Hear a BBC Radio Drama of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov: Streaming Free for a Limited Time

in Audio Books, Literature | June 10th, 2016

Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov

A quick heads up: For the next two weeks, you can stream a BBC Radio 4 drama­ti­za­tion of Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky’s final nov­el, The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov. Pub­lished between Jan­u­ary 1879 and Novem­ber 1880, the philo­soph­i­cal nov­el has influ­enced gen­er­a­tions of readers–certainly me, maybe you, and then some oth­er notable fig­ures like Ein­stein, Wittgen­stein, Hei­deg­ger, Freud and more. The radio drama­ti­za­tion is trun­cat­ed, just 5 hours, where­as most com­plete ver­sions run 34 hours. (Find those in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books. Or get a pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read ver­sion on Audible.com, by check­ing out Audi­ble’s 30-day free tri­al pro­gram.) Below, you can find the install­ments of the BBC radio dra­ma.

  • Episode 1: Rus­sia, 1880: The unpre­dictable Fyo­dor Kara­ma­zov and his sons are reunit­ed to dis­cuss Dmit­ry’s inher­i­tance. Stars Roy Mars­den.
  • Episode 2: As Alyosha attends to dying Father Zosi­ma, rela­tions between Dmit­ry and his father turn ever more dan­ger­ous. Stars Paul Hilton.
  • Episode 3: Fol­low­ing a vio­lent encounter at the Kara­ma­zov home, Dmit­ry flees the town in search of Grushen­ka. Stars Paul Hilton.
  • Episode 4: As Dmit­ry goes on tri­al for mur­der, Alyosha des­per­ate­ly seeks proof of his inno­cence. Stars Paul Hilton and Carl Prekopp.
  • Episode 5: Fol­low­ing Ivan’s dra­mat­ic appear­ance at his broth­er’s tri­al, Kate­ri­na pre­pares to deal Dmit­ry a fatal blow. Stars Paul Hilton.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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:

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Fyo­dor Dostoyevsky’s Life & Lit­er­a­ture Intro­duced in a Mon­ty Python-Style Ani­ma­tion

Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky Draws Elab­o­rate Doo­dles In His Man­u­scripts

Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es

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The Bizarre, Surviving Scene from the 1933 Soviet Animation Based on a Pushkin Tale and a Shostakovich Score

in Animation, Film, Literature | June 10th, 2016

Hot dumplings! Mar­i­nat­ed apples! A bar­rel of cucum­bers!

Want to add some quick col­or to your per­for­mance or film? Slip in a quick non-nar­ra­tive ven­dor scene. No need for char­ac­ter or plot devel­op­ment. The audi­ence will be quite con­tent with the hawk­ers’ musi­cal recita­tion of their wares.

The Gersh­win / Hey­ward opera Por­gy and Bess’ com­ic “Ven­dor’s Trio” makes a nice break from the tragedy.

The live­ly mar­ket num­ber Who Will Buy? tem­porar­i­ly side­lines Oliv­er’s orphans to show­case the tal­ents of the adult cho­rus mem­bers.

When the Simp­sons’ 179th episode took Homer to New York City back in 1997, he was able to pur­chase such exot­ic del­i­ca­cies as Khlav Kalash and canned crab juice from a col­lec­tion of push­carts at the base of the World Trade Cen­ter.

Less well known is the above bazaar sequence from The Tale of the Priest and of His Work­man Bal­da (1933), a clas­sic of Sovi­et ani­ma­tion. This short clip is the only part of direc­tor Mikhail Tsekhanovsky’s unfin­ished fea­ture-length work to sur­vive. The rest was destroyed in a fire at the LenFilm archives in World War II, the seem­ing­ly final chap­ter in its trou­bled his­to­ry.

The film was based on Alexan­der Pushkin’s poet­ic retelling of a Russ­ian folk tale about a greedy priest, who strikes an ill-advised bar­gain with a brawny work­er. It was pub­lished posthu­mous­ly, and only after cen­sors had changed the priest into a mer­chant.

As he began work on the pro­duc­tion, Tsekhanovsky invit­ed Dim­it­ry Shostakovich to com­pose the score, an inno­va­tion at a time when musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment was added to com­plet­ed silent films. Shostakovich start­ed, but was derailed by Prav­da’s 1936 denun­ci­a­tion of his work in an arti­cle titled “Mud­dle Instead of Music.”

Even­tu­al­ly Tsekhanovskiy threw in the tow­el, too.

It does not end there, how­ev­er.

