Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intelligent Person Should Read

in Audio Books, Books, e-books, Physics | December 21st, 2011

tyson intelligent books

A Reddit.com user posed the ques­tion to Neil deGrasse Tyson: “Which books should be read by every sin­gle intel­li­gent per­son on the plan­et?”

Below, you will find the book list offered up by the astro­physi­cist, direc­tor of the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um, and pop­u­lar­iz­er of sci­ence. Where pos­si­ble, we have includ­ed links to free ver­sions of the books, all tak­en from our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions. Or you can always down­load a pro­fes­sion­al­ly-nar­rat­ed book for free from Audible.com. Details here.

If you’re look­ing for a more exten­sive list of essen­tial works, don’t miss The Har­vard Clas­sics, a 51 vol­ume series that you can now down­load online.

1.) The Bible (eBook) — “to learn that it’s eas­i­er to be told by oth­ers what to think and believe than it is to think for your­self.”

2.) The Sys­tem of the World by Isaac New­ton (eBook) — “to learn that the uni­verse is a know­able place.”

3.) On the Ori­gin of Species by Charles Dar­win (eBook — Audio Book) — “to learn of our kin­ship with all oth­er life on Earth.”

4.) Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els by Jonathan Swift (eBook — Audio Book) — “to learn, among oth­er satir­i­cal lessons, that most of the time humans are Yahoos.”

5.) The Age of Rea­son by Thomas Paine (eBook — Audio Book) — “to learn how the pow­er of ratio­nal thought is the pri­ma­ry source of free­dom in the world.”

6.) The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (eBook — Audio Book) — “to learn that cap­i­tal­ism is an econ­o­my of greed, a force of nature unto itself.”

7.) The Art of War by Sun Tsu (eBook — Audio Book) — “to learn that the act of killing fel­low humans can be raised to an art.”

8.) The Prince by Machi­avel­li (eBook — Audio Book) — “to learn that peo­ple not in pow­er will do all they can to acquire it, and peo­ple in pow­er will do all they can to keep it.”

Tyson con­cludes by say­ing: “If you read all of the above works you will glean pro­found insight into most of what has dri­ven the his­to­ry of the west­ern world.”

He has also added  some more thoughts in the com­ments sec­tion below, say­ing:

Thanks for this ongo­ing inter­est in my book sug­ges­tions. From some of your reflec­tions, it looks like the intent of the list was not as clear as I thought. The one-line com­ment after each book is not a review but a state­ment about how the book’s con­tent influ­enced the behav­ior of peo­ple who shaped the west­ern world. So, for exam­ple, it does no good to say what the Bible “real­ly” meant, if its actu­al influ­ence on human behav­ior is some­thing else. Again, thanks for your col­lec­tive inter­est. ‑NDTyson

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer 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 and BlueSky.

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:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Teach­es Sci­en­tif­ic Think­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion in a New Online Course

Stephen Col­bert Talks Sci­ence with Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson

50 Famous Aca­d­e­mics & Sci­en­tists Talk About God

Neil deGrasse Tyson Stars in New Sym­pho­ny of Sci­ence

The Har­vard Clas­sics: A Free Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tion

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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Free Audio: Download the Complete Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

in Audio Books, Literature | December 19th, 2011

Before the days of Har­ry Pot­ter, gen­er­a­tions of young read­ers let their imag­i­na­tions take flight with The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia, a series of sev­en fan­ta­sy nov­els writ­ten by C. S. Lewis. Like his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis served on the Eng­lish fac­ul­ty at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty and took part in the Inklings, an Oxford lit­er­ary group ded­i­cat­ed to fic­tion and fan­ta­sy.

Pub­lished between 1950 and 1956, The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia has sold over 100 mil­lion copies in 47 lan­guages, delight­ing younger and old­er read­ers world­wide. The sev­en vol­umes in the series include:

  • The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
  • Prince Caspi­an: The Return to Nar­nia
  • The Voy­age of the Dawn Tread­er
  • The Sil­ver Chair
  • The Horse and His Boy
  • The Magi­cian’s Nephew
  • The Last Bat­tle

Now, with the appar­ent bless­ing of the C.S. Lewis estate, the sev­en vol­ume series is avail­able in a free audio for­mat. There are 101 audio record­ings in total, each aver­ag­ing 30 min­utes and read by Chris­si Hart. Down­load the com­plete audio via the web or RSS Feed. Or start lis­ten­ing to the open­ing chap­ters of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe right below.

