Is America Broken?: A Talk with The Economist’s New Editor-in-Chief

in Media | February 16th, 2007

Economist_cover_1Even if you don’t agree with its Euro con­ser­v­a­tive pos­ture, The
Econ­o­mist always comes off as

emi­nent­ly ratio­nal and sen­si­ble when
grap­pling with polit­i­cal issues, and cer­tain­ly unwill­ing to put spin
ahead of good report­ing, which sep­a­rates it from many of its Amer­i­can
coun­ter­parts. This judi­cious­ness comes across in a talk giv­en last week
by John Mick­leth­wait, the mag­a­zine’s new­ly appoint­ed Edi­tor-in-Chief. (Access audio ver­sions here.) Inter­viewed by Orville Schell, Dean of the Grad­u­ate School of Jour­nal­ism at
UC-Berke­ley,
Mick­leth­wait cov­ers a lot of ground, but spends a good deal of time
con­tem­plat­ing Amer­i­ca’s role in the world, and par­tic­u­lar­ly whether
Amer­i­ca’s inter­na­tion­al lead­er­ship is now irre­triev­ably bro­ken. His com­mon sense answers pro­vide no red
meat for any­one on the left or right. But they’re thought­ful, and worth your time. (Just as an fyi, his talk does­n’t get start­ed until about 10 min­utes in, and he does­n’t get to inter­na­tion­al affairs until about the 29th minute.) Final­ly, on a relat­ed note, you may want to explore The Econ­o­mist’s rel­a­tive­ly new series of pod­casts: iTunes  Feed

For more pod­casts like it, see Open Cul­ture’s col­lec­tion of News & Infor­ma­tion Pod­casts and our Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.


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Business School Podcast Collection — Download MBA Podcasts and other Business Podcasts

in Business | February 16th, 2007

Please vis­it our updat­ed col­lec­tion of Free Busi­ness Cours­es Online and relat­ed busi­ness resources.…

  • Dar­d­en School of Busi­ness (The Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia) iTunes — Feed — Web Site
  • Entre­pre­neur­ial Thought Lead­ers (Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty) iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A series of week­ly lec­tures on entre­pre­neur­ship joint­ly spon­sored by sev­er­al pro­grams at Stan­ford. Fea­tures speak­ers from Google, Genen­tech, and Juniper Net­works, among oth­ers.
    • Fuqua School of Busi­ness (Duke Uni­ver­si­ty)iTunes Web Site
      • One of the rich­er col­lec­tions out there.
    • HBR Idea­Cast (Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty) iTunes Feed Web Site
      • From the Har­vard Busi­ness Review, this col­lec­tion fea­tures lead­ing thinkers in the busi­ness and man­age­ment world.
    • Tomorrow’s Chal­lenges present top-ranked busi­ness school IMD’s lat­est research results. Fac­ul­ty dis­cuss crit­i­cal busi­ness top­ics such as lead­er­ship, inno­va­tion, change and gov­er­nance. See www.imd.ch/tc for in depth arti­cles.IMD Tomorrow’s Chal­lenges Pod­cast Audio Feed Video Feed
  • Lead­er­cast iTunes Feeds
  • Knowl­edge­cast iTunes Feeds
    • These two pod­casts come out of one of Europe’s elite busi­ness pro­grams.
  • Knowledge@Wharton Audio Arti­cles (Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia) iTunes Feed Web Site
    • An off­shoot of the school’s online busi­ness jour­nal called “Knowledge@Wharton.” Pro­vides “audio arti­cles” that­fea­ture high-pro­file exec­u­tives and fac­ul­ty, includ­ing sev­er­al that high­light stock mar­ket guru Jere­my Siegel.
  • Lon­don Busi­ness School iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A series of audio and video pod­casts shar­ing the lat­est in news and thought lead­er­ship from the Lon­don Busi­ness School, which is part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don.
  • MBA Pod­cast­er iTunes Feed Web Site Infor­ma­tion and advice for those look­ing to get into b‑school.
  • McK­in­sey High Tech Pod­casts iTunes Web Site
    • Obvi­ous­ly McK­in­sey is not a b‑school, but it’s the big kahu­na con­sult­ing firm and they put out some infor­ma­tive pod­casts. Here are ones from their high tech prac­tice.
  • Sloan School of Man­age­ment (MIT) iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Stan­ford Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness iTunes Web Site
    • This col­lec­tion notably includes sev­er­al pod­casts that describe how to opti­mize your appli­ca­tion to busi­ness school.
  • Times Online MBA Pod­casts iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Some of the world’s lead­ing busi­ness thinkers pro­vide the lat­est think­ing in eco­nom­ics, man­age­ment, finance, strat­e­gy and mar­ket­ing.
  • Tuck School of Busi­ness at Dart­mouth, Cen­ter for Dig­i­tal Strate­gies iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Radio Tuck brings you ground-break­ing dig­i­tal inter­views, straight from the busi­ness lead­ers of today.
  • Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, Ross School of Busi­ness iTunes Web Site
  • Yale School of Man­age­ment iTunes Web Site

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Jazz Great Sonny Rollins on iTunes and Youtube

in Video - Arts & Culture | February 15th, 2007


Sonnyrollins2Son­ny Rollins, who made his name with the acclaimed album Sax­o­phone Colos­sus, has defied the
fate

of oth­er jazz greats. He’s long out­lived his impor­tant con­tem­po­raries – Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Thelo­nious Monk – and, at 76 years old, he’s still out there issu­ing new albums (the lat­est being Son­ny, Please), and even new web videos.

