Atheists for Jesus, or Really a Debate Over Whether Religion and Science Can Get Along

in Religion | March 30th, 2007

Over the past two days, NPR’s Fresh Air has devot­ed two pro­grams to inter­ro­gat­ing whether reli­gion and sci­ence can co-exist. On Wednes­day, air time was first giv­en to Richard Dawkins, the famed Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty schol­ar of evo­lu­tion who, with his recent pub­li­ca­tion of The God Delu­sion, has launched a vig­or­ous defense of athe­ism. As you could well imag­ine, Dawkins (iTunes — feed — stream) is hard­ly will­ing to make accom­mo­da­tions for reli­gion, and he’s com­fort­able liv­ing in a world where Dar­win­ist thought solves prob­lems that reli­gion itself usu­al­ly tries to sort out — that is, the basic hows and whys of exis­tence. It has been said that Dawkins comes off as being as zeal­ous in his athe­ism as his reli­gious coun­ter­parts are in their faith. But no mat­ter how you look at him, you have to admire his abil­i­ty to make an art­ful argu­ment .… and also his sense of humor. Yes, he claims half in jest to wear an “Athe­ists for Jesus” t‑shirt. (See a pho­to here.)

Next, on Thurs­day, Ter­ry Gross invit­ed Fran­cis Collins (iTunes — feed — stream) onto the show. Collins is a geneti­cist, and not just any one. He is cur­rent­ly the direc­tor of the Nation­al Human Genome Research Project, and he most notably led a team that cracked the human genome back in 2000. He is also an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian, and, again, not just your aver­age one in that he accepts the valid­i­ty of evo­lu­tion. Hav­ing recent­ly pub­lished a new work, The Lan­guage of God: A Sci­en­tist Presents Evi­dence for Belief, Collins is sub­tly look­ing to steer a mid­dle course, to find ways to let reli­gion and sci­ence co-exist and not let the one under­mine the integri­ty of the oth­er. How well the argu­ments hang togeth­er is an open ques­tion. But it’s nonethe­less gen­uine­ly inter­est­ing to hear how he’s think­ing things through. And cer­tain­ly it’s worth lis­ten­ing to Dawkins and Collins’ inter­views side by side. This is NPR at its best, and, yes, I’d gen­tly chal­lenge one of our read­ers to find any­thing on Fox News that’s on an equal­ly intel­li­gent plane. (See the user com­ments at the bot­tom of this page.)

See our com­plete lists of Arts & Cul­ture Pod­casts, or our larg­er Pod­cast Library.  Email a friend and let them know about Open Cul­ture.

25 Smart Video Podcasts That You Can Watch on Apple TV

in Apple, Technology, Web/Tech | March 29th, 2007

Ear­li­er this week, we dis­cussed the recent release of Apple TV, the new gad­get that lets you wire­less­ly down­load videos from iTunes to your cushy widescreen TV. For many con­sumers, the log­i­cal ques­tion to ask is whether there’s much to watch if they plunk down the $299 for the hard­ware. (Check it out in our Ama­zon store.) And our read­ers might par­tic­u­lar­ly won­der whether there’s much in the way of cul­tur­al video. With these ques­tions in mind, we’ve put togeth­er a sam­pling of worth­while video pod­casts (oth­er­wise called “vod­casts”) that you can imme­di­ate­ly start con­sum­ing with Apple TV. These videos can also be found in our pod­cast library.

• Arts & Cul­ture Vod­casts
  • New York­er Car­toons iTunes Feed
    • Catch ani­mat­ed ver­sions of The New York­er’s famous car­toons.
  • Son­ny Rollins Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A 12-part video pod­cast series (to be released in month­ly install­ments) that intro­duces Son­ny Rollins, one of our jazz greats.
  • Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val iTunes Web Site
    • Get behind the scenes cov­er­age at the lat­est stag­ing of the influ­en­tial Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val.

