A Crash Course in English Literature: A New Video Series by Best-Selling Author John Green

in English Language, K-12, Literature | December 10th, 2012

There’s no doubt that a sin­gle inspir­ing teacher can have a pro­found impact on a stu­den­t’s life, but what about the duds? The apoplec­tic nun, the tapped out fos­sil, the bit­ter young man? If there’s dead­wood in your edu­ca­tion­al his­to­ry, you owe it to your­self to spend some time with John Green. The charis­mat­ic author and nerd­fight­er is fol­low­ing up his online video series Crash Course World His­to­ry, with the new mini series, Crash Course Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture.

Think Shake­speare is bor­ing? It’s a posi­tion you’ll be hard pressed to main­tain after hear­ing Green’s take on Romeo and Juli­et, a ver­i­ta­ble luge of facts, triv­ia, cute graph­ics, frank-ish sex talk, corny jokes and iambic low­down. Extra cred­it for ref­er­enc­ing Harley Granville-Bark­er, the turn of the cen­tu­ry quin­tu­ple-threat who sum­ma­rized the play as “a tragedy of youth as youth sees it”.

Hav­ing laid down a few ground rules in episode one, Green is prepar­ing to take on Fitzger­ald, Salinger, and Emi­ly Dick­in­son. If any of these names dredge up unpleas­ant mem­o­ries, relax. Green is not going to make you parse sym­bols and autho­r­i­al intent. His schtick is proud­ly pop­ulist, a Pee­Wee’s Play­house open to those who seek knowl­edge, as well as those whom expe­ri­ence has taught to resist.

Crash Course Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture will be added to our new col­lec­tion, 200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More.

More advanced cours­es can be found in the Lit­er­a­ture sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 575 Free Cours­es Online.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author whose lat­est con­tri­bu­tion to the canon of Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture is spec­tac­u­lar­ly sched­uled for a day after Christ­mas release.

Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Classic, The Foundation Trilogy, Dramatized for Radio (1973)

in Economics, Sci Fi | December 7th, 2012

Tire­less New York Times colum­nist and Nobel-prize win­ning Prince­ton econ­o­mist Paul Krug­man has long played the role of Cas­san­dra, warn­ing of dis­as­ters while the archi­tects of pol­i­cy look on, shake their heads, and ignore him. I’ve some­times won­dered how he stands it. Well, it turns out that, like many peo­ple, Krugman’s long view is informed by epic nar­ra­tive. Only in his case, it’s nei­ther ancient scrip­ture nor Ayn Rand. It’s the Isaac Asi­mov-penned Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy, which Krug­man, in a recent Guardian piece, dis­sects in detail as a series that informed his views as a teenag­er, and has stayed with him for four and a half decades.

The hero of the tril­o­gy, Hari Sel­don, is a math­e­mati­cian, whose par­tic­u­lar branch of math­e­mat­ics, called psy­chohis­to­ry, allows him to make mas­sive, large-scale pre­dic­tions of the future. This sci­ence informs “The Sel­don Plan” that silent­ly guides the com­ing of a new Galac­tic Empire thou­sands of years into the future. If it sounds a bit arid in para­phrase, it isn’t, even though Asimov’s char­ac­ters tend to be thin and his descrip­tions lack in poet­ry. “Tol­stoy this isn’t,” Krug­man tells us.

But the nov­els work as bril­liant spec­u­la­tive fic­tion, teth­ered to the famil­iar his­to­ry of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion by res­o­nances with ancient Rome, mer­can­tile Europe, and old New York. Instead of space opera or fan­ta­sy, Krug­man describes Asimov’s fic­tion as anti-action, anti-prophe­cy. The protagonist’s “pre­science comes from his math­e­mat­ics.” And this, believe it or not, is fas­ci­nat­ing, at least for Krug­man. Because for him they func­tion as reminders that “it’s pos­si­ble to have social sci­ence with the pow­er to pre­dict events and, maybe, to lead to a bet­ter future.” Krug­man writes:

They remain, unique­ly, a thrilling tale about how self-knowl­edge – an under­stand­ing of how our own soci­ety works – can change his­to­ry for the bet­ter. And they’re every bit as inspi­ra­tional now as they were when I first read them, three-quar­ters of my life ago.

