Authors@Google: Video Talks From the Epicenter of the Universe

in Books, Google, Video - Arts & Culture | April 28th, 2007

More good news for book fans: Google has launched a new col­lec­tion of videos called Authors@Google. The videos fea­ture talks by authors, writ­ing across many gen­res (lit­er­ary fic­tion to sci­ence fic­tion, soci­ol­o­gy to tech­nol­o­gy, pol­i­tics to busi­ness) who have made recent vis­its to Google campuses.You can access the talks via a new home­page, or just go imme­di­ate­ly to the video archive itself. And there, you’ll find talks by Mar­tin Amis (House of Meet­ings) and Jonathan Lethem (You Don’t Love Me Yet: A Nov­el), but also ones by Strobe Tal­bott, Bob & Lee Woodruff, Sen­a­tor Hillary Clin­ton, and Car­ly Fiorina.To get a bet­ter feel for Authors@Google, we’ve includ­ed a clip below from Jonathan Lethem, who wrote Moth­er­less Brook­lyn, a favorite of mine that offers a tru­ly unique, lit­er­ary take on the tra­di­tion­al detec­tive nov­el, and which always leaves me feel­ing a bit home­sick for Brook­lyn. For more infor­ma­tion on Authors@Google, click here.Tell a Friend About Open Cul­ture

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David Halberstam’s Last Speech and Supper

in Media, Politics, Video - Politics/Society | April 27th, 2007

      HalberstamAs many know by now, David Hal­ber­stam, the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning jour­nal­ist, was killed in a car acci­den­ton Mon­day just a few short miles from the Stan­ford cam­pus. As the obits were all quick to point out, Hal­ber­stam made his name dur­ing an era that par­al­leled our own, dur­ing the Viet­nam War. And he did it by report­ing facts and truths about the war that incon­ve­nient­ly con­tra­dict­ed the rosy, disin­gen­u­ous claims that were offi­cial­ly com­ing out of Wash­ing­ton. As The New York Times said about its for­mer cor­re­spon­dent, “His dis­patch­es infu­ri­at­ed Amer­i­can mil­i­tary com­man­ders and pol­i­cy­mak­ers in Wash­ing­ton, but they accu­rate­ly reflect­ed the real­i­ties on the ground.” Hal­ber­stam’s account of how Amer­i­ca got it wrong in Viet­nam were all famous­ly recount­ed in 1972 best­seller The Best and the Bright­est.

Hal­ber­stam spent this past Sat­ur­day night din­ning in the com­pa­ny of fel­low jour­nal­ists from UC Berke­ley, just after giv­ing a speech (mp3 — tran­script) at the uni­ver­si­ty (see orig­i­nal event page here). On Wednes­day, Radio Open Source (mp3) talked with Hal­ber­stam’s sup­per guests — Orville Schell, dean of the Berke­ley grad­u­ate pro­gram in jour­nal­ism; Mark Dan­ner of The New York Review of Books; and Sandy Tolan of NPR — and they recon­struct­ed their din­ner con­ver­sa­tions, which touched on the Iraq war, the com­par­a­tive state of jour­nal­ism dur­ing Viet­nam and Iraq, and Hal­ber­stam’s sense of mor­tal­i­ty fol­low­ing his heart attack last year. They also recalled Hal­ber­stam’s dogged approach to jour­nal­ism and how he resist­ed the temp­ta­tion to line up behind the gov­ern­ment posi­tion dur­ing times of war, even when faced with the threat of being called unpa­tri­ot­ic. Of course, if you watched Bill Moy­er’s PBS expose on Wednes­day, you’ll know that we’re not see­ing enough of this these days.

Give this seg­ment a lis­ten (get mp3 here), and also spend some time watch­ing the video clip below. Here, you get Hal­ber­stam reflect­ing on his days as a 28-year old reporter in Viet­nam and the sig­nif­i­cant pres­sures that the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment brought to bear against him, all of which leaves you think­ing — plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

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Richard Dawkins on Bill O’Reilly: How It Went Down

in Religion | April 26th, 2007

When­ev­er you put athe­is­m’s most promi­nent spokesper­son on Fox News, you’d expect the fur to fly. But that’s not how it turned out. The fur end­ed up stay­ing on the cats when Bill O’Reil­ly inter­viewed Richard Dawkins, author of the best­selling The God Delu­sion, this week, as you can see above.

