Learning the Languages of the New World Powers

in Language Lessons | February 18th, 2007

Accord­ing to a much dis­cussed report by Gold­man Sachs, the economies of Brazil, Rus­sia, India, and Chi­na — or what they col­lec­tive­ly call the BRICs — are rapid­ly grow­ing and could over­shad­ow today’s major eco­nom­ic pow­ers (includ­ing the US) by 2050. What does that mean for you? One thing is for sure: To stay com­pet­i­tive in our glob­al­ized world, you’ll need to know more than Eng­lish. And you’ll be par­tic­u­lar­ly well served if you can speak the lan­guages of the BRICs.

Over the com­ing week, we’ll point you to pod­casts that will teach you some Por­tuguese, Russ­ian, Hin­di and Chi­nese. The pod­casts are all free, and they make learn­ing con­ve­nient and fun. Our cov­er­age will start with Brazil and work its way through the acronym.

If you need an iPod to lis­ten to our pod­casts, check out our new store on Ama­zon.

Part 1: Brazil­ian Por­tuguese

Brazil is South Amer­i­ca’s sleep­ing giant. Expec­ta­tions of this large, resource-rich coun­try

have always been high, and while the opti­mistic sce­nar­ios haven’t panned out so far, the coun­try’s for­tunes may be about to change. Accord­ing to the Gold­man Sachs report, Brazil’s econ­o­my could over­take Italy by 2025; France by 2031; and the UK and Ger­many by 2036. There may be obsta­cles and detours along the way. But, for now, things seem to be inch­ing in the right direc­tion. And, no mat­ter how things go, Brazil remains an out­stand­ing place to trav­el, and, for that rea­son alone, it’s a good idea to pick up some Por­tuguese.

Once a colony of Por­tu­gal, Brazil is the only South Amer­i­can coun­try that offi­cial­ly speaks Por­tuguese. But because Brazil’s pop­u­la­tion is so large (182,000,000), it turns out that Por­tuguese is the dom­i­nant lan­guage on the con­ti­nent, although just bare­ly. (51% speak Por­tuguese v. 49% Span­ish.) The Por­tuguese spo­ken by Brazil­ians is not quite the same as the ver­sion spo­ken in Por­tu­gal itself. You’ll find dif­fer­ences in pro­nun­ci­a­tion, into­na­tion, spelling, vocab­u­lary, gram­mar, etc.

Today, we’re high­light­ing three series of podcasts/mp3’s that will get you up to speed:

First, we have Brazil­ian Por­tuguese. It’s a home­grown intro­duc­tion to Brazil­ian Por­tuguese, which will teach you the dif­fer­ences between the lan­guage spo­ken in Brazil and that in Por­tu­gal, and it will also give you an intro­duc­tion to Brazil­ian cul­ture. Mp3s for lessons 1–16 can be found here; audio files for lessons 17 and beyond can be accessed here. (The lat­ter ones can also be locat­ed on iTunes.) Just as a gen­er­al note, the pod­cast qual­i­ty improves as the lessons get more advanced. So keep that in mind.

Sec­ond, we amaz­ing­ly stum­bled upon series of intro­duc­to­ry lessons, col­lec­tive­ly called Por­tuguese Pro­gram­mat­ic Course, that was put togeth­er by the US For­eign Ser­vice, and they’re appar­ent­ly now in the pub­lic domain. From this page, you can down­load pdf text files that accom­pa­ny relat­ed audio files that you’ll need to down­load and unzip. The For­eign Ser­vice approach to teach­ing lan­guages is gen­er­al­ly very well regard­ed. Lan­guage lovers will def­i­nite­ly want to check out the full col­lec­tion of For­eign Ser­vice lan­guage lessons here.

Third, we have “Ta Fal­a­do: Brazil­ian Por­tuguese Pro­nun­ci­a­tion for Span­ish Speak­ers” (iTunes Feed Web Site). This pod­cast is pro­duced by the Lan­guage Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­ter in the Depart­ment of Span­ish and Por­tuguese at UT-Austin, and it helps stu­dents who know some Span­ish make the tran­si­tion to speak­ing Por­tuguese.

Final­ly, if you’d like to take things to the next lev­el, then you can always check out some more com­pre­hen­sive lan­guage learn­ing sys­tems out on the mar­ket. We’ve list­ed a few in our Ama­zon store.