He admits that the sen­ti­ments of Asimov’s fic­tion present us with a “very bour­geois ver­sion of prophe­cy,” but then, eco­nom­ics is a very bour­geois sci­ence, most­ly con­cerned with one emo­tion, “greed.” Nonethe­less, Krug­man believes in the pow­er of “good eco­nom­ics to make cor­rect pre­dic­tions that are very much at odds with pop­u­lar prej­u­dices.” And we could all do with few­er of those.

Asimov’s Hugo-win­ning tril­o­gy was adapt­ed for eight, one-hour radio-dra­ma episodes in 1973. Lis­ten to the first install­ment above, and down­load or stream the remain­ing episodes at the links below:

Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3| Part 4 |MP3| Part 5 |MP3| Part 6 |MP3| Part 7 |MP3| Part 8 |MP3|

Or lis­ten to the Spo­ti­fy ver­sion up top.

You can find this audio list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

The Power of “Outrospection” — A Way of Life, A Force for Social Change — Explained with Animation

in Psychology | December 7th, 2012

Here at Open Cul­ture, we can’t resist the RSA Ani­mate video series, cre­at­ed by the Roy­al Soci­ety for the Encour­age­ment of Arts, Man­u­fac­tures, and Com­merce. Its twitchy but super­nat­u­ral­ly pre­cise hand has illus­trat­ed talks by Daniel Pink, Sir Ken Robin­son, Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich, Slavoj Žižek, Steven Pinker, and Dan Ariely. This newest RSA Ani­mate pro­duc­tion may pro­vide you an intro­duc­tion not just to a ris­ing thinker, but to a new con­cept. “Writer on the art of liv­ing” Roman Krz­nar­ic, accom­pa­nied by the quick draw­ing of Andrew Park, wants to tell you about some­thing called “out­ro­spec­tion.” Con­sid­er it less an entire­ly new prac­tice than a fresh way of think­ing about how to devel­op an old human capac­i­ty: empa­thy. He finds empa­thy not a “nice, soft, fluffy social con­cept,” but some­thing pow­er­ful and poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous, a fuel for rev­o­lu­tions of all kinds.

For an exam­ple of empa­thy that looks to him pro­to-out­ro­spec­tive, Krz­nar­ic cites George Orwell, author of 1984 and Ani­mal Farm. His plunge into the world of urban pover­ty — the deep­est kind of first-hand research — to write Down and Out in Paris and Lon­don, com­ing to know, befriend, and work along­side the down-and-out them­selves, makes him “one of the great empath­ic adven­tur­ers of the 20th cen­tu­ry.” This line of thought con­nects Orwell’s active social curios­i­ty to empa­thy as a poten­tial­ly col­lec­tive force; we even hear a call for new, empa­thy-ori­ent­ed social insti­tu­tions like a “human library” with actu­al peo­ple avail­able for illu­mi­nat­ing con­ver­sa­tions. Empa­thy, to Krz­nar­ic’s mind, will only become more impor­tant in the 21st cen­tu­ry, and those of us who can mas­ter out­ro­spec­tion, the skill of “dis­cov­er­ing who we are by step­ping out­side our­selves and explor­ing the lives of oth­er peo­ple and cul­tures,” will fare best there. If after the video you still find your­self con­fused about how best to engage in out­ro­spec­tion, don’t wor­ry: Krz­nar­ic writes an entire blog on the sub­ject.

via Sci­ence Dump

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The “Priest” They Called Him: A Dark Collaboration Between Kurt Cobain & William S. Burroughs

in Literature, Music | December 7th, 2012

It was a dark col­lab­o­ra­tion folks. There’s no deny­ing it. In Sep­tem­ber of 1992, the Beat writer William S. Bur­roughs entered a stu­dio in Lawrence, Kansas and record­ed a nar­ra­tion of “The “Priest” They Called Him,” a short sto­ry orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in his 1973 col­lec­tion The Exter­mi­na­tor. It’s a grim tale about hero­in, addic­tion, with­draw­al, and the “immac­u­late fix.” Two months lat­er, the read­ing was giv­en a sound­track when Kurt Cobain, then the front­man for Nir­vana, stepped into a Seat­tle stu­dio and gave Bur­rough’s read­ing a sound­track full of harsh, dis­so­nant gui­tar riffs that cap­tured the spir­it of the sto­ry. Mixed togeth­er  by E. J. Rose and James Grauer­holz, the col­lab­o­ra­tive record­ing was released as a lim­it­ed edi­tion vinyl pic­ture disc in 1993, and then again on CD and 10-inch vinyl.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nirvana’s Home Videos: An Inti­mate Look at the Band’s Life Away From the Spot­light (1988)

William S. Bur­roughs Explains What Artists & Cre­ative Thinkers Do for Human­i­ty: From Galileo to Cézanne and James Joyce

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

Hilarious Video Proof: Your Ability to Make Realistic Sound Effects Is Gender-Based

in Comedy | December 7th, 2012

Like the num­ber of fem­i­nists need­ed to screw in a light bulb, gen­der-based assump­tions are NOT FUNNY!