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Rare Ezra Pound Recordings Now Online

in Literature | April 26th, 2007

EzraPound_Pavannes

Here’s a quick fyi for poet­ry fans: PennSound has released on its site rare audio record­ings by mod­ernist poet, Ezra Pound (Octo­ber 30, 1885 – Novem­ber 1, 1972) and, along with them, a help­ful essay called The Sound of Pound: A Lis­ten­er’s Guide by Richard Sieburth. The audio clips large­ly come out of two major record­ing ses­sions, one at Har­vard in 1939, the oth­er in Wash­ing­ton in 1958. They also include Pound’s 1942 read­ing of Can­to XLVI, a read­ing of his “Con­fu­cian Odes” in 1970, and a pri­vate record­ing of three Can­tos. Based at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, PennSound hous­es, they claim, the largest archive of dig­i­tal poet­ry record­ings, all acces­si­ble online. For more infor­ma­tion on the Pound record­ings and PennSound, click here.

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:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

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Hear Ezra Pound Read From His “Can­tos,” Some of the Great Poet­ic Works of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

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A Better Way to Read News and Blogs

in Technology | April 24th, 2007


These days, if you spend enough time on the web, you’ll inevitably hear talk about RSS feeds, feed read­ers, and sub­scrib­ing to feeds – talk that can seem fair­ly obscure and off-putting if you’re not already famil­iar with these terms.

If this has been your expe­ri­ence, then you should real­ly watch this short video below. This instruc­tive, even amus­ing, video uses sim­ple lan­guage and images to demon­strate how to use feeds and feed read­ers. In a mat­ter of min­utes, all of this will be demys­ti­fied, and you’ll dis­cov­er a much quick­er, more effi­cient and pow­er­ful way to access news and blog con­tent, includ­ing sto­ries from Open Cul­ture. You can sub­scribe to our feed here. And if you’re look­ing for a good feed read­er, def­i­nite­ly give Google Read­er a look.

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The Pirates of Silicon Valley Courtesy (?) of Google Video

in Google, Media, Video - Arts & Culture | April 24th, 2007

One of the most book­marked items this week­end on del.icio.us was a streamed ver­sion of The Pirates of Sil­i­con Val­ley. It’s a well-regard­ed tele­vi­sion movie, based on the book Fire in the Val­ley, which looks at the ear­ly days of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, the respec­tive founders of Microsoft and Apple Com­put­er. The video pro­mot­ed by del.icio.us is itself host­ed by Google Video, a fact that has a cou­ple of lay­ers of irony to it.

Irony #1. Back when the film was made in 1999, Google was bare­ly on any­one’s radar screen. Nowa­days, it’s the 800 lb goril­la in the tech sec­tor. In a few short years, it has elbowed Yahoo out of its lead­er­ship posi­tion on the web, and you can bet it will soon be eat­ing Microsoft­’s lunch. If any com­pa­ny is dom­i­nat­ing Sil­i­con Val­ley right now, it’s Google, although a re-invent­ed Apple is cer­tain­ly hav­ing a nice run.

