Listening to Poetry Online

in Literature, Podcasts | November 5th, 2007

Today, we have a guest fea­ture from Don from Clas­sic Poet­ry Aloud (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), which offers a great line­up of poet­ry pod­casts. They have just kicked off a week ded­i­cat­ed to war poet­ry, which includes pieces by Shake­speare, Coleridge and Melville, among oth­ers. Below, Don offers a very help­ful sur­vey of the poet­ry pod­cast land­scape and helps us see why pod­cast­ing might be the per­fect medi­um for spark­ing a renais­sance in poet­ry. Take it away Don…

Short, intense and often emo­tion­al pieces of writ­ing penned for the human ear: poems could have been invent­ed for pod­casts. It’s no sur­prise, then, that poet­ry read­ing pod­casts have sprung up like daisies this year.

Most are the aur­al equiv­a­lent of blogs, telling the inti­mate sto­ries of the poet, and often about as inter­est­ing. Some, though, are ded­i­cat­ed to read­ing oth­ers’ poet­ry, and they are worth vis­it­ing for a reg­u­lar, short piece of writ­ing that will almost always stim­u­late thought and feel­ing – and if it doesn’t, well, you’ve prob­a­bly only wast­ed the few min­utes it takes to read a poem.

Clas­sic Poet­ry Aloud (Tunes Feed Web Site)), my own pod­cast, is ded­i­cat­ed to any­thing in the Eng­lish lan­guage which is over 70 years old. Exper­i­men­tal­ly, this week (Nov 4 – 11) is War Poet­ry Week, fea­tur­ing poems from Samuel Coleridge and Her­man Melville as well as Wil­fred Owen and Shake­speare. It’s an attempt to take lis­ten­ers on a week-long jour­ney from the first rumours of war (on Mon­day 5th) through to remem­ber­ing the dead (on Sun­day 11th, Remem­brance day in the UK).

Most poet­ry pod­casts don’t deal exclu­sive­ly with the past, how­ev­er. On the excel­lent Poet­ry Off the Shelf (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), from the Poet­ry Foun­da­tion, you’ll find the smooth-toned Cur­tis Fox inter­view­ing con­tem­po­rary poets about their works, and hav­ing them read and inter­pret a poem or two. It’s won­der­ful­ly pro­duced and Fox’s intel­li­gent, self-dep­re­cat­ing style puts both this guests and his lis­ten­ers at ease. Oth­er pod­casts, such as MiPO­ra­dio (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), fol­low the same interview/reading for­mat.

Cloudy Day Art (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) sim­i­lar­ly involves inter­views, most recent­ly with for­mer US Poet Lau­re­ate Ted Koos­er, but with a dif­fer­ent focus. A home-pro­duced show by Wash­ing­ton DC res­i­dent Will Brown, the aim is to draw out of those he inter­views thoughts, tips and advice for those who, like the ever-enthu­si­as­tic Will him­self, are writ­ing poet­ry, for pub­li­ca­tion or just for them­selves.

One pod­cast focus­es pure­ly on Shakespeare’s son­nets, and is read by a man describ­ing him­self as “some guy from New York” (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). The shtick on this pod­cast is that the read­er was ordered to read the son­nets as some form of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice or face the prospect of prison. I’m not sure I quite believe this – the inter­pre­ta­tions are too good, and the atti­tude too laid-on. None of this detracts from what is, though, an enter­tain­ing and intel­li­gent lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence.

For pure sim­plic­i­ty, and no atti­tude, I sub­scribe to Clarica’s Poet­ry Moment (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), which gives me what I want: a clear female voice read­ing a wide range of poet­ry, with no fuss, just a sense of plea­sure in the mean­ing and the sound of the words.

In this reac­tion, I am a reg­u­lar poet­ry pod­cast lis­ten­er: all com­ments I’ve read on my own, and oth­er sites show reac­tion to all this spo­ken poet­ry to be over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive, and some­times deeply emo­tion­al. Peo­ple love to hear the poem come off the page, whether they are a recep­tion­ist in Hol­land, study­ing for their Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture exams at high school in Scot­land, or learn­ing Eng­lish in the Far East. It’s won­der­ful to sense the world being brought togeth­er through the medi­um of the poet­ry pod­cast. Some­times it almost seems that tech­nol­o­gy has enabled the oral tra­di­tion to be reborn.

For more poems and nov­els, please vis­it our Audio­book Pod­cast Col­lec­tion and if you want to guest blog, get in touch.