After Shostakovich’s death, his wid­ow got his stu­dent, Vadim Biber­ga, to com­plete work on the unfin­ished score. The Russ­ian Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra released it in 2006, as part of a Shostakovich cen­ten­ni­al.

A com­mem­o­ra­tive live per­for­mance that same year drew fire from the local dio­cese of the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church, who object­ed to the mock­ing por­tray­al of the priest. The the­ater bowed to pres­sure, stag­ing sev­en priest-free num­bers from the opera.

This recent his­to­ry adds an air of defi­ance to the grotes­queries of the sur­viv­ing clip, with top hon­ors going to the smut ped­dler enter­ing at the one minute mark, to extol the virtues of “a Venus with no gar­ments and fat thighs.”

You can lis­ten to Shostakovich’s full score here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Three Ani­mat­ed Shorts by the Ground­break­ing Russ­ian Ani­ma­tor Fyo­dor Khitruk

Sovi­et Ani­ma­tions of Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries: ‘Here There Be Tygers’ & ‘There Will Come Soft Rain’

Watch Sovi­et Ani­ma­tions of Win­nie the Pooh, Cre­at­ed by the Inno­v­a­tive Ani­ma­tor Fyo­dor Khitruk

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Malcolm Gladwell Has Launched a New Podcast, Revisionist History: Hear the First Episode

in History, Podcasts | June 10th, 2016

Mal­colm Glad­well has a pod­cast. Some of you will require no fur­ther infor­ma­tion, and in fact have already clicked over to iTunes (or anoth­er pod­cast down­load­ing appli­ca­tion of your choice), des­per­ate to down­load the first episode. Allow me to inform those cool­er heads who remain that Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry won’t begin its ten-week run, with one episode out per week, until June 16th. (Update: The first episode is now live and you can stream it below.) But you can sub­scribe right now (iTunes — Stitch­er — RSS), and while you wait over the next few days, you can lis­ten to the pre­view that Glad­well has already post­ed.

You can also get a lit­tle a taste of Glad­well’s new project by watch­ing the trail­er at the top of the post. “Every week, I’m going to take you back into the past,” Glad­well promis­es in the video’s nar­ra­tion, “to exam­ine some­thing that I think has been over­looked and mis­un­der­stood.”

He gets into more detail on the Bri­an Lehrer Show seg­ment below, in which he describes the first episode of Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry as about the ques­tion of what it means to be “the first out­sider to enter a closed world,” start­ing from the career of British painter Eliz­a­beth Thomp­son, whose 1874 can­vas The Roll Call became, for a time, the most famous image in the coun­try. It broke its female artist into the male-dom­i­nat­ed world of paint­ing, and seemed, for an even short­er time, to her­ald a new era rich with high-pro­file female painters. “Every­one waits and waits for the rev­o­lu­tion to hap­pen,” Glad­well says, already into his char­ac­ter­is­tic sto­ry­telling mode, “and it nev­er hap­pens.”

Lehrer reacts to Glad­well’s choice of the sto­ry of “the first woman to break through in a male-dom­i­nat­ed field” with the obvi­ous ques­tion: “Is that a coin­ci­dence?” It is absolute­ly not a coin­ci­dence, Glad­well replies, going on to con­nect the phe­nom­e­non in ques­tion to not just mod­ern fig­ures like Hillary Clin­ton but Barack Oba­ma, Julia Gillard, and Mar­garet Thatch­er as well, and in the pod­cast itself sure­ly many oth­ers besides. He also hints at an episode lat­er in the sea­son that begins with an obscure Elvis Costel­lo song — and a “ter­ri­ble” one at that, he adds — and uses it “as a way of find­ing out how cre­ativ­i­ty works, and how an awful lot of what we con­sid­er works of genius had an incred­i­bly cir­cuitous path to great­ness,” end­ing up at a gallery look­ing at Cézannes.

You can sign up for episode updates at the offi­cial Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry site. The show comes as a prod­uct of Panoply, the pod­cast net­work of The Slate Group, and its first sea­son promis­es slick pro­duc­tion in addi­tion to the kind of com­pelling sto­ries and mem­o­rable social-sci­ence insights with which Glad­well has made him­self famous. And we should­n’t ignore his tal­ent for mar­ket­ing, either, ful­ly in evi­dence from noth­ing more than the tagline he speaks in the trail­er: “Because some­times the past deserves a sec­ond chance.” All this togeth­er sounds like more than a good rea­son to give his pod­cast a first one.

Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry is list­ed in our new col­lec­tion, The 150 Best Pod­casts to Enrich Your Mind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pod­cast His­to­ry of Our World Will Take You From Cre­ation Myths to (Even­tu­al­ly) the Present Day

The His­to­ry of the World in 46 Lec­tures From Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

Jump Into the “Pod­cast­ing Renais­sance” with These Intel­li­gent Shows (and Tell Us Your Favorites)

Mal­colm Glad­well: What We Can Learn from Spaghet­ti Sauce

Mal­colm Glad­well: Tax­es Were High and Life Was Just Fine

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Martin Scorsese Sends a Sweet Video to the Young Creator a Kubrick/Scorsese Mashup

in Film, Life | June 9th, 2016

If you’re a vet­er­an read­er of Open Cul­ture, you may remem­ber a 2010 video trib­ute called “Kubrick vs Scors­ese.” To make the video, Lean­dro Cop­per­field, a young cinephile liv­ing in Rio de Janeiro, spent 25 days re-watch­ing 35 films, select­ing more than 500 scenes, and then edit­ing them into an homage to his two favorite direc­tors. Watch it here.

No doubt, it must have come as a sur­prise when, six years lat­er, Cop­per­field received a video from Scors­ese him­self, prais­ing the mon­tage Lean­dro made so long ago. Again, if you’re an old-timer here, you’ll know that this isn’t the first time Scors­ese has shown kind­ness to younger artists. In 2014, we recount­ed the sto­ry of Col­in Levy, a teenage film­mak­er who met with Scors­ese, and came away with a list of 39 For­eign Films Essen­tial for a Young Film­mak­er. Props to Mar­ty for being a good men­tor and teacher too.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ates a List of 39 Essen­tial For­eign Films for a Young Film­mak­er

Mar­tin Scors­ese Plays Vin­cent Van Gogh in a Short, Sur­re­al Film by Aki­ra Kuro­sawa

Mar­tin Scors­ese Makes a List of 85 Films Every Aspir­ing Film­mak­er Needs to See

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The First Biopic of Edgar Allan Poe: 1909 Film by D.W. Griffith Shows the Horror Master Writing “The Raven”

in Film, Literature | June 9th, 2016

The film indus­try knows that movie­go­ers love watch­ing genius­es at work, and they may have known it for more than a cen­tu­ry, ever since the release of 1909’s Edgar Allan Poe above. The sev­en-minute silent short, made for the cen­te­nary of the tit­u­lar lit­er­ary fig­ure’s birth (and sub­ti­tled, back in those days before the word biopic, “a Pic­ture Sto­ry Found­ed on Events in His Career”) depicts the 19th-cen­tu­ry pio­neer of psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror com­pos­ing his best-known work, “The Raven,” even as his wife lays dying of tuber­cu­lo­sis. In real life, the young Vir­ginia Eliza Clemm Poe passed away two years after the poem’s pub­li­ca­tion, but D.W. Grif­fith, like a true crafts­man of his medi­um, knew the poten­tial for extra dra­ma when he saw it.

Grif­fith, who did hun­dreds of such shorts in the late 1900s and ear­ly 1910s, would of course go on to direct two of the most inno­v­a­tive and influ­en­tial works in cin­e­ma his­to­ry: 1915’s The Birth of a Nation and the fol­low­ing year’s Intol­er­ance. But just before that, in 1914, he fur­ther pur­sued his inter­est in Poe with a fea­ture called The Aveng­ing Con­science: or, Thou Shalt Not Kill, mov­ing beyond a sim­ple depic­tion of the author and his work­ing process (or at least his work­ing process as inter­pret­ed through the dis­tinc­tive dra­mat­ic style of ear­ly silent film) to draw direct inspi­ra­tion from the work itself.

Even if you’ve nev­er actu­al­ly read any of Poe’s writ­ing, you’ll sure­ly have absorbed enough of “The Raven” (even if just from The Simp­sons) to quote it now and again, just as you’ll sure­ly have heard enough about his 1843 sto­ry “The Tell-Tale Heart” to know the plot has some­thing to do with a man tor­ment­ed by his guilty con­science — and so you’ll prob­a­bly know which sto­ry Grif­fith chose for this ear­ly exam­ple of adap­ta­tion even before you see its first title card. Just as the film­mak­er uses strik­ing light and shad­ow to evoke Poe’s inner world in the ear­li­er film, here he, in the words of Edgar Allan Poe author Kevin J. Hayes, “bril­liant­ly repli­cates Poe’s psy­cho­log­i­cal ten­sion in visu­al terms.”

