Podcasts from Top American Law Schools

in Law | March 19th, 2007

• Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty — Wash­ing­ton Col­lege of Law iTunes Feed Web Site
  • An eclec­tic col­lec­tion of legal pod­casts.

• Duke Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Lec­tures, pan­els, con­fer­ences, etc.

• George­town Uni­ver­si­ty — George­town Law iTunes Feed Web Site
  • One of the rich­er col­lec­tions.

• George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty
  • The Law and Eco­nom­ics Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Pro­duced by the Jour­nal of Law, Eco­nom­ics, and Pol­i­cy.
• Har­vard Law School
  • Medi­a­Berk­man by The Berk­man Cen­ter for Inter­net & Soci­ety iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Medi­a­Berk­man “fea­tures con­ver­sa­tions with and talks by lead­ing cyber-schol­ars, entre­pre­neurs, activists, and pol­i­cy­mak­ers as they explore top­ics such as the fac­tors that influ­ence knowl­edge cre­ation and dis­sem­i­na­tion in the dig­i­tal age; the char­ac­ter of pow­er as the worlds of gov­er­nance, busi­ness, cit­i­zen­ship and the media meet the inter­net; and the oppor­tu­ni­ties, role and lim­i­ta­tions of new tech­nolo­gies in learn­ing.”

• Lewis & Clarke Law School Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Pod­casts of speak­ers and events.

• Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Law School
  • Cen­ter for Inter­net and Soci­ety iTunes Web Site
    • These tech­nol­o­gy-focused lec­tures are giv­en by a diverse group of fac­ul­ty, many from uni­ver­si­ties oth­er than Stan­ford.
  • Pro­gram in Law, Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy iTunes Web Site
    • This pro­gram focus­es on the role that sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy play in the nation­al and glob­al are­nas. The issues dis­cussed in these pod­casts will inter­est stu­dents, legal pro­fes­sion­als, busi­ness­peo­ple, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, and the pub­lic at large.
  • The Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion Soci­ety for Law and Pol­i­cy iTunes Feed Web Site
    • The Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion Soci­ety for Law and Pol­i­cy is a nation­al orga­ni­za­tion com­prised of lawyers, law stu­dents, schol­ars, judges, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, and oth­er con­cerned indi­vid­u­als work­ing to ensure that fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of human dig­ni­ty, indi­vid­ual rights and lib­er­ties, gen­uine equal­i­ty, and access to jus­tice enjoy their right­ful, cen­tral place in Amer­i­can law.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Law School Fac­ul­ty iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A lit­tle bit of legal brain can­dy pre­sent­ed by the U Chica­go law fac­ul­ty.

• Yale Law School Feed Web Site
  • Pod­casts from one of Amer­i­ca’s finest law schools. Often fea­tures speech­es by vis­it­ing speak­ers.

Stay tuned — this page will be under con­tin­u­al and active devel­op­ment. It will grow as more law schools devel­op new pod­casts.

Bono, Richard Dawkins and Al Gore Speaking at TED

in Uncategorized | March 9th, 2007

Every year, a thou­sand “thought-lead­ers, movers and shak­ers” get togeth­er at a four-day con­fer­ence

called TED (which is short for Tech­nol­o­gy, Enter­tain­ment and Design). In past years, the list of speak­ers has ranged from Sergey Brin and Lar­ry Page to Bill Gates, to Her­bie Han­cock and Peter Gabriel, to Frank Gehry and Bil­ly Gra­ham. This year Bill Clin­ton, Paul Simon, and Lar­ry Lessig are set to speak. It almost goes with­out say­ing that not just any­one can attend such an event. You’ll need an invi­ta­tion for starters, plus $4400 to cov­er admis­sion fees. If you can look past the coun­try club­bish­ness of the event, then you may find it worth spend­ing time with the audio (iTunes — Feed) and video (iTunes — Feed) pod­casts of talks from recent con­fer­ences. Some “vod­casts” you’ll want to check out include: Bono, Peter Gabriel, Richard Dawkins, Mal­colm Glad­well, and Al Gore. (We’re not sure what to say about Tony Rob­bins.)

