RIP Peter Bergman; Hear the Firesign Theatre’s 1970 Masterpiece

in Comedy | March 13th, 2012

“I’m too young to have been around when these were cur­rent,” reads one YouTube com­ment post­ed to a piece of Fire­sign The­atre mate­r­i­al, “but as soon as I heard their first four albums or so, my dad’s jokes sud­den­ly made sense.” Respond­ing to anoth­er clip, some­one else recalls, “My father quot­ed bits of their show through­out my entire child­hood, and as we got old­er we asked where they came from.” A third com­menter appears below yet anoth­er arti­fact from a Fire­sign record: “My dad has been lis­ten­ing to this since it came out in 1969, and I myself have been lis­ten­ing to it since he showed me it when I was sev­en in 1989… and we’re STILL find­ing new things about it.” I count myself in this parade of late-twen­ties-ear­ly-thir­ties lis­ten­ers who embrace enthu­si­asm for the Fire­sign The­atre as their patro­cliny. Hav­ing nev­er known a world with­out all four of these guys whom Robert Christ­gau was call­ing “the grand old men of head com­e­dy” even in 1977, we find our­selves not just dis­mayed but star­tled by the pass­ing of found­ing mem­ber Peter Bergman last Fri­day.

For a refresh­er course — or even a first course — in the inim­itable Fire­sign sen­si­bil­i­ty, look no fur­ther than the quartet’s 1970 album Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pli­ers, avail­able in four parts on YouTube. Enthu­si­asts of stu­dio-record­ed com­e­dy con­sid­er it the Ulysses of the form (or even its Finnegans Wake), though you won’t have to per­form quite so much schol­ar­ship before you’re allowed to laugh at the jokes.

In the late six­ties and ear­ly sev­en­ties, Bergman and his co-sur­re­al­ists Phil Austin, David Oss­man, and Philip Proc­tor real­ized they could use then-mod­ern record­ing stu­dio tech­nol­o­gy not just as a facil­i­ty for cap­tur­ing com­e­dy, but for cre­at­ing com­e­dy — a new kind of com­e­dy nobody had ever heard before. Lay­er­ing speech upon noise upon son­ic abstrac­tion, the Fire­sign The­atre did with the tra­di­tions of radio com­e­dy what Steely Dan did with those of jazz and rock, craft­ing a dense satir­i­cal polypho­ny of jab, word­play, allu­sion, and con­trolled inar­tic­u­la­cy that yields dif­fer­ent laughs on dif­fer­ent lev­els depend­ing on where, when, and who you are. This proved the ide­al way to tell the sto­ry of Don’t Crush That Dwarf’s pro­tag­o­nist George Leroy Tirebiter, for­mer teen actor and cur­rent wee-hour chan­nel-flip­per in a dystopi­an future Los Ange­les cloud­ed with evan­ge­lism, huck­ster­ism, and creep­ing para­noia.

Bergman him­self said they made their records to be heard about eighty times. If we in this newest wave of adult Fire­sign The­atre fan­dom believe the col­lege sto­ries our fathers tell, Don’t Crush That Dwarf could play eighty times dur­ing the course of a sin­gle par­ty. (Before the inven­tion of the inter­net, I sup­pose you took your intel­lec­tu­al stim­u­la­tion where you found it.) Unlike them, we didn’t come upon the album by way of an insis­tent friend sit­ting us down with a pair of head­phones and a joint; we’ve been hear­ing Dad play the thing since we were in dia­pers. I find it impos­si­ble to imag­ine a child­hood — indeed, an exis­tence — with­out con­stant ref­er­ences to hot-but­tered groat clus­ters, Morse Sci­ence High School, Ersatz Broth­ers Cof­fee, or the Depart­ment of Redun­dan­cy Depart­ment. I haven’t quite heard the Fire­sign Theatre’s mas­ter­piece eighty times yet, but when­ev­er I put on their inter­pre­ta­tion of Hesiod’s five ages of man by way of the five ages of Tirebiter’s life, I lis­ten with the con­fi­dence that it will last me through five of my own.

Links to each part of Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pli­ers: one, two, three, four

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

How Bertrand Russell Turned The Beatles Against the Vietnam War

in History, Music, Philosophy | March 10th, 2012

The Bea­t­les were so much a part of the youth move­ment that blos­somed in the 1960s that it’s amus­ing to think that one of the main issues that ener­gized the movement–peace–came to the Bea­t­les through a 92-year-old man.

