A Smart Guide to Free Magazines

in Media | November 8th, 2009

A good find via Life­hack­er. Mag­g­wire is a rel­a­tive­ly new site that will do two things for you. It will direct you to free mag­a­zine con­tent online (a good thing). And (per­haps even bet­ter) it will learn what you like to read, and then start feed­ing you con­tent based on your pref­er­ences. If Mag­g­wire can deliv­er on this promise, it will help you nav­i­gate the very large vol­ume of con­tent that you encounter every day. To get start­ed with Mag­g­wire, check out this video.

This American Life Demystifies the American Healthcare System

in Business, Current Affairs, Politics | October 27th, 2009

When the glob­al finan­cial sys­tem col­lapsed last year, This Amer­i­can Life and its sis­ter pro­gram, Plan­et Mon­ey (iTunes — RSS Feed — Web Site) began doing some­thing that few oth­ers could pull off. They took very com­plex prob­lems and made them under­stand­able, often demys­ti­fy­ing dif­fi­cult con­cepts in a reli­ably engag­ing way. Now, they’re at it again. This time, they’re break­ing down the Amer­i­can health­care sys­tem and get­ting at the core ques­tion. Why can’t we con­trol ever-ris­ing health­care costs? That’s what the rag­ing health­care debate is effec­tive­ly all about. And, if you want to be an informed par­tic­i­pant in the debate, it’s worth lis­ten­ing to these two episodes that tease things out. The first episode, called More is Less, looks at doc­tors, patients, insur­ance com­pa­nies and their tan­gled rela­tion­ship. (Click here, then scroll down and find the “Full Episode” icon.) The sec­ond episode, Some­one Else’s Mon­ey, gets you inside the world of drug and insur­ance com­pa­nies and patients. Have a lis­ten, and thanks to Bob in Brook­lyn for the tip here.

Ira Glass on the Art of Story Telling

in Art, Media, Radio | October 23rd, 2009

Since 1995, Ira Glass has host­ed and pro­duced This Amer­i­can Life (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), the award-win­ning radio show that presents mas­ter­ful­ly-craft­ed sto­ries to almost 2 mil­lion lis­ten­ers each week. What’s the secret sauce that goes into mak­ing a great sto­ry, par­tic­u­lar­ly one primed for radio or TV? Glass spells it out in four parts. Part 1 (above) gets into the build­ing blocks of a good sto­ry. Part 2 talks about the impor­tance of find­ing the right sto­ry. Part 3 reas­sures you that cre­ative excel­lence takes time to devel­op. It also comes with hard work. And Part 4 flags com­mon errors to avoid. Give Glass 17 min­utes, and you will be a bet­ter sto­ry­teller for it…

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Reader Podcast Picks

in Podcasts | October 22nd, 2009

Ear­li­er this week, one of our read­ers, Scott Dumont, offered up some excel­lent thoughts on a few pod­casts that we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly over­looked. Since he put things so well, I fig­ured why not pass along his thoughts direct­ly to you. Here they go, and thanks Scott …

I’d like to make three sug­ges­tions for addi­tions to your library. Two polit­i­cal pod­casts and one his­tor­i­cal one. For the polit­i­cal ones, you’re lack­ing in the more inde­pen­dent depart­ment; you’ve got Democ­ra­cy Now, which is good enough but I’d sug­gest adding Com­mon Sense with Dan Car­lin (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) and My His­to­ry Can Beat Up Your Pol­i­tics (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Com­mon Sense with Dan Car­lin is a true inde­pen­dent news show, putting the cur­rent pol­i­tics in per­spec­tive and ana­lyz­ing the dis­con­nect between what is pro­pa­gan­da and what is truth. His descrip­tion is:

Com­mon Sense with Dan Car­lin is a blend of audio com­men­tary and news analy­sis by one of the lead­ing thinkers among today’s polit­i­cal­ly inde­pen­dent crowd. Author, reporter and talk show host Dan Car­lin takes a look at the issues in the news through the prism of his tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can “for­ward-think­ing prag­ma­tism” while push­ing a fis­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, social­ly lib­er­al approach to solv­ing prob­lems. Whether he’s rail­ing against the “Fat Police”, explain­ing the exis­tence of “The Chick­en Lit­tle Gene” or con­tin­u­al­ly bring­ing up his­tor­i­cal events no one has ever heard of, Car­lin man­ages to be enter­tain­ing and infor­ma­tive in a unique­ly non-par­ti­san way. His style has been com­pared to Sein­feld’s George Costan­za on steroids. Whether that’s true or not, he does often talk real­ly fast. You’ll have to keep up.

If I had to rec­om­mend a few from the ones cur­rent­ly in his feed, I’d say take a lis­ten to the fol­low­ing shows before you decide: “137- A Vote For None”, “143- The Black Dog”, “146- The Con­ti­nu­ity Of Errors”“154- A Con­flict of Inter­est”, “157- Read It and Weep”, “161- Shhh!”. I know it’s a lot, feel free to pick any of those, but those are prob­a­bly var­ied enough for you to get a taste of what he means.

My His­to­ry Can Beat Up Your Pol­i­tics is exact­ly what it sounds like; it puts cur­rent polit­i­cal events in a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive and ana­lyzes the his­to­ry to allow us to under­stand our pol­i­tics. For a good sam­pling, just take a look at this most recent stuff. He’s not schiz­o­phrenic like Dan Car­lin and his show is fair­ly for­mu­la­ic, but that’s not to say it’s not infor­ma­tive. (more…)

The Beatles Remastered: An Inside Look

in Music | September 20th, 2009

On Sep­tem­ber 9th, EMI released a remas­tered ver­sion of the entire Bea­t­les cat­a­logue — the first remix since 1987. And now the Bea­t­les are once again back on top of the charts. If you’re won­der­ing whether to buy the remas­tered ver­sions at all, or whether to buy the stereo or mono box sets (or some com­bi­na­tion of the two), or if you’re sim­ply won­der­ing what goes into remas­ter­ing the Fab Four’s com­plete body of work, then you will be inter­est­ed in this inter­view with Bea­t­les his­to­ri­an Kevin Howlett, who helped write the lin­er notes for the new releas­es. In this con­ver­sa­tion with NPR’s All Songs Con­sid­ered (MP3 — iTunes — RSS Feed), Howlett describes what the remas­ter­ing involved, and then com­pares the old ver­sions to the new ver­sions (both mono and stereo). When you’re done lis­ten­ing to this 20+ minute inter­view, you’ll have a much bet­ter sense of what this long-await­ed remas­ter­ing deliv­ers. You can lis­ten with the play­er below, or via the links post­ed above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What New York­ers Heard on the Radio the Night John Lennon was Shot

The Bea­t­les: Pod­casts from Yes­ter­day

The Grey Video: Mix­ing the Bea­t­les with Jay‑Z

Get Smart with Your iPhone

in Apple, iPhone | September 9th, 2009

Dur­ing the lazy days of sum­mer, we qui­et­ly launched a new, free iPhone app. Now sum­mer is fad­ing, peo­ple are get­ting back to work, stu­dents back to school, and it’s time to get the word out. This app takes our intel­li­gent media col­lec­tions and let’s you lis­ten to them on the go. Once you down­load the app, you can lis­ten to free audio books, uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, for­eign lan­guage lessons, sci­ence pod­casts and oth­er intel­li­gent con­tent on the iPhone.

The app opens all media files in native iPhone soft­ware — iTunes, Safari, the YouTube play­er, etc. You will need WI-FI (Apple says so) to down­load the con­tent. This app, which was very gen­er­ous­ly devel­oped by Fred Hsu, is a work in progress. Don’t hes­i­tate to give us feed­back. And, if you don’t mind, please leave a nice review/rating in the App Store and spread the word.