Irony #2. The Pirates of Sil­i­con Val­ley makes a point of under­scor­ing how Microsoft built its busi­ness by “bor­row­ing” from Apple. Mean­while, Google, which now owns YouTube, has been locked in a law­suit with Hol­ly­wood stu­dios (most notably Via­com) for let­ting its video ser­vices dis­trib­ute, yes, pirat­ed con­tent. It stands to rea­son that the Google-host­ed ver­sion of The Pirates of Sil­i­con Val­ley falls in that cat­e­go­ry, though we could be wrong. But giv­en how long the video has been post­ed on Google Video (since last Novem­ber) and how many times it has been viewed (352,988 at last count), you have to won­der how much the stu­dio (Turn­er Home Enter­tain­ment) par­tic­u­lar­ly cares. This is all entire­ly spec­u­la­tive, but per­haps their log­ic is sim­ply this: The res­o­lu­tion of Youtubesque video is so poor that few view­ers will see the movie as a real sub­sti­tute for the orig­i­nal film, and per­haps users will be moti­vat­ed to buy the film in DVD once they get a taste of the plot. (This is essen­tial­ly the same log­ic, by the way, put for­ward by those who argue for releas­ing books in free e‑book ver­sions and fee-based paper ver­sions.) To get a sense of what I’m talk­ing about, you can watch the video below, but you’ll pret­ty quick­ly see that it’s worth pony­ing up a lit­tle cash and watch­ing a watch­able ver­sion. (You can buy one here.)

Long-term some of this think­ing may fig­ure into any deal that Google works out with Hol­ly­wood. A deal could look like this: Hol­ly­wood agrees to upload low res­o­lu­tion con­tent that Google gets to mon­e­tize. In turn, Google agrees to let users make con­tex­tu­al pur­chas­es of DVDs, or at least down­load high res­o­lu­tion ver­sions of videos for a fee. And then every­one can go home hap­py.

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Stanford Rolls Out Another Podcast Course and a New iTunes Look

in Stanford | April 23rd, 2007


Virgil_2Stan­ford re-launched its iTunes site last week, rolling out a new sleek look and a host of new pod­casts.

Among the new releas­es, you’ll find the lat­est in a series of full-fledged cours­es ready to be down­loaded to your iPod for free. (See the pre­vi­ous cours­es we’ve men­tioned here, here and here.) This time around, you can access a short course, Vir­gil’s Aeneid: Anato­my of a Clas­sic (get it on iTunes), which takes a close look at one of the cen­tral texts in the West­ern tra­di­tion.  (You can pur­chase a copy of the book ref­er­enced in the course here, or down­load free web ver­sions in Eng­lish or Latin, though they won’t fol­low the cor­rect pag­i­na­tion.) Pre­sent­ed by Susan­na Braund, a Stan­ford clas­sics pro­fes­sor, the course is divid­ed into 5 install­ments, each run­ning about two hours. For the moment, you can only down­load the first part. But rest assured that the remain­ing ones are set to be issued in the weeks to come. The course was orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed in Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram. To learn more about the course, take a look at the course descrip­tion below.

“The cen­tral text in the canon of Latin lit­er­a­ture is Virgil’s Aeneid, an epic poem in twelve books com­posed more than two thou­sand years ago under the Roman emper­or Augus­tus. The poem was an instant hit. It became a school text imme­di­ate­ly and has remained cen­tral to stud­ies of Roman cul­ture to the present day. How can a poem cre­at­ed in such a remote lit­er­ary and social envi­ron­ment speak so elo­quent­ly to sub­se­quent ages? In this course we will dis­cov­er what kind of poem this is and what kind of hero Aeneas is. Our stud­ies will focus chiefly on the poem itself and on wider aspects of Roman cul­ture. It will be essen­tial to com­mit to read­ing the poem ahead of time, at a rate of about 100 pages per week. We will use the ener­getic trans­la­tion by Robert Fitzger­ald.”

Find many more Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts here.

See all of Open Cul­ture’s Pod­cast Col­lec­tions:

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School) — Pod­cast Primer

 

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20 Audio Lessons That Will Teach You Spanish, French, Italian and German

in Most Popular | April 20th, 2007

As we’ll men­tion in an upcom­ing piece, Euro­pean lan­guages dom­i­nate the list of most pop­u­lar edu­ca­tion­al pod­casts. So we thought that we’d high­light the key pod­casts that will teach you the major Euro­pean lan­guages — Span­ish, French, Ital­ian and Ger­man. Mean­while, if you want to learn Eng­lish online, please see our piece below. Bonne chance.

