Financial Markets Course with Yale Sage Robert Shiller

in Business, Economics, Yale | August 8th, 2011

In March 2000, Yale econ­o­mist Robert Shiller pub­lished Irra­tional Exu­ber­ance, a book that warned that the long-run­ning bull mar­ket was a bub­ble. Weeks lat­er, the mar­ket cracked and Shiller was the new guru. Fast for­ward a few years, and Shiller released a sec­ond edi­tion of the same book, this time argu­ing that the hous­ing mar­ket was the lat­est and great­est bub­ble. We all know how that pre­dic­tion played out.

Unlike most of the finan­cial indus­try, Shiller isn’t locked into a peren­ni­al­ly bull­ish view, bent on pump­ing the mar­ket despite what the real num­bers sug­gest. And that should give stu­dents, whether young or old, some con­fi­dence in his free course sim­ply called “Finan­cial Mar­kets.” Avail­able on the web in mul­ti­ple for­mats (YouTube – iTunes Audio – iTunes Video — Yale Web Site), the 26 lec­ture-course cov­ers the inner-work­ings of finan­cial insti­tu­tions that ide­al­ly “sup­port peo­ple in their pro­duc­tive ven­tures” and help them man­age eco­nom­ic risks. You can start with Lec­ture 1 here. Above, we present his intro­duc­to­ry lec­ture on Stocks.

Final­ly (and sep­a­rate­ly) you can get Shiller’s thoughts on how to han­dle Amer­i­ca’s big debt mess here. It was record­ed in recent days.

Shiller’s course appears in the Eco­nom­ics sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. 385 cours­es in total. Don’t miss them.

Astonish Me: A Magical Mystery Through Nature’s Hidden Secrets

in Film, Video - Science | August 8th, 2011

The World Wildlife Fund turns 50 this year, and, to mark the occa­sion, the acclaimed drama­tist Stephen Poli­akoff and direc­tor Charles Stur­ridge have teamed up to shoot ‘Aston­ish Me,’ a short, mag­i­cal tale that reminds us of the many mys­ter­ies nature still con­ceals.

Every year, sci­en­tists dis­cov­er some­where in the neigh­bor­hood of 15,000 new species. (See some of the most intrigu­ing recent ones here.) But this could all dis­ap­pear if we don’t pay more atten­tion to con­ser­va­tion. Every­one who worked on the film — from actors to film crew — did so for free. The action takes place in London’s Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um.

The Math Guy Radio Archive

in Math | August 8th, 2011

Image by Richard Ress­man, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Start­ing back in 1995, Kei­th Devlin, a Stan­ford math pro­fes­sor and pop­u­lar sci­ence writer, began mak­ing appear­ance’s on NPR’s Week­end Edi­tion Sat­ur­day, where he demys­ti­fies math ques­tions, both large and small, that have a bear­ing on our every­day lives. Years lat­er “The Math Guy,” as he’s oth­er­wise called, has built up a com­plete sound archive of his radio appear­ances, which fea­tures 78 episodes record­ed between 1995 and 2001. Here are a few fine exam­ples:

• June 4, 2011 Any Way You Stack It, $14.3 Tril­lion Is A Mind-Ben­der. How can we com­pre­hend the size of the cur­rent US nation­al debt?
• Octo­ber 23, 2010. Check­ing The Math Behind The Green­house Effect.
• June 5, 2010. Run­ning the Num­bers for the World Cup.
• July 4, 2009. Top 10 Rea­sons Why the BMI is Bogus.
• April 4, 2009. Anoth­er Father of the Hydro­gen Bomb. The 100th anniver­sary of the birth of the math­e­mati­cian Stanis­law Ulam.
• Feb­ru­ary 28, 2009. What do we need alge­bra for?
• Decem­ber 27, 2008. ‘Hard Day’s Night’: A Math­e­mat­i­cal Mys­tery Tour. Math­e­mat­i­cal analy­sis of the open­ing chord and oth­er Bea­t­les music.

