The Dalai Lama on the Neuroscience of Compassion

in Politics, Psychology, Religion, Science | October 21st, 2010

Last week, the Dalai Lama spent sev­er­al days at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, where he made com­pas­sion his focus. He laid the foun­da­tion with a large pub­lic address before an audi­ence of 7,000. (Watch an excerpt above or the full talk below.) Then things got more focused when the spir­i­tu­al leader of Tibet par­tic­i­pat­ed in a day­long con­fer­ence about the neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal under­pin­nings of com­pas­sion. Host­ed by Stan­ford’s Cen­ter for Com­pas­sion and Altru­ism Research and Edu­ca­tion, the con­fer­ence brought togeth­er impor­tant sci­en­tists from many dis­ci­plines – psy­chol­o­gy, neu­ro­science, med­i­cine, and eco­nom­ics. You can watch a record­ing of the con­fer­ence here. It’s all in video and ready to go.

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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Nelson Mandela’s First-Ever TV Interview (1961)

in History, Politics, Television, Video - Politics/Society | July 28th, 2010

Note: This post was orig­i­nal­ly fea­tured on our site in 2010. In light of the news that Nel­son Man­dela has passed away at age 95, we’re bring­ing this vin­tage clip back to the fore. Here you can see a young Man­dela mak­ing his­to­ry, and with­out per­haps real­iz­ing it, build­ing the remark­able lega­cy that remains with us today.

In 1962, Nel­son Man­dela was arrest­ed on alle­ga­tions of sab­o­tage and oth­er charges and sen­tenced to life in prison, where he spent 27 years before becom­ing South Africa’s first pres­i­dent elect­ed in a ful­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tion. His sto­ry, among mod­ern his­to­ry’s most pro­found­ly inspi­ra­tional, is beau­ti­ful­ly and poet­i­cal­ly cap­tured in Clint East­wood’s 2009 gem, Invic­tus. But what East­wood’s account leaves out are the events that pre­ced­ed and led to Man­de­la’s arrest.

In May of 1961, a 42-year-old Man­dela gave his first-ever inter­view to ITN reporter Bri­an Wid­lake as part of a longer ITN Rov­ing Report pro­gram about Apartheid. At that point, the police are already hunt­ing for Man­dela, but Wid­lake pulls some strings and arranges to meet him in his hide­out. When the reporter asks Man­dela what Africans want, he prompt­ly responds:

“The Africans require, want the fran­chise, the basis of One Man One Vote – they want polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence.”

But per­haps more inter­est­ing is the dia­logue towards the end of the inter­view, where Man­dela explores the com­plex rela­tion­ship between peace and vio­lence as protest and nego­ti­a­tion tac­tics. We’re left won­der­ing whether his seem­ing­ly sud­den shift from a com­plete­ly peace­ful cam­paign strat­e­gy up to that point towards con­sid­er­ing vio­lence as a pos­si­bil­i­ty may be the prod­uct of South African police going after him with full force that week. Vio­lence, it seems, does breed vio­lence even in the best and noblest of us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nel­son Man­dela Archive Goes Online (With Help From Google)

The Nel­son Man­dela Dig­i­tal Archive Goes Online

U2 Releas­es a Nel­son Man­dela-Inspired Song, “Ordi­nary Love”

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of eclec­tic inter­est­ing­ness and indis­crim­i­nate curios­i­ty. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine, Big­Think and Huff­in­g­ton Post, and spends a dis­turb­ing amount of time curat­ing inter­est­ing­ness on Twit­ter.

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Michael Sandel: The Lost Art of Democratic Debate

in Philosophy, Politics | June 10th, 2010

If you think that civic dis­course & engage­ment still mat­ter, then Michael Sandel, the Har­vard philoso­pher, has a lit­tle some­thing for you: a refresh­er (pre­sent­ed at TED) that gets you back into the prac­tice of civic debate. Some of the top­ics cov­ered here dove­tail with themes cov­ered in Jus­tice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, a huge­ly pop­u­lar Har­vard course that Sandel has now made freely avail­able online. You can find the course on YouTube, iTunes and Har­vard’s web site. It’s also list­ed in our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. You’ll find it list­ed with oth­er free phi­los­o­phy cours­es.

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Lawrence Lessig Speech Streamed Live Today

in Law, Politics | February 25th, 2010

A quick heads up…

Flu­mo­tion and the Open Video Alliance will be stream­ing a live event on Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 25th fea­tur­ing Lawrence Lessig, the foun­da­tion­al voice of the free cul­ture move­ment. The 45-minute speech will be deliv­ered live from Har­vard Law School via Flumotion’s Stream­ing Plat­form, and will explore the rela­tion­ship between copy­right, fair use, pol­i­tics and online video. The speech takes place at 6:00 PM local time (23:00 GMT) and [can be watched live here.]

