The Ancient Greek Who Speaks to All History and Military Buffs

in History | January 18th, 2007

Open Source, a radio pro­gram host­ed by Christo­pher Lydon, recent­ly pulled off some­thing rather unusu­al. The broad­cast (iTunes — mp3) made it abun­dant­ly clear why an Ancient Greek text, Thucy­dides’ His­to­ry of the Pelo­pon­nesian War, remains fas­ci­nat­ing and high­ly rel­e­vant to mod­ern day read­ers. Writ­ten 2400+ years ago, Thucy­dides has some­thing impor­tant to offer his­to­ry and mil­i­tary buffs alike, and also those who want to delve into the com­pli­cat­ed human psy­che. For his­to­ri­ans, Thucy­dides’ work gives us the first mod­ern his­to­ry — the first his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive that looked to ren­der the past in an ana­lyt­i­cal, empir­i­cal and objec­tive way (a depar­ture from the more lit­er­ary, myth-based his­to­ries that came before it). For mil­i­tary thinkers, includ­ing stu­dents at West Point, the work holds such appeal because it recounts the epic, 27-year war (431–404 BC) between the two great­est Greek pow­ers — on the one side, Athens, a demo­c­ra­t­ic but increas­ing­ly impe­ri­al­ist pow­er, and, on the oth­er side, Spar­ta, a harsh oli­garchic pow­er that held no par­tic­u­lar impe­r­i­al aspi­ra­tions. Thucy­dides, an Athen­ian gen­er­al, gives you the blow-by-blow account of a land­mark his­tor­i­cal war. But he also gives you more. What par­tic­u­lar­ly engages read­ers, both past and present, are Thucy­dides’ philo­soph­i­cal insights into human nature — into how our pas­sions and fears, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing times of war, can counter-pro­duc­tive­ly under­mine our civil­i­ty and human­i­ty. This applies to lead­ers and cit­i­zens of Athens, who over­reached and even­tu­al­ly lost their war. Yet it also poten­tial­ly applies to mod­ern Amer­i­ca because it is Thucy­dides’ assump­tion that human nature remains fun­da­men­tal­ly the same across time and place. And, in that sense, there is a cau­tion­ary tale for all of us in this sem­i­nal Greek work.

Open Culture Podcast Directories Viewable in Feed Readers

in Uncategorized | January 17th, 2007

The only down­side to using a feed read­er (Blog­lines, Google Read­er, MyYa­hoo, etc.) to access Open Cul­ture is that you won’t be able to see our pod­cast direc­to­ries which reside in our left nav bar. To assist you, we have past­ed links below that will give you direct access to the pod­cast col­lec­tions. Book­mark & enjoy.

• Arts & Cul­ture Pod­casts
• Audio Book Pod­casts
• For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­casts
• News & Infor­ma­tion Pod­casts
• Tech­nol­o­gy Pod­casts
• Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts

Ali G at Harvard; or How Sacha Baron Cohen Got Blessed by America’s Cultural Establishment

in Comedy, Film, Video - Arts & Culture | January 17th, 2007

Oodles of print have been writ­ten about Sacha Baron Cohen’s film, “Borat: Cul­tur­al Learn­ings of Amer­i­ca for Make Ben­e­fit Glo­ri­ous Nation of Kaza­khstan.” And there’s per­haps not a great deal more to say about it, oth­er than it’s remark­able how well the film has been received by Amer­i­ca’s cul­tur­al estab­lish­ment. Edgy, shock com­e­dy that uses racial and gen­der stereo­types to sub­vert racial and gen­der stereo­types usu­al­ly does­n’t go down so well with high­brow crit­ics. But, in this case it did. The Wash­ing­ton Post called the film “a per­fect com­bi­na­tion of slap­stick and satire, a Pla­ton­ic ide­al of high- and low­brow that man­ages to appeal to our basest com­mon denom­i­na­tors while bril­liant­ly skew­er­ing racism, anti-Semi­tism, … [and] sex­ism.” (Pla­ton­ic ide­al? Borat?) Of the film, The New York Times said “The bril­liance of ‘Borat’ is that its com­e­dy is as piti­less as its social satire, and as brainy.” Then, we heard Ter­ry Gross, of NPR’s Fresh Air, gush over the com­ic in her amus­ing inter­view with Baron Cohen. And last­ly, the British com­ic has been nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar by Hol­ly­wood’s film elite.

If any fur­ther proof was need­ed that Baron Cohen has been embraced by the cul­tur­al van­guard, then let this video serve as final wit­ness. In 2004, Har­vard invit­ed Baron Cohen to speak at “Class Day,” the big tra­di­tion­al event that takes place the day before com­mence­ment. And here you get him speak­ing to stu­dents and par­ents not as Baron Cohen, but as Ali G., all in a light-heart­ed way. (For more on this vis­it, see the arti­cle in the Har­vard Gazette.)

How to Get Started Podcasting on Your Campus

in Podcasts | January 17th, 2007

For every uni­ver­si­ty that has start­ed pod­cast­ing lec­tures or cours­es, dozens have proved slow to take this step. If you’re an edu­ca­tor who thinks that your uni­ver­si­ty should go dig­i­tal at long last, you’ll want to take a look at this arti­cle appear­ing in The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion. How to Pod­cast Cam­pus Lec­tures overviews the basic ques­tions that you’ll need to con­sid­er: What soft­ware and hard­ware will your school need to launch this kind of ini­tia­tive? What’s the best way to get fac­ul­ty involved in the project? How will stu­dents use these pod­casts? What edu­ca­tion­al val­ue will they have? And what copy­right and con­trac­tu­al issues will your school need to con­sid­er? This piece will get you off to a good start. If you want to learn more about the nuts and bolts of mak­ing effec­tive pod­casts, spend some time with our primer: Mak­ing Your Own Pod­casts: Resources to Get You Start­ed.