Again, you can access the com­plete archive here.

H/T @Stanford

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Map of Math­e­mat­ics: An Ani­mat­ed Video Shows How All the Dif­fer­ent Fields in Math Fit Togeth­er

Vin­tage MIT Cal­cu­lus Lessons

Futur­ist Arthur C. Clarke on Mandelbrot’s Frac­tals

Fellini + Abrams = Super 8½

in Film | August 8th, 2011

J.J. Abrams Super 8 meets Fed­eri­co Fellini’s mas­ter­piece 8 ½. The new gets lay­ered over the old, and it all adds up to Super 8 ½. Fun­ny enough, it kind of works.

Watch John Huston’s Beat the Devil

in Film | August 5th, 2011

In hon­or of what would have been John Hus­ton’s 105th birth­day, we’re fea­tur­ing Beat the Dev­il, the 1953 clas­sic direct­ed by Hus­ton and co-writ­ten by Tru­man Capote. Star­ring Humphrey Bog­a­rt, Jen­nifer Jones, Gina Lol­lo­b­rigi­da and Peter Lorre (quite a cast!), the film is a dra­mat­ic com­e­dy that spoofs the noir genre and par­tic­u­lar­ly Hus­ton’s own leg­endary film, The Mal­tese Fal­con. You can find Beat the Dev­il per­ma­nent­ly list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, as well as in our Free Film Noir col­lec­tion.

Mariachi Band Serenades Beluga Whale at Mystic Aquarium

in Life, Music | August 5th, 2011

Last month, the Mari­achi band, “Los Trovadores de Amer­i­ca,” played at a wed­ding held at the Mys­tic Aquar­i­um in Ston­ing­ton, Con­necti­cut. Before wrap­ping up, the guys were good enough to ser­e­nade one of the bel­u­ga whales. And, you know, the sea crea­ture seemed to appre­ci­ate it. Enjoy the week­end … H/T @sheerly

Dave Eggers: The Teacher Who Encouraged Me to Write

in Books, Education, Literature, Writing | August 4th, 2011

Image by Rhodo­den­drites, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Thou­sands of pub­lic school teach­ers won’t be return­ing to the class­room this fall, thanks to bud­get cuts nation­wide. And that means more than a few Jay Criche’s won’t get the chance to tap the hid­den tal­ents of young stu­dents. Jay Criche, in case you’re won­der­ing, taught Eng­lish at Lake For­est High School and count­ed Dave Eggers (A Heart­break­ing Work of Stag­ger­ing Genius and What Is the What) as one of his stu­dents. Criche passed away recent­ly, and, writ­ing in Salon, Eggers remem­bers his teacher’s deep influ­ence:

He was kind to me, but I had no sense that he took par­tic­u­lar notice of me. There were oth­er, smarter kids in the class, and soon I fell back into my usu­al posi­tion — of think­ing I was just a lit­tle over aver­age in most things. But near the end of the semes­ter, we read “Mac­beth.” Believe me, this is not an easy play to con­nect to the lives of sub­ur­ban high school­ers, but some­how he made the play seem elec­tric, dan­ger­ous, rel­e­vant. After pro­cras­ti­nat­ing till the night before it was due, I wrote a paper about the play — the first paper I typed on a type­writer — and turned it in the next day.

I got a good grade on it, and below the grade Mr. Criche wrote, “Sure hope you become a writer.” That was it. Just those six words, writ­ten in his sig­na­ture hand­writ­ing — a bit shaky, but with a very steady base­line. It was the first time he or any­one had indi­cat­ed in any way that writ­ing was a career option for me. We’d nev­er had any writ­ers in our fam­i­ly line, and we did­n’t know any writ­ers per­son­al­ly, even dis­tant­ly, so writ­ing for a liv­ing did­n’t seem some­thing avail­able to me. But then, just like that, it was as if he’d ripped off the ceil­ing and shown me the sky.

