Wolf Brother: Serial Literary Entertainment

in Audio Books, Books, Literature | July 27th, 2007

The Guardian Books Pod­cast has start­ed offer­ing an audio­book ver­sion of the young adult nov­el Wolf Broth­er as a ser­i­al pod­cast. The sto­ry is the first in a series of books by Michelle Paver called Chron­i­cles of Ancient Dark­ness. It makes good audio since it’s grip­ping and not hard to fol­low (or get back into if you get dis­tract­ed). But what real­ly makes it worth­while is Ian McKel­lan’s voice, which lends the tale just the right lev­el of ancient, mag­i­cal atmos­phere. The Guardian has released 9 out of 13 episodes so far, at a rate of one a week. (Site, iTunes)

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The Plot Against FDR: Stranger than Fiction

in History | July 25th, 2007

In 2004, Philip Roth’s The Plot Against Amer­i­ca imag­ined an alter­na­tive Amer­i­can his­to­ry. The year is 1940, and Charles Lind­bergh, an Amer­i­can hero and Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er, beats FDR in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and takes Amer­i­ca down the path toward fas­cism, import­ing to the US the worst that Europe has to offer.

An implau­si­ble his­tor­i­cal sce­nario? Not entire­ly, not accord­ing to this BBC inves­tiga­tive report (lis­ten here with Real Play­er). In 1933, when Amer­i­ca was mired deeply in the Great Depres­sion, Franklin D. Roo­sevelt came into office and launched fed­er­al poli­cies to revive the econ­o­my. Many now remem­ber well his New Deal poli­cies. But, there were some at the time — par­tic­u­lar­ly well-heeled lead­ers in the Amer­i­can busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty — who adamant­ly opposed the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment involv­ing itself in the pri­vate sec­tor. Based on research in the nation­al archives, the BBC inves­ti­ga­tion sug­gests that titans of the indus­tri­al and finan­cial world, includ­ing Prescott Bush (the grand­fa­ther of our sit­ting pres­i­dent), were linked to, if not direct­ly back­ing, a plot that would have Maj.-Gen. Smed­ley But­ler, a high­ly dec­o­rat­ed Marine, lead a 500,000 pri­vate army and push Roo­sevelt out of pow­er. It was a move tak­en straight from Hitler’s and Mus­solin­i’s play­book. To get more on the coup and how it played out, give the 30-minute inves­tiga­tive report a lis­ten.

Filling the Idea Void in Iraq

in Current Affairs, Politics | July 23rd, 2007

We have hit bot­tom in Iraq. And you know it because the debates over Iraq (whether the war was just, whether we planned it ade­quate­ly, whether we have a mean­ing­ful exist strat­e­gy, etc.) have ground to a halt. The big defend­ers of the war effort have most­ly gone silent, or they’re no longer tak­en seri­ous­ly, and what we’re left with is a deficit of ideas all around. There are those who talk about stay­ing in Iraq, but can’t artic­u­late a cred­i­ble strat­e­gy for mov­ing for­ward. And those who talk about leav­ing, but can’t out­line how we’ll leave Iraq in a moral­ly defen­si­ble posi­tion. We hear a lot in the way of plat­i­tudes, lit­tle in the way of sub­stance.

This Fresh Air inter­view (stream it here) with Thomas Ricks, author of the best­seller Fias­co: The Amer­i­can Mil­i­tary Adven­ture in Iraq, helps fill the idea void a bit. (His book, by the way, comes out in paper­back lat­er this week.) Hav­ing recent­ly returned from Iraq, Ricks talks about the real options now avail­able to the US, and what steps the Bush admin­is­tra­tion will like­ly take dur­ing its last 18 months. Also, he dis­cuss­es how the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary has changed its m.o. in Iraq. Gone are the days when pol­i­tics dic­tat­ed a sun­ny out­look and no real plans. Now, adults are run­ning the show, and they’re get­ting a good deal more real­is­tic and prag­mat­ic. But even they rec­og­nize that this new­found wis­dom is com­ing per­haps too late.

Relat­ed Note: George Pack­er, the main jour­nal­ist who cov­ered the war effort for The New York­er, has recent­ly rolled out a blog for the mag­a­zine. It’s called “Inter­est­ing Times” and it’s sure to help fill the idea void as well. Give it a look here.

Want to down­load free cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties? Check out this new pod­cast col­lec­tion.

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Stephen Colbert on Books

in Books, Comedy | July 22nd, 2007

For a lit­tle week­end laugh, here is Stephen Col­bert speak­ing at Book Expo Amer­i­ca, pump­ing his new book, I Am Amer­i­ca (And So Can You!), spar­ring with Khaled Hos­sei­ni (author of The Kite Run­ner and A Thou­sand Splen­did Suns), trash­ing Cor­mac McCarthy, and gen­er­al­ly liken­ing books to cig­a­rettes. The clip gets bet­ter as it moves along and ends with Col­bert hit­ting his stride.

PS You can also watch Part 2 of the video here.

See our pod­cast col­lec­tions of free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es and free high-qual­i­ty audio­books.

Sneak Preview of Nobel Winner’s Next Novel

in Books, Literature | July 19th, 2007

A quick heads up: You can read an excerpt from J.M. Coet­zee’s upcom­ing nov­el, Diary of a Bad Year, over at The New York Review of Books. The entire nov­el will be pub­lished in Jan­u­ary 2008. And, in case you weren’t already aware of it, Coet­zee won the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture in 2003. You can get more back­ground infor­ma­tion on the South African author here as well as reviews of his nov­els here.

