens
  • Christo­pher Hitchens and more Christo­pher Hitchens.
• FORA.tv
  • Deliv­ers video pre­sen­ta­tions from the world’s great writ­ers, lead­ers, activists and thinkers.
• Guardian Unlim­it­ed TV
  • The Guardian brings you videos that make the tele­vi­sion world its focus.
• Giz­mo­do
  • A video col­lec­tion from one of the most pop­u­lar tech­nol­o­gy web sites.
• Google Tech Talks
  • The name kind of says it all.
• Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press
  • HUP, a major pub­lish­er of non-fic­tion, schol­ar­ly, and gen­er­al inter­est books, brings you videos with new authors.
• HBO
  • Pro­vides out­takes from new HBO pro­duc­tions. The videos are all short and large­ly pro­mo­tion­al. Give us some beef, sirs.
• KQED on Demand- San Fran­cis­co
  • Media pro­vid­ed by the pub­lic broad­cast­ing com­pa­ny in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area. I drink at this well dai­ly.
• MoMA
  • Videos high­light­ing the art col­lec­tion, pub­lic pro­grams, and tem­po­rary exhi­bi­tions at The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art in New York City.
• Mon­ty Python Chan­nel
  • Their videos have been cir­cu­lat­ing around YouTube for a while. Now, the come­di­ans have their own chan­nel. A good place to have a laugh.
• Nation­al Geo­graph­ic
  • The col­lec­tion is rich, but the videos are short. Anoth­er instance where the provider could use the medi­um to offer more substance/depth.
• New Sci­en­tist.
  • Videos and vod­casts cov­er­ing sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, space, the envi­ron­ment and a whole lot more. An inter­na­tion­al team of expert jour­nal­ists brings you the lat­est inno­va­tions and ideas in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, from the won­der­ful to the wor­ry­ing to the weird.
• NOVA
  • Short video out­takes from PBS’s pop­u­lar sci­ence pro­gram.
• Oscar’s Chan­nel
  • The offi­cial chan­nel of the Acad­e­my of Motion Pic­ture Arts and Sci­ences is the only place to relive favorite Oscar® moments and see exclu­sive inter­views with the tal­ent­ed film pro­fes­sion­als who com­prise the Acad­e­my mem­ber­ship. Includes some good vin­tage clips.
• Philip Scott John­son
  • Some great videos that put art in motion.
• PBS
  • Pro­motes new PBS pro­gram­ming with painful­ly short videos.
• Pol­i­tic­sTV
  • Polit­i­cal videos with a pro­gres­sive bent.
• Pulitzer Cen­ter on Cri­sis Report­ing
  • The Pulitzer Cen­ter on Cri­sis Report­ing’s mis­sion is to pro­mote in-depth cov­er­age of inter­na­tion­al affairs, focus­ing on top­ics that have been under-report­ed, mis-report­ed — or not report­ed at all.
• Reel­NASA
  • Videos show the lat­est hap­pen­ings at NASA and new devel­op­ments in space explo­ration.
• Reuters Video
  • The lat­est video from Reuters.
• Richard Dawkins
  • The chan­nel fea­tures talks by Richard Dawkins, the Oxford evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist, as well as oth­ers influ­enced by his thought.
• Sci­en­Cen­tral
  • Sci­en­Cen­tral, Inc. pro­duces sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy con­tent for tele­vi­sion, video, and the web. From broad­cast news fea­tures to edu­ca­tion­al prod­ucts, they cov­er the med­ical, envi­ron­men­tal, and tech­no­log­i­cal issues that affect dai­ly life.
• Slate
  • Video from Slate Mag­a­zine
• Spo­ken Verse
  • Roger Ebert calls it one of the rich­est resources on YouTube. Spo­ken Verse offers over 400 read­ings of great poems in Eng­lish, from Shake­speare to today.
• Steve Span­gler Sci­ence Show
  • Catch the videos pro­duced by a teacher nation­al­ly known for mak­ing sci­ence fun.
• Sun­dance
  • Pro­vides video clips from orig­i­nal series and films air­ing on the Sun­dance Chan­nel.
• The Alcove
  • A pro­gram that fea­tures inter­views with var­i­ous influ­en­tial thinkers.
• The Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry
  • This chan­nel pro­vides a rare glimpse into the Muse­um’s exhi­bi­tions, sci­en­tif­ic research, pub­lic pro­grams and edu­ca­tion­al endeav­ors. Videos pre­sent­ed by the Muse­um high­light its glob­al mis­sion to advance sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery and increase under­stand­ing of nature and human cul­tures.
• The Com­mon­wealth Club (San Fran­cis­co)
  • Videos com­ing out of the nation’s old­est and largest pub­lic affairs forum, pre­sent­ing top­ics rang­ing across pol­i­tics, cul­ture, and soci­ety.
• The Com­mon­craft Show
  • The Com­mon Craft Show is a series of short explana­to­ry videos by Lee and Sachi LeFever. The goal is to fight com­plex­i­ty with sim­ple tools and plain lan­guage.
• The Davos Ques­tion
  • Every year, glob­al lead­ers attend the World Eco­nom­ic Forum in Davos, Switzer­land to dis­cuss how to bet­ter the world. Here you get to see what they have to say.
• The Kahn Acad­e­my
  • This chan­nel fea­tures over 800 videos that will teach stu­dents the ins and outs of alge­bra, geom­e­try, trigonom­e­try, cal­cu­lus, sta­tis­tics, finance, physics, eco­nom­ics and more. The clips have been record­ed by Salman Khan.
• The Library of Con­gress
  • Time­less trea­sures and con­tem­po­rary pre­sen­ta­tions from the Library of Con­gress in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Fea­tures record­ings dat­ing from the ear­li­est Edi­son films to the present.
• The New York Times
  • All the news that’s fit to stream.
• The New York­er
  • The offi­cial video chan­nel of The New York­er mag­a­zine.
• The Nobel Prize
  • Brings you fas­ci­nat­ing insights into the minds of cur­rent and past Nobel Lau­re­ates.
• The Onion News Net­work
  • A good dose of fun­ny videos from The Onion. Good for when you need some com­ic relief.
• The Real News
  • The Real News Net­work is a glob­al online video news net­work that lis­tens to and is depen­dent sole­ly on its audi­ence. No ads. No gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies. No cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship.
• The Research Chan­nel
  • Based out of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, the ResearchChan­nel brings togeth­er con­tent from lead­ing research and aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions.
• The World Bank
  • Videos com­ing out of the insti­tu­tion whose goal is to rid the world of pover­ty..
• The YouTube Screen­ing Room
  • Pro­vid­ed by YouTube itself, this col­lec­tion presents high qual­i­ty, inde­pen­dent films to web users and promis­es to roll out four new films every two weeks.
• Thir­teen WNET (PBS New Your)
  • Fea­tures con­tent from New York City’s flag­ship pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion.
• YouTube Movies
  • YouTube now hosts a series of com­plete stu­dio movies on its site. Above, I’ve linked you direct­ly to the documentary/biography sec­tion. But feel free to peruse the larg­er col­lec­tion. You’ll find some good films there.
• TED Talks
  • Gen­er­al­ly engag­ing videos com­ing out of the annu­al TED con­fer­ence. Fea­tures impor­tant thinkers from dif­fer­ent walks of life.
• TED x Talks
  • In the spir­it of ideas worth spread­ing, TEDx is a pro­gram of local, self-orga­nized events that bring peo­ple togeth­er to share a TED-like expe­ri­ence.
• Trav­el Chan­nel TV
  • The Trav­el Chan­nel brings you around the world on YouTube.
• Van­i­ty Fair Mag­a­zine
  • Videos from the mag­a­zine launched in 1913.
• WNYC Radio
  • Videos pro­vid­ed by WNYC, New York Pub­lic Radio, the largest pub­lic radio sta­tion in the US.
• World Eco­nom­ic Forum
  • The World Eco­nom­ic Forum is an inde­pen­dent inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion com­mit­ted to improv­ing the state of the world by engag­ing lead­ers in part­ner­ships to shape glob­al, region­al and indus­try agen­das.
• Yad Vashem
  • Con­tain­ing the world’s largest repos­i­to­ry of infor­ma­tion on the Holo­caust, Yad Vashem is a leader in Holo­caust edu­ca­tion, com­mem­o­ra­tion, research and doc­u­men­ta­tion.
• 92nd Street Y
  • Pret­ty much any­one and every­one on the cul­tur­al radar pass­es through the 92nd Y in NYC.

