Coffee Break French (and Nine Other Ways to Parler Français)

in Language Lessons | October 8th, 2007

Although fac­ing no short­age of com­pe­ti­tion, Cof­fee Break Span­ish (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) has remained the most pop­u­lar for­eign lan­guage les­son pod­cast, bar none. The pop­u­lar­i­ty rank­ings on iTunes have con­tin­u­al­ly attest­ed to that.

From this posi­tion of strength, the pro­duc­ers of Cof­fee Break Span­ish have smart­ly moved into new Euro­pean ter­ri­to­ries, rolling out ear­li­er this year MyDai­lyPhrase Ital­ian (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) and MyDai­lyPhrase Ger­man (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Now they will be fac­ing a stiffer chal­lenge – try­ing to pen­e­trate the already-crowd­ed French lan­guage les­son mar­ket.

Cof­fee Break French (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) was launched on Sep­tem­ber 26, and how it fares against the com­pe­ti­tion (see our list below) depends main­ly on whether the pod­cast deliv­ers French lessons bet­ter than the oth­ers, and whether it can cap­i­tal­ize on the estab­lished “Cof­fee Break” brand. Stay tuned. All of this remains TBD. Let’s sit back and watch how things unfold.

See our com­plete list How to Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & 37 Oth­er Lan­guages, which includes audio lessons that will teach you 40 lan­guages.

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Stephen Colbert’s New Book Released Early as Audiobook

in Audio Books, Books | October 5th, 2007

Here’s a quick heads up: Stephen Col­bert’s new book — I Am Amer­i­ca (And So Can You!) — will hit the streets on Octo­ber 9. How­ev­er, if you’re real­ly champ­ing at the bit, you can down­load the book ear­ly, start­ing today, in audio­book for­mat. The book is nar­rat­ed by Col­bert him­self, which is a perk, and you can down­load it from Audi­ble here.

To round things out, let us refer you to this video where Col­bert, speak­ing at Book Expo Amer­i­ca, pumps his new book, spars with Khaled Hos­sei­ni (author of The Kite Run­ner and A Thou­sand Splen­did Suns), and trash­es Cor­mac McCarthy. Have fun.

Animated New Yorker Cartoons: A Funny Twist on Einstein’s Relativity

in Media, Video - Arts & Culture | October 5th, 2007

The New York­er has rolled out a series of ani­mat­ed car­toons, which puts in motion its famous car­toons. They can be watched as video pod­casts or as streamed videos. You should def­i­nite­ly head over to The New York­er web site to view the larg­er col­lec­tion. But, if you want a lit­tle taste, take a look below:

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YouTube Gets Smart: The Launch of New University Channels

in Google, UC Berkeley, Video - Arts & Culture | October 5th, 2007

Updat­ed: See full col­lec­tion of Uni­ver­si­ty Video Col­lec­tions on YouTube.

I heard rumors some­thing like this was com­ing, and now it’s here. YouTube has struck deals with major uni­ver­si­ties, cre­at­ing ded­i­cat­ed chan­nels from which schools can dis­trib­ute their media con­tent. Not sur­pris­ing­ly UC Berke­ley, always at the dig­i­tal fore­front, has tak­en the lead and launched an ambi­tious chan­nel with over 300 hours of video­taped cours­es and events. You can check out their chan­nel here. The oth­er major uni­ver­si­ty to sign on is USC (Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia).

Back in March, we lament­ed the sheer dearth of cul­tur­al con­tent on YouTube. (Lis­ten to our radio inter­view here and also see our relat­ed blog post.) Since its incep­tion, the now Google-owned video ser­vice has been awash with home-brewed videos of gui­tar riffs, dorm­room lip sync ses­sions, and pet tricks. Mean­while, videos of greater cul­tur­al sub­stance have been hard­er to come by (and that’s why we’ve tried to flag the good ones for you. See here, here & here.) YouTube’s new uni­ver­si­ty ini­tia­tive begins to rem­e­dy that prob­lem. It shows a per­haps bur­geon­ing com­mit­ment to high­er-mind­ed media. But let’s not get too car­ried away. When you go to YouTube, it’s not clear how users will find/navigate to these chan­nels. If you look under Cat­e­gories, “edu­ca­tion” is not an option (although I think it used to be). Per­haps YouTube has plans to tweak its nav­i­ga­tion. Or is this just a case of let­ting a tree fall in the woods? Let’s stay opti­mistic and we’ll check back soon.