Next, Part 2: Learn­ing Russ­ian.

See our com­plete col­lec­tion of For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­casts. It now cov­ers 17 lan­guages.

Is America Broken?: A Talk with The Economist’s New Editor-in-Chief

in Media | February 16th, 2007

Even if you don’t agree with its Euro con­ser­v­a­tive pos­ture, The
Econ­o­mist always comes off as

emi­nent­ly ratio­nal and sen­si­ble when
grap­pling with polit­i­cal issues, and cer­tain­ly unwill­ing to put spin
ahead of good report­ing, which sep­a­rates it from many of its Amer­i­can
coun­ter­parts. This judi­cious­ness comes across in a talk giv­en last week
by John Mick­leth­wait, the mag­a­zine’s new­ly appoint­ed Edi­tor-in-Chief. (Access audio ver­sions here.) Inter­viewed by Orville Schell, Dean of the Grad­u­ate School of Jour­nal­ism at
UC-Berke­ley,
Mick­leth­wait cov­ers a lot of ground, but spends a good deal of time
con­tem­plat­ing Amer­i­ca’s role in the world, and par­tic­u­lar­ly whether
Amer­i­ca’s inter­na­tion­al lead­er­ship is now irre­triev­ably bro­ken. His com­mon sense answers pro­vide no red
meat for any­one on the left or right. But they’re thought­ful, and worth your time. (Just as an fyi, his talk does­n’t get start­ed until about 10 min­utes in, and he does­n’t get to inter­na­tion­al affairs until about the 29th minute.) Final­ly, on a relat­ed note, you may want to explore The Econ­o­mist’s rel­a­tive­ly new series of pod­casts: iTunes  Feed

For more pod­casts like it, see Open Cul­ture’s col­lec­tion of News & Infor­ma­tion Pod­casts and our Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

Business School Podcast Collection — Download MBA Podcasts and other Business Podcasts

in Business | February 16th, 2007

Please vis­it our updat­ed col­lec­tion of Free Busi­ness Cours­es Online and relat­ed busi­ness resources.…

• Colum­bia Busi­ness School: Ideas at Work iTunes Feed Web Site

• Dar­d­en School of Busi­ness (The Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia) iTunes — Feed — Web Site

• Entre­pre­neur­ial Thought Lead­ers (Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty) iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A series of week­ly lec­tures on entre­pre­neur­ship joint­ly spon­sored by sev­er­al pro­grams at Stan­ford. Fea­tures speak­ers from Google, Genen­tech, and Juniper Net­works, among oth­ers.
  • Fuqua School of Busi­ness (Duke Uni­ver­si­ty)iTunes Web Site
    • One of the rich­er col­lec­tions out there.
  • HBR Idea­Cast (Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty) iTunes Feed Web Site
    • From the Har­vard Busi­ness Review, this col­lec­tion fea­tures lead­ing thinkers in the busi­ness and man­age­ment world.
• • Tomorrow’s Chal­lenges present top-ranked busi­ness school IMD’s lat­est research results. Fac­ul­ty dis­cuss crit­i­cal busi­ness top­ics such as lead­er­ship, inno­va­tion, change and gov­er­nance. See www.imd.ch/tc for in depth arti­cles.IMD Tomorrow’s Chal­lenges Pod­cast Audio Feed Video Feed
• Lead­er­cast iTunes Feeds
• Knowl­edge­cast iTunes Feeds
  • These two pod­casts come out of one of Europe’s elite busi­ness pro­grams.
• Knowledge@Wharton Audio Arti­cles (Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia) iTunes Feed Web Site
  • An off­shoot of the school’s online busi­ness jour­nal called “Knowledge@Wharton.” Pro­vides “audio arti­cles” that­fea­ture high-pro­file exec­u­tives and fac­ul­ty, includ­ing sev­er­al that high­light stock mar­ket guru Jere­my Siegel.
• Lon­don Busi­ness School iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A series of audio and video pod­casts shar­ing the lat­est in news and thought lead­er­ship from the Lon­don Busi­ness School, which is part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don.
• MBA Pod­cast­er iTunes Feed Web Site Infor­ma­tion and advice for those look­ing to get into b‑school.
• McK­in­sey High Tech Pod­casts iTunes Web Site
  • Obvi­ous­ly McK­in­sey is not a b‑school, but it’s the big kahu­na con­sult­ing firm and they put out some infor­ma­tive pod­casts. Here are ones from their high tech prac­tice.
• Sloan School of Man­age­ment (MIT) iTunes Feed Web Site
• Stan­ford Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness iTunes Web Site
  • This col­lec­tion notably includes sev­er­al pod­casts that describe how to opti­mize your appli­ca­tion to busi­ness school.
• Times Online MBA Pod­casts iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Some of the world’s lead­ing busi­ness thinkers pro­vide the lat­est think­ing in eco­nom­ics, man­age­ment, finance, strat­e­gy and mar­ket­ing.
• Tuck School of Busi­ness at Dart­mouth, Cen­ter for Dig­i­tal Strate­gies iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Radio Tuck brings you ground-break­ing dig­i­tal inter­views, straight from the busi­ness lead­ers of today.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Among oth­er talks, you’ll encounter talks by Nobel Prize win­ner Gary Beck­er and also Steven Levitt, the co-author of the recent best­seller Freako­nom­ics.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, Ross School of Busi­ness iTunes Web Site
• Yale School of Man­age­ment iTunes Web Site