Digital MBA: America’s Best Business Schools on Your iPod

in Business | January 15th, 2007 Read More...

The American Idol for Thinking People: The New Twist on Book Publishing

in Books | January 15th, 2007

It was prob­a­bly only a mat­ter of time before this hap­pened. Accord­ing to The New York Times, Touch­stone, an imprint of Simon & Schus­ter, has agreed to pub­lish a work by whichev­er new writer takes first prize in a con­test spon­sored by the social-net­work­ing site, Gather.com. A la Amer­i­can Idol, every­day peo­ple and pan­el of experts will read and vote on the first chap­ter of books sub­mit­ted by every­day peo­ple.  And although the win­ner will need to sign the “stan­dard Simon & Schus­ter con­tract,” he/she will get their work fast tracked to pub­li­ca­tion and for­go the  has­sle of shop­ping a book. Also, there’s a $5,000 cash prize and the promise of pro­mo­tion at local Bor­ders’ book stores.

The under­ly­ing log­ic behind the con­test, called “First Chap­ters,” comes down to this: It’s ulti­mate­ly peo­ple who buy books, so why not let a good sam­ple demo­graph­ic (Gather.com’s 175,000 old­er and more mature users) pre­view the sub­mis­sions, decide what they like, and save the edi­tor the effort of guess­ing what will fly. That makes a cer­tain amount of sense if you’re a pub­lish­er, work­ing in a slug­gish indus­try with nar­row mar­gins, who is always look­ing to max­i­mize the odds of putting out win­ners. How­ev­er, whether it will fur­ther the pub­lish­er’s mis­sion of bring­ing qual­i­ty books to our cul­ture is an alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent ques­tion, and the jury remains out on this one. You can get more infor­ma­tion about the con­test by click­ing here.

Harvard Now on iTunes: A New Model for University Podcasts?

in Uncategorized | January 14th, 2007

50+ Free Courses from UC Berkeley on iTunes

in Online Courses, UC Berkeley | January 8th, 2007

This is noth­ing short of impres­sive. Last April, UC Berke­ley, one of the pre­miere uni­ver­si­ties in the coun­try, announced its plan to put com­plete aca­d­e­m­ic cours­es on iTunes. Fast for­ward nine months, and you can already find 59 full cours­es avail­able as pod­casts. Sim­ply click here to access Berke­ley’s iTunes site (or here for the Rss feed).No mat­ter where you live, you can access at no cost the very same cours­es attend­ed by stu­dents pay­ing full tuition. And, giv­en the crit­i­cal mass of cours­es being offered across a range of dis­ci­plines, you can put togeth­er your own per­son­al­ized cur­ricu­lum and expand your hori­zons on the fly.

If the human­i­ties are your thing, you can take US His­to­ry: From Civ­il War to Present, Exis­ten­tial­ism in Lit­er­a­ture & Film, or Euro­pean Civ­i­liza­tion from the Renais­sance to Present. If you’re into the social sci­ences, you may want to con­sid­er World Reli­gions, Peo­ples and States, US For­eign Pol­i­cy after 9/11, Human Emo­tions, or Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­tics. Turn­ing to the hard sci­ences, you can take your pick from Physics for Future Pres­i­dents, Intro­duc­tion to Chem­istry, Gen­er­al Astron­o­my, and Gen­er­al Biol­o­gy. Final­ly, for those with a tech­nol­o­gy bent, you can con­sid­er lis­ten­ing in on An Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­ers, The His­to­ry of Infor­ma­tion or even The Foun­da­tions of Amer­i­can Cyber­Cul­ture. But, if these par­tic­u­lar cours­es aren’t for you, there are many more to choose from.

Berke­ley’s col­lec­tion has gen­er­al­ly remained off of peo­ple’s radar screen, which is too bad. It’s an excel­lent pod­cast col­lec­tion, one of the best out there. Hope­ful­ly we can help read­ers find out what they are miss­ing.

For more, please see our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties.

Yale’s 15 Lectures on Democracy

in Yale | January 5th, 2007

As part of its 300th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty gath­ered togeth­er some of its fore­most fac­ul­ty and offered an extend­ed series of lec­tures on the state of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. Col­lec­tive­ly enti­tled “Demo­c­ra­t­ic Vis­tas,” this wide-rang­ing series explores Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy in his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary terms and looks at how it mesh­es with oth­er fix­tures of our social life — reli­gion, fam­i­ly, eco­nom­ic mar­kets, tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, etc. From this page, you can access all of the illu­mi­nat­ing pre­sen­ta­tions in audio and video, includ­ing those by Yale’s Pres­i­dent Richard Levin and Richard Brod­head, the for­mer Dean of Yale Col­lege and now Pres­i­dent of Duke Uni­ver­si­ty.

The one caveat worth men­tion­ing is that these talks were record­ed not long before 9/11. And, in some respects, this may give the lec­tures an out-dat­ed feel. Can we real­ly have a valu­able dis­cus­sion about Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy with­out address­ing 9/11, the war on ter­ror, and the war in Iraq? In some ways no, but in many ways yes. Amer­i­ca is still large­ly Amer­i­ca, the same coun­try it was six years ago, and, for the most part, these dis­cern­ing lec­tures remain high­ly rel­e­vant today. Indeed, Yale has already uploaded some of them to its new pod­cast col­lec­tion on iTunes.

Culture Kiosque: The Euro Guide to Culture

in Media | January 2nd, 2007