• For­eign Lan­guage Lessons
  • MyGermanClass.com Ler­nen Wir Deutsch! iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A series of edu­ca­tion­al and enter­tain­ing video pod­casts that will teach you Ger­man.
  • Japan­ese Class iTunes Web Site
    • These video­casts from the Kyoto Japan­ese Lan­guage School use video to demon­strate how to writein Japan­ese.
• News & Infor­ma­tion
  • ABC Night­ly News iTunes Feed
  • ABC’s Night­line iTunes Feed
  • BBC News­Night iTunes Feed
  • CBS’s Face the Nation iTunes Feed
  • CNN’s Late Edi­tion with Wolf Blitzer iTunes Feeds
  • Democ­ra­cy Now with Amy Good­man iTunes Feed
  • New York Times Video Reports iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Reuters World Update iTunes Feed
  • Wash­ing­ton Post Video iTunes Feed
• Sci­ence
  • Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Sci­ence Fes­ti­val iTunes Web Site
  • Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel Video Pod­casts iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A trove of video pod­casts from Dis­cov­ery. It includes Ever­est — Beyond the Lim­it (iTunes).
  • NASAcast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A series of the lat­est videos from NASA.
  • Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s Wild Chron­i­cles iTunes Feed Web Site
    • “See the nat­ur­al world like nev­er before through the eyes of Nation­al Geo­graph­ic adven­tur­ers, sci­en­tists, researchers, and the extra­or­di­nary Crit­ter­cam.”
  • NOVA iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A series of short vod­casts from NOVA.
• Tech­nol­o­gy
  • Adobe Cre­ative Suite Video Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Ter­ry­White teach­es you how to unlock the pow­er of Cre­ative Suite with visualex­am­ples. Empha­sis gets placed on inDe­sign and Pho­to­shop.
  • InDig­i­tal iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A pop­u­lar video pod­cast focus­ing on the lat­est gad­gets and high-tech prod­ucts.
  • GeekBrief.TV Video Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Fea­tur­ing­Cali Lewis, this “fast, fun and flir­ty” vod­cast explores news­about tech toys and tools. Gen­er­al­ly very well reviewed by users.
  • Dig­gna­tion iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A week­ly web cul­ture pod­cast that focus­es on the tops sto­ries on Digg.com, the pop­u­lar social con­tent web site. Host­ed by Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht.
• Uni­ver­si­ty
  • INSEAD­’s Lead­er­cast iTunes Web Site
    • A series of video pod­casts that come out of one of Europe’s elite busi­ness pro­grams.
  • Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty
    • Mod­ern The­o­ret­i­cal Physics: Quan­tum Entan­gle­ment iTunes Web Info
      • A cut­ting edge physics video course taught by Leonard Susskind, one of the lead­ing fig­ures in the field.
    • Anx­ious Times iTunes Web Site
    • • Host­ed by Ted Kop­pel, this pan­el dis­cus­sion focus­es on the glob­al chal­lenges that we’re fac­ing in this cen­tu­ry. Pan­elists include: Supre­me­Court Jus­tice Antho­ny Kennedy, for­mer Sec­re­tary of State GeorgeSchultz, for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense William Per­ry, Yahoo co-Founder

        Jer­ry Yang, and Stan­ford Pres­i­dent John Hen­nessy, among oth­ers.

  • The Uni­ver­si­ty Chan­nel iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Prince­ton­has assem­bled a col­lec­tion of pub­lic affairs lec­tures, pan­els ande­vents from aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions all over the world. You can find

      lec­tures here from some of the world’s lead­ing thinkers.

  If we’re miss­ing any­thing great, please drop us a line.

Starting Startups: A Free Course (and More) for the Entrepreneur

in Business, Entrepreneurship | March 27th, 2007

Entre­pre­neur­ship and Busi­ness Plan­ning is a free course avail­able via pod­cast (iTunes  Feed  Mp3) that par­al­lels a class­room course being offered at Carnegie Mel­lon with­in the Mas­ters in Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems Man­age­ment (MISM) pro­gram. Taught by Mark Juliano, an adjunct pro­fes­sor who oth­er­wise works in the pri­vate sec­tor, the course cov­ers the ins-and-outs of start­ing a new ven­ture. Fol­low­ing a very log­i­cal tra­jec­to­ry, it starts with the fun­da­men­tals — devel­op­ing ideas for new com­pa­nies, writ­ing busi­ness plans, and cre­at­ing teams — and then moves through more advanced mate­ri­als that you’d typ­i­cal­ly find cov­ered in b‑school: mar­ket­ing, com­pet­i­tive strat­e­gy, sales, pric­ing, fund­ing and finance. Final­ly, when you dive into the pod­casts, you’ll real­ize that Juliano has clear­ly tak­en pains to present an acces­si­ble course for lis­ten­ers. Along with clear­ly pre­sent­ed lec­tures, you get a host of sup­port­ing online mate­ri­als, plus a course blog. A very nice touch.

Next, the busi­ness-mind­ed folks among us will also want to pore over the stel­lar col­lec­tion of entre­pre­neur­ship edu­ca­tion resources assem­bled by the Stan­ford Tech­nol­o­gy Ven­tures Pro­gram. Their media con­tent trove includes a sol­id col­lec­tion of pod­casts fea­tur­ing talks with busi­ness thought lead­ers (iTunes  Feed  Web Site), not to men­tion a cache of videos high­light­ing pre­sen­ta­tions by the exec­u­tives and VCs who make Sil­i­con Val­ley tick. Just gen­er­al­ly, you’ll want to explore the many oth­er resources in the Edu­ca­tors Cor­ner.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

