The Gandhi of history doesn’t line up with the Gandhi of legend, just as the beatified Mother Teresa presents a very different picture in certain astute critics’ estimation. But as with most saints, ancient and modern, people tend to ignore Gandhi’s many contradictions and troublingly racist and casteist views. He comes to us more as myth and martyr than deeply flawed human individual. An indispensable part of the mythmaking, Richard Attenborough’s 1982 biopic, Gandhi, may be "over-sanitized," as The Guardian writes, but Ben Kingsley’s performance as the anti-colonial leader is genuinely "sublime" in his evocation of Gandhi’s "intensity… wit and even the distinctive, determined walk." It’s these personal qualities—and of course Gandhi’s defeat of the largest empire on the planet with nonviolent action and a spiritual philosophy—that continue to inspire movements for justice and civil rights. We see a little of that determined walk in the short newsreel interview above, the very first "talking picture" made of Gandhi, and we also hear his intensity and wit, though much subdued by his physical frailty after years of fasting. Taken in 1947 by Fox Movietone News, the film marks a pivotal period in the Indian leader’s life. Very shortly after this Parliament passed the Indian Independence Act. That year also marked the start of a bloody new struggle, instigated by another colonial intervention, as the British partitioned India into two warring countries, an act so poignantly dramatized in Salmon Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. This year of turmoil was also Gandhi’s last; he was assassinated in 1948 by a Hindu nationalist who accused him of siding with Pakistan. In the interview, we hear what we might think of as some of Gandhi’s final public pronouncements on such subjects as child marriage, prohibition, his deeply held convictions about an authentic Indian cultural identity, and the lengths that he would go for his country’s independence. At the end of the short interview, the American reporter asks Gandhi, presciently, "would you be prepared to die in the cause of India’s Independence?" to which Gandhi replies, "this is a bad question." Related Content: Tolstoy and Gandhi Exchange Letters: Two Thinkers’ Quest for Gentleness, Humility & Love (1909) Albert Einstein Expresses His Admiration for Mahatma Gandhi, in Letter and Audio Hear Gandhi’s Famous Speech on the Existence of God (1931) Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness Watch Gandhi Talk in His First Filmed Interview (1947) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

We got a nice tip from one of our readers, and wanted to pass it along. Paramount Pictures has launched an official, verified YouTube channel — called The Paramount Vault — where you can watch full length films for free [update: if you’re based in the US]. You won’t find Paramount’s best-known films in The Vault, but nonetheless there are some quality, if not entertaining, picks among the 150 films. The movies are grouped into the following playlists: Classics, Comedy, Action/Adventure, Drama, Horror, Westerns, Science Fiction, and Thrillers. And they include motion pictures like 1987’s Ironweed with Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, Hamlet (1990) with Glenn Close and Mel Gibson, Paris When It Sizzles (1964) with William Holden and Audrey Hepburn, Elvis in King Creole (1958), Charlton Heston in the 1950 noir film Dark City, Gene Wilder in Funny About Love (1990), and Margot at the Wedding (2007) with Nicole Kidman, Jack Black and Jennifer Jason Leigh. The Paramount Vault has been verified by YouTube, so it looks like it’s the real deal. There is also an accompanying verified Facebook page. If you stream the playlist embedded at the top, you can watch 43 dramas in a row, starting with Ironweed and Hamlet. The selections above will be added to our list, 725 Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, etc.. Enjoy! Update: it looks like you need to be based in the US to view these films — something that wasn’t apparent to me beforehand since I’m based here. My apologies to anyone who’s geoblocked. h/t David Related Content: 101 Free Silent Films: The Great Classics Columbia U. Launches a Free Multimedia Glossary for Studying Cinema & Filmmaking Stream 100+ Free Movies from Paramount Pictures on YouTube is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

