Lifehack for Learning Foreign Languages

in Language Lessons | January 31st, 2007

See our com­plete col­lec­tion How to Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & 37 Oth­er Lan­guages,

Here is a quick “life­hack” for you. You can now learn for­eign lan­guages and stay cur­rent on pol­i­tics all at once. How so? By tak­ing advan­tage of a smart pod­cast con­cept being used by French and Ger­man broad­cast­ers. Radio France Inter­na­tionale (RFI) issues a dai­ly pod­cast called Le Jour­nal en français facile (iTunes — feed — web site), which deliv­ers the night­ly inter­na­tion­al news in slow and easy-to-under­stand French. Along the same lines, the Ger­man media com­pa­ny Deutsche Welle (which puts out many great lan­guage and music pod­casts) also has its own night­ly news pro­gram — Langsam gesproch­ene Nachricht­en (iTunes — feed — web site). It’s essen­tial­ly the same con­cept: infor­ma­tive news pre­sent­ed in very sim­ple Ger­man, and, in this case, it’s spo­ken very slow­ly.

Now, what’s very nice about these pro­grams is that they also pro­vide a writ­ten tran­script of the spo­ken word. So you can read along as you lis­ten and make sure that you’re real­ly com­pre­hend­ing. (See tran­scripts in French and Ger­man). Even cool­er, with the Ger­man ver­sion, if you have a video iPod, you can read the tran­script on your lit­tle portable screen. (See direc­tions).

Final­ly, check out this off­beat sug­ges­tion sent our way by a read­er: Nun­tii Lati­ni (mp3 — web site) is “a week­ly review of world news in Clas­si­cal Latin, the only inter­na­tion­al broad­cast of its kind in the world, pro­duced by YLE, the Finnish Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny.”

Relat­ed Resource: See our arti­cle called “Cof­fee Break Span­ish & The Threat to Tra­di­tion­al Media”

Digital MBA: America’s Best Business Schools on Your iPod

in Business, Economics, Most Popular | January 29th, 2007

Is it some­thing of an odd­i­ty to see the words of famous philoso­phers and his­to­ri­ans get­ting dig­i­tized

and down­loaded to iPods every­where? Sure it is, and that’s why we gen­er­al­ly like talk­ing about human­i­ties pod­casts. But is it strange to think of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing busi­ness schools carv­ing out a space on iTunes and bring­ing their ideas to an inter­na­tion­al audi­ence? Hard­ly. For schools whose suc­cess depends on being close­ly tied to the pulse of Amer­i­can and glob­al audi­ences, get­ting involved with pod­cast­ing is a no brain­er.

Let’s take a brief tour of what Amer­i­ca’s top b‑schools are up to these days, start­ing with The Whar­ton School of The Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia. Launched about a year ago, this pod­cast col­lec­tion (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) is an off­shoot of the school’s online busi­ness jour­nal called “Knowledge@Wharton.” And what you get here are “audio arti­cles” that fea­ture high-pro­file exec­u­tives and fac­ul­ty, includ­ing sev­er­al that high­light stock mar­ket guru Jere­my Siegel. Some of these pod­casts focus on time­less b‑school issues (strat­e­gy, inno­va­tion, merg­ers, alliances, etc.). Oth­ers explore more time­ly ques­tions: New Mod­els for TV and Inter­net, What Makes an Online Com­mu­ni­ty Tick?, and Which New Tech Com­pa­nies Are Inno­vat­ing Most?. Most are worth your time.

From Philadel­phia, we move to Har­vard in Cam­bridge. This pod­cast col­lec­tion, known as HBR Idea­Cast (iTunes  Feed), is also close­ly aligned with the school’s busi­ness jour­nal, the famed Har­vard Busi­ness Review. And, here again, you get well-pro­duced audio seg­ments that offer insights on key issues in today’s busi­ness world, whether it’s how to do busi­ness in Chi­na, how to be an effec­tive and resilient leader, or how to adapt to very new trends in e‑commerce.