As Paul McCart­ney explains in this clip from a Jan­u­ary 14, 2009 inter­view on The View, it hap­pened when he decid­ed to pay a vis­it to philoso­pher Bertrand Rus­sell. A co-founder of ana­lyt­ic phi­los­o­phy, Rus­sell had been a life-long social and polit­i­cal activist. Dur­ing World War I, he was not allowed to trav­el freely in Britain due to his anti-war views. He lost his fel­low­ship at Trin­i­ty Col­lege, Cam­bridge, and was even­tu­al­ly jailed for six months for sup­pos­ed­ly inter­fer­ing with British For­eign Pol­i­cy. After World War II, Rus­sell lob­bied stren­u­ous­ly for the abo­li­tion of nuclear weapons. In the 1960s, he opposed the Viet­nam War.

After the Bea­t­les became big in 1963 and 1964, McCart­ney began tak­ing advan­tage of his celebri­ty sta­tus by call­ing on peo­ple he admired. In an inter­view with Bar­ry Miles for the book Paul McCart­ney: Many Years From Now, McCart­ney describes his meet­ing with Rus­sell:

Some­how I got his num­ber and called him up. I fig­ured him as a good speak­er, I’d seen him on tele­vi­sion, I’d read var­i­ous bits and pieces and was very impressed by his dig­ni­ty and the clar­i­ty of this think­ing, so when I got a chance I went down and met him. Bertrand Rus­sell lived in Chelsea in one of those lit­tle ter­race hous­es, I think it was Flood Street. He had the arche­typ­al Amer­i­can assis­tant who seemed always to be at every­one’s door that you want­ed to meet. I sat round wait­ing, then went in and had a great lit­tle talk with him. Noth­ing earth-shat­ter­ing. He just clued me in to the fact that Viet­nam was a very bad war, it was an impe­ri­al­ist war and Amer­i­can vest­ed inter­ests were real­ly all it was all about. It was a bad war and we should be against it. That was all. It was pret­ty good from the mouth of the great philoso­pher. “Slip it to me, Bert.”

McCart­ney report­ed his expe­ri­ence to the oth­er mem­bers of the Bea­t­les, and it was John Lennon who real­ly took the anti-war mes­sage and ran with it. For a reminder of those days, watch the video below of Lennon and Yoko Ono at their “Bed-In” for peace in 1969:

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!

‘This Is Water’: Complete Audio of David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon Graduation Speech (2005)

in Graduation Speech, Life, Literature | March 6th, 2012

Last month, on the occa­sion of the author’s 50th birth­day, we post­ed a large col­lec­tion of free essays and sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace. But we missed a rare item: the com­plete audio record­ing of the com­mence­ment address Wal­lace gave at Keny­on Col­lege, in Ohio, on May 21, 2005–three years before he took his own life. The text of the speech has been pub­lished on the Inter­net and as a book called This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Deliv­ered on a Sig­nif­i­cant Occa­sion, about Liv­ing a Com­pas­sion­ate Life, but the com­plete audio ver­sion has been hard to find.

In the speech, Wal­lace talks about the chal­lenge of mov­ing beyond the super­fi­cial kind of free­dom that can be acquired through pow­er and wealth, toward a truer lib­er­a­tion that aris­es only when we become more ful­ly con­scious of the world out­side our “tiny skull-sized king­doms.” He says:

The real­ly impor­tant kind of free­dom involves atten­tion, and aware­ness, and dis­ci­pline, and effort, and being able tru­ly to care about oth­er peo­ple and to sac­ri­fice for them, over and over, in myr­i­ad pet­ty lit­tle unsexy ways, every day. That is real free­dom. The alter­na­tive is uncon­scious­ness, the default set­ting, the “rat race”–the con­stant gnaw­ing sense of hav­ing had and lost some infi­nite thing.

You can lis­ten to the first half of the speech above. And to delve deep­er into Wal­lace’s world­view, be sure to watch the fas­ci­nat­ing 84-minute inter­view he gave in 2003 to a Ger­man tele­vi­sion sta­tion. H/T Avi Burstein.

