Bill Ayers, founder of the Weather Underground and favorite whipping boy of the failed McCain campaign, gives a primer on the summer of ’68, discusses his favorite tattoo, and explains how the Chicago Police Department now loves him. The interview was conducted by a colleague of mine, Scott Hutchins, and you have to like the ironic way it begins:
…our interview [started] with a bomb scare. We sat down on the couch in a busy hotel lobby and a worried security guard approached. “Is that your bag?” she asked, pointing to a backpack and coat that were definitely not ours. “Nope,” we said. “Oh boy,” she said. She asked a few other people. The owner was not there. She radioed in. I considered the irony of being blown up while interviewing Bill Ayers. I figured it would at least get me a wikipedia entry.
U2’s next album, No Line on the Horizon, will be released internationally in early March. But not terribly surprisingly the album is already being circulated (not legally) on BitTorrent. And this has motivated the band to give fans free access to a streamed version on MySpace. To listen, just click here, scroll down to the music player, and toggle the “Feature Playlist” to No Line on the Horizon. You should be able to access the album in its entirety.
Somewhere back in the 1970s, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez teamed up again to sing Blowin’ in the Wind. Quite the duet, which we’ve added to our YouTube Favorites. As mentioned a few weeks back, Dylan recently agreed to lend this classic song to a TV commercial for an ethical banking and retail group in the UK. You can now see this rare commercialization of a Dylan song over at the Guardian. Thanks Stephen for flagging that.
I didn’t think it would be possible, but it happened. I found my two least favorite intellectuals together on the same stage, and King’s College in NYC made it all possible. So, to mark the occasion, I bring you Dinesh D’Souza, the academy’s dressed up version of Ann Coulter, debating the ever surly Christopher Hitchens. The topic is faith and atheism. The debate is heated. And as you watch, you’ll see the charming personalities come out. The video continues with Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and Part 10. 90 minutes in total.
Harvard historian Niall Ferguson has written extensively about the rise and fall of great empires and financial systems. Writing for Foreign Policy, Ferguson now warns that the spiraling economic crisis may soon pose serious threats to international peace and American security. As we saw during the late 1930s, economic crisis often sets the stage for full-blown political and possibly military crisis, and we’re already seeing the risk of upheaval in nine countries, including Somalia, Russia, and Mexico. Ferguson closes by saying: “Economic volatility, plus ethnic disintegration, plus an empire in decline: That combination is about the most lethal in geopolitics. We now have all three. The age of upheaval starts now.”
When we first created our Twitter feed, my hopes weren’t especially high. And while I’m still not completely sold on the personal uses of Twitter, I’m definitely liking the way that it works for a blogger. For starters, Twitter has given us insight into who actually reads Open Culture. Since we started things in October 2006, I haven’t known much about who visits the site. I’ve been flying in the dark, to be honest. But now Twitter gives us a snapshot of our regular readers. Because you can see who subscribes to your Twitter feed (something that doesn’t happen with RSS feeds), you can get a feel for readers’ geographical location, their general age range, and most importantly their professional and personal interests — all of which helps us tailor the blog’s content a bit better.
Still more perks come from our subscribers. Twitter gives you the ability to see who your “followers” also follow. And that inevitably means that your subscribers, sharing similar tastes, will turn you on to new and different sources of information/inspiration. Essentially, your subscribers help you develop intellectual affinity groups that provide good grist for the mill. In addition, our readers also do their own microblogging on Twitter, and, here again, their short, pithy 140 word “posts” have surfaced interesting content that we bring back to you … with proper attribution, of course.
Based on our brief time with Twitter, we’ve put together an initial list of culturally-redeeming Twitter feeds. Have a look, and feel free to let us know if we’re missing some good ones. Of course, this list will grow over time.
Lastly, if you’re not on Twitter, it’s time to get on and see if it works for you. Join here. And if you want to subscribe to our feed, click here and then click “Follow.”
In 1907, executives from the Gramophone Company headed to the basement of the Paris Opera and sealed up some wax recordings of famous opera singers. Now, a century later, these recordings have been opened, dusted off, and (yes) even commercialized. Later this month, EMI will release the recordings under the title, “Treasures From the Paris Opera Vaults.” If you click on this NYTimes article and scroll down a little to the Multimedia section, you can sample these century old recordings. The Times collection features outtakes from Verdi’s Aida, Otello and Rigoletto. Find them here.
Here’s a handy way to weather the recession with your intellect and pocket book intact…
In this very down economy, you can keep feeding your reading habit by book swapping. Yes, that’s right, book swapping. What goes on here is fairly straightforward. You give away books that you’ve already read. In exchange, you get books that you want to read. And the cost (aside from shipping fees) is zero. Plus you’ll save more than a few trees.
On the web, you’ll find two major online book swapping services. The first is PaperBackSwap.com. The second is BookMooch. You can learn more about each service (respectively) here and here.
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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.
Earlier in the month, we 
