Intelligent YouTube Channels

in Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science, YouTube | March 13th, 2008

Below, we have gath­ered togeth­er some of the most intel­li­gent video col­lec­tions on YouTube. A great place to find cul­tur­al­ly enrich­ing video…

Gen­er­al

• @GoogleTalks
  • Google has lots of famous vis­i­tors speak­ing at its head­quar­ters, and they’re all record­ed and neat­ly pre­sent­ed here.
• Al Jazeera Eng­lish
  • The Mid­dle East­ern news ser­vice, which has gen­er­at­ed its share of con­tro­ver­sy, now airs broad­casts in Eng­lish and presents them here.
• Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry
  • Includes the excel­lent “Known Uni­verse” video.
• Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al
  • The lead­ing human rights orga­ni­za­tion brings you var­i­ous videos out­lin­ing human rights con­cerns across the globe, and the work they’re doing to improve con­di­tions.
• Artists Space
  • Artists Space sup­ports con­tem­po­rary artists work­ing in the visu­al arts, video and elec­tron­ic media, per­for­mance, archi­tec­ture and design, and it pro­motes artis­tic exper­i­men­ta­tion and dia­log in con­tem­po­rary cul­ture.
• Aspen Insti­tute
  • An inter­na­tion­al non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to fos­ter­ing enlight­ened lead­er­ship and open-mind­ed dia­logue.
• Bad Astron­o­my
  • Bad Astron­o­my is devot­ed to debunk­ing myths and mis­con­cep­tions about astron­o­my, and also to slap down with­out apol­o­gy bad think­ing in all its forms.
• BBC
  • A series of videos pro­mot­ing pro­grams com­ing out of Britain’s main media out­let. Unfor­tu­nate­ly many of these videos are short and not entire­ly sub­stan­tive. A missed oppor­tu­ni­ty.
• BBC World­wide
  • Dit­to.
• Big Think
  • This col­lec­tion brings you videos fea­tur­ing some of today’s lead­ing thinkers, movers and shak­ers.
• Boing­Bo­ingTV
  • These videos are brought to you by the mak­ers of the very pop­u­lar Boing­Bo­ing blog.
• British Film Insti­tute Nation­al Archive
  • The BFI (British Film Insti­tute) pro­motes under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of Britain’s rich film and tele­vi­sion her­itage and cul­ture. And it claims to have the “world’s largest and most diverse film and TV archive.”
• Brook­lyn Muse­um
  • A fair­ly rich line­up of videos explor­ing the col­lec­tions at Brook­lyn’s main art muse­um.
• Canal Edu­catif
  • CED is a phil­an­thropic pro­duc­er of free high-qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion­al videos in the domains of arts, eco­nom­ics and sci­ence.
• Char­lie Rose
  • PBS inter­view­er Char­lie Rose presents seg­ments of his night­ly inter­views.
• Cinet­ic
  • Cinet­ic brings audi­ences the lat­est, great­est and clas­sic fes­ti­val favorites from around the globe. From award-win­ners by vet­er­an film­mak­ers to up-and-com­ing tal­ent telling new sto­ries, Cinet­ic prides itself on being at the fore­front of qual­i­ty indie film in the dig­i­tal space.
• Cit­i­zen Tube
  • YouTube’s own chan­nel presents videos deal­ing with the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal process and the 2008 elec­tion.
• Com­put­er His­to­ry Muse­um
  • A good num­ber of videos that delve into com­put­ers, net­work­ing, and semi­con­duc­tors.
• Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions
  • A resource designed to pro­vide insight into the com­plex inter­na­tion­al issues chal­leng­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers and cit­i­zens alike.
• CSPAN
  • Videos that keep a close eye on the inner-work­ings of the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal process.
• Dai­ly­Hitchens
  • Christo­pher Hitchens and more Christo­pher Hitchens.
• FORA.tv
  • Deliv­ers video pre­sen­ta­tions from the world’s great writ­ers, lead­ers, activists and thinkers.
• Guardian Unlim­it­ed TV
  • The Guardian brings you videos that make the tele­vi­sion world its focus.