Last­ly, let me leave you with some praise that we received today. “I love this appli­ca­tion. Been using it a lot for the Biol­o­gy – Human Anato­my Cours­es avail­able. Thank you so much for devel­op­ing this app. Absolute­ly Bril­liant!!!” Does this intrigue you enough to check it out?

We Are as Gods

in Uncategorized | August 24th, 2009

Between 1968 and 1972, Stew­art Brand pub­lished The Whole Earth Cat­a­log. For Steve Jobs, it was a “Bible” of his gen­er­a­tion, a kind of Google 35 years before Google came along (see the excel­lent com­mence­ment speech where Jobs makes these com­ments.) More recent­ly, Brand found­ed The Long Now Foun­da­tion, which is all about cul­ti­vat­ing “slower/better” think­ing instead of the “faster/cheaper” mind­set that dom­i­nates our day. (You can get The Long Now pod­cast here: iTunes — Feed — Web Site.  It’s also in our Ideas & Cul­ture Audio Col­lec­tion.) Brand is good at look­ing thought­ful­ly into the future, and above he takes a long-range view on our glob­al cli­mate prob­lems. The upshot is that “we are as gods” and we had bet­ter get good at it. If you watch, you’ll see what I’m talk­ing about. This video orig­i­nal­ly comes from the EDGE.org.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Whole Earth Cat­a­log Now Online

Bet­ter Think­ing Through Pod­casts

David Sedaris Guest DJ’s

in Comedy, Music | August 24th, 2009

These days, David Sedaris is the think­ing per­son­’s favorite fun­ny man. In the past, we have fea­tured his live read­ings of com­ic mate­r­i­al from When You are Engulfed in Flames. (See “Relat­ed Con­tent” below.) Today, we’re high­light­ing some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. On August 19th, Sedaris appeared as a guest DJ on KCRW, a radio sta­tion in Los Ange­les, and spun his favorite old records. You can lis­ten with the play­er below or here. Mean­while, if you want to hear more of KCR­W’s Guest DJ Project (which has fea­tured David Lynch, Jim­my Wales, and oth­er cul­tur­al icons), you can get the pod­cast here:  iTunes — Feed — Web Site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sedaris Reads “Solu­tion to Saturday’s Puz­zle”

David Sedaris Reads “Of Mice and Men”

Nobel Prize Winner Reads From His New Novel

in Books | August 13th, 2009

J.M. Coet­zee won the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture in 2003. This com­ing Decem­ber, Viking will release his lat­est nov­el, Sum­mer­time. The New York Review of Books recent­ly pub­lished two excerpts from the book (here and here). And you can now lis­ten to Coet­zee read the first of the two excerpts. It’s called “Undat­ed Frag­ments.” It’s avail­able in the fol­low­ing for­mats: MP3 — iTunes — RSS Feed. In the mean­time, we’ve added the New York Review of Books pod­cast to our col­lec­tion of Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­casts, which can also be accessed through our Free iPhone App.

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The Ancient History Learning Guide

in History | July 21st, 2009

For life­long learn­ers, cours­es on Ancient Greece and Rome always remain in steady demand. While these cours­es are poor­ly rep­re­sent­ed in under­grad­u­ate pro­grams (at least in the States), they’re pop­u­lar in con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion pro­grams designed for old­er stu­dents. Even­tu­al­ly, it seems, many stu­dents come to the con­clu­sion that you can’t skip over the foun­da­tions and still make sense of it all. And so they go back to basics.

The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny, a com­mer­cial provider of cours­es for life­long learn­ers, has rec­og­nized this demand and built a very rich col­lec­tion of lec­tures ded­i­cat­ed to the Ancients. (NOTE: Our read­ers can get $10 off of their cours­es, by click­ing here and using the code word “CULTURE”. Be sure to check out the cours­es in mp3 for­mat, par­tic­u­lar­ly the ones on sale. They’re very afford­able.) These cours­es are pol­ished and well thought out. I rec­om­mend them high­ly.

