Open Culture: Enlightened Ideas and Media. Served Up Fresh.

I discovered this Open Culture blog today and had to share it. Think of it as a web nexus providing links to all sorts of great free audio and video files of a more educational and cultural variety. Everything is sorted by the following categories: arts and culture podcasts, audio book podcasts, foreign language lesson podcasts, news/information podcasts, technology podcasts, and university podcasts (lectures, journal articles, etc.). These "podcasts" typically entail an assortment of iTunes and/or .mp3 (and sometimes a text file too) depending upon the material. They certainly don't have everything, but there's definitely a lot to sift (and listen) through.

Their latest "podcast" is something very interesting to me as well: Lawrence Lessig's book, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. As the blog describes him, Lessig, a law professor at Stanford, "has made a big name for himself by developing a sustained critique of how Congress, at the behest of corporate America, has progressively stifled cultural and scientific innovation by extending the duration and scope of copyright laws." He's also the creator of Creative Commons, in case you've heard of them before.

Of course, all of this plays into what I see as the important value of the open source movement, particularly in these current times, but I'm sure you don't want me to bore you with that discussion.

Just enjoy all of the free resources at Open Culture...