• Giz­mo­do
  • A video col­lec­tion from one of the most pop­u­lar tech­nol­o­gy web sites.
• Google Tech Talks
  • The name kind of says it all.
• Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press
  • HUP, a major pub­lish­er of non-fic­tion, schol­ar­ly, and gen­er­al inter­est books, brings you videos with new authors.
• HBO
  • Pro­vides out­takes from new HBO pro­duc­tions. The videos are all short and large­ly pro­mo­tion­al. Give us some beef, sirs.
• KQED on Demand- San Fran­cis­co
  • Media pro­vid­ed by the pub­lic broad­cast­ing com­pa­ny in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area. I drink at this well dai­ly.
• MoMA
  • Videos high­light­ing the art col­lec­tion, pub­lic pro­grams, and tem­po­rary exhi­bi­tions at The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art in New York City.
• Mon­ty Python Chan­nel
  • Their videos have been cir­cu­lat­ing around YouTube for a while. Now, the come­di­ans have their own chan­nel. A good place to have a laugh.
• Nation­al Geo­graph­ic
  • The col­lec­tion is rich, but the videos are short. Anoth­er instance where the provider could use the medi­um to offer more substance/depth.
• New Sci­en­tist.
  • Videos and vod­casts cov­er­ing sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, space, the envi­ron­ment and a whole lot more. An inter­na­tion­al team of expert jour­nal­ists brings you the lat­est inno­va­tions and ideas in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, from the won­der­ful to the wor­ry­ing to the weird.
• NOVA
  • Short video out­takes from PBS’s pop­u­lar sci­ence pro­gram.
• Oscar’s Chan­nel
  • The offi­cial chan­nel of the Acad­e­my of Motion Pic­ture Arts and Sci­ences is the only place to relive favorite Oscar® moments and see exclu­sive inter­views with the tal­ent­ed film pro­fes­sion­als who com­prise the Acad­e­my mem­ber­ship. Includes some good vin­tage clips.
• Philip Scott John­son
  • Some great videos that put art in motion.
• PBS
  • Pro­motes new PBS pro­gram­ming with painful­ly short videos.
• Pol­i­tic­sTV
  • Polit­i­cal videos with a pro­gres­sive bent.
• Pulitzer Cen­ter on Cri­sis Report­ing
  • The Pulitzer Cen­ter on Cri­sis Report­ing’s mis­sion is to pro­mote in-depth cov­er­age of inter­na­tion­al affairs, focus­ing on top­ics that have been under-report­ed, mis-report­ed — or not report­ed at all.
• Reel­NASA
  • Videos show the lat­est hap­pen­ings at NASA and new devel­op­ments in space explo­ration.
• Reuters Video
  • The lat­est video from Reuters.
• Richard Dawkins
  • The chan­nel fea­tures talks by Richard Dawkins, the Oxford evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist, as well as oth­ers influ­enced by his thought.
• Sci­en­Cen­tral
  • Sci­en­Cen­tral, Inc. pro­duces sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy con­tent for tele­vi­sion, video, and the web. From broad­cast news fea­tures to edu­ca­tion­al prod­ucts, they cov­er the med­ical, envi­ron­men­tal, and tech­no­log­i­cal issues that affect dai­ly life.
• Slate
  • Video from Slate Mag­a­zine
• Spo­ken Verse
  • Roger Ebert calls it one of the rich­est resources on YouTube. Spo­ken Verse offers over 400 read­ings of great poems in Eng­lish, from Shake­speare to today.
• Steve Span­gler Sci­ence Show
  • Catch the videos pro­duced by a teacher nation­al­ly known for mak­ing sci­ence fun.
• Sun­dance
  • Pro­vides video clips from orig­i­nal series and films air­ing on the Sun­dance Chan­nel.
• The Alcove
  • A pro­gram that fea­tures inter­views with var­i­ous influ­en­tial thinkers.
• The Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry
  • This chan­nel pro­vides a rare glimpse into the Muse­um’s exhi­bi­tions, sci­en­tif­ic research, pub­lic pro­grams and edu­ca­tion­al endeav­ors. Videos pre­sent­ed by the Muse­um high­light its glob­al mis­sion to advance sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery and increase under­stand­ing of nature and human cul­tures.