Jazz fans will want to explore the new 12-part web video series that’s just being rolled out. Sched­uled to be released in month­ly install­ments (a new one on the 23rd of each month), the video series will “intro­duce Rollins, the man and his music, to new lis­ten­ers,” using “musi­cal per­for­mances, both cur­rent and clas­sic, inter­views and exclu­sive behind-the-scenes videos.” (See the full project descrip­tion here.) Enti­tled “The Son­ny Rollins Pod­cast,” the col­lec­tion can be accessed on iTunes in video. But you can also find the videos on Youtube/Google Video if you don’t have (or know how to use) a video-enabled iPod. That may be the eas­i­est way to go.

The first episode, “On The Road with Son­ny,” just came out in the past few weeks, and it fea­tures “behind the scenes rehearsal footage from two late 2006 Ari­zona con­certs.” You can watch it below. If you want to con­tin­ue fol­low­ing the series, then just vis­it sonnyrollins.com toward the end of each month, and they’ll post each new install­ment.

See Open Cul­ture’s Arts & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion

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The Lowdown on the Shiite-Sunni Divide

in Current Affairs | February 15th, 2007


Women_mosque200Sev­er­al months ago, The New York Times ran a rather strik­ing piece
detail­ing how key US lead­ers
— ones play­ing inte­gral roles in the war
on ter­ror and the war in Iraq — could­n’t explain the basic dif­fer­ence between a Shi­ite and a Sun­ni. The dis­clo­sure, how­ev­er, was­n’t ter­ri­bly
sur­pris­ing. We were, after all, already sev­er­al years into fight­ing a war that was premised on see­ing only rosy sce­nar­ios, not incon­ve­nient details or
hard real­i­ties on the ground.

Real­i­ty is nowa­days com­ing back with a vengeance, talk about
civ­il war and a Sun­ni-Shi­ite divide has entered our
polit­i­cal vocab­u­lary, and we’re final­ly doing the home­work that we should
have done years ago. This week, NPR’s Morn­ing Edi­tion has put togeth­er a help­ful five-part series, called “The Par­ti­sans of Ali: A His­to­ry of Shia Faith and Pol­i­tics,”
that explores the his­tor­i­cal divi­sions between Shia and Sun­ni Mus­lims,
giv­ing par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to the Shi­ites them­selves. If you haven’t
already, you might as well bone up on this mate­r­i­al, since it will shape our nation­al expe­ri­ence for years to come, regard­less of how
many exit-plans are being drawn up right now. All pro­grams can be
down­loaded as mp3’s. A gen­er­al overview of the series (which has a lot
of good sup­port­ing mate­ri­als) can be found here. Mean­while, you can access the indi­vid­ual dai­ly pro­grams below:

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A Mother Lode of Public Radio Podcasts

in Uncategorized | February 14th, 2007

This is a pod­cast com­pi­la­tion that we almost wish we had put togeth­er. The “Pub­lic Radio Pod­cast Cat­a­logue” amaz­ing­ly gives you access to over 900 pub­lic radio pro­grams pod­cast­ed from around the globe, all of which are bro­ken down into neat cat­e­gories – Busi­ness, Cul­ture, Lit­er­a­ture, Music, News, Pol­i­tics, etc. Quite con­ve­nient­ly, the orga­niz­ers of this col­lec­tion have pro­vid­ed a link to each indi­vid­ual pod­cast feed. So you only need to find the pod­cast you like – whether its Fresh Air, Car Talk, BBC News, or what­ev­er pod­cast exists in the pub­lic radio uni­verse – then paste the feed link into a pod­cast­ing pro­gram such as iTunes or Juice, and you’ll be on your way to down­load­ing, sync­ing and absorb­ing end­less amounts of enlight­en­ing radio con­tent.

See Open Cul­ture’s pod­cast col­lec­tions: Arts & Cul­ture;

Audio Books; For­eign Lan­guage Lessons;

News & Infor­ma­tion; Tech­nol­o­gy;

Uni­ver­si­ty — Gen­er­al; and

Uni­ver­si­ty — Busi­ness School.