Over the next 10 years, I thought often about Mr. Criche’s six words. When­ev­er I felt dis­cour­aged, and this was often, it was those six words that came back to me and gave me strength. When a few instruc­tors in col­lege gen­tly and not-so-gen­tly tried to tell me I had no tal­ent, I held Mr. Criche’s words before me like a shield. I did­n’t care what any­one else thought. Mr. Criche, head of the whole damned Eng­lish depart­ment at Lake For­est High, said I could be a writer. So I put my head down and trudged for­ward.

You can read Egger’s remem­brance in full here.

The Last Surviving Witness of the Lincoln Assassination Appears on a Game Show (1956)

in History, Television | August 4th, 2011

Let’s rewind the video­tape to 1956, to Samuel James Sey­mour’s appear­ance on the CBS tele­vi­sion show, “I’ve Got a Secret.” At 96 years of age, Sey­mour was the last sur­viv­ing per­son present at Ford’s The­ater the night Abra­ham Lin­coln was assas­si­nat­ed by John Wilkes Booth (April 14, 1865).

Only five years old at the time, Mr. Sey­mour trav­eled with his father to Wash­ing­ton D.C. on a busi­ness trip, where they attend­ed a per­for­mance of Our Amer­i­can Cousin. The young­ster caught a quick glimpse of the pres­i­dent, the play began, and the rest … as they say … is his­to­ry.

A quick foot­note: Samuel Sey­mour died two months after his TV appear­ance. His longevi­ty had some­thing to do, I’d think, with declin­ing those Win­stons over the years.

Find cours­es on the Civ­il War in our list of Free His­to­ry Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Hear Voices from the 19th Century: Tennyson, Gladstone & Tchaikovsky

in History, Media, Technology | August 3rd, 2011

Head over to Sound­Cloud, and you’ll find 10 audio files that span three cen­turies. It’s a fair­ly ran­dom col­lec­tion, we’ll admit. But two record­ings from the 19th cen­tu­ry imme­di­ate­ly stand out.

First we have Alfred Lord Ten­nyson (1809 – 1892), Poet Lau­re­ate of the Unit­ed King­dom dur­ing Queen Vic­to­ri­a’s reign, read­ing “The Charge of the Light Brigade” on the wax cylin­der in 1890.

And then we get to hear echoes of the voice of William Glad­stone, the four-time Prime Min­is­ter of Great Britain (1809 — 1898). Here, Glad­stone’s voice was record­ed by Thomas Edis­on’s phono­graph cylin­der (1888), the same device that lets us lis­ten to Tchaikovsky (The Nut­crack­er, the 1812 Over­ture, etc.) chat­ting with his friends. Some have doubt­ed the authen­tic­i­ty of the Glad­stone record­ing, but it still remains gen­er­al­ly accept­ed.

For more on record­ings from the 19th cen­tu­ry, we’d rec­om­mend spend­ing some time with a five-part BBC series called Gramo­phones & Grooves. It takes you into the ear­ly record­ing indus­try and lets you hear count­less oth­er voic­es.

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Richard Feynman: The Likelihood of Flying Saucers

in Physics, Video - Science | August 2nd, 2011

Richard Feyn­man was a once in a gen­er­a­tion intel­lec­tu­al. He had no short­age of brains. (In 1965, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quan­tum elec­tro­dy­nam­ics.) He had charis­ma. (Wit­ness this out­take from his 1964 Cor­nell physics lec­tures avail­able here.) He knew how to make sci­ence and aca­d­e­m­ic thought avail­able, even enter­tain­ing, to a broad­er pub­lic. (We’ve high­light­ed two pub­lic TV pro­grams host­ed by Feyn­man here and here.) And he knew how to have fun. The clip above brings it all togeth­er. Hope you enjoy, and don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos, or many free physics cours­es in our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.