Use Your Time in Isolation to Learn Everything You’ve Always Wanted To: Free Online Courses, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Coloring Books & More

in Education, Online Courses | March 16th, 2020

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” Mark Twain may or may not have actually said that, but either way the sentiment resonates — and with a new strength now, since schools have closed all over the world in an attempt to halt the spread of the pandemic coronavirus. For many, this period of isolation (self-imposed or otherwise) represents an opportunity to rediscover the value of education: not the kind directed by an institution, but the much more valuable kind that runs on one’s own steam. If you count among that select group of self-educators (or educators of children whom you can no longer send to school), we here at Open Culture have spent nearly the past decade and a half amassing just the resources you need.

At our selection of more than 1,500 free online courses, you can take deep dives into subjects from archaeology and architecture to law and literature to physics and psychology. (We’ve even got courses specifically designed to help you understand the coronavirus itself.) If you’ve been meaning to catch up on the work of the aforementioned Twain — or that of Dostoevsky, Wittgenstein, Kafka, and Proust, among others — he appears in our roundup of more than 800 free eBooks.

Should you prefer reading through earphones while exercising or cleaning — especially important activities these days — we can also offer you more than a thousand free audiobooks, whether you prefer Isaac Asimov or Jane Austen, Adrienne Rich or Charles Bukowski. (You can also get audiobooks from Audible if you sign up for a free 30-day trial there.)

While quarantine puts a temporary stop to many of our usual activities, it shouldn’t get in the way of movie night. Our collection of 1,1500 free movies will cover all your movie nights through the time of the coronavirus and then some, including as it does classic films noirs, thriller and horror pictures (including some by no less a suspense master than Alfred Hitchcock), documentaries, and even the fruits of the film industries of countries like Russia and South Korea. And though we can’t get enough cinema here at Open Culture, it’s hardly the only visual art form we feature: you might spend some time, for instance, with this collection of two million images from 30 world-class museums. This range of art also appears in free museum-produced coloring books geared to all ages.

If you’d like to use your time of “social distance” to develop skills other than coloring, we can point you toward resources for learning to cook, to draw (like an architect, like a Japanese mangaka, like Lynda Barry), to play the guitar, and to practice yoga. Bear in mind also the online-education offerings from Masterclass we’ve featured here on Open Culture, from “Margaret Atwood Teaches Creative Writing” to “David Sedaris Teaches Storytelling and Humor” to “Werner Herzog Teaches Filmmaking.” (The educational offerings provided by The Great Courses also provide another good option.) Those aren’t free, but everything else in this post is, including our collection of online language-learning resources. Having spread through world travel, the coronavirus will keep many wary of going abroad in the foreseeable future. But when the pandemic ends, you’ll want to be prepared to enjoy foreign lands again. Italy, a country especially hard-hit by the virus, will surely welcome all the visitors it can get. Until then, why not get a grasp on its language — and its cuisine — with a course like MIT’s “Learn Italian with Your Mouth Full”?

Coursera Providing Free Access to Its Course Catalog to Universities Impacted by COVID-19

Why You Should Read The Plague, the Albert Camus Novel the Coronavirus Has Made a Bestseller Again

Quarantined Italians Send a Message to Themselves 10 Days Ago: What They Wish They Knew Then

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 14 ) |

How Patti Smith “Saved” Rock and Roll: A New Video Makes the Case

in Music | March 16th, 2020

Rock and roll has always had its huge stars: from its earliest beginnings as a cultural phenomenon of interracial and sexual anxiety, to its turn as the soundtrack of free love, good drugs, and civil unrest. By the early 70s, however, Polyphonic argues above, the music of rebellion had “lost its way,” become the province of superrich superstars in private jets and French chateaus. As the 60s crashed and burned with the deaths of major figures like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison, the 70s dawned as an era of rock and roll excess to a degree that fully betrayed the music’s scrappy, teenage roots.

Punk, as the story goes, was born of backlash against the bloated, proggy state of affairs represented by the likes of Genesis; Yes; Emerson, Lake & Palmer; and so forth. While still musically leaner than these bands, the once scrappy Pink Floyd also succumbed to the trend of rock as musical theater—staging grand, expensive productions that required whole fleets to move from city to city. One iconic response, the Sex Pistols’ handmade “I Hate Pink Floyd” t‑shirt, seems to sum up punk rock’s general sneer in the direction of all rock stars.

Punk may have been a reaction, but it was not something other than rock and roll. Rather, it was a reclamation of rock’s spirit phrased in the idiom of the angry, crumbling, subversive 70s. At the center of punk’s CBGBs origins was “rock and roll warrior poet” Patti Smith and her debut, Horses, its unforgettable opening line a “radial declaration of youth, rebellion, and freedom.” (The line originated in an early poem, “Oath.”) Once Smith delivers her statement of intent, she and the band launch into “Gloria,” a garage-rock staple by Van Morrison’s 60s garage band, Them.

