25 UC Berkeley Courses Available via Free Video

in Most Popular, Online Courses, UC Berkeley | March 10th, 2007

Not long ago, we wrote a pop­u­lar piece about UC-Berke­ley’s iTunes ini­tia­tive which, to sum it up,allows any­one, any­where, to down­load com­plete uni­ver­si­ty cours­es to their iPods for free. Amaz­ing. Today, we want to point out that Berke­ley also makes avail­able full-fledged cours­es via video/webcast. You can find the com­plete list of cours­es here, but below we have list­ed below 25 cours­es that fig­ure into a “core” under­grad­u­ate cur­ricu­lum. In short, this list includes many good nuts and bolts cours­es, which will teach you a lot and, even bet­ter, cost you noth­ing. Each of these cours­es, com­ing straight from the class­room, can be accessed with Real Play­er, and some can also be accessed as MP3s.

On a relat­ed note, our Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­cast Col­lec­tion and our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es will give you access to many more uni­ver­si­ty lec­tures and cours­es, so be sure to give them a look. You may also want to check out our “playlist” of intel­li­gent videos on YouTube as well as our recent piece: 10 Signs of Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube.

UC Berke­ley Cours­es:

• Bud­dhist Psy­chol­o­gy
• Cell Biol­o­gy
• Descrip­tive Intro­duc­tion to Physics
• Eco­nom­ic Analy­sis — Micro
• Euro­pean Civ­i­liza­tion from the Renais­sance to the Present
• Gen­er­al Bio­chem­istry and Mol­e­c­u­lar Biol­o­gy
• Gen­er­al Biol­o­gy
• Gen­er­al Human Anato­my
• Gen­er­al Psy­chol­o­gy
• Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­ers
• Intro­duc­tion to Chem­istry
• Intro­duc­tion to Gen­er­al Astron­o­my
• Intro­duc­tion to Human Nutri­tion
• Intro­duc­tion to Non­vi­o­lence
• Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­tics
• Issues in For­eign Pol­i­cy After 911
• Open Source Devel­op­ment and Dis­tri­b­u­tion of Dig­i­tal Infor­ma­tion
• Macro­eco­nom­ic Analy­sis
• Physics for Future Pres­i­dents
• Search Engines: Tech­nol­o­gy, Soci­ety and Busi­ness
• The Amer­i­can Lan­guages
• The Struc­ture and Inter­pre­ta­tion of Com­put­er Pro­grams
• US His­to­ry: from Civ­il War to Present
• US For­eign Pol­i­cy After 9/11
• XML Foun­da­tions

The Top 25 Educational Podcasts on iTunes

in Uncategorized | March 8th, 2007

“Is America Too Damn Religious?” (A Debate)

in Religion | March 7th, 2007

Intel­li­gence Squared (iTunes  Feed  Web Site), a new series of NPR broad­casts, has a rather unique
for­mat. It brings Oxford-style debates to Amer­i­ca, and it fea­tures lead­ing thinkers tak­ing dif­fer­ent posi­tions on hot-but­ton issues of our day. (You can get more pre­cise infor­ma­tion on the for­mat here.) There will be eight debates in total, all record­ed live, and each one revolves around three pan­elists argu­ing for, and three against, a “motion,” such as “We must tol­er­ate a nuclear Iran,” “Free­dom of expres­sion must include the license to offend,” and “A demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed Hamas is still a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion.” And then there is the provoca­tive top­ic of the most recent debate, “Is Amer­i­ca Too Damn Reli­gious?” This debate (see bios of par­tic­i­pants) was held at the Asia Soci­ety in New York City in Feb­ru­ary, and you can catch the full debate here (Real Play­er) or a con­densed ver­sion here (mp3).

See Open Cul­ture’s Pod­cast Col­lec­tions:

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

MLK’s “Stride Toward Freedom” (A Free Lecture)

in History | March 5th, 2007

For many life­long learn­ers, The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny is a bless­ing. Since 1990, the com­pa­ny has record­ed uni­ver­si­ty cours­es taught by lead­ing pro­fes­sors and made them avail­able to con­sumers. The cours­es, which tend to be bread-and-but­ter in a good way, range in price depend­ing on the media for­mat you choose. If you buy cours­es on sale (they always run sales), and if you buy the cheap­er MP3 ver­sions (as opposed to the more expen­sive DVDs and audio CDs), you can get a lot of val­ue for your mon­ey. For exam­ple, 24 excel­lent lec­tures on Ancient Greece will run you $34.95, which is not too shab­by.

Now how does all of this tie into what we do here at Open Cul­ture? Here’s how: The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny has post­ed a free 45-minute lec­ture on Mar­tin Luther King, “Stride Toward Free­dom,” which is part of a larg­er course called “Free­dom: Phi­los­o­phy of Lib­er­a­tion.” You can access the lec­ture in dif­fer­ent audio for­mats here, and you’ll get a sense of what The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny is all about.