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:

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

The 321 Books in David Fos­ter Wallace’s Per­son­al Library: From Blood Merid­i­an to Con­fes­sions of an Unlike­ly Body­builder

David Fos­ter Wal­lace on What’s Wrong with Post­mod­ernism: A Video Essay

75 Free Philosophy Courses

in Philosophy | March 1st, 2012

The Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our big Free Cours­es col­lec­tion just went through a major update, and it now lists more than 75 cours­es. Enough to give you a soup-to-nuts intro­duc­tion to a time­less dis­ci­pline. You can start with one of sev­er­al intro­duc­to­ry cours­es.

• Phi­los­o­phy for Begin­ners – iTunes – Web Video – Mar­i­anne Tal­bot, Oxford
  
• Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing for Begin­ners - iTunes Video – iTunes Audio – Web Video — Oxford
• A Romp through Ethics for Com­plete Begin­ners - iTunes Video –Web Video — Oxford
• Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy – YouTube – iTunes – Web Video — Steven B. Smith, Yale
• The Art of Liv­ing — Web Video – Stan­ford
• The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps - Mul­ti­ple For­mats– Peter Adam­son, King’s Col­lege Lon­don

Then, once you’ve found your foot­ing, you can head off in some amaz­ing direc­tions. As we men­tioned many moons ago, you can access cours­es and lec­tures by mod­ern day, rock star philoso­phers — Michel Fou­cault, Bertrand Rus­sell, John Sear­le, Wal­ter Kauf­mann, Leo Strauss, Hubert Drey­fus and Michael Sandel. Then you can sit back and let them intro­duce you to the think­ing of Aris­to­tle, Socrates, Pla­to, Hobbes, Hegel, Hei­deg­ger, Kierkegaard, Kant, Niet­zsche, Sartre and the rest of the gang. The cours­es list­ed here are gen­er­al­ly avail­able via YouTube, iTunes, or the web.

Explore our col­lec­tion of 400 Free Cours­es to find top­ics in many oth­er dis­ci­plines — His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture, Physics, Com­put­er Sci­ence and beyond. As we like to say, it’s the most valu­able sin­gle page on the web.

30 Free Essays & Stories by David Foster Wallace on the Web

in e-books, Literature | February 22nd, 2012

Image by Steve Rhodes, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We start­ed the week expect­ing to pub­lish one David Fos­ter Wal­lace post. Then, because of the 50th birth­day cel­e­bra­tion, it turned into two. And now three. We spent some time track­ing down free DFW sto­ries and essays avail­able on the web, and they’re all now list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices. But we did­n’t want them to escape your atten­tion. So here they are — 23 pieces pub­lished by David Fos­ter Wal­lace between 1989 and 2011, most­ly in major U.S. pub­li­ca­tions like The New York­er, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review. Enjoy, and don’t miss our oth­er col­lec­tions of free writ­ings by Philip K. Dick and Neil Gaiman.