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in | November 3rd, 2007

Last mod­i­fied: July 27, 2024

Open Cul­ture, LLC (“Open Cul­ture,” “we” or “us”) knows that you care how infor­ma­tion about you is used and shared.  This Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy explains how Open Cul­ture col­lects and uses infor­ma­tion at its web­site locat­ed at www.openculture.com and at oth­er web­sites and mobile ser­vices pro­vid­ed by Open Cul­ture (col­lec­tive­ly the “Net­work Web­sites”).  This Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy also explains how you can con­trol the col­lec­tion, cor­rec­tion and/or dele­tion of cer­tain types of infor­ma­tion that we col­lect.  We will not use or share your infor­ma­tion with any­one except as described in this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy.  This Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy does not apply to infor­ma­tion we col­lect by oth­er means (includ­ing offline) or from oth­er sources.  Fur­ther, this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy does not apply to any web­sites, web­pages, blogs, appli­ca­tions, wid­gets or oth­er ser­vices oper­at­ed by any third par­ty, includ­ing our affil­i­ates, adver­tis­ers, providers and part­ners.

1. Infor­ma­tion We Col­lect

A. Per­son­al­ly Iden­ti­fi­able Infor­ma­tion

In gen­er­al, Open Cul­ture does not col­lect per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion on the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, except as set forth below.  For pur­pos­es of this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy, “per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion” is data intend­ed to be used to iden­ti­fy, con­tact or locate a per­son, includ­ing, name, address, tele­phone num­ber or e‑mail address and any oth­er infor­ma­tion (even if non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able) pro­vid­ed in com­bi­na­tion with such per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion.

You may pro­vide us infor­ma­tion about your­self, such as your name or e‑mail address, when you use or post con­tent on or though the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, includ­ing reg­is­ter­ing for the use of cer­tain fea­tures such as email RSS feeds.  If you cor­re­spond with us by email, we may retain the con­tent of your email mes­sages, your email address, and our respons­es.  We may also retain any mes­sages or oth­er con­tent you send through or post on the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.

Cit­i­zens of any coun­try that has pro­mul­gat­ed a data local­iza­tion law may not uti­lize the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices in any way, includ­ing view­ing pages on the Open Cul­ture web­site or sub­scrib­ing to the Open Cul­ture newslet­ter.

The adver­tise­ments we deliv­er may offer the abil­i­ty to inter­act, includ­ing play­ing a game or view­ing a video.  The ad may also give you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide the adver­tis­er with infor­ma­tion about your­self.  In some instances, if you choose to inter­act with an adver­tise­ment or pro­vide an adver­tis­er with infor­ma­tion about your­self, Open Cul­ture may col­lect infor­ma­tion on behalf of the adver­tis­er.  In that case, the advertiser’s pri­va­cy pol­i­cy would apply to the data col­lect­ed and we will abide by the instruc­tions giv­en to us by the adver­tis­er in our han­dling of the data.  Open Cul­ture will not asso­ciate any infor­ma­tion (non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able or per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able) we col­lect for an adver­tis­er with any oth­er infor­ma­tion we may have col­lect­ed about you through the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.

B. Non-Per­son­al­ly Iden­ti­fi­able Infor­ma­tion

When you vis­it the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, Open Cul­ture or third par­ties such as adver­tis­ers, third-par­ty adver­tis­ing net­works, and third-par­ty adver­tis­ing serv­ing com­pa­nies may col­lect non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion.  For pur­pos­es of this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy, “non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion” is data that is not per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able. Open Cul­ture and these third par­ties may imple­ment cer­tain tech­nolo­gies to enable the col­lec­tion of such infor­ma­tion.  An expla­na­tion of these tech­nolo­gies is below.

Cook­ies Infor­ma­tion: When you vis­it the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, we may send one or more cookies—a small text file con­tain­ing a string of alphanu­mer­ic characters—to your com­put­er that unique­ly iden­ti­fies your brows­er and lets Open Cul­ture help you log in faster and enhance your nav­i­ga­tion through the site.  A cook­ie may also con­vey infor­ma­tion about how you browse the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.  Open Cul­ture uses ses­sion, per­sis­tent, flash and brows­er cook­ies.  The use of cook­ies on the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices is anony­mous and does not allow us to gath­er per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion about you.  A per­sis­tent cook­ie remains on your hard dri­ve after you close your brows­er.  Per­sis­tent cook­ies may be used by your brows­er on sub­se­quent vis­its to the site.  Per­sis­tent cook­ies can be removed by fol­low­ing your web browser’s direc­tions.  A ses­sion cook­ie is tem­po­rary and dis­ap­pears after you close your brows­er.  You can set your web brows­er to refuse all cook­ies or to indi­cate when a cook­ie is being sent.  How­ev­er, some fea­tures of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices may not func­tion prop­er­ly if the abil­i­ty to accept cook­ies is dis­abled.