Mov­ing south to the Research Tri­an­gle, we vis­it Duke’s Fuqua School of Busi­ness (iTunes — Web Site), which has the begin­nings of what promis­es to be a strong audio col­lec­tion. While you’ll want to give the most time to the fair­ly robust Dis­tin­guished Speak­er Series, you may want to peruse the MBA Lead­er­ship and Mar­ket­ing Expe­ri­ence series as well. Also in the same gen­er­al vicin­i­ty is anoth­er col­lec­tion worth a good look. It’s from the Dar­d­en School of Busi­ness at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia (iTunes — Feed — Web Site)

By now, you prob­a­bly have a good sense of what you can gen­er­al­ly expect to find in these col­lec­tions. So let’s briefly leave you with two last ones. First, the com­pi­la­tion assem­bled by The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness (iTunes  Feed  Web Site). Among oth­ers, you’ll encounter talks by Nobel Prize win­ner Gary Beck­er and also Steven Levitt, the co-author of the recent best­seller Freako­nom­ics. Last­ly, we end at Stan­ford and its series called “Entre­pre­neur­ial Thought Lead­ers,” which gives you access to what Sil­i­con Val­ley has in no short sup­ply — entre­pre­neurs, includ­ing ones from Google, Genen­tech, and Juniper Net­works. Click. Down­load. Sync. And you’ll be in busi­ness.

For more pod­casts, see our uni­ver­si­ty pod­cast col­lec­tion and also our  com­plete pod­cast col­lec­tion here.

Enlightenment on iTunes: The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant

in Philosophy | January 25th, 2007

For those who dug our recent piece on UC Berke­ley’s 59 cours­es avail­able on iTunes, here’s anoth­er lit­tle item for you. Susan Stu­art, a lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Glas­gow, recent­ly taught a course on the epis­te­mol­o­gy (or the­o­ry of knowl­edge) of the great Ger­man philoso­pher, Immanuel Kant. And fig­ur­ing that it might help her stu­dents if she record­ed these lec­tures, she put on a lapel mic and did her thing. Then, as fate would have it, her lec­tures were loaded onto iTunes (iTunes — rss feed — web site) and, not unlike Lars Brown­worth’s lec­tures on the Byzan­tine World, they went viral and became iTunes’ #1 edu­ca­tion­al pod­cast for a while. The record­ings have a home­grown feel to them. But they get the job done if you’re up for grap­pling with Kan­t’s dif­fi­cult but foun­da­tion­al phi­los­o­phy.

If you want more infor­ma­tion on these pod­casts, here’s the writ­ten pref­ace that comes along with the taped course.

“Kant wrote exten­sive­ly on all major top­ics of intel­lec­tu­al inter­est. In terms of the pub­li­ca­tion of major texts his most pro­lif­ic peri­od was 1781 to 1790. In the domains of epis­te­mol­o­gy and meta­physics he pub­lished the Cri­tique of Pure Rea­son in 1781, with a sec­ond edi­tion in 1787. In the domain of ethics he pub­lished the Ground­work of the Meta­physics of Morals in 1785 and the Cri­tique of Prac­ti­cal Rea­son in 1788. In the domain of asthet­ics he pre­sent­ed his the­o­ry in 1790 in the form of the Cri­tique of Judg­ment. As a form of short­hand the three Cri­tiques are known as the First, Sec­ond, and Third, respec­tive­ly. In the first Cri­tique Kant deals with how we come to under­stand our world; in the sec­ond Cri­tique he deals with prac­ti­cal rea­son and how we act in our world; and in the third Cri­tique he attempts to show a sys­tem­at­ic con­nec­tion between the first two. So, the first deals with how we think about our sen­si­ble world, the sec­ond deals with how we act in it, and the third sup­plies a link between the two in terms of felt judge­ment. In the first he draws togeth­er our inner expe­ri­ence with our nec­es­sary per­cep­tion of an exter­nal world. He com­bines per­cep­tion and under­stand­ing through the appli­ca­tion of the pro­duc­tive imag­i­na­tion in such a way as to make judge­ments pos­si­ble. He links the First and the Third Cri­tiques by argu­ing that aes­thet­ic judg­ments, that is, judge­ments about what is beau­ti­ful or sub­lime, derive from our deter­mi­na­tion to impose order on our sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence. Thus, aes­thet­ics is just like math­e­mat­ics: it attempts to find uni­ty in expe­ri­ence. So, each of the Cri­tiques is con­cerned with judge­ment, judge­ments of rea­son, moral judge­ments, and aes­thet­ic judge­ments.”

