Straight Talk about Stem Cells: Another Stanford Course via Podcast

in Online Courses, Science, Stanford | July 25th, 2007

Last week, we men­tioned The Future of the Inter­net. This week it’s anoth­er course avail­able as a free pod­cast : Straight Talk About Stem Cells (iTunes).

The course was taught by Christo­pher Scott, the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Stan­ford’s Pro­gram on Stem Cells in Soci­ety and the author of Stem Cell Now: An Intro­duc­tion to the Com­ing Med­ical Rev­o­lu­tion. Orig­i­nal­ly taught with­in Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram, the course was designed with the gen­er­al pub­lic in mind. So it should be quite acces­si­ble. You can now down­load three of the total five lec­tures. Two more will be com­ing soon. (Get it on iTunes here.) Here is the orig­i­nal course descrip­tion for the course.

Biol­o­gy’s Brave New World: Straight Talk about Stem Cells

No area of sci­ence holds such promise for treat­ing dis­ease and improv­ing human lives as stem cell research. But no area of sci­ence caus­es such fun­da­men­tal eth­i­cal con­cern and such fero­cious polit­i­cal con­flict. In this short course, stu­dents will learn the fun­da­men­tals of stem cell biol­o­gy, and study how these pow­er­ful cells could be used to make func­tion­al organs, treat dia­betes or repair spinal cord injuries. With the sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy firm­ly in hand, we will jour­ney into the deep reach­es of the con­tro­ver­sy and exam­ine the inter­na­tion­al explo­sion of stem cell research and how law and pol­i­cy are affect­ing long-held Amer­i­can dom­i­nance in cell biol­o­gy. New sci­ence often pro­vokes a rede­f­i­n­i­tion of eth­i­cal stan­dards. Stem cells have reignit­ed the debate about the embryo, abor­tion, and sci­ence run amok. We will leave the shrill rhetoric behind, dis­cussing the ques­tion at the heart of the debate: How, as a soci­ety, do we bal­ance our respon­si­bil­i­ties to the unborn and the sick?

Check out our larg­er col­lec­tion of free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es.

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Filling the Idea Void in Iraq

in Current Affairs, Politics | July 23rd, 2007

We have hit bot­tom in Iraq. And you know it because the debates over Iraq (whether the war was just, whether we planned it ade­quate­ly, whether we have a mean­ing­ful exist strat­e­gy, etc.) have ground to a halt. The big defend­ers of the war effort have most­ly gone silent, or they’re no longer tak­en seri­ous­ly, and what we’re left with is a deficit of ideas all around. There are those who talk about stay­ing in Iraq, but can’t artic­u­late a cred­i­ble strat­e­gy for mov­ing for­ward. And those who talk about leav­ing, but can’t out­line how we’ll leave Iraq in a moral­ly defen­si­ble posi­tion. We hear a lot in the way of plat­i­tudes, lit­tle in the way of sub­stance.

This Fresh Air inter­view (stream it here) with Thomas Ricks, author of the best­seller Fias­co: The Amer­i­can Mil­i­tary Adven­ture in Iraq, helps fill the idea void a bit. (His book, by the way, comes out in paper­back lat­er this week.) Hav­ing recent­ly returned from Iraq, Ricks talks about the real options now avail­able to the US, and what steps the Bush admin­is­tra­tion will like­ly take dur­ing its last 18 months. Also, he dis­cuss­es how the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary has changed its m.o. in Iraq. Gone are the days when pol­i­tics dic­tat­ed a sun­ny out­look and no real plans. Now, adults are run­ning the show, and they’re get­ting a good deal more real­is­tic and prag­mat­ic. But even they rec­og­nize that this new­found wis­dom is com­ing per­haps too late.

Relat­ed Note: George Pack­er, the main jour­nal­ist who cov­ered the war effort for The New York­er, has recent­ly rolled out a blog for the mag­a­zine. It’s called “Inter­est­ing Times” and it’s sure to help fill the idea void as well. Give it a look here.

Want to down­load free cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties? Check out this new pod­cast col­lec­tion.