For our com­plete col­lec­tion, see How to Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & Beyond.

French

  • French for Begin­ners iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Fun, effec­tive lessons for begin­ners. Pro­vid­ed by the French Ecole.
  • Le Jour­nal en français facile iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Night­ly news from RFI pre­sent­ed in slow­ly spo­ken French to assist you with your com­pre­hen­sion.
  • Learn French by Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A well-reviewed series of lessons for begin­ners and those who want to brush up on their French.
  • Learn French with Dai­ly Pod­casts iTunes Feed Web Site
    • These lessons are brought to you by French teach­ers from Paris. They are best suit­ed for those who already have some begin­ning French under their belts.
  • The French Pod Class iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A very pop­u­lar col­lec­tion that teach­es stu­dents the French lan­guage and dif­fer­ent facets of French cul­ture.
  • The Ver­b­cast — French Verbs by Relax­ation iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A four-week series of lessons that will allow you to refine your knowl­edge of French verbs.

Ger­man

  • Deutsch — warum nicht?
  • Slow­ly Spo­ken News iTunes Feed
    • Deutsche Welle pro­vides a night­ly news broad­cast in Ger­man that’s spo­ken slow­ly so that you can work on your com­pre­hen­sion.
  • GerG­er­man­Gram­mar iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Ger­man gram­mar lessons aimed at Amer­i­can stu­dents.
  • Ler­nen Wir Deutsch iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Pre­sent­ed in video, these “vod­casts” get high marks for being not only edu­ca­tion­al but also very enter­tain­ing.
  • MyDailyPhrase.com iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Learn Ger­man phrase by phrase over a course of 20 weeks. The pod­casts will cov­er all the lan­guage you need to know to get by on a vis­it to a Ger­man-speak­ing coun­try. This series is put togeth­er by the same peo­ple cre­at­ed the pop­u­lar series “Cof­fee Break Span­ish.”

Ital­ian

  • LearnItalianPod.com iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A series of Ital­ian lan­guage lessons that will get you up and run­ning. I have per­son­al­ly used them and found them effec­tive.
  • Let’s Speak Ital­ian iTunes Feed Web Site
    • This col­lec­tion will help you learn Ital­ian in small, man­age­able 5‑minute bites.
  • MyDailyPhrase.com iTunes Web Site
    • Learn Ital­ian step by step over a course of 20 weeks. The pod­casts will cov­er all the lan­guage you need to know to get by on a vis­it to a Ital­ian-speak­ing coun­try. Cre­at­ed by the same peo­ple who put togeth­er the pop­u­lar series “Cof­fee Break Span­ish.”
  • World Lan­guages Pod­cast­ing — Ital­ian Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • It’s admit­ted­ly a bit of an untra­di­tion­al way to learn Ital­ian. This pod­cast lets you lis­ten to con­ver­sa­tions about Aus­tralian cul­ture in Ital­ian.

Span­ish

  • Cof­fee Break Span­ish iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Learn Span­ish in a low-key, effec­tive way. Cur­rent­ly the #2 over­all favorite in iTunes’ pod­cast col­lec­tion. They must be loaded on iPods every­where.
  • Final­ly Learn Span­ish — Beyond the Basics iTunes Feed Web Site
    • If you’ve had some Span­ish class­es and you need expe­ri­ence lis­ten­ing to and speak­ing the lan­guage, then Final­ly Learn Span­ish has a col­lec­tion of pod­casts for you.
  • Insta Span­ish Lessons iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Week­ly com­pre­hen­sion and gram­mar exer­cis­es for stu­dents of all lev­els. One of the more pop­u­lar pod­casts on iTunes.
  • Learn Span­ish Sur­vival Guide iTunes Feed
    • If you’re plan­ning a trip to a Span­ish speak­ing coun­try, and if you don’t know the lan­gu­gage, this will help get you up to speed.