A Mother Lode of Public Radio Podcasts

in Uncategorized | February 14th, 2007

This is a pod­cast com­pi­la­tion that we almost wish we had put togeth­er. The “Pub­lic Radio Pod­cast Cat­a­logue” amaz­ing­ly gives you access to over 900 pub­lic radio pro­grams pod­cast­ed from around the globe, all of which are bro­ken down into neat cat­e­gories – Busi­ness, Cul­ture, Lit­er­a­ture, Music, News, Pol­i­tics, etc. Quite con­ve­nient­ly, the orga­niz­ers of this col­lec­tion have pro­vid­ed a link to each indi­vid­ual pod­cast feed. So you only need to find the pod­cast you like – whether its Fresh Air, Car Talk, BBC News, or what­ev­er pod­cast exists in the pub­lic radio uni­verse – then paste the feed link into a pod­cast­ing pro­gram such as iTunes or Juice, and you’ll be on your way to down­load­ing, sync­ing and absorb­ing end­less amounts of enlight­en­ing radio con­tent.

See Open Cul­ture’s pod­cast col­lec­tions: Arts & Cul­ture;

Audio Books; For­eign Lan­guage Lessons;

News & Infor­ma­tion; Tech­nol­o­gy;

Uni­ver­si­ty — Gen­er­al; and

Uni­ver­si­ty — Busi­ness School.

Welcome to the Islamic Reformation (and How to Make Sense of bin Laden)

in Religion | February 13th, 2007

The War of the Worlds on Podcast: How H.G. Wells and Orson Welles Riveted A Nation

in Books, Literature, Media, Most Popular | February 8th, 2007

Today, by pop­u­lar demand, we’re run­ning an updat­ed ver­sion of one of our more pop­u­lar posts to date. Enjoy…

At has­tened speeds dur­ing the past year, we have seen book lovers record­ing home­grown audio­books and post­ing them on sites like Lib­rivox (see our col­lec­tion of free audio­books here). For obvi­ous copy­right rea­sons, these audio texts large­ly come from the pub­lic domain, and, yes, they’re some­times of uneven qual­i­ty. Some good, some okay. Among the recent releas­es, you’d expect to find great clas­si­cal works — the major plays by Shake­speare, the essen­tial trea­tis­es by Pla­to and oth­er philoso­phers, etc. — and you do get some of those. How­ev­er, far more often you get texts by more mod­ern writ­ers who wrote with­in the thriller, sci fi and adven­ture gen­res. Here, I’m talk­ing about Wash­ing­ton Irv­ing, Robert Louis Steven­son, Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and H.G. Wells. (Find these pod­casts here.)