We have added The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia record­ings to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books, where you will find many oth­er great clas­sics. h/t metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Down­load Copy of New Steve Jobs Biog­ra­phy

Free Audio: Down­load George Orwell’s 1984 and Ani­mal Farm for Free

Down­load 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books

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James Franco Reads Short Story in Bed for The Paris Review

in Audio Books, Books | October 30th, 2011

James Fran­co gave The Paris Review a hand when he jumped into bed and start­ed read­ing “William Wei,” a short sto­ry pub­lished in a recent edi­tion of the sto­ried lit­er­ary jour­nal. Find a cleaned up audio file here, or in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Last year, the aspir­ing writer and Yale doc­tor­al stu­dent also made a cameo appear­ance in Gary Shteyn­gart’s rather hilar­i­ous video trail­er for his nov­el, Super Sad True Love Sto­ry.

A short sto­ry by Fran­co, “Just Before the Black,” appears in Esquire. His fic­tion col­lec­tion, Palo Alto, can be picked up here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Paris Review Inter­views Now Online

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Alfred Hitchcock Presents Ghost Stories for Young People (1962)

in Audio Books, Film, Literature | October 26th, 2011

hitchcock photo

Image by Fred Palum­bo, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Close the doors. Shut the blinds. Turn out the lights. Make that room dark. Get ready for Alfred Hitch­cock Presents Ghost Sto­ries for Young Peo­ple. Orig­i­nal­ly record­ed in 1962, the album fea­tures 11 ghost sto­ries intro­duced by Hitch­cock him­self and then read by actor John Allen. If you were a kid dur­ing the ear­ly 60s, this may bring back some very good mem­o­ries. The record­ing is avail­able on YouTube and Spo­ti­fy, embed­ded below. (Down­load Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware for free here.)

Here’s a playlist of the tracks:

  • The Haunt­ed And The Haunters (The Pirate’s Curse)
  • The Magi­cian (’til Death Do Us Part)
  • John­ny Takes A Dare (The More The Mer­ri­er)
  • The Open Win­dow (Spe­cial Adap­ta­tion)
  • The Help­ful Hitch­hik­er
  • Jim­my Takes Van­ish­ing Lessons

 

h/t @BrainPicker

Relat­ed Con­tent:

21 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Alfred Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

François Truffaut’s Big Inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock (Free Audio)

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho (1960)

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

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Kickstarter: the Future of Self-Publishing?

in Audio Books, Books, Media | October 4th, 2011

We all know where books come from: a human and a muse meet, fall in love, and two months to twen­ty years lat­er, a book is born. Then, as with oth­er vari­eties of babies, the sleep­less nights start as a writer search­es for a home for the book, col­lect­ing rejec­tions like badges of hon­or, tes­ta­ments to deter­mi­na­tion.

Well, that was the old-fash­ioned way. We’ve all heard how the inter­net has lev­eled the play­ing field, allow­ing any­body to pub­lish work and find an audi­ence. How­ev­er, this eas­i­er path to pub­li­ca­tion hasn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly solved an even old­er writer’s conun­drum: How to pay for it.

That is, how to make enough mon­ey to sus­tain your­self as you write (day jobs aside). And so writ­ers must become even wil­i­er. Though you may make mon­ey from the sale of a book, how do you fund your­self before the book?

Seth Har­wood, the author of three books, is at the front of the move­ment to find alter­nate and cre­ative ways of not only reach­ing audi­ences, but pur­su­ing the writ­ing life. Since grad­u­at­ing from the Iowa Writ­ers Work­shop in 2002, Har­wood has built up a loy­al fan base—his “Palms Mamas and Palms Dad­dies” (named for one of his pro­tag­o­nists, Jack Palms)—through social media and free pod­cast­ing. Har­wood is sus­tain­ing a writ­ing life along a path that is like­ly to be more and more com­mon for writ­ers.