Then you should know about some of the free alter­na­tives. Thanks to the “open course” move­ment, you can now find a series of free cours­es online, includ­ing some from top-ranked uni­ver­si­ties. Let me give you a quick overview of your options:

Last fall, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty intro­duced a new round of open cours­es that includ­ed Don­ald Kagan’s Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek His­to­ry. A lead­ing fig­ure in the field, Kagan takes stu­dents from the Greek Dark Ages, through the rise of Spar­ta and Athens, The Pelo­pon­nesian War, and beyond. You’ll cov­er more than a mil­len­ni­um in 24 lec­tures. As I’ve not­ed else­where, Yale’s cours­es are high touch. And what’s par­tic­u­lar­ly nice is that the course can be down­loaded in one of five for­mats (text, audio, flash video, low band­width quick­time video, and high band­width quick­time video). Sim­ply choose the for­mat that works for you, and you’re good to go.

When you’ve com­plet­ed the arc of Greek his­to­ry, you can move next to the UC Berke­ley course, The Roman Empire. The course taught by Isabelle Paf­ford moves from Julius Cae­sar to Con­stan­tine (rough­ly 40 BC to 300 AD) in 42 lec­tures. And the audio comes straight from the class­room, which means that you’ll get sol­id infor­ma­tion but you’ll also have to endure some extra­ne­ous talk about home­work assign­ments and exams. (It’s free, so don’t com­plain.) You can down­load this course in one of three ways: iTunes or  streamed audio. Last­ly, I should note that Paf­ford has taught anoth­er relat­ed course at Berke­ley — The Ancient Mediter­ranean World (iTunes — Feed - MP3s).

Once you have the big sur­vey cours­es under your belt, you can switch to some more focused cours­es com­ing out of Stan­ford. Let’s start with Patrick Hunt’s course Han­ni­bal (iTunes). As I’ve not­ed in a pre­vi­ous post, this pod­cast­ed course takes you inside the life and adven­tures of Han­ni­bal, the great Carthagin­ian mil­i­tary tac­ti­cian who maneu­vered his way across the Alps and stunned Roman armies in 218 BC. The course also gives you glimpses into cut­ting-edge trends in mod­ern archae­ol­o­gy. Because Han­ni­bal still remains a fig­ure of intense his­tor­i­cal inter­est, it’s not sur­pris­ing that this course has ranked as one of the more pop­u­lar cours­es on iTune­sU.

Anoth­er short course worth your time is Virgil’s Aeneid: Anato­my of a Clas­sic. Pre­sent­ed by Susan­na Braund (a Stan­ford clas­sics pro­fes­sor at the time), the course teas­es apart the epic poem that was an instant when it was writ­ten 29–19 BC), and still endures today. Divid­ed into 5 install­ments, each run­ning about two hours, this pod­cast offers a good intro­duc­tion to one of the cen­tral texts in the Latin tra­di­tion.

Final­ly, let me throw in a quick bonus course. The His­tor­i­cal Jesus, anoth­er Stan­ford course taught by Thomas Shee­han, looks inside the historical/Roman world of Jesus of Nazareth. This is a his­to­ry course, not a reli­gion course, and it uses the best lit­er­ary and his­tor­i­cal evi­dence to answer the ques­tions: “Who was the his­tor­i­cal Jesus of Nazareth? What did he actu­al­ly say and do…? What did the man Jesus actu­al­ly think of him­self and of his mis­sion…? In short, what are the dif­fer­ences — and con­ti­nu­ities — between the Jesus who lived and died in his­to­ry and the Christ who lives on in believ­ers’ faith?

UPDATE: Thanks to a read­er, I was remind­ed of anoth­er relat­ed course: 12 Byzan­tine Rulers: The His­to­ry of the Byzan­tine Empire (iTunes  — Site). These pod­casts cov­er the lega­cy of the Roman Empire that emerged in the East (after it had col­lapsed in the West). You can read more about this course in one of my ear­ly blog posts.

All of these cours­es can be found in our larg­er col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. There you will find 200 high qual­i­ty cours­es that you can lis­ten to any­time, any­where.