 

 


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Welcome to the Islamic Reformation (and How to Make Sense of bin Laden)

in Religion | February 13th, 2007


Speak­ing recent­ly on Stan­ford’s cam­pus, Reza Aslan, an Iran­ian-Amer­i­can schol­ar who has writ­ten for The New York Times, The Nation, and Slate, sketched out an inter­est­ing frame­work for mak­ing sense of recent trends with­in the Mid­dle East, and more par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in Islam itself (iTunes — feed N/A). His argu­ment is essen­tial­ly this: Islam is under­go­ing a ref­or­ma­tion that’s not ter­ri­bly unlike the one Chris­tian­i­ty under­went in the 16th cen­tu­ry. With­in Islam, we see indi­vid­u­als arro­gat­ing pow­er from the cler­i­cal estab­lish­ment, inter­pret­ing Islam for them­selves, and attempt­ing to return it to a more pure and orig­i­nal form. And what’s dri­ving all of this are three social and tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions. First, the trans­la­tion of the Koran into many new lan­guages, which has made it acces­si­ble to wide­spread pop­u­la­tions, includ­ing non-Ara­bic-speak­ing peo­ple, for the first time.  Sec­ond, the par­tic­i­pa­tion in reformist move­ments by Mus­lims from the West, who bring their own indi­vid­u­al­is­tic per­spec­tives to the reli­gion. Third and most impor­tant­ly, the inven­tion of the Inter­net, which, much like the print­ing press dur­ing the 16th cen­tu­ry, has empow­ered new arbiters of Islam­ic law. Through the inter­net, new thinkers can get their ideas out there in unprece­dent­ed ways, mobi­lize sup­port behind a new body of reli­gious ideas, and com­pete effec­tive­ly with the old reli­gious order.

It is with­in this gen­er­al con­text of ref­or­ma­tion that Aslan places Usama bin Laden. Although the Islam­ic ref­or­ma­tion has been shaped by many mod­er­ate and pro­gres­sive fig­ures, there are, as with all refor­ma­tions, more rad­i­cal fig­ures who chal­lenge the tra­di­tion­al reli­gious insti­tu­tions and will resort to a patho­log­i­cal kind of vio­lence if nec­es­sary. In this instance, Aslan sees sim­i­lar­i­ties between bin Laden and more rad­i­cal fig­ures of the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion. Give the talk a lis­ten. And let your­self get past the first 10 min­utes because it starts a lit­tle slow­ly.

See our Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­cast col­lec­tion.

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Malcolm X at Oxford University 1964

in History | February 12th, 2007

We love find­ing these vin­tage media gems. Last week, we served up Orson Welles’ famous radio broad­cast from 1938. This week, we’ve got anoth­er one — Mal­colm X speak­ing at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty in 1964.In this clas­sic speech, you get a good feel for Mal­colm X’s pres­ence and mes­sage, not to men­tion the social issues that were alive dur­ing the day. You’ll hear X’s trade­mark claim that lib­er­ty can be attained by “what­ev­er means nec­es­sary,” includ­ing force, if the gov­ern­ment won’t guar­an­tee it, and that “intel­li­gent­ly direct­ed extrem­ism” will achieve lib­er­ty far more effec­tive­ly than paci­fist strate­gies. (He’s clear­ly allud­ing to Mar­tin Luther King.) You can lis­ten to the speech in its entire­ty here (Real Audio), some­thing that is well worth doing. But we’d also encour­age you to watch (see below) the dra­mat­ic clos­ing min­utes and pay some atten­tion to the nice rhetor­i­cal slide, to how we get from Ham­let’s doubts (“To be or not to be”) to tak­ing up arms:

“I read once, pass­ing­ly, about a man named Shake­speare. I only read about him pass­ing­ly, but I remem­ber one thing he wrote that kind of moved me. He put it in the mouth of Ham­let, I think, it was, who said, ‘To be or not to be.’ He was in doubt about something—whether it was nobler in the mind of man to suf­fer the slings and arrows of out­ra­geous fortune—moderation—or to take up arms against a sea of trou­bles and by oppos­ing end them. And I go for that. If you take up arms, you’ll end it, but if you sit around and wait for the one who’s in pow­er to make up his mind that he should end it, you’ll be wait­ing a long time. And in my opin­ion, the young gen­er­a­tion of whites, blacks, browns, what­ev­er else there is, you’re liv­ing at a time of extrem­ism, a time of rev­o­lu­tion, a time when there’s got to be a change. Peo­ple in pow­er have mis­used it, and now there has to be a change and a bet­ter world has to be built, and the only way it’s going to be built—is with extreme meth­ods. And I, for one, will join in with anyone—I don’t care what col­or you are—as long as you want to change this mis­er­able con­di­tion that exists on this earth.”

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Open Culture on Future Tense (American Public Media)

in Uncategorized | February 9th, 2007

We have a short inter­view air­ing today on Future Tense, an Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media pro­gram host­ed by Jon Gor­don. This pro­gram offers a dai­ly jour­nal of the dig­i­tal age, and today we’re talk­ing about the past, present and future of audio books, par­tic­u­lar­ly the pod­cast­ed kind. The con­ver­sa­tion weaves togeth­er a few things that we’ve dis­cussed here this week — H.G. Wells, Cory Doc­torow, Cre­ative Com­mons, the skewed pric­ing of audio books sold to con­sumers, etc. If you don’t catch it on the radio, you can lis­ten in here: MP3 — iTunes — Blog.

On a relat­ed note, we also talked with Future Tense not too long ago about what uni­ver­si­ties are doing on the pod­cast front. If you want to give it a lis­ten, you can access it here: Mp3 — Blog.

Final­ly, see our col­lec­tion of audio book pod­casts as well as Jon Gor­don’s blog, wavLength.


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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.