Please vis­it our col­lec­tion of 250 Free Online Cours­es

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Philip Roth’s Exit Ghost: Free Chapters, Podcasts & More

in Books | October 4th, 2007

Philip Roth fans did­n’t have to wait very long for anoth­er nov­el. A short year and a half after pub­lish­ing Every­man, Roth has just put out Exit Ghost. It’s anoth­er book that takes a hard look at aging, and it also marks the ninth and pos­si­bly last time that the char­ac­ter Nathan Zuck­er­man will inhab­it Roth’s lit­er­ary cre­ations. (For more on the Zuk­er­man series, see Salon’s old­er piece here.) We’ll even­tu­al­ly have more to say about Exit Ghost. But, for now, we want­ed to point you to some good relat­ed resources. For starters, if you can’t wait to get the book, you can read the first chap­ter online for free here. And you can also catch some very recent inter­views with Roth. First, Ama­zon Wired (iTunes — Feed — Tran­script) fea­tures him talk­ing about Exit Ghost and offer­ing a very short read­ing from it. Then there is this inter­view by Ter­ry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air. (iTunes — Feed — Stream). Final­ly, here are the first reviews that have rolled out: New York Mag­a­zine, The New York Sun, The New York Times, The LA Times, The Wash­ing­ton Post, and Times Online (UK).

P.S. Here are a cou­ple of oth­er Philip Roth good­ies.

• Philip Roth on “Every­man” (Real Play­er — Audio)
• Philip Roth on “Every­man” and His Approach to Writ­ing (mp3 stream)

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The World Without Us: Author Interview

in Books, Current Affairs, Media, Science | October 3rd, 2007

Ear­li­er this week I spoke on the phone with Alan Weis­man, the author of The World With­out Us. (See our ini­tial piece on his book.) Alan was gra­cious enough to take some time out of his pub­lic­i­ty sched­ule to share his thoughts on the book, the world, his writ­ing process, and more. What fol­lows is an edit­ed tran­script of our con­ver­sa­tion.

Ed: This book address­es what on the sur­face seems to be a pret­ty far-fetched hypo­thet­i­cal: that human­i­ty might sud­den­ly dis­ap­pear. What drew you to this premise in the first place?

Alan: Well, pre­cise­ly that. Most great envi­ron­men­tal writ­ing does not get read by a lot of the peo­ple who ought to be learn­ing about it because the near­er-term pos­si­bil­i­ties just seem some­times so fright­en­ing, or so depress­ing, that nobody real­ly wants to pick up a book to read it.

By struc­tur­ing the book the way that I did, I dis­arm the auto­mat­ic fear that repels a lot of peo­ple from read­ing about the envi­ron­ment. Peo­ple don’t want to read some­thing that seems too threat­en­ing. On a sub­con­scious or even a con­scious lev­el, they don’t want to be wor­ried we’re all going to die. In my book, killing us off in the first cou­ple of pages means peo­ple don’t have to wor­ry about dying because we’re already dead, and that’s a relief in a sense. The idea of glimps­ing the future is irre­sistible to all of us and I estab­lish pret­ty quick­ly that is not going to just be me spec­u­lat­ing, it’s going to be some hard sci­ence writ­ing based on a lot of report­ing, of talk­ing to experts or eye­wit­ness­es whose guess­es will be far more inter­est­ing than most peo­ples’.