Caveat: The free offer­ing was sup­posed to have expired on Feb­ru­ary 28. So it may go away soon.

Seymour Hersh’s Powerful Charge: US Backing Al-Qaeda Sympathizers to Counter Iran

in Current Affairs | March 1st, 2007

In the after­math of 9/11, the US began its assault on al-Qae­da and oth­er Sun­ni ter­ror­ist groups. Fast
for­ward to 2003: the US invades Iraq, in part because Hus­sein sup­pos­ed­ly has ties to al-Qae­da, and a new Shi­ite-led gov­ern­ment is even­tu­al­ly cre­at­ed. Now fast for­ward anoth­er cou­ple of years: we find that the Shi­ite gov­ern­ment is sud­den­ly get­ting too cozy with Iran, the major leader of the Shi­ite Mid­dle East. The Saud­is, the major Sun­ni pow­er in the region, get ner­vous. And so, too, are the hawks in Wash­ing­ton who fear a poten­tial­ly nuclear Iran. The result: the Bush admin­is­tra­tion is now look­ing to con­tain Shi­ite pow­er at all costs.

This “re-direc­tion” has involved devel­op­ing con­tin­gency plans for a mil­i­tary (most like­ly aer­i­al) assault on Iran. And, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, in con­junc­tion with the Saud­is, is even now back­ing (i.e. fun­nel­ing finan­cial aid to) rad­i­cal Sun­ni groups who oppose Shi­ite author­i­ty, even though they also amaz­ing­ly have ties with al-Qae­da. Bizarrely, we’re now indi­rect­ly help­ing the very ene­my that we ini­tial­ly set out to destroy. Or so that’s the claim of the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning jour­nal­ist Sey­mour Hersh, who famous­ly broke the sto­ries on My Lai and Abu Ghraib.

Her­sh’s claims are spelled out in a new arti­cle appear­ing in the lat­est edi­tion of The New York­er, which is well worth a read. (His oth­er New York­er pieces on the Iran attack plan appear here, here, and here.) You’ll also want to give a lis­ten to his ener­getic inter­view on NPR’s Fresh Air (iTunes — Feed — Mp3), where he cov­ers much of the same ground.

On a relat­ed note, we’d also refer you to a recent pro­gram aired by Open Source. It, too, deals with like­li­hood of a US inva­sion of Iran, and tries to fig­ure out whether the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s hard­en­ing rhetoric is sim­ply a risky nego­ti­a­tion strat­e­gy, a way to force the Ira­ni­ans to the table, or whether it’s a pre­lude to an almost cer­tain war. You can lis­ten here (Itunes — Mp3) or check out the relat­ed piece on the Open Source blog.

Managing Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions

in Current Affairs | March 1st, 2007

Arthur Schlesinger Jr — Remembered in Video

in History | March 1st, 2007

101 Early Wallace Stevens Poems on Free Audio

in Literature | February 28th, 2007

Here’s a quick lit­tle find for the poet­ry lover: A slew of ear­ly poems by Wal­lace Stevens, the great Amer­i­can poet, can now be down­loaded as pod­casts (iTunes). They include many clas­sics — Anec­dote of the Jar, The Emper­or of Ice Cream, Peter Quince at the Clavier, Sun­day Morn­ing, Thir­teen Ways of Look­ing at a Black­bird, and many oth­ers. Record­ed for Lib­riVox by Alan Drake, all poems are in the pub­lic domain.

Speak­ing of Wal­lace Stevens, you may want to give a lis­ten to a pod­cast that we high­light­ed here once before. It fea­tures the great lit­er­ary crit­ic Harold Bloom (see bio) teach­ing a sem­i­nar at Yale on “The Art of Read­ing a Poem” (iTunes — mp3). Here, Bloom takes his stu­dents through a poem by Wal­lace Stevens, Parts of a World,and moves between inter­pre­ta­tion and intrigu­ing per­son­al anec­dotes. If you want to hear a mas­ter at work, give a good lis­ten.

If you like what we’re doing here, please help spread the word and let oth­ers know what they can find on Open Cul­ture.

The Big Picture: Who Won and Lost in Iraq

in Current Affairs | February 27th, 2007

The New Yorker Magazine’s Famous Cartoons Now Available on Podcast

in Media | February 26th, 2007

Here’s a dif­fer­ent kind of pod­cast: You can now find on iTunes a new video pod­cast that fea­tures ani­mat­ed ver­sions of The New York­er’s famous car­toons. A ven­ture called Ring­Tales has appar­ent­ly been giv­en an exclu­sive license to ani­mate and dis­trib­ute The New York­er’s library of over 70,000 car­toons. Each week, they’ll issue three new video ani­ma­tions, which you can access on iTunes as well as by rss feed. They’ll also be avail­able on The New York­er web­site. For more details, see this press release.