• “9/11: The View From the Mid­west” (Rolling Stone, Octo­ber 25, 2001)
• “All That” (New York­er, Decem­ber 14, 2009)
• “An Inter­val” (New York­er, Jan­u­ary 30, 1995)
• “Asset” (New York­er, Jan­u­ary 30, 1995)
• “Back­bone” An Excerpt from The Pale King (New York­er, March 7, 2011)
• “Big Red Son” from Con­sid­er the Lob­ster & Oth­er Essays
• “Brief Inter­views with Hideous Men” (The Paris Review, Fall 1997)
• “Con­sid­er the Lob­ster” (Gourmet, August 2004)
• “David Lynch Keeps His Head” (Pre­miere, 1996)
• “Every­thing is Green” (Harpers, Sep­tem­ber 1989)
• “E Unibus Plu­ram: Tele­vi­sion and U.S. Fic­tion” (The Review of Con­tem­po­rary Fic­tion, June 22, 1993)
• “Fed­er­er as Reli­gious Expe­ri­ence” (New York Times, August 20, 2006)
• “Good Peo­ple” (New York­er, Feb­ru­ary 5, 2007)
• “Host” (The Atlantic, April 2005)
• “Incar­na­tions of Burned Chil­dren” (Esquire, April 21, 2009)
• “Laugh­ing with Kaf­ka” (Harper’s, Jan­u­ary 1998)
• “Lit­tle Expres­sion­less Ani­mals” (The Paris Review, Spring 1988)
• “On Life and Work” (Keny­on Col­lege Com­mence­ment address, 2005)
• “Order and Flux in Northamp­ton” (Con­junc­tions, 1991)
• “Rab­bit Res­ur­rect­ed” (Harper’s, August 1992)
• “Sev­er­al Birds” (New York­er, June 17, 1994)
• “Ship­ping Out: On the (near­ly lethal) com­forts of a lux­u­ry cruise” (Harper’s, Jan­u­ary 1996)
• “Ten­nis, trigonom­e­try, tor­na­does A Mid­west­ern boy­hood”  (Harper’s, Decem­ber 1991)
• “Tense Present: Democ­ra­cy, Eng­lish, and the wars over usage” (Harper’s, April 2001)
• “The Awak­en­ing of My Inter­est in Annu­lar Sys­tems” (Harper’s, Sep­tem­ber 1993)
• “The Com­pli­ance Branch” (Harper’s, Feb­ru­ary 2008)
• “The Depressed Per­son” (Harper’s, Jan­u­ary 1998)
• “The String The­o­ry” (Esquire, July 1996)
• “The Weasel, Twelve Mon­keys And The Shrub” (Rolling Stone, April 2000)
• “Tick­et to the Fair” (Harper’s, July 1994)
• “Wig­gle Room” (New York­er, March 9, 2009)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Philip K. Dick: Down­load 13 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries

Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries

Read 17 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

The David Foster Wallace Audio Archive: A Little Gift For the Novelist’s 50th Birthday

in Literature | February 21st, 2012

When we fea­tured David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s big, uncut inter­view yes­ter­day, one impor­tant detail escaped us — the fact that the nov­el­ist would have turned 50 years old today. Kind of a stun­ning thought, espe­cial­ly if you vivid­ly remem­ber the wun­derkind tak­ing the lit­er­ary world by storm with Infi­nite Jest in 1996. Seems like only yes­ter­day.

To cel­e­brate his 50th, we’re high­light­ing for you The David Fos­ter Wal­lace Audio Project — a site that brings togeth­er most of the mean­ing­ful DFW audio avail­able on the web. Built in 2009 by Jor­dyn Bonds and Ryan Walsh, a short while after the nov­el­ist com­mit­ted sui­cide, the audio site is divid­ed into four sec­tions:

• Inter­views & Pro­files
• Read­ings
• Eulo­gies & Remem­brances
• ‘Brief Inter­views’ Staged Read­ings

As you sift through the col­lec­tion, you will find 70+ clips, includ­ing a seg­ment of DFW’s 2005 com­mence­ment speech at Keny­on Col­lege, his first and sec­ond appear­ances on the Char­lie Rose Show, his read­ing from “Con­sid­er the Lob­ster” at UCLA, and the author con­tem­plat­ing the play of Roger Fed­er­er. Dive into the full col­lec­tion here.

An Animated History Of Aviation: From da Vinci’s Sketches to Apollo 11

in Animation, Technology | February 6th, 2012

It starts with Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s famous sketch­es of fly­ing machines, then moves to the first hot air bal­loon launched by the Mont­golfi­er broth­ers in 1783, the glid­ers cre­at­ed by Sir George Cay­ley (1804), and the Wright broth­ers’ first flight at Kit­ty Hawk in 1903. These great moments and oth­ers all get cov­ered in this Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Avi­a­tion, an ele­gant lit­tle film pro­duced by Utah Val­ley Uni­ver­si­ty, a col­lege with a large avi­a­tion pro­gram of its own. We’ll add it to our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos.

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!

Harold Bloom Recites ‘Tea at the Palaz of Hoon’ by Wallace Stevens

in Literature, Poetry | February 3rd, 2012

Lit­er­ary crit­ic Harold Bloom once called Wal­lace Stevens (1879–1955) “the best and most rep­re­sen­ta­tive Amer­i­can poet of our time.” In this video from Boston Col­lege’s Guest­book Project, Bloom recites a poem from Steven­s’s first book, Har­mo­ni­um, which was pub­lished in 1923:

Tea at the Palaz of Hoon

Not less because in pur­ple I descend­ed
The west­ern day through what you called
The loneli­est air, not less was I myself.

