Adult Content. For Mature Thinkers Only

in History, Literature, Philosophy, Stanford | April 22nd, 2009

A new sea­son of Enti­tled Opin­ions (iTunes Feed Web Site) recent­ly got off the ground, and it does­n’t take long to under­stand what this pro­gram is all about. Robert Har­ri­son, the Stan­ford lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor who hosts the show, opens the new sea­son with these very words:

Our stu­dios are locat­ed below ground, and every time I go down the stairs to do a new show, I feel like I’m descend­ing into the cat­a­combs where those of us who still read great lit­er­a­ture, probe ideas, and explore the recess­es of cul­tur­al his­to­ry, prac­tice a per­se­cut­ed reli­gion. In this neuras­thenic world of ours, we are like a dis­persed soci­ety of secret ini­ti­ates. We live covert­ly, as it were. And it’s in spe­cial shel­ters that our read­ing, think­ing and exchange of ideas take place. Maybe some­day we’ll once again be able to prac­tice our per­sua­sion pub­licly. But mean­while Enti­tled Opin­ions comes to you from the cat­a­combs.

You get the drift. This is a show that takes ideas, lit­er­a­ture, and life seri­ous­ly. It’s heady, and it does­n’t dumb things down. If you’re a faith­ful read­er of Open Cul­ture, you’ll find some­thing here for you. If you take a spin through the archives, you’ll find Har­ri­son in con­ver­sa­tion with Orhan Pamuk (the Nobel Prize win­ning nov­el­ist) and Richard Rorty (one of Amer­i­ca’s most impor­tant con­tem­po­rary philoso­phers). You’ll also find him talk­ing with schol­ars about  Vladimir Nabokov and his Loli­ta, World War II and the Ger­man bomb­ing of Lon­don, the His­to­ry of Psy­chi­a­try, and The His­tor­i­cal Jesus. Each pro­gram starts with a 10 minute (or so) mono­logue, and then Har­ri­son gets down to talk­ing with his guest for anoth­er 50. Give a lis­ten. Let us know your thoughts. And know that Enti­tled Opin­ions (iTunes Feed Web Site) is includ­ed in our Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

PS I shame­less­ly bor­rowed this titled from a com­ment made about Enti­tled Opin­ions on iTunes. To be hon­est, my cre­ative well was run­ning dry.

Jon Stewart on the Relevance of Cultural Magazines

in Comedy, Current Affairs | April 22nd, 2009

Here’s Jon Stew­art talk­ing Mon­day night about the rev­e­la­tion that Amer­i­ca’s “extreme inter­ro­ga­tion” tech­niques actu­al­ly amount to tor­ture. Some­how he man­ages to work The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s and The Utne Read­er into the dis­cus­sion. You’ll find it about 4 min­utes in. Pret­ty fun­ny stuff, although the com­men­tary is sad when you get right down to it.

On a more seri­ous note, Rahm Emanuel (high­light­ed in the video above) was almost cer­tain­ly ref­er­enc­ing excel­lent Mark Dan­ner’s work in the NYRB, which you can find here.

The direct link to the Stew­art video can be found here.

Web 2.0 to Book Deal in 3 Minutes

in Books, Media | April 21st, 2009

After Seth Har­wood got his MFA at the Iowa Writ­ers’ Work­shop, he began pub­lish­ing in tra­di­tion­al mag­a­zines and jour­nals, as most young writ­ers do. But those pub­li­ca­tions were slow to launch his career. Things changed, how­ev­er, once he start­ed pub­lish­ing online. And they real­ly changed when he released his crime nov­el Jack Wakes Up as a free pod­cast (via iTunes, RSS Feed, & MP3) and dis­trib­uted it through social net­works. Web 2.0 broad­ened the reach of his work, attract­ed fans world­wide, and ulti­mate­ly land­ed Har­wood a nice book deal with Ran­dom House. (RH will be pub­lish­ing Jack Wakes Up in print ear­ly next month). In the short video above, Har­wood gives you a quick look inside the mak­ing of his pod­cast, and how it brings expo­sure to his work. If you’re an up-and-com­ing writer, there’s cer­tain­ly some­thing here to think about. You can find out more about Seth’s work at SethHarwood.com.

Paul McCartney Live @ Coachella

in Music | April 20th, 2009

Paul McCart­ney played a long 35 song set at Coachel­la this past week­end. And now we’re get­ting a lit­tle peek at his per­for­mance. Here, in homage to George Har­ri­son, Paul plays “Some­thing” and a lit­tle ukulele.

Watch Super Size Me and Other Feature Films on YouTube

in Film | April 19th, 2009

Mor­gan Spur­lock­’s 2004 doc­u­men­tary, Super Size Me, is avail­able on YouTube for all to watch. Spend 30 days eat­ing noth­ing but McDon­ald’s fast food and what hap­pens? It’s not pret­ty. But you’ll get the pic­ture in an enter­tain­ing 100 min­utes. Super Size Me was nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award, and won prizes at Sun­dance and else­where. Give it a watch. And note that you can now watch oth­er fea­ture-length films on YouTube here. You’ll find some good ones in the doc­u­men­tary & biog­ra­phy sec­tion.

