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

“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”?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

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.

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

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith, The God­moth­er of Punk, Is Now Putting Her Pic­tures on Insta­gram

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

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

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Tom Waits Releas­es a Time­ly Cov­er of the Ital­ian Anti-Fas­cist Anthem “Bel­la Ciao,” His First New Song in Two Years

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.

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

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.

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:

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

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

Bill Gates Describes His Biggest Fear: “I Rate the Chance of a Wide­spread Epi­dem­ic Far Worse Than Ebo­la at Well Over 50 Per­cent” (2015)

Span­ish Flu: A Warn­ing from His­to­ry

 

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

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Schools Can Start Teach­ing Online in a Short Peri­od of Time: Free Tuto­ri­als from the Stan­ford Online High School

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

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

Bill Gates Describes His Biggest Fear: “I Rate the Chance of a Wide­spread Epi­dem­ic Far Worse Than Ebo­la at Well Over 50 Per­cent” (2015)

 

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

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?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of the Plague: Every Major Epi­dem­ic in an Ani­mat­ed Map

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

The Absurd Phi­los­o­phy of Albert Camus Pre­sent­ed in a Short Ani­mat­ed Film by Alain De Bot­ton

See Albert Camus’ His­toric Lec­ture, “The Human Cri­sis,” Per­formed by Actor Vig­go Mortensen

Albert Camus Explains Why Hap­pi­ness Is Like Com­mit­ting a Crime—”You Should Nev­er Admit to it” (1959)

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.

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

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.


Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Blues­man Robert Johnson’s Famous Deal With the Dev­il Retold in Three Ani­ma­tions

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

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

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!

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.