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Radio Lab: A Great Science Podcast

in Podcasts, Science | July 17th, 2007

Radi­o­Lab, a sci­ence radio show cre­at­ed by WNYC in New York, is a lit­tle unusu­al for a pub­lic radio show. It comes out in short sea­sons of about five episodes. Each episode address­es a par­tic­u­lar ques­tion in sci­ence through a wide lens–I found their most recent­ly pod­cast show, on Moral­i­ty, to be par­tic­u­lar­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. We’re adding the new show to our col­lec­tion of Sci­ence Pod­casts. Check it out for your­self!

Radi­o­Lab (Site, iTunes, Feed)

Elvis Costello: The First Ten Years Podcast

in Music | July 13th, 2007

A quick heads up for Elvis Costel­lo fans: In this ten-part pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), Elvis reflects on the first 10 years of his career, tak­ing lis­ten­ers on a tour that looks back at “his child­hood, musi­cal influ­ences, singing, song­writ­ing, chang­ing his name, record­ing, Nick Lowe, the Attrac­tions, the hits, the miss­es, get­ting arrest­ed and much more.” So far, 4 of the 10 seg­ments have been released; the oth­ers will be rolled out over the remain­der of the summer.For more pod­casts along these lines, check out our Music Pod­cast Col­lec­tion as well as our Arts & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

The High and Low Road of the Atheism Debate

in Current Affairs, Religion, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science | July 10th, 2007

These days, there is no short­age of pub­lic thinkers launch­ing a vig­or­ous defense of athe­ism. Most recent­ly, Christo­pher Hitchens has come out with God is Not Great. And, hold­ing true to form, he has used this book and relat­ed media cam­paign as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to fight out the ugly cul­ture wars once again. All of the expect­ed ingre­di­ents are there — the blus­ter, bad behav­ior, and gen­er­al unwill­ing­ness to engage in a civ­i­lized and sub­stan­tive debate. To get a quick taste of Hitchens’ M.O., just lis­ten to this NPR-ish inter­view. The longer the inter­view goes, the more he hits his stride.

On the upside, there is always Richard Dawkins. Yes, the man has strong opin­ions and can some­times sound smug. But you can’t deny this: he goes out there, takes the debate seri­ous­ly, thinks through the angles, and answers crit­ics’ ques­tions with crisp, intel­lec­tu­al­ly pre­cise argu­ments. It’s all a wel­comed reprieve from the style of debate that we’ve become accus­tomed to in the Unit­ed States. Below, you can get a lit­tle taste of what we’re talk­ing about, or click to watch the video here.

Watch “Live Earth” Live (Now)

in Current Affairs, Music | July 6th, 2007

Unless you’ve been liv­ing in a bunker some­where, you’ve prob­a­bly heard about Live Earth, a 24-hour, 7‑continent con­cert that’s been orga­nized to raise aware­ness about glob­al warm­ing and to inspire action on the envi­ron­men­tal front. You can watch these shows live by click­ing here. The con­certs in Asia are already under­way, and the West­ern Hemi­sphere shows will start tomor­row (Sat­ur­day). Thanks to Al Gore for pro­mot­ing this event and this impor­tant larg­er cause.

Michael Moore’s “Sicko” — Fox Likes It More Than Google?

in Current Affairs, Film, Google, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society | July 2nd, 2007

For some, it came as no sur­prise that “Sicko,” Michael Moore’s lat­est film and crit­i­cal look at Amer­i­ca’s health­care sys­tem, got strong reviews at The Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. What else would you expect from Europe’s lefty intel­li­gentsia? Then there was this lit­tle curve­ball. The right-lean­ing Fox News also called the film “bril­liant and uplift­ing.” How like­ly is that? The odds are next to zero. But it hap­pened, and it says some­thing rather extra­or­di­nary about the film. (You can watch the trail­er for the movie on your iPod here.)

In the mean­time, Google has got­ten itself into a bit of a PR deba­cle with the release of Sicko. Last week, a Google employ­ee took the posi­tion on a Google health­care blog that “Moore’s film por­trays the indus­try as mon­ey and mar­ket­ing dri­ven, and fails to show healthcare’s inter­est in patient well-being and care.” And then she invit­ed the health­care indus­try to use Adwords, the com­pa­ny’s mon­ey-rak­ing ad plat­form, to show­case for the pub­lic all the good that they do for us. When Google got the inevitable blow­back, the cor­po­rate PR folks kicked things into gear. Soon enough, we were told that the Google employ­ee had been speak­ing out of turn and they released an adden­dum on their main cor­po­rate blog, which says some­thing and yet noth­ing at the same time. Where does Google real­ly stand on the issue? Who knows. They’re play­ing things pre­dictably safe, and that’s to be expect­ed when your com­pa­ny stands to gen­er­ate bil­lions of ad rev­enue from a mul­ti-tril­lion dol­lar indus­try. Mean­while where does Fox stand on all of this (and I am talk­ing about the com­pa­ny, rather than the indi­vid­ual film review­er cit­ed above)? Prob­a­bly nowhere good.

Below, you can find Michael Moore talk­ing with Bill Maher (HBO) about the health­care prob­lem that cuts across the polit­i­cal divide. Give it a good look, but bet­ter yet, go see the movie.