Wikipedia’s (Sometimes Dirty) Little Secret

in Uncategorized | March 28th, 2007

The First Episode of This American Life: A Sneak Peek

in Media | March 25th, 2007

This is just a quick heads up. You can now watch online the first episode of This Amer­i­can Life. Show­time just start­ed air­ing a tele­vised ver­sion of the long-run­ning and very pop­u­lar radio pro­gram (which is also avail­able as a pod­cast iTunes  Feed  Web Site). If you’re won­der­ing how the show’s dis­tinc­tive feel comes off in video, here’s your chance to take a quick, easy and free look.

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

The Health Benefits of the iPod

in Uncategorized | March 25th, 2007

Who knew that the iPod could help save lives? Check out this news sto­ry on Yahoo.

Mr. Gore Goes Back to Washington

in Video - Politics/Society | March 22nd, 2007

America’s Shadow Army in Iraq

in Politics | March 20th, 2007

Here is where the ide­ol­o­gy of pri­va­ti­za­tion log­i­cal­ly ends up. As part of its occu­pa­tion, the US gov­ern­ment has flood­ed Iraq with pri­vate con­trac­tors. And while some build bridges and oth­ers help pump oil, a good num­ber car­ry out mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in Amer­i­ca’s name, and they’ve posi­tioned them­selves to be sub­ject to nei­ther mil­i­tary nor civil­ian sys­tems of jus­tice. More­over, they have also stead­fast­ly refused to han­dover infor­ma­tion about their activ­i­ties to Con­gress. This inter­view on Fresh Air (iTunes Feed mp3) gives you good back­ground infor­ma­tion on Black­wa­ter USA, the Amer­i­can mer­ce­nary army oper­at­ing in Iraq appar­ent­ly with­out over­sight or account­abil­i­ty.

The Next Fifty Years of Science, and Other Videos from Googleplex

in Google, Science, Video - Science | March 20th, 2007

Last week, we talked a lit­tle (here and here) about the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of find­ing enlight­ened con­tent on GooTube (Google Video + YouTube). What we did­n’t men­tion is that some of this good con­tent comes straight from Google head­quar­ters itself. This page, sim­ply titled Videos from Google­plex, cap­tures talks giv­en most­ly at cor­po­rate cen­tral, and they’re bro­ken down into three cat­e­gories: TechTalks, Authors@Google, and Mis­cel­la­neous Google Videos. While some of the videos pro­mote Google’s inter­nal life and cul­ture, oth­ers touch on sub­jects that have broad­er appeal. Like this one: Here we have Kevin Kel­ly, co-founder of Wired Mag­a­zine and for­mer edi­tor of the icon­ic Whole Earth Review, talk­ing about how the path to sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge — how our sci­en­tif­ic method — is like­ly to change over the next 50 years. As you could well imag­ine, this kind of for­ward-look­ing think­ing is bound to res­onate at Google, but it’s easy to see it hav­ing an audi­ence beyond. Give this 49-minute video a look and see what you think. At best, you’ll take away some­thing from it. At worst, you’ll get a feel for what the folks at Google are pon­der­ing.

Podcasts from Top American Law Schools

in Law | March 19th, 2007

• Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty — Wash­ing­ton Col­lege of Law iTunes Feed Web Site
  • An eclec­tic col­lec­tion of legal pod­casts.

• Duke Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Lec­tures, pan­els, con­fer­ences, etc.

• George­town Uni­ver­si­ty — George­town Law iTunes Feed Web Site
  • One of the rich­er col­lec­tions.

• George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty
  • The Law and Eco­nom­ics Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Pro­duced by the Jour­nal of Law, Eco­nom­ics, and Pol­i­cy.
• Har­vard Law School
  • Medi­a­Berk­man by The Berk­man Cen­ter for Inter­net & Soci­ety iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Medi­a­Berk­man “fea­tures con­ver­sa­tions with and talks by lead­ing cyber-schol­ars, entre­pre­neurs, activists, and pol­i­cy­mak­ers as they explore top­ics such as the fac­tors that influ­ence knowl­edge cre­ation and dis­sem­i­na­tion in the dig­i­tal age; the char­ac­ter of pow­er as the worlds of gov­er­nance, busi­ness, cit­i­zen­ship and the media meet the inter­net; and the oppor­tu­ni­ties, role and lim­i­ta­tions of new tech­nolo­gies in learn­ing.”

• Lewis & Clarke Law School Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Pod­casts of speak­ers and events.

• Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Law School
  • Cen­ter for Inter­net and Soci­ety iTunes Web Site
    • These tech­nol­o­gy-focused lec­tures are giv­en by a diverse group of fac­ul­ty, many from uni­ver­si­ties oth­er than Stan­ford.
  • Pro­gram in Law, Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy iTunes Web Site
    • This pro­gram focus­es on the role that sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy play in the nation­al and glob­al are­nas. The issues dis­cussed in these pod­casts will inter­est stu­dents, legal pro­fes­sion­als, busi­ness­peo­ple, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, and the pub­lic at large.
  • The Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion Soci­ety for Law and Pol­i­cy iTunes Feed Web Site
    • The Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion Soci­ety for Law and Pol­i­cy is a nation­al orga­ni­za­tion com­prised of lawyers, law stu­dents, schol­ars, judges, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, and oth­er con­cerned indi­vid­u­als work­ing to ensure that fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of human dig­ni­ty, indi­vid­ual rights and lib­er­ties, gen­uine equal­i­ty, and access to jus­tice enjoy their right­ful, cen­tral place in Amer­i­can law.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Law School Fac­ul­ty iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A lit­tle bit of legal brain can­dy pre­sent­ed by the U Chica­go law fac­ul­ty.

• Yale Law School Feed Web Site
  • Pod­casts from one of Amer­i­ca’s finest law schools. Often fea­tures speech­es by vis­it­ing speak­ers.

Stay tuned — this page will be under con­tin­u­al and active devel­op­ment. It will grow as more law schools devel­op new pod­casts.

Has Stephen Hawking Been Wrong For The Last 30 Years?

in Physics, Video - Science | March 16th, 2007

With his cut­ting-edge research on black holes in the 1970s, Stephen Hawk­ing emerged as a major play­er in the physics world. Then, with the 1988 pub­li­ca­tion of the best­seller, A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Hawk­ing achieved inter­na­tion­al celebri­ty sta­tus.

As this BBC pre­sen­ta­tion shows, Hawk­ing’s fame might rest on weak­er foun­da­tions than most could have imag­ined. Sev­er­al impor­tant physi­cists, includ­ing Leonard Susskind here at Stan­ford (see our pre­vi­ous ref­er­ences to him), zeroed in on Hawk­ing’s major con­tention that, when black holes dis­ap­pear, they take along with them all infor­ma­tion that ever exist­ed inside them, which leads to the log­i­cal con­clu­sion that there are clear lim­its to what sci­en­tists could ever know about black holes. After 20 years of debate, the Susskind camp seems to have won out, leav­ing Hawk­ing’s lega­cy in ques­tion. This BBC web page will give you the back­sto­ry in brief, but you may want to go straight to this 50 minute video.

My Trip to Al Qaeda: A New Yorker Video

in Current Affairs | March 15th, 2007

You don’t see web video like this too often… On The New York­er web site, you can now catch a video excerpt of a one-man play being staged in NYC by mag­a­zine staff writer, Lawrence Wright.  (Click here to watch.)

The New York­er pref­aces the video with this:

“This week, the New York­er staff writer Lawrence Wright opened his one-man show, “My Trip to Al-Qae­da,” at the Cul­ture Project, in New York City. Since Sep­tem­ber 11th, Wright has cov­ered Al Qae­da for the mag­a­zine; last year, he pub­lished the book “The Loom­ing Tow­er: Al-Qae­da and the Road to 9/11.” In the course of his work on the roots and the rise of Islam­ic ter­ror­ism, Wright has con­duct­ed more than six hun­dred inter­views and trav­elled to Egypt, Pak­istan, Afghanistan, Sau­di Ara­bia, and much of West­ern Europe. The play, which he wrote and per­forms, is a first-per­son account of his expe­ri­ences, and exam­ines, among oth­er themes, the ten­sion between his roles as jour­nal­ist and cit­i­zen.”

BondCast (AKA a James Bond Podcast)

in Film | March 14th, 2007

Casi­no Royale, which gave the James Bond fran­chise a good shot in the arm, is being released this week on

DVD, and so why not men­tion a new James Bond pod­cast.

Cin­e­mat­i­cal has issued its first Bond­cast that’s filled with news, rumors, spec­u­la­tions, sto­ries and gen­er­al minu­ti­ae about all things Bond. They”ll have a new episode every two weeks, and, read­er be warned, the hosts are fair­ly over the top in their idol­iza­tion of Bond. And you may need to be as rev­er­en­tial to enjoy the ride.