The Portable University

in Uncategorized | May 14th, 2007


Over the past six months, we have cre­at­ed a series of resources that let you access uni­ver­si­ty resources for free and on-the-fly. Below, we have cen­tral­ized these mate­ri­als in one place to give you quick access:

Tell a Friend About Open Cul­ture   - Sub­scribe to Our Feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Free Classical Music Podcasts

in Music | May 14th, 2007

Smart music at no cost. Hard to beat.

  • An Inti­mate Tour Through the Music of Yo-Yo Ma iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Each episode of this pod­cast delves into the his­to­ry of his career, and what led him to record each of the tracks of his cur­rent release Appas­sion­a­to.
  • Bach Pod­cast from Magnatune.com iTunes Feed Web Site
    • 60 free min­utes of Bach.
  • Bach Fes­ti­val of Philadel­phia Feed Web Site
    • Live per­for­mances of J.S. Bach works per­formed by var­i­ous artists for The Bach Fes­ti­val of Philadel­phia.
  • Boston Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra Con­ser­va­to­ry iTunes Feed Web Site
    • This edu­ca­tion­al pod­cast gives you an inside look at the sym­pho­ny. Cur­rent­ly you will find a two sea­son overview and record­ings of Beethoven and Arnold Schoen­berg.
  • Clas­si­cal Per­for­mance iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Clas­si­cal music per­for­mances from WGB­H’s Stu­dio One in Boston.
  • Dan­marks Radio — Mozart Sym­phonies Feed Web Site
    • For the cel­e­bra­tion of Mozart’s 250th anniver­sary, Den­mark radio offered pod­casts of nine Mozart sym­phonies by the Dan­ish Radio Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra. Since the web site is in Dan­ish, your best bet is to access these high qual­i­ty MP3’s through the feed.
  • Deutsche Welle
    • Beethoven­fest iTunes Feed Web Site
      • Beethoven’s most famous sym­phonies per­formed by excel­lent young orches­tras and new com­po­si­tions by award-win­ning com­posers.
    • Clas­si­cal Mas­ter­pieces iTunes Feed Web Site
      • Six mas­ter com­posers, six sym­phonies, a star con­duc­tor and a lead­ing orches­tra are the main ingre­di­ents of this remark­able musi­cal feast.
  • Gramo­phone Pod­cast Feed Web Site
    • A month­ly win­dow into the world’s most author­i­ta­tive clas­si­cal music mag­a­zine, fea­tur­ing an overview of the best releas­es, news, exclu­sive inter­views with lead­ing fig­ures from the music world, and lots of great­mu­sic.
  • NPR Music iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Reviews, musi­cian inter­views, live record­ings from Morn­ing Edi­tion, All Things Con­sid­ered, and oth­er NPR pro­grams.
  • Radio Swe­den: Mozart iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Swedish Radio has launched a Mozart Pod­cast to cel­e­brate Mozart’s 250th birth­day. They’ve been pod­cast­ing their own record­ings from the 1940–1950s of Mozart’s operas.
  • The Con­cert iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Beethoven, Bach, Mozart and more from the Isabel­la Stew­art Gard­ner muse­um in Boston.
  • Wag­n­er Operas Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Fea­tures, among oth­er things, per­for­mances from the Bayreuth Fes­ti­val.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

The Death of the Book Review?

in Books, Video - Arts & Culture | May 11th, 2007



Nybookreview_3
Posts are fly­ing around the lit­er­ary blo­gos­phere lament­ing the Death of Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism. Now, by my count this par­tic­u­lar demise has been pre­dict­ed at least three times in the past few decades, so why wor­ry now? The short answer is that more books are pub­lished annu­al­ly than ever, and now there are few­er book review­ers. The LA Times recent­ly fold­ed its free­stand­ing book review into the rest of the week­end paper and news­pa­per staffs around the coun­try are trim­ming review posi­tions in favor of syn­di­cat­ed wire ser­vice reviews.

Michael Con­nel­ly, a crime fic­tion writer, pub­lished an op-ed in the LA Times protest­ing the move and he paints a dire pic­ture of our cul­tur­al future:

The truth is that the book and news­pa­per busi­ness­es share the same
dread­ful fear: that peo­ple will stop read­ing. And the fear may be
well-found­ed. Across the coun­try, news­pa­per cir­cu­la­tions are down — and
this is clear­ly part of the rea­son for the cuts to book sec­tions. At
the same time, the book busi­ness increas­ing­ly relies on an aging
cus­tomer base that may not be refu­el­ing itself with enough new read­ers.