Device Iden­ti­fiers: When you access the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices by or through a mobile device, we may access, col­lect, mon­i­tor and/or remote­ly store one or more “device iden­ti­fiers.”  Device iden­ti­fiers are small data files or sim­i­lar data struc­tures stored on or asso­ci­at­ed with your mobile device that unique­ly iden­ti­fy your mobile device and are used by Open Cul­ture to enhance your use of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.  A device iden­ti­fi­er may be data stored in con­nec­tion with the device hard­ware, data stored in con­nec­tion with the device’s oper­at­ing sys­tem or oth­er soft­ware, or data sent to the device by Open Cul­ture.  A device iden­ti­fi­er may con­vey infor­ma­tion to us about how you browse the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.  A device iden­ti­fi­er does not col­lect or share any per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion about you.  How­ev­er, a device iden­ti­fi­er may be used in con­junc­tion with oth­er infor­ma­tion in a man­ner that may con­sti­tute per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion.  A device iden­ti­fi­er may remain per­sis­tent­ly on your device, to help you log in faster and enhance your nav­i­ga­tion through the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.  Some fea­tures of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices may not func­tion prop­er­ly if use or avail­abil­i­ty of device iden­ti­fiers are impaired or dis­abled.

Web Bea­con­s/Click-Stream Data: A web bea­con is an elec­tron­ic file that sig­nals when a web­page, adver­tise­ment, video, oth­er con­tent, an email, or a newslet­ter has been viewed.  We may use web bea­cons in our emails and newslet­ters, or on our web­sites and ser­vices.  Open Cul­ture may use web bea­cons in con­junc­tion with cook­ies to col­lect click-stream data that helps us bet­ter under­stand how vis­i­tors move from page to page with­in our web­sites.  As with cook­ies, our use of web bea­cons is anony­mous and does not allow us to gath­er per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion about you.

Pas­sive Brows­er Infor­ma­tion: Open Cul­ture col­lects pas­sive brows­er infor­ma­tion though its web servers.  We use the pas­sive brows­er infor­ma­tion to help us under­stand how many vis­i­tors come to our web­sites and where they come from, and ulti­mate­ly to help us make deci­sions about how to orga­nize the web­sites and deliv­er adver­tis­ing.

Log File Infor­ma­tion: Log file infor­ma­tion is auto­mat­i­cal­ly report­ed by your brows­er each time you access a web page.  When you use the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, our servers auto­mat­i­cal­ly record cer­tain log file infor­ma­tion.  These serv­er logs may include infor­ma­tion such as your web request, Inter­net Pro­to­col (“IP”) address, brows­er type, refer­ring / exit pages and URLs, num­ber of clicks, domain names, land­ing pages, pages viewed, data about how you inter­act with links on the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, and oth­er such infor­ma­tion.  We may dis­play your IP address to the own­ers or main­tain­ers of cer­tain blogs, groups or com­mu­ni­ties if you post to those blogs, groups or com­mu­ni­ties and the own­er or main­tain­er has enabled func­tion­al­i­ty for this pur­pose.

Scripts:  A script is a short seg­ment of com­put­er code includ­ed in a web page or oth­er con­tent that can be used to set and access a cook­ie on your computer’s hard dri­ve and to record your activ­i­ty on a web­site.  Open Cul­ture may use scripts on the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, on third-par­ty web­sites, or in our emails and newslet­ters.

C. Third Par­ty Adver­tise­ments

If an adver­tis­er asks Open Cul­ture to show an adver­tise­ment to a cer­tain audi­ence and you respond to that adver­tise­ment, the adver­tis­er or ad serv­er may con­clude that you fit the descrip­tion of the audi­ence they are try­ing to reach.  In addi­tion, third-par­ty adver­tis­ers may use non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion about your vis­its to the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices in order to pro­vide adver­tise­ments about goods and ser­vices that they believe may be of inter­est to you.  If you would like more infor­ma­tion about this prac­tice and to know your choic­es about not hav­ing this infor­ma­tion used by these com­pa­nies, please see the list pro­vid­ed imme­di­ate­ly below.  This Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy does not apply to, and we can­not con­trol the activ­i­ties of, third-par­ty adver­tis­ers.  Please con­sult the respec­tive pri­va­cy poli­cies of such adver­tis­ers for more infor­ma­tion.

• Google Ana­lyt­ics: Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy
• Google Adsense: Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy
• Ama­zon Affil­i­ate Pro­gram: Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy
• Feed­burn­er: Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy
• Com­mis­sion Junc­tion Affil­i­ate Pro­gram: Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy
• Shar­eaSale: Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy
• LinkShare/Rakuten: Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy
• Impact Radius: Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy
• Pub­lift: Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy

2. How We Use Your Infor­ma­tion

A. Per­son­al­ly Iden­ti­fi­able Infor­ma­tion

We use the per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion that we col­lect to oper­ate, main­tain, and pro­vide to you the fea­tures and func­tion­al­i­ty of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.

By pro­vid­ing Open Cul­ture with your email address, you con­sent to our use of the email address to send you notices relat­ed to the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, includ­ing any notices required by law, in lieu of com­mu­ni­ca­tion by postal mail.  We may also con­tact you via email with trans­ac­tion­al or rela­tion­ship mes­sages, such as noti­fi­ca­tions of changes to the terms of ser­vices pro­vid­ed.  By pro­vid­ing your email address, you agree that we may send you noti­fi­ca­tions of activ­i­ty on the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices to that email address, in accor­dance with any applic­a­ble pri­va­cy set­tings.  We may use your email address to send you oth­er mes­sages, such as infor­ma­tion about changes to fea­tures of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.  If you do not want to receive such email mes­sages, you may opt out or change your pref­er­ences by send­ing an email to ma**@*********re.com.  Opt­ing out may pre­vent you from receiv­ing email mes­sages regard­ing updates, improve­ments, or offers.  You may not opt out of ser­vice-relat­ed emails or trans­ac­tion­al or rela­tion­ship email mes­sages.

