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Stephen Hawking: Abandon Earth Or Face Extinction

As the year winds to a close, Big Think has pulled togeth­er a list of their Most Pop­u­lar Videos of 2010. Per­haps the biggest thinker on the list is Stephen Hawk­ing, the renowned the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist, who issues a stark warn­ing. “Our only chance of long term sur­vival, is not to remain inward look­ing on plan­et Earth, but to spread out into space.” Pop­u­la­tion growth, lim­it­ed resources, cli­mate change – these pres­sures could dri­ve the human race into extinc­tion with­in two cen­turies, and pos­si­bly even one. That makes space – plan­ets beyond our own – the next great fron­tier.

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Famous Authors Read Other Famous Authors

Through Decem­ber 22, the Guardian’s new Short Sto­ries pod­cast (iTunes — RSS — Web Site) will present 12 well-known authors read­ing sto­ries by oth­er famous writ­ers. So far, we have Philip Pull­man read­ing Chekhov, Anne Enright pre­sent­ing Ray­mond Carver’s sto­ry “Fat,” and William Boyd read­ing JG Bal­lard’s “My Dream of Fly­ing to Wake Island.” The sched­ule for the nine remain­ing sto­ries is right here.

If this pod­cast feels vague­ly famil­iar, it’s per­haps because you have already encoun­tered The New York­er Fic­tion pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Here again, lead­ing authors read short works by oth­er great writ­ers – Paul Ther­oux reads “The Gospel Accord­ing to Mark” by Jorge Luis Borges, Joyce Car­ol Oates reads Eudo­ra Wel­ty’s “Where Is the Voice Com­ing From?,” Orhan Pamuk reads Vladimir Nabokov’s “My Russ­ian Edu­ca­tion,” the parade of great read­ings goes on.

All of these read­ings, plus many more, are cat­a­logued in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books. And there they will remain. Thanks to Stephen for the heads up on the new Guardian pod­cast…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20 Great Authors (and Actors) Read Famous Lit­er­a­ture Out Loud

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Saul Bellow Reads from Humboldt’s Gift (1988)

The 92nd Street Y, a cul­tur­al pil­lar of New York City, has released from its audio archive anoth­er lit­tle gem – Saul Bel­low read­ing from his 1975 nov­el Hum­boldt’s Gift, which won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Fic­tion and con­tributed to Bel­low’s Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture.

Bel­low’s read­ing (access it via iTunes, RSS, or the mp3 play­er below) runs 11 min­utes, and it sits nice­ly along­side two oth­er 92nd Street Y record­ings – Tru­man Capote read­ing from Break­fast at Tiffany’s (1963) and William Car­los Williams read­ing select­ed poems in 1954. We fea­tured both items in our pop­u­lar post, 45 Great Cul­tur­al Icons Revis­it­ed.

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Why Can’t We Walk Straight?

When we’re blind­fold­ed, we’re doomed to walk in cir­cles. The same thing hap­pens when we dri­ve and swim with­out the ben­e­fit of sight. Around and around we go. Robert Krul­wich, the cohost of the excel­lent Radi­o­lab show (iTunes — Feed — Site), breaks this all down with some intrigu­ing ani­ma­tion. But let me add this lit­tle spoil­er alert. What makes us spin in cir­cles still defies sci­en­tif­ic expla­na­tion. H/T to Mike in Cam­bridge.

via berto-meis­ter

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A Big Bach Download: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free

bach2

A quick fyi for Bach lovers: You can down­load for free the com­plete organ works of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach. They were record­ed by Dr. James Kib­bie (Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan) on orig­i­nal baroque organs in Leipzig, Ger­many. Start with a col­lec­tion of Favorite Mas­ter­works, or get the com­plete works that have been divid­ed into 13 groups for easy down­load. Once you down­load these zip files, you will need to unzip them and import them into iTunes or a sim­i­lar appli­ca­tion. Thanks for @Pdarche (Peter Darche) for flag­ging this for us.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Bach Canon Works

A Young Glenn Gould Plays Bach

All of Bach Is Putting Videos of 1,080 Bach Per­for­mances Online:

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Talking Literature with Great British Novelists

woolf joyce

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

For decades, the BBC has inter­viewed leg­endary British nov­el­ists, ask­ing them how they cre­ate their mem­o­rable char­ac­ters, paint their evoca­tive set­tings with words, and devel­op plots that keep us turn­ing pages. Now, these audio inter­views appear online in a col­lec­tion called In Their  Own Words. The archive takes you back to 1937, to a con­ver­sa­tion with Vir­ginia Woolf, then moves you for­ward to inter­views with Aldous Hux­ley, JRR Tolkien, Doris Less­ing, Mar­tin Amis, VS Naipaul, and Salman Rushdie, to name just a few. These record­ings sit nice­ly along­side a giant archive of lit­er­ary inter­views recent­ly pub­lished online by The Paris Review. (More on that here.) So, if you want to get into the “how” of lit­er­a­ture, you can now tap instant­ly into the col­lec­tive wis­dom of the lit­er­ary greats.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

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Stephen Fry Gets Animated about Language

For a brief time in 2008, Stephen Fry, the pop­u­lar British author, writer and come­di­an, pro­duced a series of pod­casts – called “Pod­grams” – that drew on his writ­ings, speech­es and col­lec­tive thoughts. (Find them on RSS and iTunes here). Dur­ing one par­tic­u­lar episode, Fry med­i­tat­ed on lan­guage (the Eng­lish lan­guage & his own lan­guage) and a lit­tle on Barthes, Chom­sky, Pinker and even Eddie Izzard. Then Matthew Rogers took that med­i­ta­tion and ran with it, pro­duc­ing a “kinet­ic typog­ra­phy ani­ma­tion” that art­ful­ly illus­trates a six minute seg­ment of the longer talk. Watch it above, and if you’re cap­ti­vat­ed by what Fry has to say, don’t miss his pop­u­lar video, What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18.

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David Sedaris Reads From New book, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk

squirrel seeks chipmunk

Squir­rel Seeks Chip­munk: A Mod­est Bes­tiary, the new book by David Sedaris has hit the stands last week. And now thanks to The Guardian we get Sedaris him­self read­ing a story/chapter from the col­lec­tion, “The Mouse and the Snake.” It runs near­ly 10 min­utes. Start play­ing below…

via @brainpicker

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Gustavo Dudamel with the Vienna Philharmonic: A Free Live Webcast

Mark this on your cal­en­dar. This com­ing Sat­ur­day, at 7:30 a.m. Cal­i­for­nia time, Gus­ta­vo Dudamel (soon to open the 2010-11 sea­son of the Los Ange­les Phil­har­mon­ic) will con­duct a con­cert with the Vien­na Phil­har­mon­ic at the Lucerne Fes­ti­val in Switzer­land. As the LA Times reports, the con­cert will be web­cast live for free at www.medici.tv. It will also be avail­able for 90 days on demand. Pieces will include Rossini’s over­ture to “La gaz­za ladra,” OrbĂłn’s “Tres ver­siones sin­fĂłni­cas,” Bern­stein’s “Diver­ti­men­to for Orches­tra” and Rav­el’s “Pavane pour une infante dĂ©funte” and “BolĂ©ro.”

via Cul­ture Mon­ster

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200 Free Textbooks: A Meta Collection


Free text­books (aka open text­books) writ­ten by knowl­edgable schol­ars are a rel­a­tive­ly new phe­nom­e­non. Below, find a meta list of 200 Free Text­books, and check back often for new addi­tions. Also see our online col­lec­tion1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Art His­to­ry

Biol­o­gy

Busi­ness and Man­age­ment




Chem­istry

Clas­sics

Com­put­er Sci­ence & Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems

Earth Sci­ence

Eco­nom­ics & Finance

Edu­ca­tion

Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing

Engi­neer­ing

His­to­ry

Lan­guages

Law

Lin­guis­tics

Math­e­mat­ics

Music

Phi­los­o­phy

Physics

Psy­chol­o­gy

Soci­ol­o­gy 

Sys­tem The­o­ry 

Find more texts in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions

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