After offer­ing his first nov­el, Jack Wakes Up, as a free audio­book, Har­wood pub­lished it in paper­back with Break­neck Books in 2008. The Ama­zon sales, pushed by Palms Mamas and Palms Dad­dies, land­ed the book in #1 in Crime/Mystery and #45 over­all, bring­ing the atten­tion of Ran­dom House, who re-pub­lished the book one year lat­er.

Look­ing out­side main­stream avenues, Har­wood secured fund­ing for pub­li­ca­tion of his next ven­ture, Young Junius, with Tyrus Books by pre­selling signed copies through Paypal—before the books exist­ed in phys­i­cal form. And now he is one of the ear­ly adopters of using Kick­starter to pay for the ges­ta­tion and birth of not one book—but five pre­vi­ous­ly-writ­ten works in the next six months–as he puts it, “rais­ing the fixed costs of bring­ing these books to the mar­ket­place.” His Kick­starter cam­paign based around This Is Life, the sequel to Jack Wakes Up was—impressively—fully fund­ed with­in 25 hours—and with a few days still left to go, it has exceed­ed the orig­i­nal goal by over $2000.

What can a writer offer besides an auto­graphed copy of the to-be-writ­ten book, or a men­tion in the acknowl­edge­ments? For Harwood’s project, the pledges range from a dol­lar to $999, with thank-yous span­ning from the afore­men­tioned to—at the $999 end—an orig­i­nal novel­la writ­ten accord­ing to the donor’s wish­es and pub­lished as a one-off hard­cov­er.

As more and more writ­ers become cyn­i­cal about the main­stream pub­lish­ing indus­try, and the lim­its it places on writ­ers, and as the inter­net breaks down bar­ri­ers between writ­ers and read­ers, alter­nate paths of draw­ing audi­ences to the writing/publishing process may become more and more pop­u­lar. In none oth­er than the New York Times Book Review, Neal Pol­lack recent­ly declared his inten­tion to self-pub­lish his next book using Kick­starter to gen­er­ate his fixed costs and “an advance,” and last week best­seller Paulo Coel­ho dis­cussed his deci­sion to offer his nov­els for free online. (You can find free ebooks by Coel­ho here.)

Indeed, now more than ever, it seems essen­tial for authors to meet read­ers at least half-way. Har­wood con­sid­ers him­self an “author-pre­neur,” devel­op­ing new busi­ness mod­els as he pub­lish­es his books. As he sees it, inno­va­tion comes much more eas­i­ly to an author act­ing alone, than to a large pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny or big cor­po­ra­tion. He aims for the new mod­els as he sees them devel­op­ing, know­ing he’s got to go out and find read­ers him­self. As Coel­ho declares, “The ivory tow­er does not exist any­more.”

This post was con­tributed by Shaw­na Yang Ryan. Her nov­el Water Ghosts was a final­ist for the 2010 Asian Amer­i­can Lit­er­ary Award. In 2012, she will be the Dis­tin­guished Writer in Res­i­dence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hawai’i at Manoa.

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Download 20 Popular High School Books Available as Free eBooks & Audio Books

in Audio Books, Books, e-books, K-12, Literature | September 26th, 2011

Every year, thou­sands of Amer­i­can high school stu­dents read a com­mon selec­tion of great nov­els — clas­sics loved by young and old read­ers alike. Today, we have select­ed 20 of the most pop­u­lar books and high­light­ed ways that you can down­load ver­sions for free, most­ly as free audio books and ebooks, and some­times as movies and radio dra­mas. You will find more great works — and some­times oth­er dig­i­tal for­mats — in our twin col­lec­tions: 600 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices and 550 Free Audio Books. So please give them a good look over, and if we’re miss­ing a nov­el you want, don’t for­get Audible.com’s 14 day tri­al. It will let you down­load an audio book for free, pret­ty much any one you want.

1984 by George Orwell: Read Online
Although pub­lished in 1949, 1984 still cap­tures our imag­i­na­tion gen­er­a­tions lat­er because it offers one of the best lit­er­ary accounts of total­i­tar­i­an­ism ever pub­lished. And it’s sim­ply a great read.