Uni­ver­si­ties

Spot­light­ed Col­lec­tions

• YouTube EDU
  • YouTube got a lot more intel­li­gent when it launched YouTube EDU, a sec­tion of the site that cen­tral­izes all of its educational/academic con­tent. This is the best place to start if you’re look­ing for lec­tures and cours­es.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia — Berke­ley
  • Arguably the most sub­stan­tive YouTube col­lec­tion out there. Fea­tures a large num­ber of free cours­es, plus numer­ous lec­tures giv­en by impor­tant fig­ures.
• Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty
  • 800 years and now going dig­i­tal.
• Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty
  • Har­vard was late to the Web 2.0 par­ty, but they final­ly have their chan­nel up on YouTube, and it con­tains some worth­while con­tent, includ­ing Michael Sandel’s famous course on Jus­tice.
• Indi­an Insti­tute of Technology/Indian Insti­tute of Sci­ence
  • Pre­sent­ed by the lead­ing tech­nol­o­gy insti­tutes in India, this col­lec­tion fea­tures more than 50 free cours­es. Obvi­ous­ly has a strong technology/engineering bent.
• MIT (Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy)
  • Makes avail­able many of the videos pro­duced as part of MIT’s lead­ing Open­Course­Ware ini­tia­tive.
• Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty
  • New­ly launched, the col­lec­tion already fea­tures a cou­ple hun­dred videos, includ­ing sev­er­al free cours­es.
• UChan­nel (Prince­ton)
  • Spear­head­ed by Prince­ton, this col­lec­tion aggre­gates qual­i­ty videos com­ing from a con­sor­tium of major uni­ver­si­ties.

Oth­er Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lec­tions

• Auburn Uni­ver­si­ty
  • Hard to sep­a­rate the intel­lec­tu­al sub­stance from videos that have a more pro­mo­tion­al & inter­nal bent. But some of the for­mer is there to be found.
• Berk­man Cen­ter for Inter­net and Soci­ety at Har­vard Law School
  • The videos host­ed here look at how the dig­i­tal world and the law inter­sect.
• Carnegie Mel­lon
  • Among oth­er things, this col­lec­tion fea­tures the high­ly pop­u­lar video: Randy Pausch’s Last Lec­ture: Achiev­ing Your Child­hood Dreams.
• Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty
  • One of NYC’s finest.
• Duke Uni­ver­si­ty
  • Indi­vid­ual videos explore the research com­ing out of one of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties.
• Duke’s Fuqua School of Busi­ness
  • Sim­i­lar to Duke’s main col­lec­tion, but focused on busi­ness.
• Emory Uni­ver­si­ty
  • One of the finest uni­ver­si­ties in the South of the US.
• EGS (The Euro­pean Grad­u­ate School)
  • This Euro­pean col­lec­tion fea­tures impor­tant, con­tem­po­rary the­o­rists, philoso­phers, and film­mak­ers.
• Har­vard’s Bok Cen­ter
  • A small col­lec­tion focused on ped­a­gogy.
• Old Domin­ion
  • A lit­tle bit of a hodge­podge but there’s some inter­est­ing items in the mix.
• Ohio State
  • So far not an over­whelm­ing use of the medi­um.
• Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty — Saïd Busi­ness School
  • Rather inter­nal­ly focused. Not much in the way of edu­ca­tion­al con­tent per se. But let’s keep our fin­gers crossed that it even­tu­al­ly offers more.
• Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty
  • Again some­thing of a hodge­podge. Wheat and chaff.
• Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty
  • Ever heard of it?
• Sono­ma State
  • A more intel­lec­tu­al­ly robust col­lec­tion that fea­tures a fair amount of notable lec­tures.
• The Open Uni­ver­si­ty
  • The Open Uni­ver­si­ty (OU) is the Unit­ed King­dom’s only uni­ver­si­ty ded­i­cat­ed to dis­tance learn­ing. Some of the more edu­ca­tion­al videos can befound here.
• Tulane Uni­ver­si­ty
  • You can access some of the speech­es by esteemed guest speak­ers here.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona
  • You can sort through a good num­ber of talks here.
• UCLA
  • Along with Berke­ley, this is the oth­er flag­ship pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty in Cal­i­for­nia.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia TV
  • UCTV pulls togeth­er videos from the cam­pus­es, nation­al lab­o­ra­to­ries, and affil­i­at­ed insti­tu­tions of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press
  • Though still mod­est in size, the col­lec­tion fea­tures some inter­est­ing items.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham — The Peri­od­ic Table of Videos
  • A nice uni­ver­si­ty-spon­sored project, this col­lec­tion fea­tures a video about each ele­ment on the peri­od­ic table. A handy thing for chem­istry stu­dents.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na — Chapel Hill
  • The col­lec­tion is sub­stan­tive on the whole. You will need to sift through the videos to find ones of inter­est.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia
• UCSF Mem­o­ry & Aging Chan­nel
  • UCSF, one of the lead­ing med­ical schools in the US, fea­tures videos that will “edu­cate patients, care­givers and health pro­fes­sion­als about the var­i­ous forms of neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases.” The dis­eases cov­ered here include Alzheimer’s, Fron­totem­po­ral demen­tia and Creutzfelt-Jakob
• USC (Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia)
  • Get lec­tures here, and arts con­tent here.
• Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty
  • An eclec­tic mix.
• Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

• On this page, you’ll find some of the high­est qual­i­ty open cours­es out there.

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