Talent = 10,000 Hours + Luck

in Comedy, Life | April 19th, 2009

Take Mal­colm Glad­well’s new book, Out­liers: The Sto­ry of Suc­cess. Boil it down. Make it fun­ny. And here you have our next video pro­duced by Kir­by Fer­gu­son. NB that there are a few words sprin­kled in that won’t be safe for work (unless you work in a spe­cial kind of place).

How Do You Use Open Courses?

in Most Popular, Online Courses, Random | April 14th, 2009

I was asked by a news­pa­per reporter today how peo­ple, like you, are using open uni­ver­si­ty cours­es (such as those found in our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es). And the truth is, I’m not always sure. So I fig­ured, why not put the ques­tion out there and ask you. Here it goes: How are you using these cours­es? Are you lis­ten­ing to (or watch­ing) these cours­es pure­ly for per­son­al enrich­ment? Or are you spend­ing time with these cours­es for pro­fes­sion­al rea­sons? Are you try­ing to boost your resume/career with these cours­es? Also, dur­ing this reces­sion, are these cours­es sud­den­ly more attrac­tive? Or were they attrac­tive to you all along? Last­ly, what top­ics do you gen­er­al­ly tend to focus on? His­to­ry? Lit­er­a­ture? Com­put­er Sci­ence? Physics?

Ok, folks, give a hand and let me know your thoughts. Please feel free to write your thoughts in the com­ments below, or write us at mail [at] openculture.com.

Learning Physics Through Free Courses

in Physics | April 13th, 2009

There’s some­thing com­pelling about physics. Almost every major open course­ware col­lec­tion fea­tures a well-craft­ed physics course, and these cours­es con­sis­tent­ly rank high on iTune­sU and YouTube Edu. Let’s give a quick overview of the favorites.

At Stan­ford, we’re putting togeth­er a six course sequence called Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum. Taught by Leonard Susskind, one of America’s lead­ing physics minds, this course traces the devel­op­ment of mod­ern physics, mov­ing from New­ton to Ein­stein to Black Holes. So far, we’ve made five of the six cours­es avail­able online (get them here), which amounts to 100 hours of free class­room footage. Hard to beat. (And, in case you’re won­der­ing, the sixth course is being taped right now, and it will be com­ing online dur­ing the months to come.)

Anoth­er pro­gram that has received a fair amount of atten­tion is Wal­ter Lewin’s series of cours­es at MIT. As The New York Times has not­ed, Lewin has long had a cult fol­low­ing at MIT, and now, thanks to his physics cours­es, he’s achieved a minor degree of fame on the inter­net. His lec­tures, deliv­ered with panache, can be found here:

• Physics I: Clas­si­cal Mechan­ics — iTunes — Video Down­load — YouTube
• Physics II: Elec­tric­i­ty and Mag­net­ism — iTunes — Video Down­load — YouTube
• Physics III: Vibra­tions and Waves — iTunes — Video Down­load — YouTube

A third course to call your atten­tion to is Richard Muller’s Physics for Future Pres­i­dents (Feed — MP3s — YouTube).  The course comes out of UC Berke­ley, where it’s an under­grad­u­ate favorite. (It’s also the basis of a recent book by the same name.) And the whole point here is to give cit­i­zens the sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge they need to under­stand crit­i­cal issues fac­ing our soci­ety.

Final­ly, anoth­er course worth review­ing is Fun­da­men­tals of Physics, which is taught by Rama­mur­ti Shankar and it’s part of Yale’s Open Course ini­tia­tive.

UPDATE: Since we orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed this col­lec­tion, Bill Gates has post­ed Richard Feyn­man’s great lec­tures online. Learn more here.

All of these physics cours­es, and many more, can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es. You can also find the cours­es in our sec­tion called Physics: Free Cours­es.

Open Culture Now at OpenCulture.com … and a Small Favor to Ask

in Random | April 13th, 2009

Here’s a quick announce­ment, and please take note. Start­ing today, you can find Open Cul­ture at www.openculture.com. Our old domain (oculture.com) will still work, as will old links. But they’ll for­ward (hope­ful­ly) seam­less­ly to the new domain. Why the change? Because it seemed time to have the url actu­al­ly match the site’s name.

If you encounter any tech­ni­cal prob­lems, please let us know at ma**@*********re.com. Also, let me please ask a quick favor from you. If you’ve pre­vi­ous­ly linked to our site, could you please update your links to reflect the new domain? Sim­ply change ocul­ture to open­cul­ture, and keep the rest of the link the same, and you’re good to go. This will be a big help to us. Mean­while, if you’ve nev­er told a friend about Open Cul­ture, now would be a good time to spread the word.

Last­ly, I want to extend a big thanks to Eric Ober­le for mak­ing this switch pos­si­ble and for gen­er­al­ly keep­ing the site run­ning smooth­ly. With­out Eric, I would have blown this site to pieces long ago. We’re only still around because of him. Thanks ‑e!

Twitter in the University Classroom

in Uncategorized | April 11th, 2009