Gen­der-based sound effects prove to be the excep­tion in Bleep Blap Bloop, a very fun­ny short film fea­tur­ing real peo­ple attempt­ing to imper­son­ate var­i­ous machines, pri­mar­i­ly vehi­cles and weapons of the sort one rarely encoun­ters in every day use. They’re not the most diverse bunch with regard to age or eth­nic­i­ty, but as far as white peo­ple in their 20’s go, Bleep Blap Bloop’s find­ings are pret­ty air­tight. The Y chro­mo­somes are the clear win­ners.

“Could­n’t you have done, like, a duck?” one of the female con­tes­tants asks as the cred­its roll.

What about you? Is this a case where you fit the mold? Please share your most tri­umphal (or least humi­lat­ing) sound effect below. Trans­peo­ple hearti­ly encour­aged to expand the con­ver­sa­tion!

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is a proud fem­i­nist who changes light­bulbs solo and could­n’t make a machine gun noise even if she had an actu­al machine gun.

Quentin Tarantino’s 75 Minute Interview with Howard Stern

in Comedy, Film | December 7th, 2012

Quentin Taran­ti­no sat down this week for an inter­view that cov­ered a lot of ter­rain — his strained his rela­tion­ship with his father, his ninth-grade edu­ca­tion and how it shapes his film­mak­ing, his path from work­ing in a video rental store to writ­ing scripts and even­tu­al­ly direct­ing films, his approach to film­ing vio­lence, his new West­ern film Djan­go Unchained, his plans to retire before he gets old and lots more. The inter­view­er? Yup, it’s Howard Stern on Sir­ius and the hearty chuck­les you hear in the back­ground belong to the Star Trek icon George Takei. Need­less to say the inter­view enters some Not-Safe-for-Work ter­ri­to­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His Favorite Films Since 1992

My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Film­mak­ing Advice from Quentin Taran­ti­no and Sam Rai­mi (NSFW)

Quentin Taran­ti­no Gives Sneak Peek of Pulp Fic­tion to Jon Stew­art (1994)

Charles Bukowski’s Poem “Nirvana” Presented in Three Creative Videos

in Poetry | December 6th, 2012

I’ve rid­den a lot of busses–back and forth from city to city, tak­ing the cheap­est tick­ets, which meant trav­el­ing overnight, and eat­ing cheap and greasy food at hur­ried stops along the way. I remem­ber think­ing some­times that I might nev­er come back, that I might lose myself in some small south­ern town and dis­ap­pear. I remem­ber those times now as I read Charles Bukowski’s poem “Nir­vana,” a poem about a lost young man who finds in the quaint strange­ness of a din­er in North Car­oli­na a respite from the con­fu­sion of his life.

Then he boards his bus again, and the moment is gone, the moment of the poem, that is, which is all there is, since we don’t know where he came from or where he’s bound. We’re only told he’s “on the way to some­where,” and the omis­sion means it doesn’t real­ly mat­ter. The poem is “about” its details: the snow, the lit­tle café in the hills, the unaf­fect­ed wait­ress with her “nat­ur­al humor.” The way these famil­iar things are made strange by the pres­ence of a stranger. While I may relate to the aim­less young man in the poem, it real­ly isn’t about him so much as about that estrange­ment, which for him becomes a tem­po­rary home. Then before he gets too com­fort­able, he’s out again and on the road to “some­where.”

Bukows­ki had a way with these small scenes, a way of estrang­ing the ordi­nary. The short film above, from Lights Down Low pro­duc­tions, offers one inter­pre­ta­tion of what the moment of Bukowski’s poem might look like. The film has the slow, med­i­ta­tive pac­ing of a Ter­rence Mal­ick film, the same kind of obses­sive dwelling on the details of a lost mid-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca. An apple pie, the slow-motion sway of the leg­gy wait­ress’ sky-blue dress as she walks toward a snow-cov­ered window—none of these details bear the slight­est trace of kitsch. Instead they are objects of wabi sabi, the Japan­ese term for imper­ma­nence. Nir­vana is for­ev­er, life is tem­po­rary.