Ani­mal Farm by George Orwell: Read Online — Free Ani­mat­ed Movie
Orwell’s 1945 alle­gor­i­cal novel­la took aim at the cor­rup­tion of the Sovi­et Union and its total­i­tar­i­an rule. The short book, which almost nev­er saw the light of day, appears on the Mod­ern Library’s list of the 100 Best Nov­els of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Brave New World by Aldous Hux­ley: eText — Free Radio Drama­ti­za­tion (by Hux­ley him­self)
Lit­tle known fact. Hux­ley once taught George Orwell French at Eton. And, years lat­er his 1931 clas­sic, Brave New World, is often men­tioned in the same breath with 1984 when it comes to great books that describe a dystopi­an future.

Franken­stein by Mary Shel­ley - Free ebook — Free Audio Book (MP3) — Radio Dra­ma ver­sion (1938) — Movie
Mary Shel­ley start­ed writ­ing the great mon­ster nov­el when she was only 18 and com­plet­ed it when she was 21. The 1823 goth­ic nov­el is arguably one of your first works of sci­ence fic­tion.

Heart of Dark­ness by Joseph Con­rad: Free eBook — Free Audio Book (iTunes) — Radio Drama­ti­za­tion by Orson Welles (MP3)
More than 100 years after its pub­li­ca­tion (1902), Con­rad’s novel­la still offers the most canon­i­cal look at colo­nial­ism and impe­ri­al­ism. So pow­er­ful was its influ­ence that Orson Welles dra­ma­tized it in 1938, and the book also famous­ly inspired Cop­po­la’s Apoc­a­lypse Now in 1979.

Plays by William Shake­speare

No descrip­tion need­ed. None giv­en.

Romeo and Juli­et — Free eBook — Free Audio Book (MP3s)

Mac­Beth — Free eBook — Free Audio Book (iTunes)

Ham­let — Free eBook — Free Audio Book (MP3s)

Julius Cae­sar — Free eBook — Free Audio Book (MP3s)

Note: You can find The Com­plete Works of Shake­speare here: Free eBook – Free ver­sion for the iPad

Pride & Prej­u­dice by Jane Austen – Free eBook — Free Audio Book (iTunes)
Jane Austen’s 1813 nov­el remains as pop­u­lar as ever. To date, it has sold more than 20 mil­lion copies, and, every so often, it finds itself adapt­ed to a new film, TV or the­ater pro­duc­tion. A must read.

The Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn by Mark Twain — Free eBook — Free Audio Book (iTunes)
When you think Huck­le­ber­ry Finn, you think Great Amer­i­can Nov­el. It was con­tro­ver­sial when it was first pub­lished in 1884, and it remains so today. But nonethe­less Twain’s clas­sic is a peren­ni­al favorite for read­ers around the world.

The Call of the Wild by Jack Lon­don — Free eBook — Free Audio Book (iTunes)
The Call of the Wild, first pub­lished in 1903, is regard­ed as Jack Lon­don’s mas­ter­piece. It’s “a tale about unbreak­able spir­it and the fight for sur­vival in the frozen Alaskan Klondike.”

The Cru­cible by Arthur Miller - Free Audio Book from Audible.com
Arthur Miller’s 1952 play used the Salem witch tri­als of 1692 and 1693 to offer a com­men­tary on McCarthy­ism that tar­nished Amer­i­ca dur­ing the 1950s. Today, The Cru­cible occu­pies a cen­tral place in Amer­i­ca’s lit­er­ary canon.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Stein­beck — Free Audio Book from Audible.com
This 1939 nov­el won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and lat­er helped Stein­beck win the Nobel Prize for Lit­er­a­ture in 1962. It’s per­haps the most impor­tant book to give lit­er­ary expres­sion to the Great Depres­sion.

The Great Gats­by by F. Scott Fitzger­ald – Free eBook — Free Audio Book from Audible.com
It’s the clas­sic por­trait of the Jazz Age, a tale of deca­dence and excess. And today The Mod­ern Library has called Fitzger­ald’s 1925 mas­ter­piece the 2nd best nov­el of the last cen­tu­ry.