What was the oint­ment sprin­kled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?

Out of my mind the gold­en oint­ment rained,
And my ears made the blow­ing hymns they heard.
I was myself the com­pass of that sea:

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more tru­ly and more strange.

“The palaz of Hoon is sky and space seen as a gaudy and ornate dwelling,” writes Bloom in Wal­lace Stevens: The Poems of Our Cli­mate; “to have tea at the palaz is to watch the twi­light while con­vers­ing with the set­ting sun, who is hard­ly lone­ly since all the air is his and since all direc­tions are at home in him. He is him­self when most impe­r­i­al, in pur­ple and gold, and his set­ting is a coro­na­tion.”

The video con­cludes with Bloom recit­ing the open­ing stan­za from a lat­er poem by Stevens that echoes the ear­li­er one, a poem regret­tably titled “Like Dec­o­ra­tions in a Nig­ger Ceme­tery”:

In the far South the sun of autumn is pass­ing
Like Walt Whit­man walk­ing along a rud­dy shore.
He is singing and chant­i­ng the things that are part of him,
The worlds that were and will be, death and day.
Noth­ing is final, he chants. No man shall see the end.
His beard is of fire and his staff is a leap­ing flame.

“Whit­man, like Hoon,” writes Bloom, “both con­tains every­thing else and is an idea of the sun, not as a god but as a god might be. Hoon is him­self the com­pass of the sea whose tides sweep through him; Walt encom­pass­es worlds but him­self is not to be encom­passed.”

J.R.R. Tolkien in His Own Words

in Literature | January 3rd, 2012

Today is the birth­day of J.R.R. (John Ronald Reuel) Tolkien, author of the fan­ta­sy nov­els The Hob­bit and The Lord of the Rings. He was born on Jan­u­ary 3, 1892 to British par­ents in Bloem­fontein, South Africa. His father died when he was 3 years old, and he moved with his moth­er to Eng­land. The young boy took an ear­ly lik­ing to sto­ries of mag­ic and myth. In his 1947 book On Fairy Sto­ries, Tolkien wrote:

I had very lit­tle desire to look for buried trea­sure or fight pirates, and Trea­sure Island left me cool. Red Indi­ans were bet­ter: there were bows and arrows (I had and have a whol­ly unsat­is­fied desire to shoot well with a bow), and strange lan­guages, and glimpses of an archa­ic mode of life, and above all, forests in such sto­ries. But the land of Mer­lin and Arthur were bet­ter than these, and best of all the name­less North of Sig­urd and the Vol­sungs, and the prince of all drag­ons. Such lands were pre-emi­nent­ly desir­able.

The urge to com­pose his own tales came ear­ly, but Tolkien became side­tracked by an inter­est in the sub­tleties of lan­guage. In a let­ter to W.H. Auden in 1955 he wrote:

I first tried to write a sto­ry when I was about sev­en. It was about a drag­on. I remem­ber noth­ing about it except a philo­log­i­cal fact. My moth­er said noth­ing about the drag­on, but point­ed out that one could not say “A green great drag­on,” but had to say “a great green drag­on.” I won­dered why, and still do. The fact that I remem­ber this is pos­si­bly sig­nif­i­cant, as I do not think I ever tried to write a sto­ry again for many years, and was tak­en up with lan­guage.

Tolkien became a philol­o­gist. He stud­ied Eng­lish Lan­guage and Lit­er­a­ture at Exeter Col­lege, Oxford and–after a har­row­ing expe­ri­ence in the trench­es of World War I–embarked on an aca­d­e­m­ic career. He became an expert on Anglo Sax­on and Norse mythol­o­gy.

But the misty forests of Tolkien’s child­hood imag­i­na­tion nev­er left him. One day in the ear­ly 1930s, he was at home grad­ing a large stack of stu­dent papers when his mind began to wan­der. On a blank sheet in one of the papers, the pro­fes­sor found him­self writ­ing, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hob­bit.” He did­n’t know what a hob­bit was, but soon found him­self spin­ning a tale, which he told to his young chil­dren. In 1937 it was pub­lished as The Hob­bit.