See our com­plete list of uni­ver­si­ty pod­casts here, and our larg­er pod­cast col­lec­tion here.

10 Excellent University Podcasts

in Most Popular | January 19th, 2007

For more enrich­ing audio, see our col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es.

1.) Abra­ham Lin­col­n’s Inven­tion of Pres­i­den­tial Pow­ers — James MacPher­son iTunes Audio Stream

Prince­ton’s James MacPher­son, a Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author on the Amer­i­can Civ­il War, dis­cuss­es how Lin­coln invent­ed pres­i­den­tial war-time pow­ers. It’s a top­ic of par­tic­u­lar inter­est giv­en the recent debate over the
valid­i­ty of war­rant­less wire­taps.

2.) Active Lib­er­ty: A Con­ver­sa­tion with Supreme Court Jus­tice Stephen Brey­er iTunes Audio Stream
Jus­tice Stephen Brey­er makes the case that lib­er­ty, as defined by the con­sti­tu­tion, isn’t about free­dom from gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence (neg­a­tive lib­er­ty), as so many want to pro­claim today, but about the free­dom to par­tic­i­pate in our demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem (active lib­er­ty).

3.) Democ­ra­cy Mat­ters — Cor­nell West iTunes Audio Stream
A pow­er­ful ora­tor, West looks at how democ­ra­cies dete­ri­o­rate when cit­i­zens lose their abil­i­ty to think crit­i­cal­ly and rec­og­nize the deep under­ly­ing prob­lems that exist with­in their own nations. (The talk real­ly gets start­ed about 10 min­utes in.)

4.) Exis­ten­tial­ism in Lit­er­a­ture & Film — Hubert Drey­fus iTunes
This is not a lec­ture, but rather a full-fledged course taught by UC Berke­ley’s Hubert Drey­fus, which takes a close look at how exis­ten­tial­ism suf­fus­es impor­tant lit­er­a­ture, phi­los­o­phy and films — Dos­to­evsky’s Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov, Niet­zsche’s Gay Sci­ence, and Alain Resnais’ film Hiroshi­ma Mon Amour.

5.) Grad­u­a­tion Speech — Steve Jobs iTunes audio iTunes video Google Video
A short speech by Apple’s vision­ary CEO where he talks about his phi­los­o­phy on life. The moti­vat­ing talk was giv­en at Stan­ford in June
2005.

6.) Nation Build­ing: Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan — Fran­cis Fukuya­ma iTunes Audio Stream
Fukuya­ma, who once saw the world com­ing into an eter­nal demo­c­ra­t­ic bal­ance, now talks more sober­ly about how to han­dle the dif­fi­cult task of re-build­ing nations in gen­er­al, and par­tic­u­lar­ly those in the tur­bu­lent Mid­dle East. Fukuya­ma teach­es at Johns Hop­kins and heads the SAIS Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment Pro­gram.

7.) The Art of Read­ing a Poem — Harold Bloom iTunes — Audio Stream
The famed lit­er­ary crit­ic takes his stu­dents through a poem by Wal­lace Stevens, Parts of a World, and con­stant­ly moves between inter­pre­ta­tion and digres­sion — digres­sions that are often filled with intrigu­ing per­son­al anec­dotes.
The record­ing is not high­ly edit­ed, which lets you feel like a fly on the wall in the class­room. (Bloom real­ly gets start­ed about 13 min­utes in.)