• The Com­mon­wealth Club (San Fran­cis­co)
  • Videos com­ing out of the nation’s old­est and largest pub­lic affairs forum, pre­sent­ing top­ics rang­ing across pol­i­tics, cul­ture, and soci­ety.
• The Com­mon­craft Show
  • The Com­mon Craft Show is a series of short explana­to­ry videos by Lee and Sachi LeFever. The goal is to fight com­plex­i­ty with sim­ple tools and plain lan­guage.
• The Davos Ques­tion
  • Every year, glob­al lead­ers attend the World Eco­nom­ic Forum in Davos, Switzer­land to dis­cuss how to bet­ter the world. Here you get to see what they have to say.
• The Kahn Acad­e­my
  • This chan­nel fea­tures over 800 videos that will teach stu­dents the ins and outs of alge­bra, geom­e­try, trigonom­e­try, cal­cu­lus, sta­tis­tics, finance, physics, eco­nom­ics and more. The clips have been record­ed by Salman Khan.
• The Library of Con­gress
  • Time­less trea­sures and con­tem­po­rary pre­sen­ta­tions from the Library of Con­gress in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Fea­tures record­ings dat­ing from the ear­li­est Edi­son films to the present.
• The New York Times
  • All the news that’s fit to stream.
• The New York­er
  • The offi­cial video chan­nel of The New York­er mag­a­zine.
• The Nobel Prize
  • Brings you fas­ci­nat­ing insights into the minds of cur­rent and past Nobel Lau­re­ates.
• The Onion News Net­work
  • A good dose of fun­ny videos from The Onion. Good for when you need some com­ic relief.
• The Real News
  • The Real News Net­work is a glob­al online video news net­work that lis­tens to and is depen­dent sole­ly on its audi­ence. No ads. No gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies. No cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship.
• The Research Chan­nel
  • Based out of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, the ResearchChan­nel brings togeth­er con­tent from lead­ing research and aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions.
• The World Bank
  • Videos com­ing out of the insti­tu­tion whose goal is to rid the world of pover­ty..
• The YouTube Screen­ing Room
  • Pro­vid­ed by YouTube itself, this col­lec­tion presents high qual­i­ty, inde­pen­dent films to web users and promis­es to roll out four new films every two weeks.
• Thir­teen WNET (PBS New Your)
  • Fea­tures con­tent from New York City’s flag­ship pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion.
• YouTube Movies
  • YouTube now hosts a series of com­plete stu­dio movies on its site. Above, I’ve linked you direct­ly to the documentary/biography sec­tion. But feel free to peruse the larg­er col­lec­tion. You’ll find some good films there.
• TED Talks
  • Gen­er­al­ly engag­ing videos com­ing out of the annu­al TED con­fer­ence. Fea­tures impor­tant thinkers from dif­fer­ent walks of life.
• TED x Talks
  • In the spir­it of ideas worth spread­ing, TEDx is a pro­gram of local, self-orga­nized events that bring peo­ple togeth­er to share a TED-like expe­ri­ence.
• Trav­el Chan­nel TV
  • The Trav­el Chan­nel brings you around the world on YouTube.
• Van­i­ty Fair Mag­a­zine
  • Videos from the mag­a­zine launched in 1913.
• WNYC Radio
  • Videos pro­vid­ed by WNYC, New York Pub­lic Radio, the largest pub­lic radio sta­tion in the US.
• World Eco­nom­ic Forum
  • The World Eco­nom­ic Forum is an inde­pen­dent inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion com­mit­ted to improv­ing the state of the world by engag­ing lead­ers in part­ner­ships to shape glob­al, region­al and indus­try agen­das.
• Yad Vashem
  • Con­tain­ing the world’s largest repos­i­to­ry of infor­ma­tion on the Holo­caust, Yad Vashem is a leader in Holo­caust edu­ca­tion, com­mem­o­ra­tion, research and doc­u­men­ta­tion.
• 92nd Street Y
  • Pret­ty much any­one and every­one on the cul­tur­al radar pass­es through the 92nd Y in NYC.