Grif­fith’s sec­ond Poe film incor­po­rates not just the stuff of his work, but more of the stuff of his life as well: “Some aspects of the plot, in which the cen­tral char­ac­ter is an orphan as well as an author, are also rem­i­nis­cent of Poe’s life,” writes Hayes in The Cam­bridge Com­pan­ion to Edgar Allan Poe. “The sto­ry includes echoes of oth­er writ­ing includ­ing ‘Three Sun­days in a Week,’ ‘The Pit and the Pen­du­lum,’ ‘The Black Cat,’ and ‘Annabel Lee,’ ” all “spun togeth­er in a sto­ry of love, mur­der, and vengeance, which nonethe­less ends hap­pi­ly.” Which brings us to anoth­er piece of com­mon cin­e­mat­ic wis­dom, appar­ent­ly known as well by Grif­fith as by any of his Hol­ly­wood suc­ces­sors: every­body loves a hap­py end­ing — appar­ent­ly, once they get in front of the sil­ver screen, even read­ers of Edgar Allan Poe.

Both films will be added to our col­lec­tion of Silent Films, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Sto­ries as Free eBooks & Audio Books

Edgar Allan Poe & The Ani­mat­ed Tell-Tale Heart

New Film Extra­or­di­nary Tales Ani­mates Edgar Poe Sto­ries, with Nar­ra­tions by Guiller­mo Del Toro, Christo­pher Lee & More

Edgar Allan Poe Ani­mat­ed: Watch Four Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Poe Sto­ries

The Simp­sons Present Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and Teach­ers Now Use It to Teach Kids the Joys of Lit­er­a­ture

The Mys­tery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Death: 19 The­o­ries on What Caused the Poet’s Demise

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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1978 News Report on the Rocky Horror Craze Captures a Teenage Michael Stipe in Drag

in Film, History | June 9th, 2016

The impact of The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show in the ‘70s came from a per­fect cock­tail of sev­er­al time-spe­cif­ic ingre­di­ents: A lib­er­at­ed, post-’60s gen­er­a­tion of young peo­ple embold­ened by glam and the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion find­ing their voice; the pro­lif­er­a­tion of cin­e­mas that found that mid­night screen­ings were good for busi­ness; and the need to see a film again and again in a pre-VHS Amer­i­ca.

In the above clip from a St. Louis, MO night­ly news segment–commenters place it at around 1978–TV reporter Michael Brown inter­views the crowd out­side a screen­ing at the Var­si­ty The­ater, wait­ing to see the film “that some peo­ple obvi­ous­ly think has been here too long” (accord­ing to the news­cast­er) and, instead of find­ing deviants, dis­cov­ers some of the first cos-play­ers in his­to­ry.

One of which–and why the clip was post­ed in the first place–is a teenage Michael Stipe, years before mov­ing to Geor­gia and start­ing R.E.M., in full Frank N. Furter drag, who says this is “nor­mal” dress.

The idea to sell a film (that was orig­i­nal­ly a flop) as a “mid­night movie” start­ed with a loy­al fol­low­ing at the Waver­ly The­ater in New York City, and can­ny stu­dio mar­keters. Accord­ing to a 1999 arti­cle by Patri­cia Cor­ri­g­an,

“Rocky Hor­ror” came to St. Louis in March of 1976, show­ing at the now-defunct Var­si­ty The­atre in Uni­ver­si­ty City. The movie ran every night, as the main fea­ture, for three weeks. Pete Pic­cione, who owned the Var­si­ty, brought the film back as a mid­night movie on occa­sion­al week­ends for the rest of the year and on through 1977. By May of 1978, “Rocky Hor­ror” was play­ing every week­end as the mid­night show.

In fact, Pic­cione is in the seg­ment, being asked how he’d feel if his son or daugh­ter attend­ed this film, and well, we won’t ruin the reply. You’ll just have to watch.

Not only is this a great his­tor­i­cal vignette, but a reminder that the sight of peo­ple in cos­tume gath­er­ing to cel­e­brate a pop cul­ture event was once remark­able; now it’s called Comi­con.

