A Whole Lotta Chomsky

in Politics | June 7th, 2007

We recent­ly stum­bled upon a big trove of polit­i­cal dis­sent. This col­lec­tion fea­tures over 200 talks — some in audio, some in video — giv­en by MIT’s Noam Chom­sky. The talks, which focus on pol­i­tics (and not his work on lin­guis­tics) range from the 1970s to today. For an archive of his polit­i­cal writ­ings, which includes many com­plete online texts, click here.

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Books That Writers Recommend

in Books | June 5th, 2007

The New York Times sur­veyed a series of well-known writ­ers and asked them what books they’ve read and enjoyed late­ly. Here is what they had to rec­om­mend. For the record, the list of writ­ers includes, among oth­ers, Nora Ephron, Dave Eggers, Ursu­la K. Le Guin, Jonathan Safran Foer, Colm Toib­in, and Jef­frey Eugenides.

Among the titles you’ll find rec­om­mend­ed are The Omni­vore’s Dilem­ma (Michael Pol­lan), The Cave (Jose Sara­m­a­go), Kaloo­ki Nights (Howard Jacob­son), Natasha’s Dance: A Cul­tur­al His­to­ry of Rus­sia (Orlan­do Figes), Lincoln’s Sword (Dou­glas Wil­son), The Lay of the Land (Richard Ford), One Big Self (C. D. Wright), and Rembrandt’s Nose: Of Flesh and Spir­it in the Master’s Por­traits (Michael Tay­lor).

A History of the West: 52 Free Videos

in History, Online Courses | June 4th, 2007

The West­ern Tra­di­tion is a free series of videos that traces the arc of west­ern civ­i­liza­tion. Start­ing in Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, the sur­vey pro­ceeds to cov­er the Byzan­tine Empire and Medieval Europe, then the Renais­sance, Enlight­en­ment, and Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion, and final­ly ends up in 20th cen­tu­ry Europe and Amer­i­ca. Pre­sent­ed by UCLA pro­fes­sor Eugen Weber, an impres­sive Euro­pean his­to­ri­an, the video series includes over 2,700 images from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art that illus­trate some of the West’s great cul­tur­al achieve­ments. Each of the 52 videos runs about 30 min­utes. So you’re get­ting an amaz­ing 26 hours of con­tent for free.

You can stream all of the videos from this page.

You can find The West­ern Tra­di­tion list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

The Cannes Film Festival: 60 Years of Images

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | June 2nd, 2007

The Cannes Film Festival Re-Cap

in Film | June 1st, 2007

Who Didn’t See This One Coming?

in Current Affairs, Politics, Video - Politics/Society | May 29th, 2007

Amer­i­ca’s 42nd pres­i­dent spoke this week­end at Har­vard’s Class Day, a tra­di­tion­al event held for grad­u­at­ing seniors. While Class Day often fea­tures pop icons and come­di­ans — take this speech by Ali G from a few yeas ago — Clin­ton’s speech was a bit more seri­ous and ide­al­is­tic, and it reminds us that there may be again a day when we can look to the White House for sub­stance and inspi­ra­tion. This too shall pass. You can watch Part 1 of his pre­sen­ta­tion below. Here are links to Parts 2 and 3.

Talks from the 92nd Street Y

in Uncategorized | May 29th, 2007

If you’re not a New York­er, the 92nd Street Y prob­a­bly means lit­tle to you. But, if you’re a Man­hat­tan dweller, you know that it is a cul­tur­al pil­lar of the city, a place where you can always find good talks being giv­en by lead­ing news mak­ers, artists, authors and thinkers.

Hav­ing recent­ly left NYC for shiny, hap­py Cal­i­for­nia, it was a plea­sure to dis­cov­er that the “Y” now runs a blog and, bet­ter yet, a pod­cast (iTunes — Feed) fea­tur­ing high­lights of note­wor­thy talks. Here’s a sam­ple of the audio clips that you’ll encounter: A seg­ment from David Hal­ber­stam’s 11th and last appear­ance at the Y (mp3) before his recent fatal car acci­dent; Kurt Von­negut, who also died recent­ly, read­ing (mp3) from his book Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons; and Robert Alt­man (yes, he died too not too long ago) talk­ing (mp3) about what turned out to be his last film, A Prairie Home Com­pan­ion.

