Next Wednes­day, at 9 pm, respect­ed jour­nal­ist Bill Moy­ers will return to PBS and air a 90-minute pre­sen­ta­tion called Buy­ing the War. Along the way, he’ll look at how the main­stream Amer­i­can press wound up cheer­lead­ing for the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s dri­ve toward war in Iraq rather than doing their real job — ask­ing tough ques­tions and pro­vid­ing par­ti­san-free report­ing.

Below, you can find a video excerpt from next week’s show. To briefly set the stage, Bob Simon of of 60
Min­utes talks here about “the report­ing he
was see­ing and read­ing out of the belt­way, and John Wal­cott and War­ren
Stro­bel of Knight Rid­der news­pa­pers (now The McClatchy Com­pa­ny),
dis­cuss their work bur­row­ing deep into the intel­li­gence agen­cies to
deter­mine whether there was any evi­dence for the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion’s
case for war.” (Note: You can get more infor­ma­tion on the expose from this PBS page, and you can sub­scribe to feeds for Bill Moy­er’s pod­casts here.)

you did­n’t before Copen­hagen hit the stage in 1998 and dra­mat­i­cal­ly told the sto­ry of Niels Bohr’s shad­owy meet­ing with Wern­er Heisen­berg back in 1941. Since then, sci­ence plays have been going strong. Just take this for exam­ple: L.A. The­atre Works recent­ly launched its Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Series, a “month­ly broad­cast fea­tur­ing plays that explore the impact of sci­ence on indi­vid­u­als and soci­ety.” You can down­load the series as a pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), and it so hap­pens that the series kicks off with a Tony and Pulitzer Prize-win­ning play called Proof, star­ring Anne Heche.

Writ­ten by David Auburn in 2001, Proof is not as aca­d­e­m­ic as it sounds. The New York Times called it “An exhil­a­rat­ing and assured new play … acces­si­ble and com­pelling as a detec­tive sto­ry.” And Hol­ly­wood turned the play into a film in 2005, with Gwyneth Pal­trow play­ing the lead. So you should­n’t have any reser­va­tions about immers­ing your­self in this dra­mat­ic work. Down­load it, sync it, and get ready to lis­ten to a tale of love and death, intel­lec­tu­al adven­ture and para­noia, and a sprin­kling of sex, drugs and rock and roll.

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Dig into Open Cul­ture’s pod­cast col­lec­tions.

The Smith­son­ian

has come out with a nice pho­to essay look­ing back on the leg­endary escape artist Har­ry Hou­di­ni. It begins:

Har­ry Hou­di­ni freed him­self from chains after jump­ing off a pier into Boston’s Charles Riv­er, wig­gled out of a strait jack­et while hang­ing upside down in Times Square and appeared alive and well after being sub­merged in his Water Tor­ture Cell. The great escape artist defied belief and enter­tained hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple through­out the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry until he died on Hal­loween in 1926, at age 52. His death cer­tifi­cate blames a rup­tured appen­dix, but rumors cir­cu­lat­ed that he may have been mur­dered.
Adver­tise­ment

A new biog­ra­phy, The Secret Life of Hou­di­ni by William Kalush and Lar­ry Slo­man, has caused many peo­ple, includ­ing the magi­cian’s great-nephew, to recon­sid­er these rumors. Hou­di­ni, they believe, may have been poi­soned by Spir­i­tu­al­ists, a group who claimed to speak to the dead through séances. Hou­di­ni went to great lengths to debunk their prac­tices, often expos­ing their tricks on the stage. In late March, foren­sic pathol­o­gists announced that they will exhume Hou­dini’s body to deter­mine once and for all what hap­pened to the escape artist.

In this pho­to essay, explore the extra­or­di­nary life of Har­ry Hou­di­ni: BEGIN SLIDESHOW>

We’re not exact­ly break­ing news here today in men­tion­ing that author Kurt Von­negut has passed away. (Get the NY Times obit here.) In mem­o­ry of the writer, we thought that we’d present a fit­ting­ly uncon­ven­tion­al inter­view that was con­duct­ed last year in Sec­ond Life. (And, by the way, the irony of talk­ing today about a Von­negut inter­view in some­thing called Sec­ond Life is not exact­ly lost on us. Let’s hope that he’ll indeed have one.)

The iPod is not just for groov­ing to music any­more. Muse­ums are using pod­casts to help vis­i­tors bet­ter explore their
art col­lec­tions (See our relat­ed arti­cle). Uni­ver­si­ties are doing the same for their cam­pus­es (see UC Berke­ley’s tour on iTunes). Doc­tors are now using iPods to improve their stetho­scope skills. And, trav­el­ers can now use them to tour through the great cities and coun­tries of the world.

Along these lines, a ven­ture called Sound­walk pro­vides engag­ing, some­what off­beat audio tours of New York and Paris. In New York, they offer indi­vid­ual tours of Lit­tle Italy, the Low­er East Side, Times Square and the Meat Pack­ing Dis­trict. They also get into Brook­lyn and the Bronx. Mean­while, in Paris, they take you through the Marais, St. Ger­main, Pigalle, Belleville, and the Palais Roy­al. Each tour is nar­rat­ed by fit­ting fig­ures. The writer Paul Auster leads you through Ground Zero in New York. Vin­ny Vel­la, who has played roles in The Sopra­nos and Mar­tin Scorce­se’s Casi­no, takes you through Chi­na­town. To get a feel for whether it’s the right kind of expe­ri­ence for you, Sound­walk lets you lis­ten to a sam­ple of each tour. Unlike most things that we fea­ture on Open Cul­ture, these audio files are not free. They’ll run you $12 a piece. But in the scheme of a big trip, it may be worth the cost.

Now if you’re look­ing for free trav­el pod­casts, then you’ll want to give some time to Trav­el with Rick Steves (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Some recent episodes look at Sici­ly, Spain, Cuba and Mex­i­co. You can also find a sep­a­rate col­lec­tion ded­i­cat­ed to trav­el­ing in Paris and its envi­rons (iTunes). Lis­ten­ers give these pod­casts high marks.

See all of Open Cul­ture’s Pod­cast Col­lec­tions:

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School) — Pod­cast Primer