Uni­ver­si­ties

Spot­light­ed Col­lec­tions

• YouTube EDU
  • YouTube got a lot more intel­li­gent when it launched YouTube EDU, a sec­tion of the site that cen­tral­izes all of its educational/academic con­tent. This is the best place to start if you’re look­ing for lec­tures and cours­es.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia — Berke­ley
  • Arguably the most sub­stan­tive YouTube col­lec­tion out there. Fea­tures a large num­ber of free cours­es, plus numer­ous lec­tures giv­en by impor­tant fig­ures.
• Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty
  • 800 years and now going dig­i­tal.
• Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty
  • Har­vard was late to the Web 2.0 par­ty, but they final­ly have their chan­nel up on YouTube, and it con­tains some worth­while con­tent, includ­ing Michael Sandel’s famous course on Jus­tice.
• Indi­an Insti­tute of Technology/Indian Insti­tute of Sci­ence
  • Pre­sent­ed by the lead­ing tech­nol­o­gy insti­tutes in India, this col­lec­tion fea­tures more than 50 free cours­es. Obvi­ous­ly has a strong technology/engineering bent.
• MIT (Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy)
  • Makes avail­able many of the videos pro­duced as part of MIT’s lead­ing Open­Course­Ware ini­tia­tive.
• Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty
  • New­ly launched, the col­lec­tion already fea­tures a cou­ple hun­dred videos, includ­ing sev­er­al free cours­es.
• UChan­nel (Prince­ton)
  • Spear­head­ed by Prince­ton, this col­lec­tion aggre­gates qual­i­ty videos com­ing from a con­sor­tium of major uni­ver­si­ties.

Oth­er Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lec­tions

• Auburn Uni­ver­si­ty
  • Hard to sep­a­rate the intel­lec­tu­al sub­stance from videos that have a more pro­mo­tion­al & inter­nal bent. But some of the for­mer is there to be found.
• Berk­man Cen­ter for Inter­net and Soci­ety at Har­vard Law School
  • The videos host­ed here look at how the dig­i­tal world and the law inter­sect.
• Carnegie Mel­lon
  • Among oth­er things, this col­lec­tion fea­tures the high­ly pop­u­lar video: Randy Pausch’s Last Lec­ture: Achiev­ing Your Child­hood Dreams.
• Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty
  • One of NYC’s finest.
• Duke Uni­ver­si­ty
  • Indi­vid­ual videos explore the research com­ing out of one of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties.
• Duke’s Fuqua School of Busi­ness
  • Sim­i­lar to Duke’s main col­lec­tion, but focused on busi­ness.
• Emory Uni­ver­si­ty
  • One of the finest uni­ver­si­ties in the South of the US.
• EGS (The Euro­pean Grad­u­ate School)
  • This Euro­pean col­lec­tion fea­tures impor­tant, con­tem­po­rary the­o­rists, philoso­phers, and film­mak­ers.
• Har­vard’s Bok Cen­ter
  • A small col­lec­tion focused on ped­a­gogy.
• Old Domin­ion
  • A lit­tle bit of a hodge­podge but there’s some inter­est­ing items in the mix.
• Ohio State
  • So far not an over­whelm­ing use of the medi­um.
• Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty — Saïd Busi­ness School
  • Rather inter­nal­ly focused. Not much in the way of edu­ca­tion­al con­tent per se. But let’s keep our fin­gers crossed that it even­tu­al­ly offers more.
• Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty
  • Again some­thing of a hodge­podge. Wheat and chaff.
• Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty
  • Ever heard of it?
• Sono­ma State
  • A more intel­lec­tu­al­ly robust col­lec­tion that fea­tures a fair amount of notable lec­tures.
• The Open Uni­ver­si­ty
  • The Open Uni­ver­si­ty (OU) is the Unit­ed King­dom’s only uni­ver­si­ty ded­i­cat­ed to dis­tance learn­ing. Some of the more edu­ca­tion­al videos can befound here.
• Tulane Uni­ver­si­ty
  • You can access some of the speech­es by esteemed guest speak­ers here.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona
  • You can sort through a good num­ber of talks here.
• UCLA
  • Along with Berke­ley, this is the oth­er flag­ship pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty in Cal­i­for­nia.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia TV
  • UCTV pulls togeth­er videos from the cam­pus­es, nation­al lab­o­ra­to­ries, and affil­i­at­ed insti­tu­tions of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press
  • Though still mod­est in size, the col­lec­tion fea­tures some inter­est­ing items.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham — The Peri­od­ic Table of Videos
  • A nice uni­ver­si­ty-spon­sored project, this col­lec­tion fea­tures a video about each ele­ment on the peri­od­ic table. A handy thing for chem­istry stu­dents.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na — Chapel Hill
  • The col­lec­tion is sub­stan­tive on the whole. You will need to sift through the videos to find ones of inter­est.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia
• UCSF Mem­o­ry & Aging Chan­nel
  • UCSF, one of the lead­ing med­ical schools in the US, fea­tures videos that will “edu­cate patients, care­givers and health pro­fes­sion­als about the var­i­ous forms of neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases.” The dis­eases cov­ered here include Alzheimer’s, Fron­totem­po­ral demen­tia and Creutzfelt-Jakob
• USC (Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia)
  • Get lec­tures here, and arts con­tent here.
• Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty
  • An eclec­tic mix.
• Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

• On this page, you’ll find some of the high­est qual­i­ty open cours­es out there.

