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.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed - See our com­plete col­lec­tion of audio­books

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.

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.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed - Tell a Friend About Open Cul­ture — Rec­om­mend a New Pod­cast

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.

Weekly Wrap — June 30

in Uncategorized | June 30th, 2007

It’s a wrap for the week:

• Steven Col­bert Gives iPhone Zero Stars
• Phi­los­o­phy Bites
• Miles and Coltrane on YouTube: The Jazz Greats
• The Online Span­ish Edu­ca­tion Pro­gram
• 20 Pod­casts That Will Teach You Span­ish, French, Ital­ian and Ger­man (A Reprise)
• What Feed Read­ers Don’t See on Open Cul­ture

Philosophy Bites

in Philosophy | June 27th, 2007

Back when we start­ed out, we men­tioned a radio show — and now pod­cast — com­ing out of Stan­ford that offers a “down-to-earth and no-non­sense approach” to phi­los­o­phy that’s engag­ing, if not enter­tain­ing. It’s called Phi­los­o­phy Talk, and you can catch some of the old pro­grams on iTunes.

Now, about 6,000 miles and eight time zones away, anoth­er phi­los­o­phy pod­cast, Phi­los­o­phy Bites (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), has been launched in Eng­land by David Edmonds and Nigel War­bur­ton (see bios here). Inter­view­ing top philoso­phers, the two delve into some essen­tial philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions — what is the mean­ing of life? what is the nature of real­i­ty? what is evil?, etc. And then they get into some oth­er good ques­tions: Can philoso­phers con­tribute to pub­lic life, and is wine tast­ing sub­jec­tive?

The lat­est pod­cast (which can be accessed via the feed, but not yet via iTunes) fea­tures an inter­view with Alain de Bot­ton, who has man­aged to write snap­py best­sellers that tack­le philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions. It takes a rare writer to pull that off, and his books are def­i­nite­ly worth a look. After launch­ing his career with How Proust Can Change Your Life, he has more recent­ly pub­lished The Con­so­la­tions of Phi­los­o­phy and The Archi­tec­ture of Hap­pi­ness. And it is this last book that the lat­est pod­cast revolves around.

As a final note, Nigel War­bur­ton has also put out anoth­er pod­cast, Phi­los­o­phy: The Clas­sics (iTunes) in which he reads from a recent­ly pub­lished book with the same title. You may want to give it a lis­ten.

For more pod­casts along these lines, see our Arts & Cul­ture pod­cast col­lec­tion.

French Podcasts — Learn French

in Uncategorized | June 24th, 2007

Our col­lec­tion of pod­casts will help you start speak­ing Man­darin or Can­tonese. To learn more lan­guages, see our com­plete col­lec­tion of for­eign lan­guage les­son pod­casts.

• French for Begin­ners iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Fun, effec­tive lessons for begin­ners. Pro­vid­ed by the French Ecole.
• Le Jour­nal en français facile iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Night­ly news from RFI pre­sent­ed in slow­ly spo­ken French to assist you with your com­pre­hen­sion.
• Learn French by Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A well-reviewed series of lessons for begin­ners and those who want to brush up on their French.
• Learn French with Dai­ly Pod­casts iTunes Feed Web Site
  • These lessons are brought to you by French teach­ers from Paris. They are best suit­ed for those who already have some begin­ning French under their belts.
• Ma France iTunes Feed Web Site
  • The BBC offers 24 video pod­casts that will teach you French.
• Mali French Feed Web Site
  • The Peace Corps teach­es you some of the French spo­ken in Mali.
• The French Pod Class iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A very pop­u­lar col­lec­tion that teach­es stu­dents the French lan­guage and dif­fer­ent facets of French cul­ture.
• The Ver­b­cast — French Verbs by Relax­ation iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A four-week series of lessons that will allow you to refine your knowl­edge of French verbs.

English Podcasts — Learn English

in Uncategorized | June 24th, 2007

Our col­lec­tion of pod­casts will help you start get­ting com­fort­able in Eng­lish. To learn more lan­guages, see our com­plete col­lec­tion of for­eign lan­guage les­son pod­casts.

• Busi­ness Eng­lish iTunes Web Site
  • Learn the Eng­lish you will need to func­tion effec­tive­ly in an Amer­i­can busi­ness envi­ron­ment.
• Eng­lish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A very well liked col­lec­tion of ESL lessons. Over 100 episodes in the col­lec­tion.
• Eng­lish for Span­ish Speak­ers (’Por Fin Aprende Ingles’) iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Si ust­ed haya asis­ti­do al menos a un cur­so de ingles, y ust­ed nece­si­ta la opor­tu­nidad de escuchar al ingles y hablar el ingles, entonces ‘Por Fin Aprende Ingles’ es el pod­cast per­fec­to para ust­ed. Pre­sen­ta­do por Car­la Staufert-Sauvi­er, una pro­fe­so­ra de Mex­i­co, y Jade Lindquist, una pro­fe­so­ra de los EE UU.
• ESL Busi­ness News iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A week­ly pod­cast of inter­na­tion­al busi­ness news read in slow, clear Eng­lish. Lis­ten to the pod­cast and fol­low along in the accom­pa­ny­ing script.
• On Demand Eng­lish iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Dai­ly pod­casts that will teach you Eng­lish and Amer­i­can cus­toms. Well done.
• The Bob and Rob Show: Week­ly Eng­lish Lessons from a Yan­kee and a Brit iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Tak­ing a more uncon­ven­tion­al approach to teach­ing Eng­lish, this pro­gram uses humor to teach inter­me­di­ate-to-advanced stu­dents idioms, gram­mar, and slang in both Amer­i­can and Eng­lish fla­vors.