8.) The Heart of Non Vio­lence — His Holi­ness the Dalai Lama iTunes Video (Real Play­er)
The Dalai Lama, the polit­i­cal and reli­gious leader of Tibet and win­ner of the Nobel Peace Price, speaks at Stan­ford about non­vi­o­lence, what it
means, when vio­lence is jus­ti­fi­able, and whether US mil­i­tary actions in Iraq might actu­al­ly be jus­ti­fied.

9.) The Future of the Inter­net — Tim Bern­ers-Lee iTunes Audio Stream
Tim Bern­ers-Lee, founder of the world wide web and direc­tor of the World Wide Web Con­sor­tium, speaks at Prince­ton about the seman­tic web and the chal­lenges to its future devel­op­ment.

10.) The Life and Work of Philip John­son — Vin­cent Scul­ly iTunes
Vin­cent Scul­ly, one of Amer­i­ca’s finest archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­ans, takes a look at the life and career of Philip John­son, one of Amer­i­ca’s finest archi­tects.

Steve Jobs Presents the iPhone and the Podcast World Reacts

in Apple, Technology | January 12th, 2007

Each year, Steve Jobs kicks off Mac­World with a big address, which either con­firms or quash­es all the rumors and spec­u­la­tion about the new wave of Apple prod­ucts. It’s usu­al­ly a big deal, and this year did­n’t dis­ap­point. Jobs deliv­ered with flair the iPhone, which Apple hopes will rev­o­lu­tion­ize the cell phone mar­ket as the iPod did the portable music play­er mar­ket, if not the entire music mar­ket itself. And then there is Apple TV, which will let you wire­less­ly play your iTunes con­tent (movies, TV shows, music, pho­tos and pod­casts) on your widescreen TV.

If you have some down­time, you can check out the video of Jobs’ speech on iTunes or via Quick­Time. For ini­tial thoughts on the iPhone, you may want to read David Pogue’s and Wal­ter Moss­berg’s ear­ly reviews (and also Pogue’s iphone FAQ), and for com­men­tary across the pod­cast world, you can lis­ten in on:

• GeekBrief.TV’s quick sur­vey of announce­ments iTunes Feed
• Engad­get’s pod­cast com­men­tary of new prod­ucts iTunes Feed
  • also see Engad­get’s web page ded­i­cat­ed to Mac World.
• Mac­World’s review of the keynote and new prod­ucts iTunes Mp3 Stream
• Robert X. Cring­ley’s take on Apple’s trade­mark con­flict with Cis­co iTunes Feed
• MacBreak Week­ly iTunes Feed
• Forum on Tech­nol­o­gy & Soci­ety — A pan­el dis­cus­sion on the new gad­gets and how they affect our soci­ety iTunes Feed

Also see Open Cul­ture’s Tech­nol­o­gy Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

50+ Free Courses from UC Berkeley on iTunes

in Online Courses, UC Berkeley | January 8th, 2007

This is noth­ing short of impres­sive. Last April, UC Berke­ley, one of the pre­miere uni­ver­si­ties in the coun­try, announced its plan to put com­plete aca­d­e­m­ic cours­es on iTunes. Fast for­ward nine months, and you can already find 59 full cours­es avail­able as pod­casts. Sim­ply click here to access Berke­ley’s iTunes site (or here for the Rss feed).No mat­ter where you live, you can access at no cost the very same cours­es attend­ed by stu­dents pay­ing full tuition. And, giv­en the crit­i­cal mass of cours­es being offered across a range of dis­ci­plines, you can put togeth­er your own per­son­al­ized cur­ricu­lum and expand your hori­zons on the fly.