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History, Power and our Global Society

in History, Politics, Stanford | March 12th, 2008

Here’s a new, free course from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. Taught by James Shee­han, the His­to­ry of the Inter­na­tion­al Sys­tem (iTunes) offers a his­tor­i­cal view of inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics in the 20th cen­tu­ry, explor­ing how inter­na­tion­al play­ers have attempt­ed to project their will and pro­tect their inter­ests, all while nego­ti­at­ing flu­id and not always man­age­able exter­nal forces. The course looks back at com­mu­nism, fas­cism and lib­er­al­ism, then moves through the Cold War to the present day, and ends with cur­rent events in Iraq. An impor­tant his­to­ri­an and one of Stan­ford’s finest lec­tur­ers, Shee­han was recent­ly Pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can His­tor­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion. So far four lec­tures have been post­ed (see here), and there will be more to come.

NOTE: This course has been added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es, where you can find about 120 top-notch cours­es.

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500 Years of Women in Art (Give This Video Points for Creativity)

in Art | March 11th, 2008

This video takes you on a fair­ly amaz­ing tour of the great por­traits of women in West­ern art. It moves from da Vin­ci to Picas­so, and, along the way, the por­traits seam­less­ly morph one into anoth­er. This mor­ph­ing allows you to see how artis­tic styles changed over time, and also how the human face has been artis­ti­cal­ly treat­ed dur­ing dif­fer­ent peri­ods. Watch the video below, which is accom­pa­nied by Bach’s Suite No. 1 per­formed by Yo-Yo Ma. For infor­ma­tion on the paint­ings cov­ered in the clip, click here. And also see the relat­ed video, Women in Film.

More Cat Shenanigans

in Comedy | March 11th, 2008

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Samantha Power & the Obama Controversy

in Current Affairs, Politics | March 11th, 2008

It’s rare that pro­fes­sors find them­selves at the cen­ter of a polit­i­cal firestorm. But that’s where Saman­tha Pow­er, Pro­fes­sor of Prac­tice of Glob­al Lead­er­ship and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy at Har­vard, found her­self last week when, dur­ing an off-the-record con­ver­sa­tion with a reporter, she referred to Hillary Clin­ton as a “mon­ster” and then had to resign as senior for­eign pol­i­cy to advis­er to Barack Oba­ma.

Until then, Pow­er had been rid­ing a big wave of suc­cess. Only 37 years old, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her first book, A Prob­lem from Hell: Amer­i­ca and the Age of Geno­cide. She’s also now pro­mot­ing her sec­ond book, Chas­ing the Flame: Ser­gio Vieira de Mel­lo and the Fight to Save the World. (Watch a clip from the book tour here). And until this high pro­file slip-up, she was clear­ly help­ing shape Oba­ma’s for­eign pol­i­cy. You can hear Pow­er’s influ­ence in how Oba­ma answered the high­ly pub­li­cized ques­tion last sum­mer — would you, as pres­i­dent, nego­ti­ate direct­ly with Iran’s Ahmadine­jad? (He said yes.) Pow­er’s think­ing on inter­na­tion­al diplo­ma­cy gets artic­u­lat­ed fair­ly well in this lengthy inter­view. Below, we’ve also post­ed a clip (from FORA.tv) of Pow­er speak­ing about Oba­ma and the ques­tion of nego­ti­at­ing with ene­mies. (Get the full talk here.)

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Australia’s Electronic Canvas

in Art | March 10th, 2008

We want­ed to post a quick pho­to from the light­ing show at the Ade­laide Fes­ti­val of Arts. Dur­ing the fes­ti­val, artists project lights on the city’s archi­tec­tur­al mon­u­ments, turn­ing the build­ings into elec­tron­ic can­vas­es. We’ve post­ed one pho­to below. For more good ones, see here. Thanks Car­ol for shar­ing these!