Smith explicitly connected her musical revolution to the three-chord proto-punk of ten years earlier, just as Iggy and the Stooges warped the meanest expressions of 60s rock into music that more accurately reflected the state of the Motor City. Her sound was pure downtown New York, with its hustlers, schemers, and dreamers, a distillation of rock’s essence, filtered through the seedy poetry of the Bowery.

There were many others—Richard Hell and the Voidoids, The Ramones, forgotten but significant bands like Pure Hell—whose sound was more prototypically punk. Smith was there before punk, living the life she writes of in Just Kids, hanging out with Bob Dylan and Allan Ginsberg, bridging the 60s and 70s while radically recovering rock’s racial and sexual transgressions and turning them on their patriarchal heads. In Smith’s version, “the lyrics and performance of ‘Gloria’ were overt challenges to perceptions of sexuality and gender.” After her came dozens of punk frontwomen who did the same, playing roles previously reserved for male rock stars.

Unlike the Sex Pistols, Smith did not spit in the eye of the rock stars of the past. She eulogized them in the sweaty downtown clubs of mid-70s New York City, in a scene happy to jettison rock’s past. Despite her unshakable title as the “godmother of punk,” Smith insists “I was not really a punk, and my band was never a punk rock band.” She is an artist and a poet who played rock and roll. And while she might not have “saved” the music, as Polyphonic claims, she certainly helped preserve it for the first punk audiences and first wave of punk bands, achieving her goal of passing the spirit of the counterculture to the next generation.

Hear Patti Smith Read 12 Poems From Seventh Heaven, Her First Collection (1972)

Watch Patti Smith’s New Tribute to the Avant-Garde Poet Antonin Artaud

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 8 ) |

Italians’ Nightly Singalongs Prove That Music Soothes the Savage Beast of Coronavirus Quarantine & Self-Isolation

in Health, Life, Music, Opera, Travel | March 16th, 2020

It’s not like we’re maestros…it’s a moment of joy in this moment of anxiety. —Emma Santachiara, Rome

As reported by The New York Times, Ms. Sanachiara, age 73, has joined the vast choir of ordinary Italians taking to their balconies and windows to participate in socially distant neighborhood singalongs as coronavirus rages through their country.

The Internet has been exploding with messages of support and admiration for the quarantined citizens’ musical displays, which have a festive New Year’s Eve feel, especially when they accompany themselves on pot lids.

Three days ago, Rome’s first female mayor, Virginia Raggi, called upon residents to fling open their windows or appear on their balconies for nightly 6pm community sings.

A woman in Turin reported that the pop up musicales have forged friendly bonds between neighbors who in pre-quarantine days, never acknowledged each other’s existence.

Naturally, there are some soloists.

Tenor Maurizio Marchini serenaded Florentines to “Nessun Dorma,” the famous aria from Puccini’s opera Turandot, repeating the high B along with a final Vincerò!, which earns him a clap from his young son.

In Rome, Giuliano Sangiorgi, frontman for Negramaro, hit his balcony, guitar in hand, to entertain neighbors with Pino Daniele’s 1980 hit “Quanno Chiove” and his own band’s “Meraviglioso.”

Earlier in the year, the 11 million residents of Wuhan, China, the deadly epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, also used music to boost morale, singing the national anthem and other patriotic songs from their individual residences. Jiāyóu, or “add oil,” was a frequent exhortation, reminding those in isolation to stay strong and keep going.

Readers, are you singing with your neighbors from a safe distance? Are they serenading you? Let us know in the comments.

Bruce Springsteen Singin’ in the Rain in Italy, and How He Creates Powerful Imaginary Worlds

Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Like most of us in this crazy, historic period, all of her events have been cancelled. Follow her @AyunHalliday.

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Quarantined Italians Send a Message to Themselves 10 Days Ago: What They Wish They Knew Then

in Current Affairs, Health | March 15th, 2020

Countries like the US, England, France, Spain and Germany are about 9–10 days behind in the COVID-19 progression. For our benefit, the video channel called “A THING BY” asked Italians to record a message they wish had heard 10 days prior. Let’s take careful note of what they have to say.

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.

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Zoom Providing K‑12 Schools Free Access to Videoconferencing Tools During COVID-19 Crisis: They’ll Power Your Online Courses

in Current Affairs, Education | March 13th, 2020

FYI: Zoom provides a turnkey video conferencing solution that’s high quality and easy to use. And now universities across the country use Zoom to power their online courses. Today, Zoom announced that K‑12 schools can gain free access to Zoom during the COVID-19 crisis. Students or teachers can sign up here.

