UCLA on YouTube

Add anoth­er one to our col­lec­tion: Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube: 75 Edu­ca­tion­al Video Col­lec­tions

UCLA has brought their videos to YouTube, join­ing a grow­ing num­ber of oth­er well-respect­ed cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions. Com­pared to oth­er new­com­ers, the ini­tial set of videos (see the UCLA col­lec­tion here) is rea­son­ably strong, and I sus­pect that it will get more sub­stan­tive over time. Straight off the bat, I’d point you to a longer course that you can watch online. It’s called Life, Con­cepts & Issues, and the first video appears below.

While on the top­ic of YouTube, I want to men­tion that I’ve been work­ing at Stan­ford on a fun (and also free) media project that we’ll be rolling out next week. Stay tuned for more details.

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NPR’s Planet Money Podcast

This is worth a quick men­tion: If you’re try­ing to make sense of our rapid­ly chang­ing (and these days dete­ri­o­rat­ing) econ­o­my, then you’ll want to spend some time with NPR’s Plan­et Mon­ey. The pod­cast has been tak­ing an expert look at the day-to-day break­down of the finan­cial sys­tem and gov­ern­ment efforts to bail it out. Plus, it’s been keep­ing an eye on how the fias­co poten­tial­ly affects you. To stay on top of things, you can grab the pod­cast here: iTunes — Rss Feed. Also see the Plan­et Mon­ey Pod­cast web site here.

Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, Read by Neil Gaiman

Sci-fi author Neil Gaiman has the right idea. After mak­ing his well-known nov­el Amer­i­can Gods freely avail­able online last year, he has gone the extra mile again in releas­ing his new nov­el, The Grave­Yard Book. In brief, he has just kicked off a nine day book tour, and each day he’s read­ing a chap­ter that you can lat­er watch on the web. You can watch all of the videos above. And find more read­ings here:

Hear Neil Gaiman Read Aloud 15 of His Own Works, and Works by 6 Oth­er Great Writ­ers: From The Grave­yard Book & Cora­line, to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven & Dick­ens’ A Christ­mas Car­ol

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.

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Now and Then: More Poetry in Motion

Bil­ly Collins, for­mer US Poet Lau­re­ate and one of Amer­i­ca’s best-sell­ing poets, reads his poem “Now and Then” with ani­ma­tion by Eun-ha Paek of Milky Ele­phant. (Yup, it’s added to our YouTube playlist and also see the pre­vi­ous ani­mat­ed Bil­ly Collins poem.)

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The Web According to Google in 2001

Google recent­ly turned 10, and, as part of the cel­e­bra­tion, it has re-pub­lished its first search engine index from 2001. A mere 1.3 bil­lion pages. Now, go ahead and do your van­i­ty search and see if you show up. Me, I’m bare­ly there. You?

 

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Depression Humor Revived

You know things are look­ing bleak when com­e­dy starts mak­ing fod­der out of depres­sion themes. Here’s a bit that tells you how to go from office work­er to home­less drifter in sev­en easy steps. (Video cour­tesy of How­cast)

via Val­ley­wag

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Dave Eggers in Conversation with Chris Elliott

“Come­di­an, actor and satirist Chris Elliott has made a career of blur­ring truth and absur­di­ty. Elliott wrote and per­formed for Late Night With David Let­ter­man, and went on to per­form in oth­er tele­vi­sion pro­grams, includ­ing Sat­ur­day Night Live.” Here he is in con­ver­sa­tion with writer Dave Eggers (A Heart­break­ing Work of Stag­ger­ing Genius). The video is cour­tesy of Fora.TV, and you can watch it here.

Jonathan Franzen Reads

In a quick three min­utes, you can watch the some­times cocky author of The Cor­rec­tions read from an essay on bird watch­ing, cour­tesy of BigThink.com, where you can also find more videos with intel­lec­tu­al heft.

For more thought­ful video, also see our YouTube playlist and the relat­ed col­lec­tion: Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube: 70 Edu­ca­tion­al Video Col­lec­tions.

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China’s Space Walk: Fresh Footage

As US stock declines, Chi­na’s stock keeps going up. It’s the sto­ry of the decade, real­ly. Here’s footage from Chi­na’s first space walk this past week …

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What Happens on Mars

From The Dai­ly Dish:

“Clouds move across the sky on Mars. The sun ris­es. Snow falls — but nev­er touch­es the ground.”

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George Orwell’s 1984: Download Free Audio Book Version

I first post­ed this one dur­ing the dead of sum­mer, so it seemed worth revis­it­ing this now that we’re all a bit more focused .…

Over at the Inter­net Archive, you can find George Orwell’s clas­sic, 1984, avail­able as a free audio book. As you’ll see, the record­ing is pro­fes­sion­al­ly done. You can down­load the full zip file here. Or alter­na­tive­ly you can get the indi­vid­ual mp3 files, or stream them, from this page. On a more per­ma­nent basis, you can find Orwell’s 1949 work housed in our Free Audio Book Col­lec­tion along with lots of oth­er free texts. Or see it on our list of Life Chang­ing Books.

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