Now, I real­ize that this sounds more grim than it is. No, the pod­cast col­lec­tion fea­tures more than talks by the recent­ly deceased. The last I heard Syd­ney Pol­lack is still alive, and here he is talk­ing (mp3) about his doc­u­men­tary, Sketch­es of Frank Gehry. And to end on a some­what pos­i­tive note, here you have Bri­an Wil­son, of Beach Boys fame, dis­cussing the film Beau­ti­ful Dream­er: Bri­an Wil­son and the Sto­ry of Smile. Smile is one of the more famous “unfin­ished” albums in rock his­to­ry.

For more pod­casts along these lines, please see our col­lec­tion of Arts & Cul­ture Pod­casts.

French Lessons from the BBC and the Peace Corps

in Language Lessons | May 28th, 2007

When­ev­er traf­fic flows to to our col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons, one good out­come is that we almost always learn of new pod­casts to add to the list. (Just as an fyi, we now have 64 indi­vid­ual pod­casts that offer instruc­tion on 22 dif­fer­ent lan­guages.)

Last week did­n’t dis­ap­point. We learned of a few good new ones. Most notably, one of our read­ers flagged for us a series of video-based French lessons assem­bled by the BBC. Pre­sent­ed by Stéphane Cor­ni­card, Ma France con­sists of 24 inter­ac­tive video units that teach you the lan­guage and a lit­tle about the coun­try. You can launch this video to get a brief intro­duc­tion. The series, which assumes a lit­tle pri­or knowl­edge of French, was shot in Lyons, the Alps and in Provence. You can access the videos on iTunes, by feed, and by web.

Anoth­er new addi­tion to col­lec­tion, How to Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & 37 Oth­er Lan­guages, comes from the Peace Corps. They offer some pod­casts that will teach you some French, Man­darin Chi­nese, Ara­bic, and Russ­ian. It all sounds pret­ty straight­for­ward. But then you find out that they’re teach­ing the French spo­ken in Mali (West Africa) and the Russ­ian used in Kaza­khstan — that is, the kind of places where Peace Corps vol­un­teers actu­al­ly go. It’s a bit of a dif­fer­ent twist on the usu­al lan­guage les­son pod­cast. Also, be sure to check out the instruc­tion­al PDF files that accom­pa­ny each pod­cast.

Fonts of Fame

in Art | May 25th, 2007

What font do you write in? Do you have strong feel­ings about it? It turns out many writ­ers do. Slate has a fas­ci­nat­ing slide-show essay mark­ing Hel­veti­ca’s fifti­eth anniver­sary, cel­e­brat­ing the font “some have called the offi­cial type­face of the 20th cen­tu­ry.” In an accom­pa­ny­ing arti­cle the mag­a­zine sur­veyed a few famous writ­ers and none of them claimed the big H as their let­ter­ing of choice (couri­er won by a landslide–apparently these peo­ple have fond mem­o­ries of their type­writ­ers). If you’re in New York, you might check out the MoMA exhib­it cel­e­brat­ing Hel­veti­ca’s gold­en moment.

Ready for a new look your­self? There are hun­dreds of sites ready to help you get your font on for love or for money–check out Sim­ply the Best Free Fonts as just one exam­ple. To be safe, always make sure you scan down­loaded files for virus­es before start­ing that new nov­el.

New Books on Mp3 (For Free)

in Audio Books, Books, Literature | May 24th, 2007

While our col­lec­tion of for­eign lan­guage lessons pod­casts has been get­ting a fair amount of love and atten­tion late­ly, we’ve been spruc­ing up our direc­to­ry of audio book pod­casts.

To this list of Eng­lish-lan­guage clas­sics, we’ve added three new clas­sics by Jane Austen — Per­sua­sion, Mans­field Park, and Northang­er Abbey — all of which are byprod­ucts of the new tele­vi­sion series, The Jane Austen Sea­son. You’ll also find some new audio files from the great Lib­rivox col­lec­tion, includ­ing E. M. Forster’s Howards End, Char­lotte Bron­te’s Jayne Eyre, and F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s This Side of Par­adise. And final­ly we’ve added some select­ed poet­ry and prose by Walt Whit­man and Hen­ry David Thore­au. To review the longer list of clas­sics, click here.

More Pod­casts:

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