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!

via Forbes.

Coursera Providing Free Access to Its Course Catalog to Universities Impacted by COVID-19

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by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Why You Should Read The Plague, the Albert Camus Novel the Coronavirus Has Made a Bestseller Again

in Literature | March 13th, 2020

The coronavirus, fair to say, isn’t good for the economy: not for the economies of individual nations, and not for the world economy as a whole. But that’s not to say that every industry has taken a hit. This is hardly the worst time in history to produce and sell toilet paper, for instance, nor to furnish the packages of necessities demanded by “preppers” who foresee the end of society as we know it. One probably wouldn’t wish to take the place of the makers of Corona beer right now, but despite the now-unfortunate brand name, their sales, too, have stayed strong. And for publishers around the world who have been considering a reprint of Albert Camus’ La Peste, now is most assuredly the time.

The Plague, as it’s titled in English, “follows the inhabitants of Oran, an Algerian town that is sealed off by quarantine as it is ravaged by bubonic plague,” writes The Guardian’s Alison Flood. “Penguin is rushing through a reprint of its English translation to meet demand,” but last week stock had already sold out on Amazon.

“The publisher added that sales in the last week of February were up by 150% on the same period in 2019.” The novel has also become a bestseller in Italy — a country especially hard hit by the virus — and sales “have also risen sharply in France, according to the French books statistics website Edistat,” to the tune of “around 300% on the previous year.” I live in South Korea, one of the countries most severely hit by the coronavirus, and recently wrote an essay about reading The Plague here in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Though Camus tells a story set in real city and about a specific disease, his literary rendering of a community isolated and under invisible siege has the universal quality of myth. Each main character — the tireless doctor Rieux, the suicidal-turned-gregarious Cottard, the humanist outsider Tarrou — exemplifies a different arc of individual reaction to the crisis. Even in Seoul I noticed certain parallels: Camus’ description of the “commercial character of the town” and the work habits of its people, of the sudden runs on particular items thought to have preventative properties (peppermint lozenges, in the novel), of the fierce public attacks on the government whenever the struggle turns especially harrowing. Readers the world over will feel a grim sense of recognition at the Oran authorities’ unwillingness to call the plague a plague, due to “the usual taboo, of course; the public mustn’t be alarmed, that wouldn’t do at all.”

Camus wrote The Plague in 1947, five years after his best-known work The Stranger and just three years after the real Oran’s most recent outbreak of the bubonic plague. (You can get a primer on Camus’ life, work, and reluctantly existentialist philosophy in the animated School of Life video above.) Like The Stranger, and like all great works of art, The Plague permits more than one interpretation: J.M. Coetzee suggests one reading of the novel “as being about what the French called ‘the brown plague’ of the German occupation, and more generally as about the ease with which a community can be infected by a bacillus-like ideology.” But each era has its own reading of The Plague — in the year 2003, for instance, critic Marina Warner offered it up as a “study in terrorism” — and of all its readers and re-readers in this historical moment, how many could resist an entirely more literal interpretation?

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Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Covering Robert Johnson’s Blues Became a Rite of Rock ‘n’ Roll Passage: Hear Covers by The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Howlin’ Wolf, Lucinda Williams & More

in Music | March 13th, 2020

American rock and roll originated from all corners of the country in the 1940s and 50s: from the exuberant gospel of the south, rollicking western swing of Texas, lean electric blues of Chicago, fast-paced Chicano music of L.A…. Truly a cultural melting pot, it represented the U.S to itself, amplifying and intensifying contemporary trends that continued right alongside the upstart new genre. But along with the deaths, arrests, and army stints of the music’s most famous stars at the end of the 50s, rock’s first wave suffered from a kind of creative fatigue, seeming to have done all it could with its source material.

British musicians who fell in love with Elvis and Little Richard saw a need to revitalize the music by reaching back to older forms—to the influences of rock and roll’s influences, most from the American South. First came skiffle, a jazz-blues-folk fusion born in the early-20th century U.S. It launched the careers of The Beatles and became huge in its own right as a popular British folk form of the 50s. Then came the massive influence of the Mississippi Delta blues, which gave The Rolling Stones, and virtually every band featuring Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, or Jimmy Page, a reason for being.

Among Delta Blues players, no one contributed more to British invasion bands and the blues-rock explosion in the U.S. than Robert Johnson, the legendary Mississippi bluesman who is said to have traded his soul for his talent. Johnson’s evolution from relative obscurity in his lifetime to rock’s most revered ancestor in death is the story of the music’s rebirth. As Keith Richards put it:

To me Robert Johnson’s influence—he was like a comet or a meteor that came along and, BOOM, suddenly he raised the ante, suddenly you just had to aim that much higher. You can put the record on now, and it’s a fresh and interesting as the first day you heard it.