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Sneak Preview of Nobel Winner’s Next Novel

in Books, Literature | July 19th, 2007

A quick heads up: You can read an excerpt from J.M. Coet­zee’s upcom­ing nov­el, Diary of a Bad Year, over at The New York Review of Books. The entire nov­el will be pub­lished in Jan­u­ary 2008. And, in case you weren’t already aware of it, Coet­zee won the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture in 2003. You can get more back­ground infor­ma­tion on the South African author here as well as reviews of his nov­els here.

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Radio Lab: A Great Science Podcast

in Podcasts, Science | July 17th, 2007

Radi­o­Lab, a sci­ence radio show cre­at­ed by WNYC in New York, is a lit­tle unusu­al for a pub­lic radio show. It comes out in short sea­sons of about five episodes. Each episode address­es a par­tic­u­lar ques­tion in sci­ence through a wide lens–I found their most recent­ly pod­cast show, on Moral­i­ty, to be par­tic­u­lar­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. We’re adding the new show to our col­lec­tion of Sci­ence Pod­casts. Check it out for your­self!

Radi­o­Lab (Site, iTunes, Feed)

The Decline and Fall of the Roman (and American?) Empire: A Free Audiobook

in Audio Books, Books, Current Affairs, History, Literature | July 13th, 2007

Edward Gib­bon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – It’s a major work of the Enlight­en­ment, a book that shaped how we mod­erns write his­to­ry (and, for that mat­ter, how we aspire to write in the Eng­lish lan­guage), and it’s now avail­able as a free pod­cast thanks to Lib­rivox. Or at least Vol­ume 1 is. With a run­time of almost 20 hours, this audio­book — click to access indi­vid­ual files or the full zip file — will make it so that you’re not look­ing for the remain­ing vol­umes any time soon. But don’t wor­ry they’re even­tu­al­ly com­ing.

Pub­lished first in 1776, just as the US declared its inde­pen­dence from Eng­land, Gib­bon’s Decline and Fall looked to offer an empir­i­cal expla­na­tion for why Ancient Rome fell as a pow­er, and he gen­er­al­ly point­ed to a decline in civic virtue among its cit­i­zen­ry (why both­er fight­ing the Empire’s wars when you can get mer­ce­nar­ies to do it?) and to the rise of Chris­tian­i­ty (why wor­ry about Rome when a bet­ter life, an eter­nal after­life, awaits you?).

In part, Gib­bon’s work has endured because it speaks to ques­tions that mod­ern pow­ers have on their minds. What brings Empires down, and what (implic­it­ly) allows them to endure? These ques­tions have a cer­tain amount of rel­e­vance these days in an anx­ious US. And indeed Gib­bon’s name was imme­di­ate­ly invoked in a recent pod­cast that asked whether Amer­i­ca, today’s empire, is on the brink. (Click to lis­ten.) The par­al­lels between Gib­bon’s Rome and the con­tem­po­rary Unit­ed States have also been direct­ly explored by the pro­lif­ic, young Har­vard his­to­ri­an, Niall Fer­gu­son. You may want to check out his Octo­ber 2006 piece in Van­i­ty Fair, Empire Falls. And depend­ing on what you think, you can give time to his two books on Empire — the first (and bet­ter) one focus­es on the British Empire, and a sec­ond one devotes itself to the US.

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Elvis Costello: The First Ten Years Podcast

in Music | July 13th, 2007

A quick heads up for Elvis Costel­lo fans: In this ten-part pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), Elvis reflects on the first 10 years of his career, tak­ing lis­ten­ers on a tour that looks back at “his child­hood, musi­cal influ­ences, singing, song­writ­ing, chang­ing his name, record­ing, Nick Lowe, the Attrac­tions, the hits, the miss­es, get­ting arrest­ed and much more.” So far, 4 of the 10 seg­ments have been released; the oth­ers will be rolled out over the remain­der of the summer.For more pod­casts along these lines, check out our Music Pod­cast Col­lec­tion as well as our Arts & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

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Ten Podcasts to Build Your Vocabulary

in English Language, Podcasts | July 12th, 2007

Recent­ly Mer­ri­am-Web­ster announced that they’re adding “ginor­mous,” “speed dat­ing” and a few oth­er gems to the lat­est edi­tion of their dic­tio­nary. In their hon­or, we present ten pod­casts to help you expand your vocab­u­lary. Enjoy!