If the human­i­ties are your thing, you can take US His­to­ry: From Civ­il War to Present, Exis­ten­tial­ism in Lit­er­a­ture & Film, or Euro­pean Civ­i­liza­tion from the Renais­sance to Present. If you’re into the social sci­ences, you may want to con­sid­er World Reli­gions, Peo­ples and States, US For­eign Pol­i­cy after 9/11, Human Emo­tions, or Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­tics. Turn­ing to the hard sci­ences, you can take your pick from Physics for Future Pres­i­dents, Intro­duc­tion to Chem­istry, Gen­er­al Astron­o­my, and Gen­er­al Biol­o­gy. Final­ly, for those with a tech­nol­o­gy bent, you can con­sid­er lis­ten­ing in on An Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­ers, The His­to­ry of Infor­ma­tion or even The Foun­da­tions of Amer­i­can Cyber­Cul­ture. But, if these par­tic­u­lar cours­es aren’t for you, there are many more to choose from.

Berke­ley’s col­lec­tion has gen­er­al­ly remained off of peo­ple’s radar screen, which is too bad. It’s an excel­lent pod­cast col­lec­tion, one of the best out there. Hope­ful­ly we can help read­ers find out what they are miss­ing.

For more, please see our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties.

Free Beethoven and Mozart Recordings via Podcast

in Most Popular, Music | January 4th, 2007

See our fol­low up piece: More Free Clas­si­cal Music Pod­casts: Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Wag­n­er and Some Yo-Yo Ma

Cour­tesy of Deutsche Welle, the Ger­man inter­na­tion­al broad­cast­ing ser­vice, you can fill your iPod at no cost with some excep­tion­al clas­si­cal music. We’d par­tic­u­lar­ly encour­age you to focus on two pod­casts. First, Beethoven­fest (iTunes Feed Web Site), which lets users down­load “Beethoven’s most famous sym­phonies per­formed by excel­lent young orches­tras.” Next, Clas­si­cal Mas­ter­pieces (iTunes Feed Web Site), which gives you free access to sym­phonies by Mozart, Strauss, Schu­mann, Brahms, and Bruck­n­er, each pre­sent­ed by con­duc­tor Kent Nagano and the inter­na­tion­al­ly known DSO Berlin. (Inci­den­tal­ly, a quite large col­lec­tion of free clas­si­cal music can also be found on Wikipedia. Thanks to one of our read­ers for let­ting us know.)

Final­ly, we should men­tion that Deutsche Welle offers a lot of oth­er free pod­casts in Eng­lish. Take for exam­ple Inspired Minds (iTunes Feed Web Site), a series of pod­casts explor­ing the world’s great thinkers, or Deutsche Warum Nicht? (iTunes), a mul­ti-part series that will teach you Ger­man from the ground up. A great trove of con­tent that’s worth your time.

You can find more clas­si­cal music in our Music Pod­cast Col­lec­tion .

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Making Your Own Podcasts: Resources to Get You Started