Never mind that Johnson died five years before Richards was born. For the generation just discovering him, the bluesman was a brand-new epiphany. All of them returned the favor, giving Johnson’s name immortal fame and covering his songs. How do their versions stack up against the originals? Compare for yourself in some classic examples here. At the top, see the Stones play “Love in Vain” live in Texas in 1972, and below them, hear Johnson’s recorded version.

Clapton leaned even more heavily on Johnson’s style than Keith Richards, turning Johnson’s iconic “Crossroads” into his own signature blues. Further up, see Clapton play “Rambling on My Mind” at Madison Square Garden in 2008. Just above, hear Johnson’s 1936 recording. The tradition of covering Johnson didn’t start or end with classic rock stars, of course. “Long before white British kids discovered him,” writes Stephen Deusner at Paste, “older black bluesmen were playing the hell out of Robert Johnson’s tunes, chief among them Howlin’ Wolf.” See Howlin’ Wolf, another hero of the Rolling Stones, play “Dust My Broom” below with his killer electric band.

Still, it took white musicians to bring Johnson’s music to white audiences outside of blues fandom, just as it took Clapton’s cover of “I Shot the Sheriff” to help Bob Marley cross over. After Cream, the Stones, the Yardbirds, etc., it became fashionable for everyone to cover Johnson’s songs, almost as a rite of rock and roll passage.

Lucinda Williams recorded a take of “Rambling on My Mind” for her debut album in 1979, Country-blues punks Gun Club released their manic, unhinged version of Johnson’s “Preaching the Blues” on their 1980 debut. The list of explicitly Robert Johnson-influenced musicians goes on and on, dwarfed by the list of musicians indirectly influenced by him. Hear the 10 best Robert Johnson covers, according to Deusner, at least, at Paste, and find all of Johnson’s original recordings for comparison here.

Keith Richards Waxes Philosophical, Plays Live with His Idol, the Great Muddy Waters

Robert Johnson Finally Gets an Obituary in The New York Times 81 Years After His Death

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Coursera Providing Free Access to Its Course Catalog to Universities Impacted by COVID-19

in Current Affairs, Education | March 12th, 2020

FYI: If you work in a university impacted by COVID-19, Coursera invites you to leverage their course catalogue. The company’s CEO writes:

The spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) is the most serious global health security threat in decades. In many countries, restrictions imposed by government agencies have disrupted daily routines for millions, including students. Many universities in the impacted regions have suspended face-to-face seminars, closed campuses, and are scrambling to find a solution to minimize disruption for their students.

We are fortunate to have university and industry partners, who have been at the forefront of responding to the challenges humanity has faced from time to time. Inspired by their support and consistent with our mission of serving learners everywhere, we are launching a global effort to assist universities and colleges seeking to offer online courseware in response to the coronavirus.

Starting today, we’ll provide every impacted university in the world with free access to our course catalogue through Coursera for Campus. Universities can sign up to provide their enrolled students with access to more than 3,800 courses and 400 Specializations from Coursera’s top university and industry partners. These institutions will have access until July 31, 2020, after which we plan to provide month-to-month extensions depending on prevailing risk assessments. Students who enroll on or before July 31 will continue to have access until Sept. 30, 2020.

Over the past few weeks, Duke University has been using Coursera for Campus to serve impacted students at their Duke Kunshan campus in China. This effort has been swiftly adopted by students and widely recognized by the broader community. We believe that Coursera for Campus can be an effective resource to help all higher education institutions respond to the impact of coronavirus.

As a global community of educators, we are honored to be serving fellow institutions and student communities during this crisis. Over the next few days, we will also hold webinars and share more resources, including experiences from our partner community, to help institutions looking to transition online during this crisis. Stay tuned.

Sign up for Coursera’s Coronavirus program here.

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!

by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Use Your Time in Isolation to Learn Everything You’ve Always Wanted To: Free Online Courses, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Coloring Books & More

How Patti Smith “Saved” Rock and Roll: A New Video Makes the Case

Italians’ Nightly Singalongs Prove That Music Soothes the Savage Beast of Coronavirus Quarantine & Self-Isolation

Quarantined Italians Send a Message to Themselves 10 Days Ago: What They Wish They Knew Then

Zoom Providing K‑12 Schools Free Access to Videoconferencing Tools During COVID-19 Crisis: They’ll Power Your Online Courses

Why You Should Read The Plague, the Albert Camus Novel the Coronavirus Has Made a Bestseller Again

Covering Robert Johnson’s Blues Became a Rite of Rock ‘n’ Roll Passage: Hear Covers by The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Howlin’ Wolf, Lucinda Williams & More

Coursera Providing Free Access to Its Course Catalog to Universities Impacted by COVID-19

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