Open Cul­ture may use your per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion and user con­tent inter­nal­ly for pur­pos­es such as oper­at­ing or improv­ing its web­sites, deter­min­ing which users have access priv­i­leges to cer­tain con­tent, ser­vices or resources that we offer, diag­nos­ing ser­vice or tech­ni­cal prob­lems, main­tain­ing secu­ri­ty, doing some­thing that you have asked us to do, telling you about Open Cul­ture prod­ucts, ser­vices and mar­ket­ing events that we think may be of inter­est, ana­lyz­ing how the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices are used, and per­son­al­iz­ing con­tent.

B. Non-Per­son­al­ly Iden­ti­fi­able Infor­ma­tion

We may use non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion, includ­ing cook­ies, device iden­ti­fiers, loca­tion data, web bea­con­s/click-stream data, pas­sive brows­er infor­ma­tion, demon­stra­tion data, log file infor­ma­tion, and scripts to: (a) remem­ber infor­ma­tion so that you will not have to re-enter it dur­ing your vis­it or the next time you vis­it the site; (b) pro­vide cus­tom, per­son­al­ized con­tent and infor­ma­tion; © mon­i­tor the effec­tive­ness of our ser­vices; (d) mon­i­tor aggre­gate met­rics such as total num­ber of vis­i­tors, traf­fic, and demo­graph­ic pat­terns; (e) diag­nose or fix tech­nol­o­gy prob­lems report­ed by our users or engi­neers that are asso­ci­at­ed with cer­tain IP address­es; (f) help you effi­cient­ly access your infor­ma­tion after you sign in; (g) mon­i­tor and pre­vent fraud and abuse; (h) iden­ti­fy you as an account hold­er; (i) require you to re-enter your pass­word after a cer­tain peri­od of time has elapsed to pre­vent oth­ers from access­ing your account con­tents; (j) keep track of pref­er­ences you spec­i­fy while you are using Open Cul­ture Ser­vices; (k) con­duct research to improve Open Cul­ture Ser­vices; (l) mon­i­tor adver­tis­ing-relat­ed met­rics, in order to pro­vide you with more help­ful and rel­e­vant adver­tis­ing; (m) admin­is­ter our busi­ness (e.g., to cal­cu­late pay­ments due to our net­work web­sites); and (n) track user con­tent and users to the extent nec­es­sary to com­ply as a ser­vice provider with the Dig­i­tal Mil­len­ni­um Copy­right Act.

Third-par­ty adver­tis­ing net­works and adver­tis­ers may also use non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion to assist them in deliv­er­ing adver­tis­ing that may be rel­e­vant to your inter­ests.

3. How We Share Your Infor­ma­tion

A. Per­son­al­ly Iden­ti­fi­able Infor­ma­tion

Open Cul­ture will not rent or sell your per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion to oth­ers.  Open Cul­ture only shares per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion with oth­er com­pa­nies or indi­vid­u­als out­side of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices as fol­lows: (1) if Open Cul­ture has your con­sent to the shar­ing of per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion; (2) to pro­vide Open Culture’s ser­vices to you; (3) to respond to sub­poe­nas, court orders or legal process, to assist gov­ern­ment enforce­ment agen­cies, to estab­lish or exer­cise our legal rights, or to defend against legal claims; (4) if we believe it is nec­es­sary in order to inves­ti­gate, pre­vent, or take action regard­ing third-par­ty claims or alle­ga­tions, ille­gal activ­i­ties, sus­pect­ed fraud, sit­u­a­tions involv­ing poten­tial threats to the safe­ty or prop­er­ty of anoth­er per­son, vio­la­tion of our Terms and Con­di­tions of Ser­vice; or (7) as oth­er­wise required by law.  Open Cul­ture may also store per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion and user con­tent in loca­tions out­side the direct con­trol of Open Cul­ture (for instance, on servers or data­bas­es co-locat­ed with host­ing providers).

Any per­son­al infor­ma­tion or con­tent that you vol­un­tar­i­ly dis­close for post­ing to the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, such as mes­sages, com­ments or oth­er user con­tent, becomes avail­able to the pub­lic.

B. Non-Per­son­al­ly Iden­ti­fi­able Infor­ma­tion

In the event that we use a third par­ty to pro­vide ser­vices or to sup­port aspects of our busi­ness on our behalf, Open Cul­ture may share non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion with the third par­ty to be used by them only for the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing their ser­vices to Open Cul­ture.