The Top 25 Educational Podcasts on iTunes

in Uncategorized | March 8th, 2007

“Is America Too Damn Religious?” (A Debate)

in Religion | March 7th, 2007

Intel­li­gence Squared (iTunes  Feed  Web Site), a new series of NPR broad­casts, has a rather unique
for­mat. It brings Oxford-style debates to Amer­i­ca, and it fea­tures lead­ing thinkers tak­ing dif­fer­ent posi­tions on hot-but­ton issues of our day. (You can get more pre­cise infor­ma­tion on the for­mat here.) There will be eight debates in total, all record­ed live, and each one revolves around three pan­elists argu­ing for, and three against, a “motion,” such as “We must tol­er­ate a nuclear Iran,” “Free­dom of expres­sion must include the license to offend,” and “A demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed Hamas is still a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion.” And then there is the provoca­tive top­ic of the most recent debate, “Is Amer­i­ca Too Damn Reli­gious?” This debate (see bios of par­tic­i­pants) was held at the Asia Soci­ety in New York City in Feb­ru­ary, and you can catch the full debate here (Real Play­er) or a con­densed ver­sion here (mp3).

See Open Cul­ture’s Pod­cast Col­lec­tions:

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School)

This American Life Goes Hollywood (or Something Like That)

in Media | March 5th, 2007

See Open Cul­ture’s Pod­cast Col­lec­tions:

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School)

Seymour Hersh’s Powerful Charge: US Backing Al-Qaeda Sympathizers to Counter Iran

in Current Affairs | March 1st, 2007

In the after­math of 9/11, the US began its assault on al-Qae­da and oth­er Sun­ni ter­ror­ist groups. Fast
for­ward to 2003: the US invades Iraq, in part because Hus­sein sup­pos­ed­ly has ties to al-Qae­da, and a new Shi­ite-led gov­ern­ment is even­tu­al­ly cre­at­ed. Now fast for­ward anoth­er cou­ple of years: we find that the Shi­ite gov­ern­ment is sud­den­ly get­ting too cozy with Iran, the major leader of the Shi­ite Mid­dle East. The Saud­is, the major Sun­ni pow­er in the region, get ner­vous. And so, too, are the hawks in Wash­ing­ton who fear a poten­tial­ly nuclear Iran. The result: the Bush admin­is­tra­tion is now look­ing to con­tain Shi­ite pow­er at all costs.

This “re-direc­tion” has involved devel­op­ing con­tin­gency plans for a mil­i­tary (most like­ly aer­i­al) assault on Iran. And, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, in con­junc­tion with the Saud­is, is even now back­ing (i.e. fun­nel­ing finan­cial aid to) rad­i­cal Sun­ni groups who oppose Shi­ite author­i­ty, even though they also amaz­ing­ly have ties with al-Qae­da. Bizarrely, we’re now indi­rect­ly help­ing the very ene­my that we ini­tial­ly set out to destroy. Or so that’s the claim of the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning jour­nal­ist Sey­mour Hersh, who famous­ly broke the sto­ries on My Lai and Abu Ghraib.

Her­sh’s claims are spelled out in a new arti­cle appear­ing in the lat­est edi­tion of The New York­er, which is well worth a read. (His oth­er New York­er pieces on the Iran attack plan appear here, here, and here.) You’ll also want to give a lis­ten to his ener­getic inter­view on NPR’s Fresh Air (iTunes — Feed — Mp3), where he cov­ers much of the same ground.