in Podcasts, Technology | December 31st, 2006

With all the recent talk about pod­casts, you may have won­dered how you can cre­ate your own. How can you record and dis­trib­ute via pod­cast what­ev­er valauble things you have to say? We have recent­ly come across some help­ful mate­r­i­al that seemed worth high­light­ing for you. Pod­cast Acad­e­my At Boston Uni­ver­si­ty, Pod­cast Acad­e­my recent­ly held a two-day sem­i­nar, led by sea­soned tech­nol­o­gy vet­er­ans, that offered a very com­pre­hen­sive overview of the craft. The top­ics cov­ered here ranged from get­ting start­ed with record­ing, edit­ing and pub­lish­ing pod­casts; to devel­op­ing a per­son­al style; to work­ing with the right equip­ment; to know­ing how to get pod­casts list­ed in search engines and also mon­e­tize them. You can review and stream all of the pre­sen­ta­tions in video from this page. Plus you can also find here copies of the PDFs used in these talks. This is an excel­lent resource for start­ing out. Apple’s Pod­cast Recipe Giv­en that Apple helped more than any­one to give life to pod­cast­ing, it only makes sense that they would offer some primers. You can find here a three-part sem­i­nar cre­at­ed by Apple experts, who offer their wis­dom on how to cre­ate a great-sound­ing pod­cast, pro­duce a pro­fes­sion­al show, and then pro­mote it. These pre­sen­ta­tions are also avail­able in video, and they are free. How­ev­er, you do need to reg­is­ter with Apple before you can start watch­ing the pre­sen­ta­tions. Nuts and Bolts Primers The mate­ri­als above don’t real­ly walk you through the actu­al tech­ni­cal mechan­ics of cre­at­ing a pod­cast, so we have added here a few primers that will real­ly give you the real nuts and bolts. About.com’s “How to Cre­ate Your Own Pod­cast — A Step-by-Step Tuto­r­i­al” PodcastingNews.com’s “Make Your First Pod­cast” Dig­i­tal Trend’s “How to Make a Pod­cast” If you close­ly review all of these mate­ri­als, you should soon be ready to devel­op your first pod­cast, cre­ate a pro­fes­sion­al sound, and bring it to lis­ten­ers who will ben­e­fit from what you have to say. If you know of any oth­er great resources that should be added to this col­lec­tion, feel free to let us know.

Philip Roth’s Everyman and Beyond

in Books, Literature | December 29th, 2006

Cour­tesy of the radio pro­gram Open Source, we get an intrigu­ing and widerang­ing inter­view with Philip
Roth, where he talks can­did­ly about his lat­est and 27th nov­el Every­man, a work that takes an exis­ten­tial­ly anguish­ing look at the end of life. We also get Roth read­ing from oth­er past nov­els, talk­ing about the day-to-day prac­tice of writ­ing, and offer­ing thoughts on the cur­rent state of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. You can catch the inter­view in one of three ways: iTunes, Rss feed, mp3 stream.

For oth­er inter­views with promi­nent thinkers, see our page called Smart Talks — Lead­ing Thinkers in Mul­ti-Media.

A World Without Net Neutrality

in Technology | December 28th, 2006

If you’re a savvy tech­nol­o­gist, you’ve heard a lot about the debate over “net neu­tral­i­ty.” If you’re not, then you should get up to speed on the issue because it could change the face of the web as you know it.

Bill Moy­ers recent­ly put togeth­er an excel­lent pro­gram look­ing at the Faus­t­ian bar­gain that Con­gress might soon be mak­ing. In exchange for giv­ing the tele­phone com­pa­nies an incen­tive to build a fast fiber net­work in the US — some­thing that many oth­er coun­tries already have, and some­thing that the tel­cos promised to build years ago, but did­n’t, despite accept­ing tax breaks — our nation­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives may be primed to let the tel­cos con­trol the future web and oper­ate it as a “toll road.” Under the cur­rent regime, every web site is treat­ed neu­tral­ly, mean­ing
that web sites can dis­trib­ute con­tent at equal speeds and costs to con­tent providers. If things change,
the tel­cos will cre­ate a “fast lane” and a “slow lane” for dis­trib­ut­ing con­tent, and they can use their dis­cre­tion, based on what­ev­er stan­dards they choose, to charge con­tent providers dif­fer­ent rates for using the dif­fer­ent lanes. This will have a whole host of con­se­quences for the future devel­op­ment of the inter­net, chang­ing how com­pa­nies com­pete on the web, how the pace of inno­va­tion pro­gress­es (or not), how you access con­tent, and whether you can access con­tent freely and equal­ly. In short, it will deter­mine whether your cul­ture stays open or not.

There is a lot to this issue, and Moy­ers on Amer­i­ca does a very good job teas­ing apart the issue in this 90 minute exposé that you can find on iTunes (or see the rss feed). The pro­gram’s web site also has a lot of good sup­port­ing infor­ma­tion and is worth a look.

For more infor­ma­tion, you should also see what the ACLU is say­ing about the issue.