We may share non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion (such as anony­mous usage data, referring/exit pages and URLs, plat­form types, num­ber of clicks, etc.) with third par­ties to help them under­stand the usage pat­terns for cer­tain Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, and as part of the func­tion of our busi­ness.

C. Trans­fer of Data

In the event that Open Cul­ture sells, trans­fers or oth­er­wise relin­quish­es all or part of our assets, busi­ness offer­ings, or ser­vices, includ­ing any of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, infor­ma­tion that you have shared with Open Cul­ture or that Open Cul­ture has col­lect­ed, includ­ing both per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion and non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion, may be one of the busi­ness assets that will be trans­ferred.  We may also trans­fer or assign such infor­ma­tion in the course of cor­po­rate divesti­tures, merg­ers, or dis­so­lu­tion.  The trans­ferred infor­ma­tion will remain sub­ject to the terms of this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy or those of sub­se­quent poli­cies to which you have con­sent­ed.  If Open Cul­ture is involved in a merg­er, acqui­si­tion, or sale of all or a por­tion of its assets, you will be noti­fied via a promi­nent notice on our web­site of any change in own­er­ship or uses of your per­son­al infor­ma­tion, as well as any choic­es you may have regard­ing your per­son­al infor­ma­tion.

4. Con­tent Removal

Open Cul­ture reserves the right, but has no oblig­a­tion, to mon­i­tor the user con­tent you post on any of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.  We reserve the right to remove any such infor­ma­tion or mate­r­i­al for any rea­son or no rea­son, includ­ing with­out lim­i­ta­tion if in our sole opin­ion such infor­ma­tion or mate­r­i­al vio­lates, or may vio­late, any law or our Terms and Con­di­tions of Ser­vice, or to pro­tect or defend our rights or prop­er­ty or those of any third par­ty.  Open Cul­ture also reserves the right to remove infor­ma­tion upon the request of any third par­ty.

5. Data Reten­tion

Open Cul­ture may retain and con­tin­ue to use indef­i­nite­ly all infor­ma­tion (includ­ing user con­tent) post­ed to the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.

Open Cul­ture retains the spe­cif­ic anony­mous data col­lect­ed and tied to your computer’s unique ID as described in this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy for a peri­od of up to twelve months.  Such data may be aggre­gat­ed and used for ana­lyt­i­cal pur­pos­es indef­i­nite­ly.

6. How We Pro­tect Your Infor­ma­tion

Open Cul­ture cares about the integri­ty and secu­ri­ty of your per­son­al infor­ma­tion.  We can­not, how­ev­er, ensure or war­rant the secu­ri­ty of any infor­ma­tion you trans­mit to Open Cul­ture or guar­an­tee that your infor­ma­tion on the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices may not be accessed, dis­closed, altered, or destroyed by breach of any of our phys­i­cal, tech­ni­cal, or man­age­r­i­al safe­guards.  The trans­mit­tal of infor­ma­tion from you to us is done at your own risk.

7. Com­pro­mise of Per­son­al Infor­ma­tion

In the event that per­son­al infor­ma­tion is com­pro­mised as a result of a breach of secu­ri­ty, Open Cul­ture will prompt­ly noti­fy those per­sons whose per­son­al infor­ma­tion has been com­pro­mised, in accor­dance with the noti­fi­ca­tion pro­ce­dures set forth in this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy, or as oth­er­wise required by law.

8. Your Choic­es About Your Infor­ma­tion

You may, of course, decline to sub­mit per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion through the Ser­vice, in which case Open Cul­ture may not be able to pro­vide cer­tain ser­vices to you.

You can lim­it tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing by con­fig­ur­ing your browser’s set­tings or chang­ing the man­age­ment pan­el of the Adobe Flash Play­er to lim­it your accep­tance of or delete cook­ies.  Because the man­age­ment of cook­ies in var­i­ous browsers dif­fers, you should con­sult the doc­u­men­ta­tion for your brows­er in order to man­age your cook­ies.  In order to lim­it the accep­tance of or dis­able “flash” cook­ies, you must access the man­age­ment pan­el of the Adobe Flash Play­er installed on your com­put­er.  To learn more about the man­age­ment pan­el of the Adobe Flash Play­er and the man­age­ment of “flash” cook­ies, please access the fol­low­ing link: http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/index.html.  You can also opt-out of receiv­ing cook­ies from third-par­ty data providers by fol­low­ing the instruc­tions at:  http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp.  You can opt-out of receiv­ing cook­ies from Tar­gus­in­fo, a spe­cif­ic third-par­ty data provider, by fol­low­ing the instruc­tions at:  http://www.adadvisor.net/optout.html.  Also, because your choic­es are not asso­ci­at­ed with you as a par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­ual, if you change com­put­ers, web browsers or cook­ie set­tings, you will need to re-imple­ment your pref­er­ences as described above.  Note that if you lim­it or dis­able cook­ies, this does not mean that you will not see ads on the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices. Instead, ads will be dis­played that are based on pas­sive brows­er infor­ma­tion or oth­er infor­ma­tion that that may be pro­vid­ed by the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices at the time of your vis­it.