It seems rather fit­ting that Wells, the father of sci­ence fic­tion, would be among the first to have his writ­ings dig­i­tal­ly record­ed and dis­trib­uted. Nowa­days, you can down­load, sync and lis­ten to his major works – The New Accel­er­a­tor (mp3), The Invis­i­ble Man (iTunes — feed), The Time Machine (iTunes — feed), and The War of the Worlds (iTunes). But what’s bet­ter than all of this, at least in our minds, is this vin­tage gem …

Here you can down­load the ver­sion of The War of the Worlds that Orson Welles famous­ly adapt­ed and aired on nation­al radio in Octo­ber 1938. Pre­sent­ed so that it sound­ed like an actu­al news broad­cast, the Orson Welles ver­sion was mis­tak­en for truth by many lis­ten­ers who caught the pro­gram mid­stream (more info here), and, soon enough, they found them­selves flee­ing an unfold­ing Mar­t­ian inva­sion, run­ning down into their base­ments with guns cocked and ready to fire. You can catch the mp3 ver­sion of the famous Welles record­ing here (and also alter­na­tive­ly here). Have fun with this broad­cast. It’s a clas­sic.

Relat­ed con­tent: For more old time, sci-fi radio broad­casts, check out this nice col­lec­tion on iTunes.

Also see: Vin­tage Radio Archive: The Lone Ranger, Abbott & Costel­lo, and Bob Hope

Sub­scribe to Our Feed and peruse our col­lec­tion of Free Audio­book Pod­casts

New Italian and German Audio Lessons (Plus English as a Second Language)

in Language Lessons | February 6th, 2007

Here’s a good catch by one of our read­ers: The folks at Radio Lin­gua

Inter­na­tion­al, who pro­duce the very pop­u­lar pod­cast, “Cof­fee Break Span­ish,” haven’t wast­ed their momen­tum. They have recent­ly released two new pod­casts that will help you learn Ital­ian (iTunes Feed Web Site) and Ger­man (iTunes Feed Web Site). Each pod­cast teach­es you smalls bits of the lan­guage over the course of 20 weeks, giv­ing you the vocab­u­lary you’ll need to trav­el around Italy and Ger­many and get the most out of it.

Mean­while, it’s worth men­tion­ing that our col­lec­tion of ESL pod­casts is get­ting a bit rich­er. Here are the titles that you’ll now find:

• Busi­ness Eng­lish iTunes Web Site
• Eng­lish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
• Eng­lish for Span­ish Speak­ers iTunes Feed Web Site
• ESL Busi­ness News iTunes Feed Web Site
• The Bob and Rob Show: Week­ly Eng­lish Lessons from a Yan­kee and a Brit iTunes Feed Web Site

To learn more lan­guages, please vis­it Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & Beyond.

New Cory Doctorow Book Available for Free Download (Under Creative Commons)

in Books, Literature | February 5th, 2007

A cou­ple weeks ago, we told you about
45 recent­ly pub­lished books, most of them of very high
qual­i­ty, that you can down­load for free under a Cre­ative Com­mons license. Giv­en the exu­ber­ant response to that post, it seemed worth men­tion­ing that Cory Doc­torow — the sci-fi author, Boing­Bo­ing blog­ger, and advo­cate of open­ing up copy­right restric­tions — is now releas­ing a new col­lec­tion of short sto­ries called Over­clocked. As usu­al, you can buy the book, down­load the short sto­ries for free, or do both. It’s your call. He fig­ures he’ll win either way. And, by the way, you can freely down­load the rest of Doc­torow’s books here.

Now, final­ly, it’s worth point­ing out that the Boing­Bo­ing (iTunes — feed) crowd has a pod­cast worth check­ing out. The lat­est episode — the first 10 min­utes, in fact — gives you some of Doc­torow’s thoughts on what the future of e‑books looks like, the pros and cons, etc.  Cer­tain­ly worth a lis­ten. Enjoy.

A Brief Audio History of Iraq

in History | February 2nd, 2007

NPR’s Fresh Air Now Available as a Podcast

in Media | February 2nd, 2007

A quick fyi: As of this week, Fresh Air, the pop­u­lar pro­gram host­ed by Ter­ry Gross, is now avail­able as a free pod­cast on iTunes or via feed. Along with Fresh Air, NPR has just issued many oth­er new pod­cast offer­ings, includ­ing Xeni Tech, a dai­ly pro­gram fea­tur­ing Boing­Bo­ing blog­ger Xeni Jardin, who explores the inter­sec­tion between tech­nol­o­gy and con­tem­po­rary cul­ture (iTunes — Feed). For the com­plete list­ing of NPR pod­casts, see this web page or vis­it NPR’s main page on iTunes.