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Where the American Press Went Wrong on the Iraq War: Bill Moyers Returns to TV Next Week

in Video - Politics/Society | April 20th, 2007


Next Wednes­day, at 9 pm, respect­ed jour­nal­ist Bill Moy­ers will return to PBS and air a 90-minute pre­sen­ta­tion called Buy­ing the War. Along the way, he’ll look at how the main­stream Amer­i­can press wound up cheer­lead­ing for the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s dri­ve toward war in Iraq rather than doing their real job — ask­ing tough ques­tions and pro­vid­ing par­ti­san-free report­ing.

Below, you can find a video excerpt from next week’s show. To briefly set the stage, Bob Simon of of 60
Min­utes talks here about “the report­ing he
was see­ing and read­ing out of the belt­way, and John Wal­cott and War­ren
Stro­bel of Knight Rid­der news­pa­pers (now The McClatchy Com­pa­ny),
dis­cuss their work bur­row­ing deep into the intel­li­gence agen­cies to
deter­mine whether there was any evi­dence for the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion’s
case for war.” (Note: You can get more infor­ma­tion on the expose from this PBS page, and you can sub­scribe to feeds for Bill Moy­er’s pod­casts here.)

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How Web 2.0 Will Transform the Humanities

in Technology | April 19th, 2007

Digital_campus_2Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, there are a few pro­fes­sors out there who actu­al­ly have their own accounts on Face­Book, much to the hor­ror of their stu­dents. Now you can hear their take on new media and the uni­ver­si­ty in a biweek­ly pod­cast, Dig­i­tal Cam­pus.
The series fea­tures a pan­el of new media schol­ars at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty dis­cussing how Web 2.0 techonolo­gies will change human­i­ties teach­ing and research. Top­ics so far have includ­ed Wikipedia, YouTube and this week’s episode on social net­work­ing (mp3 — feed — web­site). As the most recent show points out, Web 2.0 is rapid­ly mak­ing it to the aca­d­e­m­ic primetime–the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan now offers a mas­ter’s degree in social com­put­ing.

The flip side of new media tech­nolo­gies is how they will trans­form research into more tra­di­tion­al human­i­ties sub­jects. The Dig­i­tal Cam­pus crew are all involved in the emerg­ing field of dig­i­tal human­i­ties. On the pod­cast they dis­cuss many of the chal­lenges of trans­fer­ring old media knowl­edge to dig­i­tal archives and struc­tur­ing those archives to make search­ing easy. In addi­tion to air­ing these ques­tions in the pod­cast, Dig­i­tal Cam­pus is pro­mot­ing a new wiki designed for new­com­ers and vet­er­ans alike.


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Pulitzer Prize-Winning Play Ready to Download and Sync

in Theatre | April 19th, 2007

When you think Broad­way, you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly think first about plays that make sci­ence its point of focus. Or at least

you did­n’t before Copen­hagen hit the stage in 1998 and dra­mat­i­cal­ly told the sto­ry of Niels Bohr’s shad­owy meet­ing with Wern­er Heisen­berg back in 1941. Since then, sci­ence plays have been going strong. Just take this for exam­ple: L.A. The­atre Works recent­ly launched its Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Series, a “month­ly broad­cast fea­tur­ing plays that explore the impact of sci­ence on indi­vid­u­als and soci­ety.” You can down­load the series as a pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), and it so hap­pens that the series kicks off with a Tony and Pulitzer Prize-win­ning play called Proof, star­ring Anne Heche.

Writ­ten by David Auburn in 2001, Proof is not as aca­d­e­m­ic as it sounds. The New York Times called it “An exhil­a­rat­ing and assured new play … acces­si­ble and com­pelling as a detec­tive sto­ry.” And Hol­ly­wood turned the play into a film in 2005, with Gwyneth Pal­trow play­ing the lead. So you should­n’t have any reser­va­tions about immers­ing your­self in this dra­mat­ic work. Down­load it, sync it, and get ready to lis­ten to a tale of love and death, intel­lec­tu­al adven­ture and para­noia, and a sprin­kling of sex, drugs and rock and roll.

Tell a Friend About Open Cul­ture

Dig into Open Cul­ture’s pod­cast col­lec­tions.

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