The Odyssey by Homer – Free eBook — Free Audio Book
The West­ern lit­er­ary tra­di­tion begins with Home­r’s epic poems The Ili­ad (etext here) and The Odyssey, both writ­ten some 2800 years ago. It has been said that “if the Ili­ad is the world’s great­est war epic, then the Odyssey is lit­er­a­ture’s grand­est evo­ca­tion of every­man’s jour­ney through life.” And that just about gets to the heart of the poem.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hem­ing­way - Free Audio Book from Audible.com
It was Hem­ing­way’s last major work of fic­tion (1951) and cer­tain­ly one of his most pop­u­lar, bring­ing many read­ers into con­tact with Hem­ing­way’s writ­ing for the first time.

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane — Free eBook — Free Audio Book (iTunes) — Free Movie
This Civ­il War nov­el won what Joseph Con­rad called “an orgy of praise” after its pub­li­ca­tion in 1895, and inspired Ernest Hem­ing­way and the Mod­ernists lat­er. The nov­el made Stephen Crane a celebri­ty at the age of 24, though he died only five years lat­er.

The Scar­let Let­ter by Nathaniel Hawthorne – Free eBooks – Free Audio Book — Movie
Though set in Puri­tan Boston between 1642 and 1649, Hawthorne’s mag­num opus explores “the moral dilem­mas of per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty, and the con­sum­ing emo­tions of guilt, anger, loy­al­ty and revenge” that were rel­e­vant in 1850 (when the book was pub­lished). And they remain so today.

To Kill a Mock­ing­bird by Harp­er Lee — Free Audio Book from Audible.com
Harp­er Lee’s 1960 nov­el takes an inci­sive look at atti­tudes toward race and class in the Deep South dur­ing the 1930s. It won the Pulitzer Prize a year lat­er.

Note: We list­ed Audible.com as an option when books were still under copy­right.

Mean­while, edu­ca­tors don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es. It fea­tures many free Lit­er­a­ture cours­es, includ­ing cours­es on Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture.

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Kenneth Branagh Stars in Radio Dramatization of Epic Soviet Novel, Life and Fate (Free Audio)

in Audio Books, Books, Literature | September 19th, 2011

Le Monde has called Life and Fate “the great­est Russ­ian nov­el of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry,” and Mar­tin Amis once described its author, Vasi­ly Gross­man, as “the Tol­stoy of the USSR.” Now, if you haven’t read the nov­el, you can begin to under­stand the rea­son for all of the high praise.

Start­ing this week, the BBC will air an eight-hour drama­ti­za­tion of the mas­ter­piece that offered a sweep­ing account of the siege of Stal­in­grad, one of the blood­i­est bat­tles of World War II. Although orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten in 1959, the book was offi­cial­ly cen­sored in the Sovi­et Union until 1988 because, in the esti­ma­tion of the appa­ratchiks, it threat­ened to do more harm to the USSR than Paster­nak’s Doc­tor Zhiva­go.

Ken­neth Branagh and David Ten­nant star in the 13-episode series that will be broad­cast from 18 to 25 Sep­tem­ber on Radio 4. You can access the audio files online or via iTues, RSS Feed, and oth­er for­mats here.

For more drama­ti­za­tions of lit­er­ary clas­sics, please vis­it:

Aldous Hux­ley Reads Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion of Brave New World

HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds Nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles

Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

50 Clas­sic Russ­ian Films (Includ­ing Tarkovsky’s Finest) Now Online

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Back to School: Free Resources for Lifelong Learners Everywhere

in Audio Books, e-books, Film, Online Courses | September 9th, 2011

With Labor Day behind us, it’s offi­cial­ly time to head back to school. That applies not just to kids, but to you. No mat­ter what your age, no mat­ter where you live, no mat­ter what your pri­or lev­el of edu­ca­tion, you can con­tin­ue deep­en­ing your knowl­edge in areas old and new. And it has nev­er been eas­i­er. All you need is a com­put­er or smart phone, an inter­net con­nec­tion, some free time, and our free edu­ca­tion­al media col­lec­tions. They’re avail­able 24/7 and con­stant­ly updat­ed:

Free Online Cours­es: Right now, you can down­load free cours­es (some in video, some in audio) cre­at­ed by some of the world’s lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties — Stan­ford, Oxford, Yale, Har­vard, UC Berke­ley, MIT and oth­ers. The cours­es cov­er pret­ty much every sub­ject — from phi­los­o­phy, lit­er­a­ture and his­to­ry, to physics, com­put­er sci­ence, engi­neer­ing and psy­chol­o­gy. The col­lec­tion fea­tures about 400 cours­es in total. And while you can’t take these cours­es for cred­it, the amount of per­son­al enrich­ment offered by these lec­tures is end­less.

Free Text­books: Anoth­er tool for the life­long learn­er. This col­lec­tion brings togeth­er rough­ly 150 free text­books authored by pro­fes­sors (and some high school teach­ers) across the globe. The col­lec­tion will par­tic­u­lar­ly ben­e­fit those inter­est­ed in deep­en­ing their knowl­edge in eco­nom­ics, com­put­er sci­ence, math­e­mat­ics, physics and biol­o­gy.

Free Lan­guage Lessons: Ours is an increas­ing­ly glob­al­ized world, and it cer­tain­ly pays to know more than one lan­guage. With the free audio lessons list­ed here, you can learn the basics of Span­ish, French and Ital­ian (the lan­guages tra­di­tion­al­ly taught in Amer­i­can schools). Or you can start bon­ing up on Man­darin, Brazil­ian Por­tuguese and oth­er lan­guages spo­ken by the new world pow­ers. Tak­en togeth­er, you can Learn 40 Lan­guages for Free.

Free Audio Books: This free col­lec­tion gives you the abil­i­ty to down­load audio ver­sions of impor­tant lit­er­ary works. Dur­ing your down­time, you can lis­ten to short sto­ries by Isaac Asi­mov, Ray­mond Carv­er, Jorge Luis Borges, and Philip K. Dick. Or you can set­tle into longer works by Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzger­ald, Friedrich Niet­zsche and James Joyce.

Free eBooks: Once again, it’s free lit­er­ary works. But this time you can down­load e‑texts to your com­put­er or dig­i­tal read­er. Franz Kaf­ka, George Orwell, Gertrude Stein, Edgar Allan Poe, Mar­cel Proust and Kurt Von­negut. They’re all on the list. And so too are The Har­vard Clas­sics, a 51 vol­ume series of endur­ing works.

Great Sci­ence Videos: This list pulls togeth­er some of our favorite sci­ence videos on the web. It fea­tures about 125 videos, cov­er­ing astron­o­my & space trav­el, physics, psy­chol­o­gy and neu­ro­science, reli­gion, tech­nol­o­gy and beyond.

Intel­li­gent YouTube Sites: Have you ever want­ed to sep­a­rate the wheat from the chaff on YouTube? This list will give you a start. It fea­tures over 100 YouTube chan­nels that deliv­er high qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion­al con­tent. Along sim­i­lar lines, you may want to vis­it our col­lec­tion of Intel­li­gent Video Sites. Same con­cept but applied to sites on the web.

Cul­tur­al Icons: If you’ve ever want­ed to see great thinkers, artists and writ­ers speak­ing on video in their own words, this list is for you. It has Borges and Bowie, Coltrane and Cop­po­la, Ayn Rand and Noam Chom­sky, Tol­stoy and Thomas Edi­son, among oth­ers. 275 cul­tur­al icons in total.

Free Movies Online: What bet­ter way to get a cul­tur­al edu­ca­tion than to watch some free cin­e­mat­ic mas­ter­pieces, includ­ing 15 films with Char­lie Chap­lin, 22 ear­ly films by Alfred Hitch­cock, 25 West­erns with John Wayne, and a num­ber of Sovi­et clas­sics by Andrei Tarkovsky. The list of 400+ films goes on. And so does your cul­tur­al edu­ca­tion.…

Get more cul­tur­al nuggets dai­ly by fol­low­ing us on Face­book and Twit­ter.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.