9. Children’s Pri­va­cy

Pro­tect­ing the pri­va­cy of young chil­dren is espe­cial­ly impor­tant.  Open Cul­ture and its relat­ed web­sites are not struc­tured to attract chil­dren under 13 years of age.  Open Cul­ture pro­hibits the use of our web­sites or ser­vices by any­one under 13 years of age.  Open Cul­ture does not know­ing­ly col­lect or solic­it per­son­al infor­ma­tion from any­one under the age of 13 or know­ing­ly allow such per­sons to reg­is­ter for any of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.  If you are under 13, please do not access the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices or send any infor­ma­tion about your­self to us, includ­ing your name, address, tele­phone num­ber, or email address.  In the event that we learn that we have col­lect­ed per­son­al infor­ma­tion from a child under age 13 with­out ver­i­fi­ca­tion of parental con­sent, we will delete that infor­ma­tion as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.  If you believe that we might have any infor­ma­tion from or about a child under 13, please con­tact us at ma**@*********re.com.

10. Links to Oth­er Web­sites

We are not respon­si­ble for the prac­tices employed by web­sites linked to or from the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, nor the infor­ma­tion or con­tent con­tained there­in.  Please remem­ber that when you use a link to go from with­in the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices to an out­side web­site, our Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy is no longer in effect.  Your brows­ing and inter­ac­tion on any oth­er web­site, includ­ing those that have a link on the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, is sub­ject to that website’s own rules and poli­cies. Please read over those rules and poli­cies before pro­ceed­ing.

11. Noti­fi­ca­tion Pro­ce­dures

It is our pol­i­cy to pro­vide noti­fi­ca­tions, whether such noti­fi­ca­tions are required by law or are for mar­ket­ing or oth­er busi­ness relat­ed pur­pos­es, to you via email notice, writ­ten or hard copy notice, or through con­spic­u­ous post­ing of such notice on the applic­a­ble Open Cul­ture web­site or ser­vice, as deter­mined by Open Cul­ture in its sole dis­cre­tion. We reserve the right to deter­mine the form and means of pro­vid­ing noti­fi­ca­tions to you, pro­vid­ed that you may opt out of cer­tain means of noti­fi­ca­tion as described in this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy.

12. Gov­ern­ing Law

This Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy is gov­erned by the laws of the State of Cal­i­for­nia and the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.

13. Changes to this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy

Open Cul­ture may mod­i­fy or update this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy at its sole dis­cre­tion from time to time, and so you should review this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy peri­od­i­cal­ly.  When we change the pol­i­cy in a mate­r­i­al way, we will noti­fy you by means of a notice on our web­site pri­or to the change becom­ing effec­tive.  Changes to this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy are effec­tive when they are post­ed on this page.  Your con­tin­ued access to the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices after the Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy has been mod­i­fied and post­ed will sig­ni­fy your accep­tance of such mod­i­fi­ca­tions.

If you have any ques­tions about this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy, the prac­tices of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, or your deal­ings with Open Cul­ture, please con­tact us at ma**@*********re.com.

14. Cal­i­for­nia Con­sumer Pri­va­cy Act (“CCPA”)

The Godfather Without Brando?: It Almost Happened

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | November 3rd, 2007

It’s hard to imag­ine The God­fa­ther, the icon­ic 1972 film, with­out Mar­lon Bran­do. But that’s almost how it turned out.

Dur­ing cast­ing, Para­mount exec­u­tives orig­i­nal­ly pushed for Lau­rence Olivi­er. But when he could­n’t take the film, and when the direc­tor, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, asked them to con­sid­er Bran­do, they ini­tial­ly respond­ed: “Mar­lon Bran­do will nev­er appear in this motion pic­ture.” Below, Cop­po­la and co-star James Caan explain how the execs were even­tu­al­ly cajoled into chang­ing their minds, and how film his­to­ry fell into place. As you watch this, also keep in mind that Para­mount orig­i­nal­ly asked two oth­er direc­tors to make The God­fa­ther before approach­ing Cop­po­la, and they lat­er want­ed Robert Red­ford or Ryan O’Neal to play Michael Cor­leone. But Cop­po­la, who threat­ened to quit pro­duc­tion, even­tu­al­ly got his way and put the rel­a­tive­ly unknown Al Paci­no into the film.

FYI: Best Week Ever has a good post on the Top 10 Actor / Direc­tor Tandems In Movie His­to­ry.

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Where to Get Online Music For Free

in Music | November 2nd, 2007

Head over to Wired and you’ll find a “How-To Wiki” that lists web sites where you can stream or down­load music online for free. As you’ll see, Wired is not shy about admit­ting what it’s try­ing to accom­plish here. The wiki page is called “Cheat the Music Indus­try: Nev­er Pay for Music.”