Should we blame cash-strapped news­pa­per com­pa­nies or a cul­ture that’s shift­ing away from tra­di­tion­al media alto­geth­er? Ladies and gen­tle­men, start your iPods–to lend rea­soned analy­sis, we now turn to Steven Col­bert, who inter­viewed Salman Rushdie on this sub­ject ear­li­er this week (click below or watch the full show on iTunes):

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

25 Blogs for Movie Buffs

in Film | May 11th, 2007


Below, you’ll find a list of 25 fine cinema/film blogs, all for the cin­e­ma buff.

This list fig­ures into a larg­er col­lec­tion of Cul­ture Blogs that we’re putting togeth­er over time. It’s a work in progress, so watch it grow. If you feel that we’re miss­ing some extra­or­di­nary blogs, please feel free to **@******re.com/”>email us and let us know.

  • Alter­na­tive Film Guide: A nice resource for any­one who wants to go beyond main­stream movies.
  • Cahiers du ciné­ma: This is not exact­ly a blog. Rather it’s the site for the very influ­en­tial French film mag­a­zine found­ed in 1951. If you read French, def­i­nite­ly give it a look.
  • Cinecultist: This cin­e­ma blog comes straight to you from the East Vil­lage in NYC, and it’s put togeth­er main­ly by Karen Wil­son, a free­lance writer and edi­tor with a film back­ground.
  • Cin­e­ma Min­i­ma: A news blog for movie mak­ers that digests infor­ma­tion about movie mak­ing, act­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion, and film fes­ti­vals.
  • Cin­e­ma Strikes Back: The site cov­ers movies world­wide with news, reviews, inter­views and film fes­ti­val reports. It also offers advanced looks at upcom­ing movies and DVDs. Has a par­tic­u­lar focus on genre, cult and for­eign films.
  • Cin­e­marati: Cre­at­ed by the The Web Alliance for Film Com­men­tary, this blog brings togeth­er online film crit­ics for seri­ous, and seri­ous­ly fun, dis­cus­sion about film, and also coun­ters the notion that “any­one with a modem can be a crit­ic.”
  • Cin­e­mat­i­cal: Part of the Weblogs, Inc. net­work, Cin­e­mat­i­cal keeps tabs on what’s new in film.
  • Clip Joint: Put out by the Guardian, this blog presents a roundup of top cin­e­ma-relat­ed clips on the inter­net.
  • Cyn­thia Rock­well’s Wait­ing Room: A site that you’ll find list­ed on many A‑list film blogs.
  • Dave Kehr.com: When not blog­ging, Dave writes “Critic’s Choice: New DVDs,” a
    col­umn that appears in The New York Times and is archived here.
  • Dead­line Hol­ly­wood Dai­ly: Pub­lished by LA Week­ly, this blog is writ­ten by jour­nal­ist Nik­ki Finke, who writes about the busi­ness, pol­i­tics and cul­ture of the info­tain­ment indus­try.
  • Drift­ing: David Low­ery dis­cours­es here on film, at least most of the time.
  • Film Expe­ri­ence Blog: What you get here are cin­e­mat­ic mus­ings from Nathaniel R with fre­quent dips into pop cul­ture mis­cel­la­nia.
  • Flick­head: Keep­ing it reel!
  • Green Cine Dai­ly: GreenCine Dai­ly is pri­mar­i­ly writ­ten by GC Edi­tor David Hud­son. A nice com­pre­hen­sive blog.
  • Hell on Frisco Bay: The jour­nal of a cinephile haunt­ing the remain­ing movie hous­es of the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area.
  • If Char­lie Park­er Was a Gun­slinger: Cul­tur­al obser­va­tions by Tom Sut­pen, Stephen Cooke and Richard Gib­son.
  • Like Anna Kari­na’s Sweater: A film and cul­ture blog with a focus on non-main­stream top­ics, writ­ten by a pro­fes­sion­al screen­writer and a part-time mis­an­thrope.
  • Lost in Neg­a­tive Space:  For provoca­tive film crit­i­cism with an under­dog bite. Writ­ten by Peter Gelderblom.
  • Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma: Five blog­gers from three dif­fer­ent
    coun­tries bring per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion togeth­er in one place
    for afi­ciona­dos of World Cin­e­ma.
  • Movie City Indie: Inde­pen­dent movies, inde­pen­dent think­ing by Ray Pride.
  • Not Com­ing to a The­ater Near You: A site with a bias towards old­er, often unpop­u­lar, and some­times unknown films that mer­it a sec­ond look.
  • Notes from the Under­dog: On writ­ing, screen­writ­ing, films, music, and the polit­i­cal land­scape.
  • Scan­ners: A film blog writ­ten by Jim Emer­son, a Seat­tle-based writer and film crit­ic, who is also the found­ing edi­tor-in-chief of RogerEbert.com.
  • Ser­gio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule: Hard to sum­ma­rize this one (as the title kind of demon­strates). Bet­ter just to see it instead.