• Mer­ri­am-Web­ster’s Word of the Day (Feed, Site)
• Pod­ic­tionary (Feed, iTunes, Site)
• The Word Nerds (iTunes, Site)
• NPR: On Words with John Cia­r­di (iTunes, Site)
• KPBS: A Way With Words (Feed, iTunes, Site)
• Just Vocab­u­lary (iTunes, Site)
• WordS­mart Word­Cast (Feed, iTunes, Site)
• Learn Eng­lish: Very Vocab­u­lary (iTunes, Site)
• Test Prep Vocab­u­lary (Feed, Site)
• The Prince­ton Review Vocab­u­lary Minute (iTunes, Feed, Site)

How Open Culture Can Enrich Your Summer Travels

in Uncategorized | July 12th, 2007

We’re now in prime vaca­tion sea­son, and so we fig­ured that we’d high­light sev­er­al ways in which Open Cul­ture can enrich your sum­mer trav­els — all for free.

• First and fore­most, if you’re trav­el­ing to anoth­er coun­try, and if you want to speak the moth­er tongue, then spend some time with our col­lec­tion of for­eign lan­guage les­son pod­casts. The col­lec­tion cur­rent­ly cov­ers over 25 lan­guages, so there is a very good chance that we can meet your trav­el needs.

• Next, if you plan to do a good long road trip, you should sort through our col­lec­tion of audio­book pod­casts. Our list, which gives you access to 90 mas­ter­pieces in lit­er­a­ture and clas­sics, can help the long trav­el hours effort­less­ly slide by.

• A vaca­tion is always a good time to learn some­thing new and worth­while. Here are five cours­es from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, avail­able as free pod­casts, that were cre­at­ed with the life­long learn­er in mind. So they were essen­tial­ly cus­tom-made for you. (You can also find here a long list of free cours­es from oth­er major uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing MIT, Berke­ley, Har­vard, Oxford, and Johns Hop­kins.)

• Look­ing for some free Mozart, Beethoven, or Miles Davis to enrich your expe­ri­ence? Find free pod­casts in our Music sec­tion. See our com­plete col­lec­tion of pod­casts here.

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Watch “Live Earth” Live (Now)

in Current Affairs, Music | July 6th, 2007

Unless you’ve been liv­ing in a bunker some­where, you’ve prob­a­bly heard about Live Earth, a 24-hour, 7‑continent con­cert that’s been orga­nized to raise aware­ness about glob­al warm­ing and to inspire action on the envi­ron­men­tal front. You can watch these shows live by click­ing here. The con­certs in Asia are already under­way, and the West­ern Hemi­sphere shows will start tomor­row (Sat­ur­day). Thanks to Al Gore for pro­mot­ing this event and this impor­tant larg­er cause.

Radio Open Source Goes Radio Silent

in Uncategorized | July 5th, 2007

As we cov­er the world of enlight­ened pod­casts, we inevitably uncov­er ones that become our per­son­al favorites, and this was the case with Radio Open Source (iTunes Feed Web Site). Host­ed by Christo­pher Lydon, the show had a great knack for mak­ing heady issues engag­ing and acces­si­ble to a wider audi­ence, and that was main­ly because the show took its lead from the Radio Open Source blog and its active online com­mu­ni­ty. Rather unique­ly, Lydon and his crew let the online com­mu­ni­ty help pro­duce the show, which meant let­ting the audi­ence sug­gest top­ics and guests for future pro­grams. It was a nov­el con­cept that yield­ed some very good results.

Any­way, as you can tell, we’re talk­ing about things in the past tense, and that’s because the show announced last week that they’ve run out of fund­ing and gone on a sum­mer hia­tus. They’re sort­ing things out and hop­ing to return this fall with new mon­ey and per­haps a new broadcasting/podcasting approach. We hope to see them back in action soon. In mean­time, we’d encour­age you look back through their media archive — iTunes Feed Web Site — to get a feel for what the fall may bring.