Earlier this month Jennifer Egan, the newly-minted Pulitzer Prize winner, paid a visit to Google to talk about A Visit from the Goon Squad, her experimental novel that won the Pulitzer, among many other awards. That’s the ostensible focus. But the conversation moves quickly into other areas that will interest writers and readers alike — how Egan first develops ideas for her novels, why she writes her first drafts in illegible handwriting on legal pads, why she wrote a chapter of her new novel in PowerPoint (without ever having used the software before), what her novel has in common with The Who’s Quadrophenia (I’m hooked), and how technology might change the novel as we know it.
Not long after the devastating tsunami of 2004, Brian Keith Dalton began working on a skit that morphed into Mr. Deity, a satirical look at our Creator and his everyday struggle to manage his new creation. The first episode (above) aired on iTunes and the web in early 2007, and straightaway, we encounter Mr. Deity and his sidekick Larry bumbling their way through the Genesis story and related theological questions. (Also don’t miss the pair trying to figure out how to light their new world.) By the second episode, we’re already skipping forward to the New Testament and Mr. Diety recruiting a skeptical Jesus for an important job. Talk about awkward.
57 episodes have since followed, including the most recent installment — Mr. Deity and the Philosopher — released just last week. You can find all episodes easily on iTunes. When it comes to the web, Seasons One, Three and Four appear officially on YouTube, and Season 2 can be best viewed via this informal collection.
You can download hundreds of Free Courses from Great Universities. (Perhaps you already knew that.) And that includes courses by some of the biggest minds teaching in philosophy. (Is that old news too? Or some welcomed good news?) So we’re starting the week by giving you a rundown of some notable mentions.
John Searle began teaching philosophy at UC-Berkeley in 1959, and first did important work on “speech act” theory. Later he turned to consciousness and artificial intelligence, out of which came his famous “Chinese room” thought experiment. You can find a nice trio of classes online.
Walter Kaufmann spent 33 years teaching philosophy at Princeton. And more than anyone else, Kaufmann introduced Nietzsche’s philosophy to the English-speaking world and made it possible to take Nietzsche seriously as a thinker. Here he delivers three lectures on existentialists.
Lectures on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre — Web Site
Leo Strauss landed at The University of Chicago in 1949, where he spent decades teaching and writing on political philosophy, especially the political thought of the Ancients. His intellectual legacy is controversial, but his courses valuable.
Bertrand Russell was one of the most important British philosophers of the last century — a logician, essayist and social critic best known for his work in mathematical logic and analytic philosophy. When it comes to this lecture series, start with the bottom lecture first and then work your way up.
Authority & the Individual: Six BBC Lectures — Web Site
Michel Foucault taught history and philosophy at the Collège de France and published influential writings on power, knowledge, and discourse.
Six Lectures on Truth & Subjectivity presented on the UC Berkeley campus (English) - YouTube
Michael Sandel has taught political philosophy at Harvard since 1980. His course on justice (below) has been taken by more than 15,000 students, making it the most popular undergraduate course at Harvard. This version aired on PBS and the web.
Justice: A Journey in Moral Reasoning - YouTube — Web Site
The Velvet Underground first released “Sweet Jane” in 1970, and a cool version it was. But, soon enough, Lou Reed launched his solo career, put out a live version of “Sweet Jane” on Rock n Roll Animal (1974), and made the song his own. That same year, Reed performed another funk-laden version in Paris, with Prakash John playing bass and Steve Hunter on guitar. And that’s what the vintage video gods are serving up today.
All these years later, Sweet Jane still fires the rock ‘n roll imagination. In 2009, Reed performed the anthem with Metallica at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Benefit Concert at Madison Square Garden, and it laid the foundation for a project now coming to fruition — a collaborative album called Lulu that will drop on October 31st in the US, and November 1 abroad. Reed originally wrote the songs for a play called Lulu, then he brought Metallica into the sometimes emotional project and things just rolled along. In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Reed said, “the version of the Lulu music I did with Metallica is awe-inspiring. It’s maybe the best thing done by anyone, ever. It could create another planetary system. I’m not joking, and I’m not being egotistical.” The bar is now officially set high…
“Should evolution be taught in schools?” That was the question actually put to participants in the Miss USA pageant held this past June.