See Our Arts & Cul­ture Pod­casts — Tell a Friend About Open Cul­ture   - Sub­scribe to Our Feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

The Great God Debate

in Religion | May 10th, 2007

On Mon­day night faith and athe­ism got a ver­bal work­out. Famous­ly vit­ri­olic colum­nist Christo­pher Hitchens (a for­mer lib­er­al best-known in recent years for his staunch sup­port of the war in Iraq) faced off against Rev­erend Al Sharp­ton in a dis­cus­sion mod­er­at­ed by Slate edi­tor Jacob Weis­berg. Hitchens is a vehe­ment non-believ­er and the new author of God is not Great (also avail­able on iTunes). Suf­fice to say that the debate between him and Sharp­ton was col­or­ful. That should come as no surprise–what makes it worth lis­ten­ing to is that it was also rea­soned and intel­li­gent.

You can read a tran­script or lis­ten to the debate (RealAu­dio only), which was held at the New York Pub­lic Library.

The two celebri­ty pun­dits saved their best moment for last:

“I’d encour­age peo­ple to buy the book,” Mr. Sharp­ton said. “I don’t
believe what it says, but it’s well writ­ten. He’s a very elo­quent and
well-versed per­son.”

“That’s extreme­ly hand­some of you,” Mr. Hitchens replied.

As an aside, Hitchens recent­ly appeared on CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight. In the inter­view above, you can get a lit­tle more insight into Hitchens’ think­ing.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

20+ Great Book & Literature Blogs

in Books | May 9th, 2007

Below, you’ll find a list of 20 fine lit­er­ary blogs. Like our pod­cast col­lec­tions, this list will grow over time. In fact, it will become part of a larg­er list of great cul­ture blogs. Over the com­ing weeks, we’ll roll out new install­ments and then mash them togeth­er into one larg­er list. Stay tuned for more.

If you feel that we’re miss­ing some extra­or­di­nary blogs, please feel free to **@******re.com/”>email us.