150 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

Apple TV: Turn Your TV into a Smart Box

in Apple, Technology, Web/Tech | March 26th, 2007

When Steve Jobs announced Apple’s new line­up of gad­gets at Mac­world in Jan­u­ary (lis­ten on iTunes or stream it), all eyes were focused on the planned release of the iPhone. Rel­a­tive­ly lost in the com­mo­tion, how­ev­er, was Apple TV, which start­ed ship­ping this week. (Check it out in our Ama­zon store.) Despite the name, Apple TV does­n’t come with a TV. But, for $299, you do get a piece of hard­ware that lets you wire­less­ly sync your iTunes col­lec­tion to your widescreen TV. And, with that, you can watch down­loaded movies, TV shows, and video pod­casts in a much more suit­able and plea­sur­able envi­ron­ment. (Even­tu­al­ly, you’ll be able to watch videos via Apple TV in high def.) If giv­en the choice between watch­ing your video down­loads on a small iPod screen or a cushy plas­ma TV in your liv­ing room, the deci­sion becomes a no-brain­er. The new gad­get instant­ly makes Apple a cred­i­ble play­er in the video dis­tri­b­u­tion mar­ket, and it clear­ly fur­thers along the com­pa­ny’s trans­for­ma­tion into a more diver­si­fied con­sumer-elec­tron­ics and media com­pa­ny.

For Open Cul­ture read­ers, Apple TV has some ben­e­fits on the near hori­zon. Over the past sev­er­al months, we’ve noticed more pod­casts com­ing out in a video fla­vor. (See our pod­cast library.) And that trend should only pick up over time. (Indeed, Robert X. Cring­ley, the astute observ­er of tech trends, fore­sees a video glut this year that could over­whelm the cur­rent capac­i­ty of the Net.) Thanks to Apple TV, you might soon be able to use your tele­vi­sion as much as your iPod to con­sume high qual­i­ty cul­tur­al con­tent. And this may become all the more true if the rumors pan out that Apple and Google have been talk­ing about dis­trib­ut­ing Google Video through iTunes. Just think of the pos­si­bil­i­ties that lie ahead.

For more infor­ma­tion on Apple TV, you can vis­it Apple’s site, check out the cov­er­age on Engad­get and CNET, or watch the Wal­ter Moss­berg video below.

Oxford University Takes to iTunes

in Uncategorized | March 23rd, 2007

Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty now has an offi­cial pod­cast­ing pres­ence on iTunes, albeit a small one. It’s hard to know whether this is part of a wider uni­ver­si­ty ini­tia­tive, or whether it’s just one aca­d­e­m­ic pro­gram act­ing on its own (it seems to be the lat­ter), but you can now lis­ten to a series of four Oxford lec­tures on Old Eng­lish lan­guage and lit­er­a­ture in his­tor­i­cal con­text. In short, we’re talk­ing about things medieval. Cap­tured straight from the class­room, the lec­tures are pre­sent­ed in a live­ly way by Dr. S. D. Lee. Give a lis­ten here.

Also be sure to check out our com­plete list of Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts.

Oodles of Google Video Documentaries

in Google, Video - Arts & Culture | March 23rd, 2007

Last week, we talked about how it can be logis­ti­cal­ly dif­fi­cult to find smart videos on Google Video and YouTube. Then, this week, we stum­ble upon this: a no-frills web site called Best Online Doc­u­men­taries that aggre­gates, yes, you guessed it, high-qual­i­ty online doc­u­men­taries, almost all from Google Video. The video seg­ments are divid­ed into broad cat­e­gories (Biogra­phies, His­to­ry, Reli­gion, Sci­ence, etc), and, with­in them, you’ll find some items that deserve your time — includ­ing a his­to­ry of Byzan­tium, a biog­ra­phy of Mal­colm X, a look at Alfred Hitch­cock and his films, a pro­gram called The God Delu­sion fea­tur­ing the Oxford sci­en­tist Richard Dawkins, and, at the oth­er end of the spec­trum, a coun­ter­point British pro­gram, The Trou­ble with Athe­ism. If these pro­grams are up your alley, you can start perus­ing the larg­er col­lec­tion here.

Oth­er doc­u­men­taries and films can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Movies.

The YouTube Threat to iTunes?

in Uncategorized | March 21st, 2007

The New Psychology of Success

in Psychology, Science | March 21st, 2007

The lat­est issue of Stan­ford Mag­a­zine fea­tures an intrigu­ing arti­cle worth a lit­tle bit of your time. Car­ol Dweck, a psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford, has spent much of her career look­ing at the psy­cho­log­i­cal under­pin­nings of suc­cess, and her research has point­ed to one broad con­clu­sion: Those who believe their intel­li­gence is fixed — who think they’ve either got it or they don’t — tend to have dif­fi­cul­ty over­com­ing adver­si­ty and reach­ing their full poten­tial, where­as those who see their intel­li­gence and abil­i­ty as flu­id, as being the by-prod­uct of effort, end up being more resilient and bet­ter able to excel. And this applies just as much to young stu­dents in school as to adults in the work­place, or any­where else. That’s just a quick sum­ma­ry, and there’s obvi­ous­ly a bit more to it. Click here to dig a bit deep­er. Or check out Dweck­’s new book called Mind­set: The New Psy­chol­o­gy of Suc­cess.