Get more details from Flu­mo­tion here.

PS On a relat­ed note, TEDxNYED will stream talks live on March 6th.  Speak­ers will include Lawrence Lessig, Hen­ry Jenk­ins, Jeff Jarvis, Michael Wesch and oth­ers. Looks like a great event. Get more details here.

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The Science/Liberty Nexus

in History, Politics, Science | February 18th, 2010

You can’t get good democ­ra­cy with­out sci­ence, and you can’t get good sci­ence with­out democ­ra­cy. That’s why great polit­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tions have his­tor­i­cal­ly gone hand-in-hand. It’s an intrigu­ing argu­ment that Tim­o­thy Fer­ris (UC Berke­ley) makes in his new book, The Sci­ence of Lib­er­ty, and debates in an inter­view with Michael Kras­ny, aired last week on KQED in San Fran­cis­co. You can stream the inter­view below, or access it via mp3 or iTunes.

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Lessig on Political Corruption in America

in Current Affairs, Law, Politics | January 25th, 2010

Pub­lic con­fi­dence in the U.S. House and Sen­ate is at an all-time low, and, after last week’s Supreme Court deci­sion, it’s bound to sink even low­er. On Jan­u­ary 19th (the day before the deci­sion), Har­vard law pro­fes­sor Lawrence Lessig returned to Stan­ford and high­light­ed the degree to which “insti­tu­tion­al cor­rup­tion” — in the form of lob­by­ists and cor­po­rate influ­ence — per­vades Con­gress, dic­tates leg­is­la­tion, and brings large sums of mon­ey to cam­paigns and, yes, even rep­re­sen­ta­tives’ per­son­al bank accounts. (Rough­ly 50% of U.S. Sen­a­tors become lob­by­ists, work­ing for indus­tries they once assist­ed polit­i­cal­ly, and earn sub­stan­tial incomes.) The talk, accom­pa­nied by a rapid fire Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion, runs a sol­id hour and details var­i­ous instances in which lob­by­ists have shaped unfath­omably bad leg­is­la­tion. Hap­pi­ly, the talk also ends with Lessig out­lin­ing pos­si­ble solu­tions. Pol­i­cy changes can offer some answers. But, a lot of it comes down to this: get­ting the pas­sive priv­i­leged to rein in a cor­rupt­ed elite.

Note: To see Lessig’s imme­di­ate response to the SCOTUS deci­sion, look here.

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Faith and Globalization: Tony Blair Teaches at Yale

in Current Affairs, Politics, Religion, Yale | January 5th, 2010

After he left office in 2007, Tony Blair went across the pond and spent time teach­ing at Yale. Exit Prime Min­is­ter Blair. Enter Pro­fes­sor Blair. Dur­ing the 2008-09 aca­d­e­m­ic year, Blair and Miroslav Volf co-taught “Faith and Glob­al­iza­tion,” a course designed to help stu­dents under­stand the two inter­twined forces shap­ing our world. In some ways, reli­gion is the real focus here, and it is Blair’s argu­ment (above, for exam­ple) that “If you can­not under­stand the world of faith, whether you are in busi­ness, or in pub­lic affairs, or in pol­i­tics, then you actu­al­ly can­not under­stand the world.” The full course can be accessed on iTunes, and we have also added it to our large col­lec­tion of free cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties. For more infor­ma­tion on this course, please vis­it Yale’s Faith and Glob­al­iza­tion web­site and also be sure to access Yale’s Open Course ini­tia­tive.

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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This American Life Demystifies the American Healthcare System

in Business, Current Affairs, Politics | October 27th, 2009

When the glob­al finan­cial sys­tem col­lapsed last year, This Amer­i­can Life and its sis­ter pro­gram, Plan­et Mon­ey (iTunes — RSS Feed — Web Site) began doing some­thing that few oth­ers could pull off. They took very com­plex prob­lems and made them under­stand­able, often demys­ti­fy­ing dif­fi­cult con­cepts in a reli­ably engag­ing way. Now, they’re at it again. This time, they’re break­ing down the Amer­i­can health­care sys­tem and get­ting at the core ques­tion. Why can’t we con­trol ever-ris­ing health­care costs? That’s what the rag­ing health­care debate is effec­tive­ly all about. And, if you want to be an informed par­tic­i­pant in the debate, it’s worth lis­ten­ing to these two episodes that tease things out. The first episode, called More is Less, looks at doc­tors, patients, insur­ance com­pa­nies and their tan­gled rela­tion­ship. (Click here, then scroll down and find the “Full Episode” icon.) The sec­ond episode, Some­one Else’s Mon­ey, gets you inside the world of drug and insur­ance com­pa­nies and patients. Have a lis­ten, and thanks to Bob in Brook­lyn for the tip here.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.