In response, MacKenzie Fegan and her friends had some fun with the whole line of thinking, shooting their own mock video in reply. Enjoy, and do know that we heart Miss Vermont…
Michael Schur, the co-creator of NBC’s Parks and Recreation, has had a long-running fascination with David Foster Wallace’s sprawling magnum opus, Infinite Jest. So when his favorite band, The Decemberists, asked him to shoot a video for their new track “Calamity Song,” he knew the creative direction he wanted to take. And so here it is — the newly-premiered video that makes “Eschaton” its creative focus. Fans of DWF’s novel will remember that Eschaton — “basically, a global thermonuclear crisis recreated on a tennis court” — appears on/around page 325. The New York Times has more, and you can also find another version of the video if you’re having problems viewing it here.
Martin Scorsese (Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas) has always had a penchant for the rockumentary. In 1978, he directed The Last Waltzfeaturing the farewell concert of The Band — a film later called “the greatest rock concert movie ever made.” Then, after a hiatus, Scorsese returned to music again, shooting No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005) and Shine a Light, a tribute to the Rolling Stones, in 2008.
If you’re tackling Dylan and the Stones, then why not go for the trifecta and bring your cinematic talents to bear on The Beatles? And so it shall be. On October 5th and 6th, HBO will air George Harrison: Living in the Material World, a two-part documentary dedicated to the Beatle who long played in the shadow of John and Paul. Scorsese’s latest film will feature unseen archival materials and interviews with Paul, Ringo, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Terry Gilliam, Phil Spector and others. It will also be co-released with a 400-page hardcover book written by Olivia Harrison, which uses photographs, letters, diaries, and memorabilia to trace the arc of George’s life. Can hardly wait. H/T Wired
Note: You can find The Last Waltz and Taxi Driver in our collection of Free Movies Online.
Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, a newish film directed by Sophie Fiennes, lets you sit back and watch the German artist Anselm Kiefer at work, creating his large-scale “world of ruination.” The film has no narration, only some musical accompaniment. And, more than anything, it gives you a direct, unembellished view of Kiefer’s “alchemical creative process” that regularly takes over his studio in southern France. Above, Kiefer puts the finishing touches on, then raises, one of his elaborate creations. The clip, along with others, appears in a larger, more compelling format on the film’s official web site. H/T NYRB
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and we’ll deliver great culture right to your virtual doorstep daily.
The drama of 9/11 unfolded before the world on TV. Even many New Yorkers, myself included, watched the traumatic events on CNN rather than witnessing them firsthand. During the days that followed, we were bombarded with endless replays — the planes hitting the buildings, the towers aflame and collapsing, the piles of smoking debris left behind. Then, mercifully, the coverage disappeared.
Almost a decade later, the Internet Archive has launched a 9/11 Television News Archive, a resource for scholars, journalists, and anyone interested in the historical record created by television. The archive brings together more than 3,000 hours of television coverage from 20 US and international broadcasters, and the coverage can be segmented by day, time and news provider.
Yet one more reason why we consider the Internet Archive one of the most valuable sites on the web.
For more than a decade, Luis Soriano, a primary school teacher, has traveled the rugged terrain of Colombia by donkey, delivering books to children in hundreds of rural villages. The project, powered by his two donkeys Alfa and Beto, goes by the name “Biblioburro.” And it seeks to promote literacy in areas where access to books is not always a given. You can find more information and pictures on the homepage of the Biblioburro project and also make a small donation. A video update shows what these donations are actually used for.
Bonus material: The clip above is part of a 60-minute PBS documentary available in full here. If you are a teacher and want to work with the film in class, you will appreciate this related lesson plan. Biblioburro has even been covered by The New York Times, and there is now a similar project underway in Ethiopia.
By profession, Matthias Rascher teaches English and History at a High School in northern Bavaria, Germany. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twitter.
Arthur Rimbaud, once described by Victor Hugo as ‘an infant Shakespeare,’ burst onto the Parisan literary scene in 1870, shortly before he was 16. By the time 1874 rolled around, Rimbaud had broken the conventions of poetry and fashioned a new, modern poetic language. He had published all of his major works — Illuminations, Une saison en enfer, etc.– and had his absinthe/hashish-fueled affair with Paul Verlaine. Then, committing an act that still haunts his fans today, the 20 year old renounced poetry utterly and completely and started traveling the world.
We're hoping to rely on loyal readers, rather than erratic ads. Please click the Donate button and support Open Culture. You can use Paypal, Venmo, Patreon, even Crypto! We thank you!
Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.