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of The Hob­bit, not only with chil­dren but with adults, led to requests for a sequel, and in 1954 and 1955 Tolkien’s epic tril­o­gy, The Lord of the Rings was pub­lished. It went on to become one of the most pop­u­lar works of fic­tion of the 20th cen­tu­ry, with over 150 mil­lion copies sold worldwide–and count­ing.

In cel­e­bra­tion of Tolkien’s 120th birth­day, we present a fas­ci­nat­ing film on the author from the BBC series In Their Own Words: British Nov­el­ists. The 27-minute film was first broad­cast in March of 1968, when Tolkien was 76 years old, and includes inter­views and footage of the old man at his haunts in Oxford. H/T The Writer’s Almanac.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Audio: Down­load the Com­plete Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia by C.S. Lewis

The Best of Open Culture 2011

in Art, Books, Education, Film, Music, Online Courses | January 2nd, 2012

Before we rush head­long into a new year, it’s worth paus­ing, ever so briefly, to con­sid­er the ground we cov­ered in 2011. What top­ics res­onat­ed with you … and jazzed us? Today, we’re high­light­ing 10 the­mat­ic areas (and 46 posts) that cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion. Chances are you missed a few gems here. So please join us on our brief jour­ney back into time. Tomor­row, we start look­ing for­ward again.

1) Uni­ver­si­ties Offer More Free Cours­es, Then Start Push­ing Toward Cer­tifi­cates: The year start­ed well enough. Yale released anoth­er 10 stel­lar open cours­es. (Find them on our list of 400 Free Cours­es). Then oth­er uni­ver­si­ties start­ed push­ing the enve­lope on the open course for­mat. This fall, Stan­ford launched a series of free cours­es that com­bined video lec­tures with more dynam­ic resources — short quizzes; the abil­i­ty to pose ques­tions to Stan­ford instruc­tors; feed­back on your over­all per­for­mance; a state­ment of accom­plish­ment from the instruc­tor, etc. A new round of free cours­es will start in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary. (Get the full list and enroll here.) Final­ly, keep your eyes peeled for this: In 2012, MIT will offer sim­i­lar cours­es, but with one big dif­fer­ence. Stu­dents will get an offi­cial cer­tifi­cate at the end of the course, all at a very min­i­mal charge. More details here.

2) Cul­tur­al Icons at Occu­py Wall Street: OWS was a big nation­al sto­ry, and we were always intrigued by its cul­tur­al dimen­sion — by the cul­tur­al fig­ures who cham­pi­oned the move­ment. You can revis­it performances/speeches by: Philip Glass & Lou Reed; Willie Nel­son, Pete Seeger, and Arlo Guthrie; David Cros­by and Gra­ham Nash; Joseph Stiglitz and Lawrence Lessig; Noam Chom­sky; and Slavoj Zizek. Also check out: 8 Lec­tures from Occu­py Har­vard and Artis­tic Posters From Occu­py Wall Street.

3) Books Intel­li­gent Peo­ple Should Read: Neil deGrasse Tyson’s list “8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read” end­ed up gen­er­at­ing far more con­ver­sa­tion and con­tro­ver­sy than we would have expect­ed. (Users have left 83 com­ments at last count.) No mat­ter what you think of his ratio­nale for choos­ing these texts, the books make for essen­tial read­ing, and they’re freely avail­able online.

Tyson’s list dove­tails fair­ly nice­ly with anoth­er list of essen­tial texts — The Har­vard Clas­sics, a 51 vol­ume set that’s avail­able online. Accord­ing to Charles W. Eliot, the leg­endary Har­vard pres­i­dent, if you were to spend just 15 min­utes a day read­ing these books, you could give your­self a prop­er lib­er­al edu­ca­tion. And that could part­ly apply to anoth­er list we pulled togeth­er: 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books — the great lit­er­ary clas­sics taught in class­rooms all across Amer­i­ca, all free…

4) Christo­pher Hitchens and Stephen Fry: Christo­pher Hitchens left us this past month. And, until his last day, Hitchens was the same old Hitch — pro­lif­ic, inci­sive, surly and defi­ant, espe­cial­ly when asked about whether he’d change his posi­tion on reli­gion, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and the after­life. All of this was on dis­play when he spoke at the Amer­i­can Jew­ish Uni­ver­si­ty in Los Ange­les last Feb­ru­ary. We cov­ered his com­ments in a post called, No Deathbed Con­ver­sion for Me, Thanks, But it was Good of You to Ask. And even from the grave, Hitchens did more of the same, forc­ing us to ques­tion the whole mod­ern mean­ing of Christ­mas.