It’s also worth won­der­ing: apart from the open­ing night, will we ever again see peo­ple gath­er­ing in pub­lic to watch a film 30, 40, 50 times? And did those news­cast­ers ever get bet­ter fash­ion sense?

via A.V. Club/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Inter­view: Tim Cur­ry Dis­cuss­es The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show, Dur­ing the Week of Its Release (1975)

http://www.openculture.com/2015/02/tim-curry-discusses-the-rocky-horror-picture-show.html

Michael Stipe Rec­om­mends 10 Books for Any­one Marooned on a Desert Island

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Moby Lets You Download 4 Hours of Ambient Music to Help You Sleep, Meditate, Do Yoga & Not Panic

in Health, Music | June 8th, 2016

Back in May, I wrote about the dam­ag­ing effects stress has on the body, and the sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-val­i­dat­ed pow­er of yoga and med­i­ta­tion to undo them. Fol­low­ing close behind stress as a chron­ic con­trib­u­tor to ill­ness is sleep­less­ness, which the Divi­sion of Sleep Med­i­cine at Har­vard Med­ical School links to dia­betes, high blood pres­sure, heart dis­ease, and short­ened life expectan­cy. Add to all these risks the prob­lems of poor pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and dis­or­ga­nized think­ing, and you’ll begin to see insom­nia for the dan­ger­ous con­di­tion it is.

What to do with that anx­ious, over­worked, over­tired self? Well, again, I’d hearti­ly rec­om­mend a yoga or med­i­ta­tion prac­tice. Pow­er naps through­out the day can boost your endurance and brain­pow­er as well. But I’d also rec­om­mend music—music that calms the body and helps wash away the men­tal gunk that accu­mu­lates through­out the day. Com­pos­er Max Richter recent­ly released an eight-hour piece of music intend­ed to lull lis­ten­ers to sleep and keep them there. His efforts are now joined by elec­tron­i­ca super­star Moby, who has spo­ken frankly about the insom­nia that has plagued him since the age of four.

For his own ben­e­fit, Moby began mak­ing what he describes on his web­site as “real­ly real­ly real­ly qui­et music to lis­ten to when I do yoga or sleep or med­i­tate or pan­ic.” He “end­ed up with 4 hours of music,” he says, and “decid­ed to give it away.” The col­lec­tion con­sists of 11 “Long Ambi­ent” pieces between around 20 and 30 min­utes each. You can hear them all—or not, if they put you to sleep—at the Spo­ti­fy playlist above, or down­load them at Moby’s site. (He also gives you the option to play the record­ings on Apple Music, Sound­cloud, Deez­er and oth­er plat­forms.) “It’s real­ly qui­et,” he reit­er­ates, “no drums, no vocals, just very slow calm pret­ty chords and sounds and things.”

Con­sist­ing of rum­bling drone notes with reverb-drenched synths float­ing atop, Moby’s “Long Ambi­ent” com­po­si­tions remind me of the sound­scapes of Bri­an Eno or William Basin­s­ki, and like the work of those com­posers, his sleep music feels both ocean­ic and cin­e­mat­ic. Per­haps in his move a few years back from his native New York to L.A., Moby found him­self musi­cal­ly inspired by the Pacif­ic and the movies. (You might remem­ber his gor­geous, dra­mat­ic sound­track to the L.A.-set Michael Mann film Heat.) Wher­ev­er this music comes from, it’s a peace­ful way to com­bat insom­nia, stress, or pan­ic.

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Music That Helps You Sleep: Min­i­mal­ist Com­pos­er Max Richter, Pop Phe­nom Ed Sheer­an & Your Favorites

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

The Pow­er of Pow­er Naps: Sal­vador Dali Teach­es You How Micro-Naps Can Give You Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Free: Learn Foreign Languages in Your Car

in Language Lessons | June 8th, 2016

SONY DSC

Have a bor­ing com­mute? A long road trip com­ing up? Con­sid­er using that time well and learn­ing a lan­guage as you dri­ve. While rum­mag­ing around on Spo­ti­fy (down­load their free soft­ware here), we noticed that they give you free access to the mul­ti-part col­lec­tions: Learn Span­ish in Your Car, Learn French in Your Car, Learn Man­darin in Your Car, Learn Ital­ian in Your Car, Learn Russ­ian in Your Car, and Learn Ger­man in Your Car.

Run­ning 10–14 hours, the col­lec­tions (usu­al­ly retail­ing for $22.95 on Ama­zon) build in dif­fi­cul­ty, mov­ing from “Lev­el 1” to “Lev­el 2” to “Lev­el 3.” We’ve embed­ded the playlists below, and you can always find them list­ed in our col­lec­tion, Learn 45+ Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More.

Span­ish: 

French

Man­darin

Ger­man 

Ital­ian

Russ­ian

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.