Here’s a quick recap of May’s favorites in case you missed them:

• 10 Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es on iTunes
• 100 Top Cul­ture Blogs
• The Portable Uni­ver­si­ty
• The Skin­ny on Sec­ond Life
• John Stew­art: When Come­di­ans Start Ask­ing the Tough Ques­tions
• Authors@Google: Video Talks From the Lit­er­ary Front
• 10 Unex­pect­ed Uses of the iPod
• David Byrne and Daniel Lev­itin Have Music on the Brain
• YouTube’s Impact on the 2008 Elec­tion: The Hype and the Fact
• What Pirates Can Teach Us about Democ­ra­cy

See Our Pod­cast Col­lec­tions:

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School) — Uni­ver­si­ty (Law School) — Pod­cast Primer

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Over the past six months, we have cre­at­ed a series of resources that let you access uni­ver­si­ty resources for free and on-the-fly. Below, we have cen­tral­ized these mate­ri­als in one place to give you quick access:

• Uni­ver­si­ty Video Col­lec­tion
  • A large trove of video con­tent from well-known uni­ver­si­ties. All video can be watched on your com­put­er.
• Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts  — Gen­er­al Col­lec­tion
  • This col­lec­tion fea­tures large pod­cast col­lec­tions from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties in the US and Europe.  This col­lec­tion will def­i­nite­ly give your mind a work­out.
• Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts — Law School
  • A more focused col­lec­tion of pod­casts from major Amer­i­can law schools.
• Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts — Busi­ness School
  • Anoth­er spe­cial­ized col­lec­tion of pod­casts pro­duced by top-notch MBA pro­grams and busi­ness school pub­lish­ers (e.g. Har­vard Busi­ness Review). See relat­ed arti­cle here.
• 10 Excel­lent Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts
  • Title pret­ty much says it all.
• Learn 20+ Lan­guages on Your iPod
  • These pod­casts are most­ly not spon­sored by uni­ver­si­ties, but they seemed worth includ­ing in this mix of edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als.
• E‑learning Pro­grams from Top Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ties
  • There are many insti­tu­tions now offer­ing online cours­es. Many, how­ev­er, are of dubi­ous qual­i­ty. Here are some pret­ty good ones.
• 50+ Free Cours­es from UC Berke­ley on iTunes
  • Again, the title tells you pret­ty much all you need to know.
• Five Stan­ford Cours­es Avail­able as Free Pod­casts on iTunes
  • Dit­to

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The hydro­gen-filled Hin­den­burg went down in remark­able flames exact­ly 70 years ago in Lake­hurst, New Jer­sey. Below, we’ve post­ed the dra­mat­ic his­tor­i­cal footage. You can read here a decent account of what hap­pened on that day, plus inter­views with still liv­ing sur­vivors.

Over the past cou­ple weeks, our read­ers have sent some new links our way. Here’s some of the good stuff that they’ve had to offer:

• Ency­clopo­dia (Wikipedia on Your Ipod): If this works, it’s a great idea. Ency­clopo­dia is a free soft­ware project that brings Wikipedia to the Apple iPod. Ency­clopo­dia can be installed on iPod gen­er­a­tions 1 through 4, plus on iPod Min­is.

• Down­load Free Music Thanks to Peter Gabriel: You can can down­load songs free and legal­ly through a new ser­vice backed by Peter Gabriel. The new ven­ture, We7, pro­vides DRM-free music. And in exchange for it, lis­ten­ers agree to lis­ten to “per­son­al­ized mes­sages” (read ads) that are “graft­ed” onto the begin­ning of song tracks. Mean­while, anoth­er read­er sug­gests look­ing at Groove­shark, which is also offer­ing DRM-free music.

• Free Travelling/Touring Pod­casts: In our Mon­day piece that looked at 10 Unex­pect­ed Uses of the iPod, we men­tioned a prod­uct that let’s you take guid­ed tours of New York and Paris, and they hap­pen to run about $12. It turns out that you can get user-cre­at­ed city tours for free. Check out iToors, Podguides.net (where you can get user-gen­er­at­ed city guides), and also iaudioguide.com, which fea­tures audio guides for over 40 cities. Anoth­er one sug­gest­ed by a read­er is Tour­dio.

• Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts: As you may know, we keep a nice col­lec­tion of uni­ver­si­ty pod­casts, which include free lec­tures, cours­es, and speech­es by impor­tant thinkers. Here’s a cou­ple new ones that read­ers sent our way: one from the School of Visu­al Arts in NYC, and yet anoth­er from the Uni­ver­sité de Provence, where, if you speak French, you’ll find an eclec­tic col­lec­tion of pod­casts from the human­i­ties and sci­ences. And while we’re at it, you may want to check out a new pod­cast by The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion.

• More French Cul­ture Pod­casts: This is from John­nyB in Brook­lyn: “France Cul­ture (iTunes) has a vast col­lec­tion of pro­gram­ming avail­able for down­load, includ­ing dai­ly news updates and lots of cul­tur­al pro­gram­ming. One of my favorites is Repliques (iTunes), host­ed by Alain Finkelkraut. The tenet of the pro­gram is to invite two authors with either slight­ly or wide­ly diver­gent points of view on a sin­gle top­ic, and to let the dis­cus­sion roll. Some­times it’s won­der­ful, some­times vapid, and Finkelkraut often impress­es me as a one-note John­ny with his wail­ing about La Defaite de la Pensee, but I always find it bet­ter than lis­ten­ing to my neigh­bor’s hip-hop beats in the sub­way ride to work.”

• Lan­guage Learn­ing Pod­casts: Rox­anne sug­gests a cou­ple pod­casts that will teach you Kore­an: One is called Kim­chi­girls; the oth­er is called Core­an 4 Life, which despite the mis­spelling appears to be teach­ing Kore­an. Then Hank rec­om­mends Span­ish­Sense that will help you pick up some Span­ish, and Frank offers up a pod­cast for stu­dents learn­ing Khmer.

See Our Pod­cast Col­lec­tions — Tell a Friend About Open Cul­ture   — Buy a New iPod & iPod Gear