The fact that it is far-fetched is real­ly use­ful because on the one hand real­ly it’s a remote pos­si­bil­i­ty that we would leave, that we would dis­ap­pear tomor­row. So peo­ple don’t go into a pan­ic over this book, and it real­ly gives peo­ple enough time to think about these things with­out pan­ick­ing about it. So that’s how this device works, and I think it’s been proven to be very effec­tive. I’m get­ting a lot more peo­ple to read it than just peo­ple who are hung up on the envi­ron­ment.

(more…)

Kasparov, The Chess Master, Takes on Putin: A New Yorker Podcast

in Current Affairs | October 2nd, 2007

David Rem­nick, the edi­tor of the New York­er and author of the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning book, Lenin’s Tomb, has recent­ly revis­it­ed the coun­try he knows so well. And what he has to show for it is an exten­sive piece on Gar­ry Kas­parov, arguably the best chess play­er in his­to­ry, and his dan­ger­ous move into the polit­i­cal are­na. In Vladimir Putin’s Rus­sia, nei­ther polit­i­cal dis­sent nor polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion goes over ter­ri­bly well. Since he took the reins of pow­er in 2000, more than a dozen jour­nal­ists crit­i­cal of Putin have turned up dead. So have some politi­cians. Then there was the dra­mat­ic case of Alexan­der Litvi­nenko, the for­mer KGB agent turned Putin crit­ic, who died of radi­a­tion poi­son­ing in Lon­don last fall. All of the cas­es remain “unre­solved.”

At great per­son­al and finan­cial cost, Kas­parov is try­ing to lay the foun­da­tion for a legit­i­mate polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion. Get­ting there, how­ev­er, won’t be easy. For one, Putin, hav­ing shored up Rus­si­a’s econ­o­my and nation­al psy­che, is immense­ly pop­u­lar, hav­ing upwards to an 80% pop­u­lar­i­ty rat­ing. Even the old dis­si­dent Alek­san­dr Solzhen­it­syn likes him. Then, there’s the fact that Putin has almost a tsarist, “L’État, c’est moi” kind of grip on pow­er. In a pod­cast­ed inter­view (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) that grew out of Rem­nick­’s arti­cle, Kas­parov talks about his expec­ta­tions for the next pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in Rus­sia, when Putin is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly required to cede pres­i­den­tial pow­ers to anoth­er politi­cian. Here, he tells Rem­nick that Putin will con­tin­ue call­ing the shots because, as he puts it, Rus­si­a’s polit­i­cal elite is so feck­less that they would “vote to make Putin’s dog the prime min­is­ter.” This strikes the lis­ten­er as a strange but time­ly com­ment, espe­cial­ly in light of Putin’s announce­ment yes­ter­day that he may seek to become Rus­si­a’s prime min­is­ter, which would essen­tial­ly give him the chance to con­tin­ue exer­cis­ing pow­er from what one diplo­mat has called “a par­al­lel struc­ture.” That’s a move that should prove hard for Kas­parov or any oth­er Putin oppo­nent to par­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

• The New York­er Mag­a­zine Cross­es the Dig­i­tal Divide
• The New York­er Mag­a­zine’s Famous Car­toons Now Avail­able on Pod­cast
• My Trip to Al Qae­da: A New York­er Video

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The Grey Video: Mixing The Beatles with Jay‑Z

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | October 1st, 2007

In 2004, Dan­ger Mouse released The Grey Album which lay­ered the rap­per Jay-Z’s The Black Album on top of The Bea­t­les’ White Album. Black and white makes grey.

Now, on YouTube, you can find The Grey Video, which exper­i­men­tal­ly brings Dan­ger Mouse’s con­cept to video. The video, cre­at­ed by two Swiss direc­tors, mesh­es clips from The Bea­t­les’ film A Hard Day’s Night with footage of Jay‑Z per­form­ing. Watch it below, and get more info on The Grey Album here. Also check our col­lec­tion of MP3 Music Blogs.