On a relat­ed note, we’d also refer you to a recent pro­gram aired by Open Source. It, too, deals with like­li­hood of a US inva­sion of Iran, and tries to fig­ure out whether the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s hard­en­ing rhetoric is sim­ply a risky nego­ti­a­tion strat­e­gy, a way to force the Ira­ni­ans to the table, or whether it’s a pre­lude to an almost cer­tain war. You can lis­ten here (Itunes — Mp3) or check out the relat­ed piece on the Open Source blog.

101 Early Wallace Stevens Poems on Free Audio

in Literature | February 28th, 2007

Here’s a quick lit­tle find for the poet­ry lover: A slew of ear­ly poems by Wal­lace Stevens, the great Amer­i­can poet, can now be down­loaded as pod­casts (iTunes). They include many clas­sics — Anec­dote of the Jar, The Emper­or of Ice Cream, Peter Quince at the Clavier, Sun­day Morn­ing, Thir­teen Ways of Look­ing at a Black­bird, and many oth­ers. Record­ed for Lib­riVox by Alan Drake, all poems are in the pub­lic domain.

Speak­ing of Wal­lace Stevens, you may want to give a lis­ten to a pod­cast that we high­light­ed here once before. It fea­tures the great lit­er­ary crit­ic Harold Bloom (see bio) teach­ing a sem­i­nar at Yale on “The Art of Read­ing a Poem” (iTunes — mp3). Here, Bloom takes his stu­dents through a poem by Wal­lace Stevens, Parts of a World,and moves between inter­pre­ta­tion and intrigu­ing per­son­al anec­dotes. If you want to hear a mas­ter at work, give a good lis­ten.

If you like what we’re doing here, please help spread the word and let oth­ers know what they can find on Open Cul­ture.

The Podcast Library

in Uncategorized | February 28th, 2007

100s of cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al pod­casts. Email a friend about Open
Cul­ture.

• Arts & Cul­ture Pod­casts
• Audio Book Pod­casts
• For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­casts
• News/Information Pod­casts
• Sci­ence Pod­casts
• Tech­nol­o­gy Pod­casts
• Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts — All
• Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts — Busi­ness School

Einstein’s E = mc2 Explained

in Science, Video - Science | February 28th, 2007

E = mc2. It’s hands-down the most well known equa­tion out there. But how many have the faintest idea what the equa­tion real­ly means? Not too long ago, PBS’ NOVA put togeth­er a “docu­d­ra­ma,” called Ein­stein’s Big Idea, which took a close look at how Ein­stein arrived at the equa­tion and what it means. Along with the pro­gram, NOVA pro­duced some relat­ed media resources, among which you’ll find a series of pod­casts (iTunes — Feed — mp3) fea­tur­ing 10 top physi­cists (includ­ing two Nobel Prize win­ners) who briefly explain the mean­ing and impor­tance of E = mc2. In addi­tion, and per­haps even bet­ter, they’ve post­ed an audio clip of Ein­stein him­self explain­ing what the equa­tion is all about. You’ll find many good resources here, so have a good look around.

If physics intrigues you, you should also check out a new Stan­ford course that’s being dis­trib­uted for free via video pod­cast. The course, Mod­ern The­o­ret­i­cal Physics: Quan­tum Entan­gle­ment, is pre­sent­ed by Leonard Susskind, whom many con­sid­er the father of string the­o­ry, a con­tro­ver­sial inno­va­tion in physics that squares quan­tum the­o­ry with rel­a­tiv­i­ty and explains the nature of all mat­ter and forces. Now, when Susskind dis­cuss­es quan­tum entan­gle­ment, he is sure­ly get­ting into some heady, cut­ting-edge stuff. But the good thing is that the very pop­u­lar course was pre­sent­ed through Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies Pro­gram (where I work, just to put my cards on the table), and was geared toward the gen­er­al pub­lic. The course is expect­ed to last a full year, and it should result in 30 free two-hour lec­tures, which will all be grad­u­al­ly post­ed online. You can find a more detailed course descrip­tion here.

The Big Picture: Who Won and Lost in Iraq

in Current Affairs | February 27th, 2007