While the film above draws on Malick’s Amer­i­cana, Tom Waits’ read­ing of “Nir­vana” (below) comes clos­est, per­haps, to the world-weary Bukowski’s voice, and the images and music that accom­pa­ny Waits’ griz­zled sigh con­vey the drea­ry grit of the real world of bus trav­el, not as it looks in the movies, but as it looks from the road: the bleak same­ness of high­ways and the way the snow is oily and speck­led with black min­utes after it falls.

A third inter­pre­ta­tion of Bukowski’s poem (below) is read by a man who calls him­self Tom O’Bedlam, and who sounds a bit like Richard Bur­ton. How­ev­er, his read­ing is the least dra­mat­ic of the three; his lack of affect draws atten­tion to the words, which appear in stark black and white text on the screen as he intones them like a mass. This one comes cour­tesy of Roger Ebert, who rec­om­mends O’Bedlam’s Spo­ken Verse YouTube page as one of his favorite places on the web.

It’s hard for me to choose a favorite of the three. Each one draws atten­tion to the poem in dif­fer­ent ways, some­times, per­haps, turn­ing it into a script, and some­times get­ting out of its way and let­ting it do all the work. Nei­ther approach strikes me as a bad one; each one has its mer­its. But tell me, read­ers, what do you think?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Bukows­ki: Depres­sion and Three Days in Bed Can Restore Your Cre­ative Juices (NSFW)

The Last Faxed Poem of Charles Bukows­ki

Charles Bukows­ki Tells the Sto­ry of His Worst Hang­over Ever

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Watch a Cool and Creepy Visualization of U.S. Births & Deaths in Real-Time

in Life, Technology | December 6th, 2012

As one Metafil­ter com­menter put it, this visu­al­iza­tion is cool and creepy at once. Assem­bled by Brad Fly­on, the visu­al­iza­tion gives you a feel for the qual­i­ta­tive rhythm of births and deaths in the U.S.. (For­tu­nate­ly the births exceed deaths by a sig­nif­i­cant mar­gin.) When you enter the visu­al­iza­tion, you’ll want to give things a few moments to get going. And you can mouse over parts of the map to get more data.

The visu­al­iza­tion itself was cre­at­ed with the fol­low­ing (and I’m quot­ing Fly­on ver­ba­tim here):

• The 2010 pop­u­la­tion data for “Places” from US Cen­sus, which con­tains cen­sus infor­ma­tion for about 30,000 “places” (cities, towns, cen­sus des­ig­nat­ed places, etc.) in the US
• The 2010 pop­u­la­tion data for US coun­ties
• An annu­al birth rate of 13.5 births per thou­sand from page 67 of the U.S. Cen­sus Bureau, Sta­tis­ti­cal Abstract of the Unit­ed States: 2012
• An annu­al death rate of 8.1 deaths per thou­sand from page 81 of the U.S. Cen­sus Bureau, Sta­tis­ti­cal Abstract of the Unit­ed States: 2012

Richard Burton Reads ‘Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait’ and 14 Other Poems by Dylan Thomas

in Literature, Poetry | December 6th, 2012

When the actor Richard Bur­ton died in 1984 he was buried, as he request­ed, with a copy of The Col­lect­ed Poems of Dylan Thomas.

Bur­ton was a great friend and admir­er of Thomas, who shared his Welsh her­itage and rak­ish demeanor. The two men also shared a love of lit­er­a­ture. “I was cor­rupt­ed by Faust,” Bur­ton once said. “And Shake­speare. And Proust. And Hem­ing­way. But most­ly I was cor­rupt­ed by Dylan Thomas. Most peo­ple see me as a rake, wom­an­iz­er, booz­er and pur­chas­er of large baubles. I’m all those things depend­ing on the prism and the light. But most­ly I’m a read­er.”