Dur­ing Hitch’s final days, Stephen Fry emceed a large trib­ute to his friend in Lon­don, an event that brought togeth­er Richard Dawkins, Christo­pher Buck­ley, Salman Rushdie, Lewis Lapham, Mar­tin Amis, poet James Fen­ton and actor Sean Penn. It’s well worth a watch. But you also should­n’t miss some oth­er great videos fea­tur­ing the wis­dom of Mr. Fry — his intro­duc­tion to the strange world of nanoscience, his ani­mat­ed debate on the virtues (or lack there­of) of the Catholic Church, and his thought­ful reflec­tion, What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18.

5) Four for the Fab Four: John, Paul, Ringo and George. We sneak them in when­ev­er we can. A sprin­kling here and there. This year, we served up an ever-pop­u­lar post, Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, and a no less pop­u­lar free­bie: Down­load The Bea­t­les’ Yel­low Sub­ma­rine as a Free, Inter­ac­tive eBook. Trail­ing right behind are two oth­er good Bea­t­les picks: All Togeth­er Now: Every Bea­t­les Song Played at Once and The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig.

6) Wis­dom from Great Philoso­phers: Want the chance to take cours­es from great philoso­phers? Here’s your oppor­tu­ni­ty. Our meta post brought togeth­er courses/lectures from Bertrand Rus­sell, Michel Fou­cault, John Sear­le, Wal­ter Kauf­mann, Leo Strauss, Hubert Drey­fus, and Michael Sandel. You could get lost in this for days. Also while you’re at it, you should check out The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy … With­out Any Gaps, an ongo­ing pod­cast cre­at­ed by Peter Adam­son (King’s Col­lege Lon­don) that moves from the Ancients to the Mod­erns. Plus we’d encour­age you to revis­it: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er in 1971.

7) Vin­tage Film Col­lec­tions: Scour­ing the web for vin­tage films. It’s some­thing we love to do. In 2011, we brought you 22 films by Alfred Hitch­cock, 25 West­erns with John Wayne, 32 Film Noir clas­sics, and a series of films by the great Russ­ian direc­tor Andrei Tarkovsky. All are list­ed in our big col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

8) Back to the Future: We had fun going back — way back — and see­ing how past gen­er­a­tions imag­ined the future. Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dict­ed the Future in 1964 … And Pret­ty Much Nailed It. Before that, Amer­i­can fash­ion design­ers looked rough­ly 70 years into the future and guessed how women might dress in Year 2000. Turns out fash­ion design­ers aren’t the best futur­ists. And, even before that (cir­ca 1922), we get to see the world’s first mobile phone in action. Seri­ous­ly!

9) Ani­mat­ed Films: 2011 start­ed off on exact­ly the right note. On Jan­u­ary 1, we fea­tured Shel Sil­ver­stein’s ani­mat­ed ver­sion of The Giv­ing Tree. Then some oth­er gems fol­lowed: Des­ti­no, the Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney col­lab­o­ra­tion that start­ed in 1946 and fin­ished in 1999; Spike Jonze’s Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side), a short stop motion film set inside the famous Parisian book­store, Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny; John Tur­tur­ro nar­rat­ing an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of Ita­lo Calvino’s fairy tale, “The False Grand­moth­er;” and a series of ani­mat­ed films fea­tur­ing the voice of Orson Welles. Also let’s not for­get these splen­did ani­ma­tion con­cepts for The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier and Clay and, just for good mea­sure, Ter­ry Gilliam’s vin­tage primer on mak­ing your own cut-out ani­ma­tion.

10) New Archives & Art on the Web: Last but not least — 2011’s new archival projects that brought great cul­ture to the web.

• Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You
• Roy­al Soci­ety Opens Online Archive; Puts 60,000 Papers Online
• Google Puts The Dead Sea Scrolls Online (in Super High Res­o­lu­tion)
• The Smith­son­ian Launch­es Wildlife Pho­to Archive
• Sir Isaac Newton’s Papers & Anno­tat­ed Prin­cip­ia Go Dig­i­tal

And now onward into 2012.…