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The Elegant Universe

in Science, Video - Science | September 27th, 2007

PBS’s NOVA recent­ly aired a three-hour mini-series, The Ele­gant Uni­verse, that intro­duced TV view­ers to string the­o­ry — a rad­i­cal “the­o­ry of every­thing” that unites major laws of physics and offers a uni­fied expla­na­tion for every­thing that hap­pens in the uni­verse. The pro­gram was host­ed by Bri­an Green, a string the­o­rist who wrote a run­away best­selling book also called The Ele­gant Uni­verse (you can read an excerpt here). The pro­gram makes dif­fi­cult con­cepts quite gras­pable, part­ly with the help of dynam­ic com­put­er ani­ma­tion. And the best part is that you can now watch the mini-series any time you want online (just click here to get the videos). You can also access the com­plete descrip­tion of the show here.

PS: Here is a great heads up from a read­er. “A great com­ple­ment to the Ele­gant Uni­verse is the Ori­gins series on NOVA, part of which is also avail­able online. It details the cre­ation of life on earth.” The com­plete col­lec­tion of NOVA episodes can be found here. Thanks Allen for the good info.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

• Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion
• Cut­ting-Edge Physics on iTunes
• Has Stephen Hawk­ing Been Wrong For The Last 30 Years?
• Ein­stein’s E = mc2 Explained
• What Genius Looks Like at Zero Grav­i­ty
• William Gib­son, Father of Cyber­punk, Reads New Nov­el in Sec­ond Life

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Hannibal on iTunes: From the Classical World to Archaeology Today

in History, Stanford | September 26th, 2007

Let me elab­o­rate on an item that we touched upon very briefly ear­li­er this week. Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty has rolled out a new free course on iTunes (lis­ten here) that takes you inside the life and adven­tures of Han­ni­bal, the great Carthagin­ian mil­i­tary tac­ti­cian who maneu­vered his way across the Alps and stunned Roman armies in 218 BCE. Pre­sent­ed by Patrick Hunt, the author of the new­ly-released Ten Dis­cov­er­ies That Rewrote His­to­ry, the class also gives you glimpses into cut­ting-edge trends in mod­ern archae­ol­o­gy.

The course, orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed in Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies Pro­gram, will be rolled out in install­ments over the next sev­er­al weeks. Sep­a­rate­ly you can lis­ten to a stand­alone lec­ture that Hunt gave on Han­ni­bal short­ly before the start of the course. (Lis­ten on iTunes here.) For more cours­es like these, check out our pod­cast col­lec­tion of free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es.

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Course Descrip­tion for Han­ni­bal

“Han­ni­bal is a name that evoked fear among the ancient Romans for decades. His courage, cun­ning and intre­pid march across the dan­ger­ous Alps in 218 bce with his army and war ele­phants make for some of the most excit­ing pas­sages found in ancient his­tor­i­cal texts writ­ten by Poly­bius, Livy, and Appi­an. And they con­tin­ue to inspire his­to­ri­ans and archae­ol­o­gists today. The mys­tery of his exact route is still a top­ic of debate, one that has con­sumed Patrick Hunt (Direc­tor of Stanford’s Alpine Archae­ol­o­gy Project) for more than a decade.

This course exam­ines Hannibal’s child­hood and his young sol­dier­ly exploits in Spain. Then it fol­lows him over the Pyre­nees and into Gaul, the Alps, Italy, and beyond, exam­in­ing his vic­to­ries over the Romans, his bril­liance as a mil­i­tary strate­gist, and his lega­cy after the Punic Wars. Along the way, stu­dents will learn about archae­ol­o­gists’ efforts to retrace Hannibal’s jour­ney through the Alps and the cut­ting-edge meth­ods that they are using. Hunt has been on foot over every major Alpine pass and has now deter­mined the most prob­a­ble sites where archae­o­log­i­cal evi­dence can be found to help solve the mys­tery.”