Free Presidential Biographies on iTunes: FDR and Beyond

in History, Politics, Video - Politics/Society | September 16th, 2008

Thanks to PBS, you can now down­load from iTunes a four-hour defin­i­tive biog­ra­phy of Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt. FDR guid­ed the US through the Great Depres­sion, then World War II, serv­ing as pres­i­dent for an unprece­dent­ed four terms. The video pod­cast run a good four hours, and it’s part of a series called Amer­i­can Expe­ri­ence: The Pres­i­dents. Oth­er pres­i­dents fea­tured in this series include Har­ry Tru­man, Lyn­don John­son, Richard Nixon, Jim­my Carter, and Ronald Rea­gan. You can watch more videos from The Amer­i­can Expe­ri­ence series online by click­ing here.

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How Did We Get Into This Financial Mess? This American Life Explains

in Current Affairs, Uncategorized | September 15th, 2008

The stock mar­kets are bleed­ing red today. Lehman Broth­ers has gone BK, even though it nev­er had a quar­ter­ly loss as a pub­lic com­pa­ny until this past June. The finan­cial sys­tem is a com­plete mess.

How did we get into what Alan Greenspan has called a “once-in-a-cen­tu­ry” finan­cial cri­sis? Let me refer you back to an episode of This Amer­i­can Life (“The Giant Pool of Mon­ey”) which we fea­tured ear­li­er this year. (Lis­ten here.) Step by step, the show traces in its trade­mark, enter­tain­ing way how this cred­it deba­cle took shape. Along the way, you’ll dis­cov­er how 70 tril­lion dol­lars of glob­al mon­ey need­ed to get parked some­where, and it found the US hous­ing mar­ket. As the mon­ey poured in, the Amer­i­can invest­ment com­mu­ni­ty cranked out as many mort­gages as it could. And when there were no more qual­i­fied home buy­ers left, the banks start­ed low­er­ing lend­ing stan­dards until there were none left. In the end, even dead peo­ple were get­ting mort­gages (sad­ly, a true sto­ry). Give the pod­cast a lis­ten. The whole deba­cle gets pieced togeth­er in a way that you’ve prob­a­bly nev­er heard before.

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Animated Poetry by US Poet Laureate

in Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | September 13th, 2008

Bil­ly Collins, for­mer US Poet Lau­re­ate and one of Amer­i­ca’s best-sell­ing poets, reads his poem “The Dead” with ani­ma­tion by Juan Del­can of Spon­ta­neous. Take it away:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Howard Zinn’s His­to­ry of the Amer­i­can Empire

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Evil

The Sto­ry of Stuff in 20 Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

Ani­mat­ed New York­er Car­toons: A Fun­ny Twist on Einstein’s Rel­a­tiv­i­ty

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The Creator of the Wire on American Urban Decline

in Current Affairs, Television | September 12th, 2008

The Wire — it has monop­o­lized my DVD play­er since May. As many of you hope­ful­ly know, it’s a stun­ning pro­duc­tion. And if you haven’t seen it, do your­self a favor. Get a Net­flix sub­scrip­tion and devote your atten­tion to it for the next few months.

David Simon (the show’s cre­ator) has called his HBO series “a polit­i­cal tract mas­querad­ing as a cop show.” In a piece pub­lished in the UK last week — “The Esca­lat­ing Break­down of Urban Soci­ety Across the US” — he writes more direct­ly about the sub­text that runs through­out The Wire. The op-ed gets down to this fun­da­men­tal truth: “There are two Amer­i­c­as — sep­a­rate, unequal, and no longer even acknowl­edg­ing each oth­er except on the barest cul­tur­al terms. In the one nation, new mil­lion­aires are mint­ed every day. In the oth­er, human beings [read: Bal­ti­more and oth­er cities like it] no longer nec­es­sary to our econ­o­my, to our soci­ety, are being deval­ued and destroyed.”

In oth­er David Simon news, you can catch him in a wide-rang­ing inter­view record­ed ear­li­er this week in San Fran­cis­co. Catch it here. MP3 — iTunes — Feed.

New Yorker Fiction Podcast: Wolff Reads Dog Heaven

in Books | September 11th, 2008

In the lat­est install­ment of The New York­er Fic­tion pod­cast (iTunes Feed Web Site), Tobias Wolff (author of Old School) reads Stephanie Vaughn’s short sto­ry “Dog Heav­en.”  If you’ve nev­er heard him before, Wolff gives his own work and oth­ers a very good read (see our ear­li­er piece.).