Sep­a­rate­ly, you can lis­ten in here on a pod­cast inter­view with Dweck and her thoughts on the pscy­hol­o­gy of suc­cess.

Email a friend and let them know about Open Cul­ture.

Podcast Tutorial

in Podcasts | March 19th, 2007

We talk about pod­casts a good deal around here. But giv­en that only 12% of inter­net users have ever down­loaded a pod­cast, and only 1% does so dai­ly (see this Pew Research Cen­ter study), we want­ed to pro­vide an overview of pod­casts and how to use them. In a few min­utes, we want to get you up and run­ning and explor­ing our rich col­lec­tions of edu­ca­tion­al and cul­tur­al mate­ri­als.

What is a pod­cast?

Here’s the basic answer. Pod­casts are essen­tial­ly radio shows avail­able for down­load over the Inter­net, and you can lis­ten to them on your iPod, oth­er portable mp3 play­ers, and com­put­er. Instead of being broad­cast over the air­waves and even­tu­al­ly lost, as hap­pens with tra­di­tion­al radio shows, pod­casts can be stored and played at the user’s con­ve­nience. Think of it as a TIVO in audio.

How do I down­load and lis­ten to pod­casts? The iTunes Way

Giv­en the preva­lence of Apple’s iPod/iPhone, dis­cussing the Apple way of down­load­ing pod­casts is unavoid­able.

To access pod­casts through iTunes (down­load for free here), you have sev­er­al options:

Option 1:

• Open iTunes,
• Click on “iTunes store” on the left side of the screen,
• Next click on “Pod­casts” with­in the area called “iTunes Store,”
• Search and find the pod­cast you want,
• Then either click “Get Episode” to get an indi­vid­ual pod­cast that inter­ests you, or click “Sub­scribe” to auto­mat­i­cal­ly receive each new install­ment with­in the pod­cast series.

Option 2:

• Find a pod­cast that you’d like to explore. (You may encounter them while surf­ing the web),
• Locate the pod­cast’s rss feed, which sites usu­al­ly adver­tise on their home­page, and are often accom­pa­nied by this sym­bol,
• Click on the “Advanced” drop-down menu along the top of the screen,
• Next select “Sub­scribe to pod­cast,”
• And then paste the feed link (for exam­ple, https://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/mind.xml) into the box and click “Ok.”

NOTE: This option works well when you find a pod­cast that’s not already list­ed on iTunes.

Option 3:

• Some­times when you’re surf­ing the web, you’ll find a pod­cast that you like, and you’ll have the option to sub­scribe direct­ly to the pod­cast on iTunes from the web page. (On Open Cul­ture, we give you this option when­ev­er we see a link that says “iTunes.”)
• Click on the link and it will help you launch iTunes, and from there you’ll be giv­en the option either to sub­scribe to the ongo­ing pod­cast, or to down­load indi­vid­ual episodes.

Lis­ten­ing to the Pod­casts

Final­ly, when you sync your iPod, your pod­casts will be auto­mat­i­cal­ly down­loaded onto your iPod. And you can lis­ten to them by:

• Turn­ing on your iPod,
• Click­ing on “Music” at the main menu.
• Scrolling the wheel down to “Pod­casts,”
• And then select­ing the indi­vid­ual pod­casts that you want to play.

Are there alter­na­tives to iTunes?

Yes. And you have a cou­ple of options here.

If you own anoth­er kind of mp3 play­er (e.g. ones by Microsoft, San­Disk, or Cre­ative), it will come with soft­ware that per­forms essen­tial­ly the same func­tions as iTunes. And you’ll want to fol­low the same basic direc­tions that we out­lined in Step 2 above. That is, find the rss feed (which we always try to pro­vide) and use it to sub­scribe to the pod­cast. Then sync and lis­ten.

And then there is an inter­est­ing sec­ond option: Life­hack­er recent­ly rec­om­mend­ed a free soft­ware called “MyPod­der” (down­load here). It is a cross plat­form soft­ware for down­load­ing pod­casts direct­ly to your MP3 play­er, no mat­ter what kind you have.

Can I Make My Own Pod­casts?

Sure, check out our pre­vi­ous fea­ture that directs you to good resources.

The Problem with GooTube (and Inside Iran)

in Media | March 12th, 2007