  • Blog of a Book Slut: Book­slut’s edi­tor-in-chief, Jes­sa Crispin, pro­vides links and com­men­tary for those who love to read. The pop­u­lar relat­ed web­site includes fea­ture sto­ries, author inter­views, reviews, columns about book-relat­ed con­tent, etc.
  • Book­Dad­dy: It’s your source for intel­li­gent book blath­er. The stat­ed mis­sion of the site is to “pon­der print media, lit­er­a­cy & pub­lish­ing. Any­thing on wood pulp, pix­els or stone is up for dis­cus­sion.”
  • Books, Inq: This blog offers a behind-the-scenes look at a book-review edi­tor’s world. In this case, the book review edi­tor is Frank Wil­son, of the Philadel­phia Inquir­er.
  • Book World: What you get here is one wom­an’s attempt to read what’s worth read­ing and say some­thing about it along the way.
  • Chekhov’s Mis­tress: An oft-cit­ed lit­er­a­ture blog writ­ten by Bud Parr, a book lover who also runs a net­work of lit­er­ary blogs called Metax­u­Cafe.
  • Con­fes­sions of an Idio­syn­crat­ic Mind: Sarah Wein­man puts togeth­er here “a respect­ed resource for com­men­tary on crime and mys­tery fic­tion.”
  • Crit­i­cal Mass: Offer­ing com­men­tary on lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, pub­lish­ing, and writ­ing, this blog is writ­ten by the Board of Direc­tors of the non-prof­it that issues the year­ly Nation­al Book Crit­ics Cir­cle Awards.
  • Eve’s Alexan­dria: A nice­ly bal­anced mul­ti-per­son lit­er­ary blog com­ing out of the UK.
  • Lau­rable’s Poet­ry Weblog: A poet­ry weblog that spe­cial­izes in con­nect­ing read­ers with audio of poets read­ing their work.
  • Maud New­ton: A wide­ly-read blog that spe­cial­izes in pub­lish­ing & writ­ing indus­try news, plus occa­sion­al lit­er­ary links, amuse­ments, pol­i­tics, and rants.
  • Moor­ish Girl: A well regard­ed book and lit­er­a­ture blog writ­ten by Laila Lala­mi, author of Hope and Oth­er Dan­ger­ous Pur­suits.
  • Rake’s Progress: Named by The Guardian as one of the 10 best book blogs.
  • ReadyS­teady­Blog: Run by Mark Thwaite, this is an “inde­pen­dent book review web­site … devot­ed to review­ing the very best books in lit­er­ary fic­tion, poet­ry, his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy.”
  • Slate Books: Even though tech­ni­cal­ly not a blog, it should be on your read­ing list.
  • So Many Books: Giv­en the tagline ‘the agony and the ecsta­sy of a read­ing life”, here’s a laud­ed blog that takes you into the read­ing world of Stephanie Hollmichel.
  • The Ele­gant Vari­a­tion: A well-reviewed and respect­ed book blog that tends to give spe­cial atten­tion to the LA lit­er­ary scene. Fea­tures a real­ly exten­sive blogroll that’s worth pick­ing through.
  • The Guardian Book Blog: It’s not exact­ly your aver­age inde­pen­dent book blog, but it’s got valu­able con­tent and it’s worth your time.
  • The Keny­on Review Blog: If you’re a writer, you sure­ly know The Keny­on Review, and you should also get to know their blog.
  • The Lit­blog Co-Op: A use­ful blog that unites the “lead­ing lit­er­ary
    weblogs for the pur­pose of draw­ing atten­tion to the best of
    con­tem­po­rary fic­tion, authors and press­es, strug­gling to be noticed in
    a flood­ed mar­ket­place.”
  • This Space: A lit­er­ary blog writ­ten by Stephen Mitchel­more, a blog­ger who Ready Steady Book deems “the finest writer we have in the lit­er­ary blo­gos­phere.”
  • Vulpes Lib­ris: “Vulpes Lib­ris: A mul­ti-nation­al pack of book­fox­es blog­ging, review­ing and chat­ting about books and book mat­ters. Par­tic­i­pa­tion wel­come.”
  • Words With­out Bor­ders Blog — This weblog is the online com­ple­ment to Words With­out Bor­ders: The Online Mag­a­zine for Inter­na­tion­al Lit­er­a­ture. And, yes, as you’d expect, it’s a lit­er­a­ture blog with an inter­na­tion­al focus.

Stay tuned for more to come!

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Supreme Court Goes Digital

in Law | May 8th, 2007

The Supreme Court has long tak­en heat for being in the tech­no­log­i­cal arrière-garde, a crit­i­cism that has seemed fair giv­en its unwill­ing­ness to even allow cam­eras into its oral argu­ments.

Slow­ly, how­ev­er, that per­cep­tion may be about to change. Accord­ing to the ABA Jour­nal eRe­port, the Court has stuck a small toe into the tech­nol­o­gy waters by pro­vid­ing web access to video­taped evi­dence that fig­ured into a recent case, Scott v. Har­ris. The url for the video gets ref­er­enced with­in the writ­ten opin­ion for the case, and a link is pro­vid­ed from the Court’s opin­ions web page. (You’ll need Real Play­er to watch it.)

The video itself is noth­ing spe­cial. It fea­tures very low qual­i­ty footage of a car chase tak­en from the dash­board of a police car, and it’s essen­tial­ly the same sce­nario that Amer­i­ca has seen played out for almost 20 years on Fox’s COPS. As you watch the video, you can’t help but feel that this land­mark moment for the court is a non-moment. But that’s per­haps to be expect­ed when a tra­di­tion-bound insti­tu­tion banal­ly enters a brave new world.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

John Stewart: When Comedians Start Asking the Tough Questions

in Comedy, Current Affairs | May 6th, 2007

John_stewart_2When Bill Moy­ers returned to PBS two weeks ago, his first pro­gram took a care­ful look at how the main­stream media has fall­en down on the job when it comes to ask­ing tough ques­tions to politi­cians. Giv­en this start­ing point, it seemed log­i­cal for Moy­ers to speak next (iTunes — Feed) with John Stew­art, host of The Dai­ly Show. That’s because adver­sar­i­al jour­nal­ism is now found more read­i­ly on Com­e­dy Cen­tral than on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox, etc. The inter­view with Stew­art, which is quite sub­stan­tive and worth a lis­ten, makes ref­er­ence to John McCain’s recent appear­ance on The Dai­ly Show and also to Steven Col­bert’s famous/infamous roast of Pres­i­dent Bush in 2006. You can watch both below.

Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion shows have been sat­i­riz­ing politi­cians for a long time. That’s not new. But what’s new with Stew­art is that he’s upend­ing the whole point of tele­vi­sion satire. Whether you look at Jay Leno’s tame humor, or the more bit­ing humor of Sat­ur­day Night Live, the point of the satire has always been to get a laugh. For Stew­art, some­thing else is going on. Watch the McCain inter­view and you see that the joke is essen­tial­ly a prop, a con­ve­nient means of get­ting at some­thing much more seri­ous, a way of hav­ing a blunt, no non­sense con­ver­sa­tion, pre­cise­ly the kind of con­ver­sa­tion that the main­stream media has been large­ly unwill­ing, if not down­right afraid, to have with our lead­ers.

McCain on TDS

Col­bert Bush Roast

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Oh the Humanity

in Uncategorized | May 6th, 2007


The hydro­gen-filled Hin­den­burg went down in remark­able flames exact­ly 70 years ago in Lake­hurst, New Jer­sey. Below, we’ve post­ed the dra­mat­ic his­tor­i­cal footage. You can read here a decent account of what hap­pened on that day, plus inter­views with still liv­ing sur­vivors.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Spiderman 3: Web Roundup

in Film | May 5th, 2007


Spi­der­man 3 came to movie the­aters yes­ter­day, mak­ing May 4 the sin­gle biggest-gross­ing day in box office his­to­ry. You can read inter­views with Sam Rai­mi, Tobey Maguire and most of the oth­er prin­ci­pal “names” in the movie here. Don’t for­get to read the spoil­ers and immerse your­self in the lore at the sequel’s exten­sive Wikipedia page. But if the lines are long, what else can you do to spend some time with Amer­i­ca’s favorite arach­nid hero?

For­tu­nate­ly, today is Free Com­ic Book Day. Thou­sands of spe­cial­ty store are hand­ing out four-col­or fun to any­one who walks in the door. Look up par­tic­i­pat­ing stores near you here. Salon has a great guide for com­ic new­bies look­ing to get in on the action.

If you’re more into audio, check out this free music from the Spi­der­man 3 sound­track. Or you can buy the new game (which has got­ten at least one good review) on just about any game plat­form you might own, from the PlaySta­tion 3 to the Nin­ten­do DS.

And if all else fails, at least you can watch the trail­er at home (watch all of them here):

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Vintage Radio Archive: The Lone Ranger, Abbott & Costello, and Bob Hope

in Media, Radio | May 4th, 2007

This web page does­n’t look like much, but it hous­es a great deal. Put sim­ply, the page plugs you into an archive of 135

vin­tage Amer­i­can radio shows, span­ning from the 1930s to the 1950s. This was the height of Amer­i­ca’s radio days. And when you lis­ten to the record­ings, it won’t take long to real­ize that Amer­i­ca was a very dif­fer­ent coun­try then (polit­i­cal­ly, social­ly and cul­tur­al­ly) than what it is today. The list fea­tures some well-known clas­sics. Take for exam­ple, the Abbott and Costel­lo Show, Bob and Ray Show, Bob Hope Show, Burns and Allen Show, Mel Blanc Show and Mil­ton Berle Show (detect a pat­tern yet?). Then, you can also lis­ten in on episodes of Gun­smoke, Jack Ben­ny, The Lone Ranger, The Cis­co Kid, Father Knows Best and the Adven­tures Of Philip Mar­lowe. For those who want to expe­ri­ence the clas­sics of old-time Amer­i­can radio, or what main­stream Amer­i­can enter­tain­ment used to be, this audio archive should keep you busy for a good long while.

Relat­ed Web­site: Anoth­er col­lec­tion of vin­tage radio audio clips can be found here.

Relat­ed Arti­cle: Radio fans should look back at our arti­cle on the famous Orson Welles radio broad­cast from 1938 — The War of the Worlds. Read­ers can access here an audio file of the orig­i­nal broad­cast that sent the US into hys­ter­ics. It’s well worth a lis­ten if you haven’t heard it before.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |


« Newer Entries | Older Entries »

  • Great Lectures

  • Sign up for Newsletter

  • About Us

    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.


    Advertise With Us

  • Great Recordings

  • Book Lists By

  • Syllabi

  • Favorite Movies

  • Archives

  • Search

    • Quantcast