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David Sedaris Delivers a Pizza

in Comedy | March 9th, 2008

Appar­ent­ly not the real deal, but a pret­ty good imper­son­ation nonethe­less…

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Top 10 Grammar Myths

in English Language | March 9th, 2008

For Nation­al Gram­mar Day (March 4), The Gram­mar Girl (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site) issued anoth­er pop­u­lar pod­cast that out­lines and debunks 10 com­mon gram­mar myths. If you’re already up to speed on these (pre­view them here), con­grats. If not, give a lis­ten.

Listening to Famous Poets Reading Their Own Work

in Audio Books, Literature | March 6th, 2008

Today, we have a guest fea­ture by Don from Clas­sic Poet­ry Aloud (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), a place where you can find a great line­up of poet­ry pod­casts. We wel­come oth­er guest con­trib­u­tors. So, if you’re inter­est­ed, just email us. Take it away (and thanks) Don…

The inter­net has giv­en poet­ry new scope and a new fresh­ness. It’s almost like the ‘70s, when punk fanzine read­ers were famous­ly told ‘Here are three chords, now form a band’. Today, the injunc­tion could be: ‘Here are three web sites, now per­form some poet­ry’.

And the empha­sis would very much be on per­for­mance, with read­ings tak­ing place on blogs (indi­vid­u­al­ly) and at poet­ry slams (col­lec­tive­ly).

But an inter­est in poet­ry read­ings is not con­fined to new work. My own dai­ly poet­ry pod­cast, Clas­sic Poet­ry Aloud, is ded­i­cat­ed to any­thing in the Eng­lish lan­guage that is out of copy­right, and attracts lis­ten­ers on every con­ti­nent.

While pod­casts such as Clas­sic Poet­ry Aloud (see a Novem­ber Open Cul­ture post­ing for a list­ing of poet­ry pod­casts) fea­ture a range of poets, the inter­net also offers a wealth of record­ings of cel­e­brat­ed authors read­ing from their own work.

The BBC has a won­der­ful series of such record­ings at Poet­ry Out Loud. My favourites include: Men and their Bor­ing Argu­ments by con­tem­po­rary British poet Wendy Cope, and an excerpt from Tennyson’s cel­e­brat­ed Charge of the Light Brigade, orig­i­nal­ly record­ed in 1890 on a wax cylin­der by Edi­son. In addi­tion, the BBC has a series of inter­views with poets dis­cussing their work.

The Acad­e­my of Amer­i­can Poets’ lis­ten­ing booth offers more than 150 orig­i­nal read­ings. As well as the rolling tones of Dylan Thomas read­ing Do not go Gen­tle into that Good Night, there is Robert Frost’s The Road not Tak­en, and Gwen­dolyn Brooks’ We Real Cool – com­plete with an illu­mi­nat­ing, humor­ous, wry intro­duc­tion. This is an unashamed show stop­per read­ing of a poem that runs to just 24 words.

Indeed, one of the joys of lis­ten­ing to poets read­ing from their own work is often the com­ments and insights that they offer. T.S. Eliot does this in intro­duc­ing The Jour­ney of the Magi, one of three of his poems to fea­ture on the Poet­ry Archive. On this site, there are over 200 poems that fea­ture some form of intro­duc­tion by the poet.

The Poet­ry Archive is an ambi­tious project set up by British poet lau­re­ate Andrew Motion to cap­ture poet­ry read­ings. The range here is so vast that it is impos­si­ble to say how many poems are fea­tured on the site, but it makes for an invalu­able resource, with poems acces­si­ble by theme as well as by form.

Among British poets is for­mer lau­re­ate John Bet­je­man, appar­ent­ly unable to remem­ber the title of the poem he is best remem­bered for – A Subaltern’s Love Song – and he jokes with his audi­ence before launch­ing into a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly brisk and warm ren­di­tion. Not all of the Poet­ry Archive comes from the UK, though, and Allen Gins­berg reads three poems, includ­ing A Super­mar­ket in Cal­i­for­nia.

Author Andrew Keen has claimed that the inter­net is ‘killing cul­ture’. That’s a good, allit­er­a­tive tag line to sell books, but the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of poet­ry on the net shows that it’s also far from the truth.

Cat Shenanigans

in Comedy | March 6th, 2008

It may not qual­i­fy as cul­ture, but it’s fun­ny and rings awful­ly true … (Along sim­i­lar lines, you can get some good ani­mat­ed New York­er car­toons here and here.)

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