To access more online music, vis­it Life­hack­er’s guide to find­ing free music on the web, and peruse our col­lec­tion of free music pod­casts.

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Watching Wikipedia Get Written in Real Time

in Web/Tech | November 1st, 2007

The cre­ativ­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with Wikipedia nev­er ends. If you click here, a pro­gram called Wikipedi­aV­i­sion will show you a Google map that dis­plays in real time who is writing/editing what Wikipedia entry across the globe. Cool mashup. (Source: The New Scientist.com)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

• Keep­ing Wikipedia Hon­est
• Track­ing Wikipedia’s Manip­u­la­tions

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Learning Mandarin for Free Online

in Language Lessons | November 1st, 2007

Chi­na is on the upswing polit­i­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly. Accord­ing to Gold­man Sachs, Chi­na’s econ­o­my may out­size every oth­er econ­o­my (except that of the U.S.) by 2016, and it could even sur­pass the Amer­i­can econ­o­my by 2039. Giv­en this, the hottest lan­guage being stud­ied right now by busi­ness trav­el­ers is Man­darin (see this New York Times piece). And, in my work at Stan­ford, we’re see­ing a very sharp increase in young and old stu­dents enrolling in Man­darin cours­es (and oth­er Chi­na-focused cours­es), for both per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al rea­sons.

Learn­ing Man­darin can be cost­ly — some orga­ni­za­tions charge $2500 for a week-long course — but it does­n’t have to be. More rea­son­ably, you can pur­chase CD-Roms that will sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly teach you Man­darin at home, when your sched­ule per­mits, for a much more rea­son­able price (about $200). Roset­ta Stone offers one good exam­ple. Or you can do it even more cheap­ly, if not for free, with the help of pod­casts.

As you’ll see, there’s no short­age of Man­darin lan­guage lessons, and we invite you to peruse the list below. Of all of them, two tend to get par­tic­u­lar­ly high marks from users. The first is called Chi­nese Lessons with Serge Mel­nyk (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Put togeth­er by an Eng­lish speak­er who stud­ied Man­darin Chi­nese for almost 20 years (and who has lived in Bei­jing and Shang­hai for 12 years), the free pod­cast cur­rent­ly offers 90 lessons that last between 20 and 30 min­utes. A sec­ond option, which users also give pos­i­tive feed­back, is Chinesepod.com (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Pro­duced by native speak­ers, these dai­ly audio pod­casts, each run­ning 10–20 min­utes in length, will immerse you in col­lo­qui­al (read: use­ful) Man­darin. Impres­sive­ly, you can now find 100 pieces of audio in Chi­ne­se­pod’s large archive. While both of these pod­casts are free, each offers addi­tion­al learn­ing resources for a rea­son­able fee (though it appears that you can get by with­out them).

For more Chi­nese lessons, please vis­it our col­lec­tion: Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & Beyond

• Chi­nese Learn Online iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A dia­logue-based intro­duc­tion to Man­darin Chi­nese. Load them on your iPod and get up the Chi­nese curve.
• Chi­nese Lessons with Serge Mel­nyk iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Week­ly lessons in Man­darin that get very strong reviews from iTunes users.
• Chinesepod.com iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A series of well-reviewed lessons that will let you learn Man­darin on your own terms.
• iMandarinPod.com iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A more advanced pod­cast, this series of lessons teach­es Chi­nese by talk­ing about Chi­nese cul­ture or what is hap­pen­ing today in Chi­na.
• LearnChinesePod.com iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A Man­darin lan­guage pod­cast taught by Yao in New York City.
• Man­darin Chi­nese Con­ver­sa­tion iTunes Web Site
  • A lan­guage series put togeth­er by TimesOn­line.
• Man­darin Chi­nese Feed Web Site
  • 10 Lessons by the US Peace Corps. Make sure you vis­it the site and down­load the pdf that accom­pa­nies the lessons.
• Sur­vival Chi­nese iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Learn the phras­es you need to get by while trav­el­ing in Chi­na.
• World Learn­er Chi­nese iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Anoth­er in the mix of pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Talks from The New Yorker Festival Available as Video Podcasts

in Media | October 30th, 2007

In ear­ly Octo­ber, The New York­er mag­a­zine held its eighth annu­al fes­ti­val in NYC. (Yikes! As I am typ­ing I’m feel­ing my first earth­quake here in Cal­i­for­nia. Appar­ent­ly 5.7 on Richter scale. Details here.) Any­way, the fes­ti­val brings to the stage an impres­sive list of writ­ers & artists (see the full sched­ule here). And while the aver­age New York­er had to pay some­where between $16 and $100 to attend the var­i­ous events, you can now watch a select num­ber of them for free. The free videos fea­ture New York­er edi­tor David Rem­nick speak­ing with Sey­mour Hersh about his inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism and Amer­i­ca’s involve­ment in Iraq and Iran; Nobel Prize win­ner Orhan Pamuk and Salman Rushdie dis­cussing how they approach writ­ing about their respec­tive home­lands, Turkey and India; and Mar­tin Amis and Ian Buru­ma mak­ing sense of his­tor­i­cal “mon­sters” and the psy­chol­o­gy that dri­ves evil. Also Philip Goure­vitch leads a quite thought-pro­vok­ing con­ver­sa­tion with Errol Mor­ris about Abu Ghraib and what did and did not hap­pen there. (Abu Ghraib is the sub­ject of Morris’s next film.) Then, on the lighter side, come­di­an Steve Mar­tin amus­es the crowd by show­ing clips of his stand-up per­for­mances, and film­mak­er Judd Apa­tow talks with film crit­ic David Den­by about his new com­e­dy “Knocked Up.”