In 1954 Bur­ton read a selec­tion of his friend’s poet­ry for a record­ing that would be released the fol­low­ing year as Richard Bur­ton Reads 15 Poems by Dylan Thomas. The record­ings were made about a year after the poet­’s death, and just when Bur­ton was rid­ing high on the suc­cess of his 1954 per­for­mance in Thomas’s radio play Under Milk Wood. The long poem “Bal­lad of the Long-Legged Bait,” above, is from the 1954 ses­sions. The 14 poems below are most­ly from the same ses­sions, although a cou­ple of them might be from lat­er record­ings made by Bur­ton.

1. Under Milk Wood
2. Deaths and Entrances
3. Lament
4. Ele­gy
5. A Win­ter’s Tale
6. Fern Hill
7. Before I Knocked
8. In My Craft or Sullen Art
9. I See the Boys of Sum­mer
10. Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed
11. The Force that Through the Green Fuse Dri­ves the Flower
12. The Hand that Signed the Paper
13. And Death Shall Have No Domin­ion
14. Do Not Go Gen­tle Into That Good Night

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dylan Thomas Recites ‘Do Not Go Gen­tle Into That Good Night’ and Oth­er Poems

Schoolhouse Rock: Revisit a Collection of Nostalgia-Inducing Educational Videos

in Animation, Education, K-12, Television | December 6th, 2012

Some­times a tune lives in your head and you hum it now and again with­out any rec­ol­lec­tion of where it orig­i­nal­ly came from. Chances are, if you grew up in the Unit­ed States watch­ing Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toons, that tune came from School­house Rock.

Like so many of its biggest fans, School­house Rock is now offi­cial­ly in its 40s. This year marks the 40^th anniver­sary of the pilot seg­ment, Three is a Mag­ic Num­ber, whose melody and lyrics ooze the type of hip­pie Sun­shine Fam­i­ly whole­some­ness so abun­dant in ‘70s children’s pro­gram­ming.

Man and a woman had a lit­tle baby,

Yes they did.

They had three in the fam­i­ly.

And that’s a mag­ic num­ber

Fol­low that up with School­house Rock’s win­ning for­mu­la: sim­ple, hum­ma­ble tunes mixed with math fact lyrics.

3–6‑9, 12–15-18, 21–24-27, 30.
3–6‑9, 12–15-18, 21–24-27, 30.

School­house Rock start­ed out as an adver­tis­ing ven­ture on ABC, dreamed up by an exec­u­tive whose son was strug­gling to mem­o­rize his mul­ti­pli­ca­tion tables. But it grew into the most pop­u­lar inter­sti­tial pro­gram­ming (short vignettes shown between TV seg­ments) in mod­ern tele­vi­sion.

One of the most mem­o­rable melodies is Blos­som Dearie’s sweet and melan­choly Fig­ure Eight, broad­cast in Feb­ru­ary, 1973. This one was cov­ered by Eliot Smith in a decid­ed­ly less upbeat ver­sion.

With­out a doubt these three-minute ani­ma­tions (by Loonie Tunes ani­ma­tor Chuck Jones) are some of the best mod­ern edu­ca­tion­al videos around. Whose social stud­ies teacher didn’t show this tune­ful expla­na­tion of the leg­isla­tive process dur­ing class?

And this one about the Con­sti­tu­tion, well I have to admit that it still chokes me up.

The man behind the vast major­i­ty of the music is Bob Dor­ough, a pianist who worked with Miles Davis and Allen Gins­berg before becom­ing the voice and main com­pos­er for School­house Rock.

The series took on near­ly every sub­ject, from mul­ti­pli­ca­tion and gram­mar to sci­ence and Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment. Today’s edu­ca­tion­al soft­ware devel­op­ers would kill to make gram­mar as fun as Con­junc­tion Junc­tion and Lol­ly, Lol­ly, Lol­ly Get Your Adverbs Here.  The pro­duc­ers didn’t shy away from more weighty issues either. Take a lis­ten to this lit­tle dit­ty on the theme of Amer­i­can ter­ri­to­r­i­al expan­sion.

The series took a break dur­ing the 1980s but picked up again in the mid-’90s with Mon­ey Rock. In 2009 came Earth Rock. Both fea­tured a more gloom-and-doom feel than the inspir­ing tone of the ear­li­er School­house Rock iter­a­tions.

Some­times the orig­i­nal real­ly is the best.

You can pur­chase the com­plete set of School­house Rock videos on Ama­zon. We’ve also added a link to this post in our new col­lec­tion: 200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at and thenifty.blogspot.com.