Though the pod­cast is not yet avail­able on iTunes, you can lis­ten to the mp3 right here. Also, I’d encour­age you to check out the var­i­ous New York­er pod­casts found in our Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

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Learning Chemistry on YouTube

in Science, Video - Science, YouTube | September 10th, 2008

This is per­haps a first: A uni­ver­si­ty-spon­sored video col­lec­tion on YouTube that hangs togeth­er and con­tributes to devel­op­ing a larg­er body of knowl­edge. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham has launched a chan­nel called The Peri­od­ic Table of Videos, which offers a video for each ele­ment on the peri­od­ic table. In total, you will find 118 videos, includ­ing the one below that gives you a clos­er look at Ura­ni­um. And, for the record, we’ve added this video set to our com­pi­la­tion: Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube: 70 Edu­ca­tion­al Video Col­lec­tions. Here it goes:

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The Tribe: Now Playing in the YouTube Screening Room

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | September 10th, 2008

“What can Bar­bie teach us about cul­ture? More than you might think. In this short doc­u­men­tary, direc­tor Tiffany Shlain explores mod­ern Jew­ish iden­ti­ty through the unusu­al lens of the Bar­bie doll. The Tribe was an offi­cial selec­tion of the 2006 Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val.”

Per­son­al­ly, the film strikes me as rather facile, but what does my opin­ion count next to that of Sun­dance? …

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Thomas Friedman’s Green Revolution: The New Book for the Left & Right

in Books, Current Affairs | September 8th, 2008

Thomas Fried­man’s new book has final­ly hit the stands. Ini­tial­ly, it was going to be titled “Green is the New Red, White and Blue.” But some­how it got released with the far less art­ful — though more descrip­tive — title, Hot, Flat, and Crowd­ed: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew Amer­i­ca. When Fried­man came to Stan­ford last year, he pre­viewed many of his argu­ments in a talk that you can catch on iTunes. But, to boil it down, his argu­ment is that a “green rev­o­lu­tion” makes for smart eco­nom­ic, nation­al secu­ri­ty and envi­ron­men­tal pol­i­cy, and it’s an argu­ment that gets fleshed out in a fair amount of depth in the new work. Despite the unwieldy title, it’s vir­tu­al­ly a giv­en that mil­lions of copies will be sold. And I would­n’t be sur­prised if it brings about a real shift in the nation­al debate — that is, if it helps define what a green rev­o­lu­tion real­ly means and demon­strates how it can make nation­al strate­gic sense on mul­ti­ple lev­els. That’s a gift that Fried­man has. For more on this, check out Fried­man’s talk today on NPR’s Fresh Air, where he goes into more depth and offers some can­did thoughts on the pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates and their envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies. You can lis­ten here: iTunes — RSS Feed — Stream Here.

Here’s a quick quote from the inter­view: The oppo­nents have called Green “lib­er­al, tree hug­ging, girly man, sis­sy, unpa­tri­ot­ic, vague­ly French, and basi­cal­ly what I’m out to do in this book is to rename Green — it’s geopo­lit­i­cal, geostrate­gic, geoe­co­nom­ic, inno­v­a­tive, com­pet­i­tive, patri­ot­ic: Green is the new Red, White, and Blue.” …

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The World is Flat: The #1 Free Pod­cast on iTune­sU

Top 10 Amazing Physics Videos (Including Boomerang in Zero Gravity)

in Physics, Science, Video - Science | September 8th, 2008

Wired Sci­ence gives you their favorites here. Below, we’ve post­ed a sam­ple: It’s called “Boomerang in Zero Grav­i­ty” and shows that, even in out­er space, a boomerang will always return to the per­son who threw it.

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The iPhone: Your Foreign Travel Companion

in Apple | September 7th, 2008

How can the iPhone become your handy trav­el com­pan­ion? The NYTimes explains. Also, as a bonus, trav­el­ers should see our ear­li­er piece. Turn Your iPod into a Trav­el Guide: 20 Trav­el Pod­casts.

PS One of our read­ers raised a good point that deserves some high­light­ing (Thanks Sebastien):

“Turn­ing your iphone into a for­eign trav­el com­pan­ion could cost you a lit­tle for­tune because most of these iphone appli­ca­tions need and Inter­net con­nec­tion to work. Unless you have wifi in your hotel room, you would have to roam on 3G or Edge which would prob­a­bly make it the most expen­sive trip ever…”

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