You can access these video talks in one of three ways. Watch them online right on The New York­er web site; head over to Itunes where you can down­load them as video pod­casts; or work with the video rss feed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

• The New York­er Mag­a­zine Cross­es the Dig­i­tal Divide
• Sat­i­riz­ing Ahmadine­jad: The New York­er Picks Up Where SNL Left Off
• Ani­mat­ed New York­er Car­toons: A Fun­ny Twist on Einstein’s Rel­a­tiv­i­ty

100 Top Jazz CDs

in Music | October 30th, 2007

If you’re look­ing to build your jazz col­lec­tion, this site offers some sound guid­ance. It fea­tures 100 top jazz CDs. Although inher­ent­ly sub­jec­tive, the list includes many indis­putable clas­sics that belong in any respectable jazz col­lec­tion. (Note: if you click on the link for each album, you’ll find some back­ground infor­ma­tion that’s often worth read­ing.)

For more jazz, check out our col­lec­tion of Music Pod­casts which includes a decent selec­tion of, yes, jazz pod­casts.

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Reading Great Books with The New York Times (Starting with War & Peace)

in Books, Media | October 30th, 2007

Ear­li­er this month, The New York Times Book Review launched an online Read­ing Room that lets read­ers tack­le great books with the help of “an all-star cast of pan­elists from var­i­ous backgrounds—authors, review­ers, schol­ars and jour­nal­ists.” The first read­ing starts with Leo Tol­stoy’s 1200+ page epic, War and Peace (1865–69), and it’s led by book review edi­tor Sam Tanen­haus and a sup­port­ing crew con­sist­ing of Bill Keller (exec­u­tive edi­tor of The Times), Stephen Kotkin (a Russ­ian his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Prince­ton), Francine Prose (author of Read­ing Like a Writer), and Liesl Schillinger (a reg­u­lar review­er for the Book Review).

At the out­set, Sam Tanen­haus’ intro­duc­tion leaves the impres­sion that the “Read­ing Room” will offer a fair­ly struc­tured read­ing of Tol­stoy’s text. But that’s not exact­ly how things turn out. Often quite frag­men­tary, the con­ver­sa­tion most­ly oper­ates out­side the text itself and veers in many dif­fer­ent, though often intrigu­ing, direc­tions. At one moment, Francine Prose tells us that Tol­stoy’s account of the Napoleon­ic wars reminds her of today’s war in Iraq. For Bill Keller, it evokes the wan­ing days of the Sovi­et Union. And, for Liesl Schillinger, it’s her youth in 1970s Amer­i­ca. (You can get a feel for the flow and focus of the dis­cus­sion here.) Ulti­mate­ly, what you think of this new project depends on what you want to get out of the expe­ri­ence. If it’s a more struc­tured read­ing (as we were hop­ing), then you may not be com­plete­ly engaged. But if it’s a more free-flow­ing con­ver­sa­tion that moves in and around great works, then you’ll want to join the con­ver­sa­tion. And, yes, there’s a role there for the every­day read­er too. Take a look at the Read­ing Room and let us know what you think.

Relat­ed Posts:

• Freako­nom­ics Moves to The New York Times
• The New York Times “Opens Up” at Mid­night
• Book Chap­ters Pre­sent­ed by The New York Times

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Human Species May Split into Two: Life Imitates Art Again?

in Science | October 27th, 2007

Here’s a zinger to mull over: The BBC has post­ed an arti­cle about a the­o­ry advanced by Oliv­er Cur­ry, an “evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­rist” work­ing out of The Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, who sug­gests that human­i­ty may split into two sub-species about 100,000 years down the road. And what we’d be left with is “a genet­ic upper class” rul­ing over “a dim-wit­ted under­class.” This is a sce­nario, of course, that HG Wells laid out in his 1895 clas­sic, The Time Machine (lis­ten to free audio­book on iTunes here). And, if Cur­ry’s the­o­ry holds water, Welles may offer the most extreme exam­ple of sci­ence fic­tion antic­i­pat­ing the shape of the future. Does Cur­ry’s the­o­ry have any­thing to it? We haven’t the fog­gi­est. But does it make for strange­ly com­pelling yet dis­turb­ing read­ing? It sure does.

See our Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion as well as our col­lec­tion of Audio­book Pod­casts.

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