The Civil War & Reconstruction: A Free Course from Yale University

The Civ­il War was a water­shed moment in US his­to­ry, and it fig­ures cen­tral­ly in any Amer­i­can his­to­ry cur­ricu­lum. If you missed this course dur­ing high school or col­lege, not to wor­ry. Now, thanks to Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, you can revis­it this his­tor­i­cal moment with Prof. David Blight, one of the nation’s lead­ing Civ­il War schol­ars. The Civ­il War and Recon­struc­tion “explores the caus­es, course, and con­se­quences of the Amer­i­can Civ­il War, from the 1840s to 1877,” look­ing at how the Unit­ed States was trans­formed on mul­ti­ple lev­els: racial­ly, social­ly, polit­i­cal­ly, con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly and moral­ly. You can access the 27 free lec­tures, pre­sent­ed in audio and video, via YouTubeiTunes, and the Yale web site (plus a syl­labus). We also have it on the list of our Free His­to­ry Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

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Watch Andrei Tarkovsky’s Films Free Online: Stalker, The Mirror & Andrei Rublev

The stench of Vladimir Putin and his inva­sion of Ukraine should­n’t taint every­thing Russ­ian, espe­cial­ly some of its finest cin­e­ma. So we’ll give you this heads up: Mos­film, the largest and old­est film stu­dio in Rus­sia, has post­ed sev­er­al major films by Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986), on its offi­cial YouTube channel. Above, you can watch Stalk­er, which we’ve cov­ered amply here on Open Cul­ture. Below, stream The Mir­ror, Andrei Rublev, and Ivan’s Child­hood.

The Mir­ror

Andrei Rublev

Solaris


Ivan’s Child­hood

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

Andrei Tarkovsky Calls Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey a “Pho­ny” Film “With Only Pre­ten­sions to Truth

Slavoj Žižek Explains the Artistry of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Films: Solaris, Stalk­er & More

Watch Stalk­er, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mind-Bend­ing Mas­ter­piece Free Online

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mas­ter­piece Stalk­er Gets Adapt­ed into a Video Game

 

Roman Polanski on Making Chinatown

This morn­ing, the Swiss reject­ed US requests to extra­dite Roman Polanksi. This deci­sion effec­tive­ly brings to a close a rather dark chap­ter in his per­son­al life and lets the con­ver­sa­tion return to his film­mak­ing. Enter our video above, which fea­tures Polan­s­ki talk­ing about the mak­ing of Chi­na­town, his 1974 neo-noir film, star­ring Jack Nichol­son, Faye Dun­away, and John Hus­ton, that land­ed eleven Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tions. Thanks Mike for send­ing this our way…

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Three Minute Philosophy — Immanuel Kant

File under com­e­dy. It’s slight­ly cheeky, at times lit­tle crass, but how often do the com­e­dy and phi­los­o­phy worlds col­lide? I mean, real­ly?

S. Peter Davis also has three minute takes on DescartesHumeAris­to­tleLockeGalileoPythago­ras, and Aquinas.

via Metafil­ter

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A Brief, Artistic Introduction to Nikola Tesla

This week­end marked the 154th birth­day of Niko­la Tes­la, the Serbian/Croatian emi­gre whose work on elec­tro­mag­net­ism and electro­mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing con­tributed to the birth of com­mer­cial elec­tric­i­ty. Espe­cial­ly dur­ing the past year, his name has regained a fair amount of cur­ren­cy, not least because there’s a very sporty elec­tric road­ster now named after him. In hon­or of his birth­day, the clip above gives a very quick and artis­tic intro­duc­tion to Tes­la’s life and work …

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The Monty Python Philosophy Football Match: The Greeks v. the Germans

Today, we’re revis­it­ing a clas­sic Mon­ty Python skit. The scene is the 1972 Munich Olympics. The event is a football/soccer match, pit­ting Ger­man philoso­phers against Greek philoso­phers. On the one side, the Ger­mans — Hegel, Niet­zsche, Kant, Marx and, um, Franz Beck­en­bauer. On the oth­er side, Archimedes, Socrates, Pla­to and the rest of the gang. The ref­er­ee? Con­fu­cius. On May 9, this match was recre­at­ed by The Phi­los­o­phy Shop, a group ded­i­cat­ed to pro­mot­ing phi­los­o­phy among pri­ma­ry school­child­ren. The Tele­graph gives you more details.

Mean­while, on a more seri­ous note, you can down­load free phi­los­o­phy cours­es in audio & video. Just vis­it our post, Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life, to get start­ed…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Noam Chom­sky Slams Žižek and Lacan: Emp­ty ‘Pos­tur­ing’

Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

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John Wayne Recites the Pledge of Allegiance

This week, the US cel­e­brat­ed its inde­pen­dence. And so it’s per­haps fit­ting to head into the week­end with John Wayne, an Amer­i­can icon, recit­ing and inter­pret­ing the Pledge of Alle­giance. Long live the Duke…

Find more vin­tage audio and video in our col­lec­tion of Cul­tur­al Icons.

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New Twain Online

Mark Twain died a good cen­tu­ry ago. But new Twain writ­ings keep com­ing out. Lat­er this fall, his auto­bi­og­ra­phy will hit book­stores for the first time. And just this week, PBS pub­lished online a new Twain essay called “Con­cern­ing the Inter­view.” It begins:

No one likes to be inter­viewed, and yet no one likes to say no; for inter­view­ers are cour­te­ous and gen­tle-man­nered, even when they come to destroy.

You can read a high res­o­lu­tion, hand-writ­ten copy of the essay here.

via @alyssa_milano

The Beginning and Evolution of Life

It’s an unsci­en­tif­ic point of view by BLU. Thanks @wesalwan for send­ing our way…

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The Stanford Mini Med School: The Complete Collection

Image by King of Hearts, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Through­out the past year, Stanford’s School of Med­i­cine and Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies (my day job) teamed up to offer The Stan­ford Mini Med School. Fea­tur­ing more than thir­ty dis­tin­guished fac­ul­ty, sci­en­tists, and physi­cians, this year­long series of cours­es (three in total) offered stu­dents a dynam­ic intro­duc­tion to the world of human biol­o­gy, health and dis­ease, and the ground­break­ing changes tak­ing place in med­ical research and health care. Now you can watch these lec­tures for free. The fall and win­ter lec­tures (20 lec­tures in total) are com­plete­ly avail­able online. And the spring lec­tures are get­ting rolled out start­ing this week. You can access the full lec­tures series in mul­ti­ple for­mats below:

  • Fall 2009, The Dynam­ics of Human Health — iTunesYouTube — Web Site
  • Win­ter 2009, Human Health and the Fron­tiers of Sci­ence — iTunesYouTube — Web Site
  • Spring 2010, Trans­form­ing Our Under­stand­ing of Human Health and Dis­ease — iTunes — Web Site

The entire series also appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

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Jimmy Page, 13, Plays Guitar on BBC Talent Show (1957)

Let’s rewind the video tape to 1957. A very young Jim­my Page appears on a BBC chil­dren’s tal­ent show to play some skif­fle. Mix­ing togeth­er strands of Amer­i­can blues, jazz, coun­try and folk music, this style of music became all the rage in the UK dur­ing the 1950s. Lon­nie Done­gan got the craze going. And it was­n’t long before John Lennon formed his own skif­fle band – The Quar­ry Men (pho­to here) … lat­er to become The Bea­t­les. Head­ing into the 60s, a matur­ing Jim­my Page took his music in entire­ly new direc­tions, which brings us to our post last week: The Strange Tale of Dazed and Con­fused.

Video via Laugh­ingSquid

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