Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum

Open Culture gives an update on the rollout of these courses, taught by Leonard Susskind.

For the past two years, Stanford has been rolling out a series of courses (collectively called Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum) that gives you a baseline knowledge for thinking intelligently about modern physics. The sequence, which moves from Isaac Newton, to Albert Einstein’s work on the general and special theories of relativity, to black holes and string theory, comes out of Stanford’s Continuing Studies program (my day job). And the courses are all taught by Leonard Susskind, an important physicist who has engaged in a long running “Black Hole War” with Stephen Hawking. The final course, Statistical Mechanics, has now been posted on YouTube, and you can also find it on iTunes in video. (Continue for links to all the courses.)

Tony Blair and Miroslav Volf Teach on Faith and Globalization

Much thanks to Open Culture for regularly pointing out good resources like this.

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 Yale’s YouTube Channel, and we have also added it to our large collection of free courses from top universities. (Just look under the Politics and Religion sections.) 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.

Learn a New Language in 2010

Courtesy of Open Culture:

We can’t help you get fit (at least physically) in the new year. But we can help you learn a new language. Our collection of Free Language Lessons covers 37 languages, and we have now developed sections dedicated to commonly sought after languages. (See below.) Please keep in mind that the collection also features less frequently spoken languages–Maori, Luxembourgish, Tagalog, Yiddish and beyond. For all languages, please visit the full collection of Free Language Lessons.

• Arabic
• Chinese (mostly Mandarin)
• English
• French
• German
• Italian
• Japanese
• Russian
• Spanish

New Open Courses from Yale

Open Culture lists several new Yale courses available for download.  See the Open Culture Free Online Courses & Lectures page for a comprehensive listing of courses in dozens of subjects.

• Dante in Translation – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course – Giuseppe Mazzotta
• European Civilization, 1648-1945 – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course – Professor John Merriman
• Freshman Organic Chemistry – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course – Professor J. Michael McBride
• Global Problems of Population Growth – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course – Professor Robert Wyman
• Introduction to New Testament History and Literature – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course – Professor Dale B. Martin
• Introduction to Theory of Literature – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course – Professor Paul H. Fry
• Listening to Music – Download Course – Professor Craig Wright
• Principles of Evolution, Ecology and Behavior – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course – Professor Stephen C. Stearns
• The Psychology, Biology and Politics of Food – Download Course – Professor Kelly D. Brownell
• Roman Architecture – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course – Diana E. E. Kleiner

Watch the 10 Best Twilight Zone Episodes Online

Last Friday marked the 50th anniversary of The Twilight Zone’s debut on American television, a big occasion for fans of sci-fi, horror and suspense. To celebrate the anniversary, TV Squad pulled together a list of the 10 best episodes of Rod Serling’s show. At the top, you might put the episode called “Eye of the Beholder,” which we’ve posted above. For the remaining nine, visit the TV Squad list and also see the interviews with Rod Serling toward the end of their page. Enjoy.

(Via Open Culture)

Harvard Professor Michael Sandel’s Justice Lectures

Thanks to Open Culture for passing on this interesting resource.

We happened to mention Michael Sandel last week, and then I came across this…
Harvard University and WGBH Boston have posted online Sandel’s very popular course, “Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?” How popular is it? Over 14,000 Harvard students have taken this course over the past 30 years. The course takes a close look at our understanding of justice by exploring important, contemporary moral dilemmas. Is it wrong to torture? Is it always wrong to steal? Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth?  We have posted the first lecture above, and you can watch the remaining 11 lectures here on Harvard’s YouTube Channel. We have also added this course to our collection of Free University Courses. It’s filed under Philosophy.

Harvard Philosopher on the Today Show

Harvard philosophy professor Michael Sandel appeared on the Today Show this morning, and got four minutes to make the case for philosophy. If you’re not familiar with him, Sandel is a very popular Harvard professor. Some 15,000 students have taken his courses over 30 years, and to get a feel for his teaching, you can watch his 30-minute lecture online. It’s called Justice: A Journey into Moral Reasoning, and it’s one of the very few open lectures that Harvard has put online. (A disappointment, I must say.) The lecture also otherwise appears in our collection of Free University Courses.

(Via Open Culture)

35 Universities Launch Futurity.org

A little breaking news… 35 leading universities have launched a new web site, Futurity.org, with a simple goal — educating the public about new scientific breakthroughs. In the old days, universities depended on the traditional press to spread the word about new scientific advances. Now, with journalism in crisis and newspapers folding, the schools can no longer bank on that. And so we get Futurity, which is essentially a nonprofit wire service that will distribute news through major news suppliers on the web (Yahoo News & Google News) and also through social media channels (Twitter, Facebook and MySpace). On the list of participating universities, you will find UC Berkeley, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, The University of Chicago, Duke, Princeton, Yale and many others. You can get a full list here, and read more about the venture here.

(Via Open Culture)

Intelligent Video, Now Organized

If you regularly visit Open Culture, then you’re probably familiar with TED Talks — the series of 15 minute “riveting talks by remarkable people” that TED produces and makes free to the world. We’ve included TED in our collection, Intelligent Video: The Top Cultural & Educational Video Sites, and it’s one of the best sources of intelligent video out there. Having said that, I was pleased to find this Google spreadsheet of every TED Talk ever posted online. Although TED hosts many videos on its web site (and on its iTunes and YouTube channels), these platforms don’t give you clean access to the entire TED catalogue. Meanwhile, this simple and sortable spreadsheet does. So enjoy, and use it well.

(Via Open Culture)

Academic Earth Website for Intelligent Video

Image via CrunchBase

A quick news break: Time.com has released today a new list, “The 50 Best Web Sites of 2009,” and right alongside some well known brands, you’ll find Academic Earth, a new venture that aggregates high quality university video. Essentially, Academic Earth pulls together videos from top-notch universities and lets users watch them with a very user-friendly interface. And that’s why we’ve previously featured them in our popular collection: Intelligent Video: The Top Cultural & Educational Video Sites. Is open courseware finally hitting the mainstream? It seems so. Congrats, Richard!

For more university courseware, check out our large collection, Free Lectures & Courses from Great Universities. Or get this university content via our free iPhone app.

(Via Open Culture)

There are lots of interesting course and lecture titles on this site, but unfortunately only a paltry two philosophy courses.  It would be great if more colleges and universities would make philosophy courses available in their open course offerings.