"One of the many remarkable things about Charlie Chaplin," wrote Roger Ebert, "is that his films continue to hold up, to attract and delight audiences." Richard Brody described Chaplin as not just "alone among his peers of silent-comedy genius," but also as a maker of "great talking pictures." Jonathan Rosenbaum asked, "Has there ever been another artist — not just in the history of cinema, but maybe in the history of art — who has had more to say, and in such vivid detail, about what it means to be poor?" Andrew Sarris called Chaplin "arguably the single most important artist produced by the cinema, certainly its most extraordinary performer and probably still its most universal icon." "For me," wrote Leonard Maltin, "comedy begins with Charlie Chaplin." And so we see that Chaplin, nearly forty decades after his death, maintains his high critical reputation — while also having enjoyed the absolute height of movie-stardom back in the silent era. Vanishingly few artists of any kind manage to combine such blockbusting commercial success with such flying-colors critical success. That alone might give you good enough reason to plunge into Chaplin’s filmography, but know that you can begin that cinematic adventure for free right here on Open Culture in our archive of more than 60 Charlie Chaplin films on the web. There you’ll find short comedies like 1914’s Kids Auto Race at Venice, which introduced his famous penniless protagonist "The Tramp"; the following year’s The Tramp, which made it into a phenomenon; 1919’s Sunnyside, in which we find out what happens when Chaplin’s gracefully hapless comedic persona winds up on the farm; and 1925’s The Gold Rush, the film Chaplin most wanted to be remembered for. But though Chaplin’s oeuvre couldn’t be easier to start watching and laughing at, coming to appreciate the full scope of his craft — in the way that the critics quoted above have spent careers doing — may take time. After all, the man made 80 movies over his 75-year entertainment career, a kind of productivity that, even leaving the considerable artistry aside, cinema may never see again. You can dive into our collection of Chaplin films here. Related Content: 101 Free Silent Films: The Great Classics Colorized Photos Bring Walt Whitman, Charlie Chaplin, Helen Keller & Mark Twain Back to Life Charlie Chaplin Does Cocaine and Saves the Day in Modern Times (1936) Watch Charlie Chaplin Demand 342 Takes of One Scene from City Lights; And Then Watch 65 Free Chaplin Films Online 725 Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, etc. Colin Marshall writes elsewhere on cities, language, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, and the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future? Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook. Discover the Cinematic & Comedic Genius of Charlie Chaplin with 60+ Free Movies Online is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

To my knowledge, Bob Dylan has only appeared in a handful of TV commercials over the decades, including most notably a bizarre ad for Victoria’s Secret back in 2004. Now you can add another to the small list. Last night, IBM debuted a new ad with the iconic singer-songwriter. And this time around, Dylan isn’t peddling bras. Rather, it’s IBM’s cognitive system called "Watson," which promises to analyze data for corporations in all kinds of interesting ways. Says IBM: Humans create a staggering amount of information. Poetry, equations, films, selfies, diagnoses, discoveries. Data pours from our mobile devices, social networks, from every digitized and connected system we use. 80% of this data is virtually invisible to computers—including nearly all the information captured in language, sight and sound. Until now. IBM Watson applies its cognitive technologies to help change how we approach and understand all of this information. Everything that is digital has the potential to become cognitive, and, in a sense, be able to "think." Watson can bring cognition to everything and everyone. To evolve in this data-driven culture, every business will need to become a cognitive business. To demonstrate its analytical powers, IBM asked Watson to analyze Dylan’s lyrics, and it concluded that the major themes of Dylan’s songs are "time passes and love fades". It’s a conclusion, I’m sure, that never dawned on casual or ardent fans of Dylan’s music. Related Content: Bob Dylan’s Controversial 2004 Victoria’s Secret Ad: His First & Last Appearance in a Commercial "They Were There" — Errol Morris Finally Directs a Film for IBM Andy Warhol’s ‘Screen Test’ of Bob Dylan: A Classic Meeting of Egos Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Modernist Poem The Waste Land Bob Dylan and The Grateful Dead Rehearse Together in Summer 1987. Listen to 74 Tracks. Bob Dylan Appears in Rare TV Ad: Watch IBM’s Super Computer Offer a Literary Analysis of His Songs is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Founded and directed by physicist Lawrence Krauss, Arizona State’s Origins Project has for several years brought together some of the biggest minds in the sciences and humanities for friendly debates and conversations about "the 21st Century’s greatest challenges." Previous all-star panels have included Krauss, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Brian Greene, and Richard Dawkins. Stephen Hawking has graced the ASU Origins Project stage, as has actor and science communicator Alan Alda. And this past March, in a sold-out, highly-anticipated Origins Project event, Krauss welcomed Noam Chomsky to the stage for a lengthy interview, which you can watch above. Although Krauss says he’s wary of hero worship in his laudatory introduction, he nonetheless finds himself asking "What Would Noam Chomsky Do" when faced with a dilemma. He also points out that Chomsky has been "marginalized in U.S. media" for his anti-war, anarchist political views. Those views, of course, come widely into play during the conversation, which ranges from the theory and purpose of education—a subject Chomsky has expounded on a great deal in books and interviews—to the fate of political dissidents throughout history. Chomsky also gives us his views on science and technology, particularly in the Q&A portion of the talk above, in which he answers questions about artificial intelligence—another subject he’s touched on in the past—and animal experimentation, among a great many other topics. Krauss mostly hangs back during the initial discussion but takes a more active role in the session above, offering views on medical and scientific ethics that will be familiar to those who follow his atheist activism and championing of rationality over religious dogma. What you won’t see in the video above is a conversation Chomsky and Krauss had with Motherboard’s Daniel Oberhaus, who caught up with both thinkers during the ASU event to get their take on what he calls "another great space race." As Oberhaus makes clear, the current competition is not necessarily between global superpowers, but—as with so much modern research and development—between public and private entities, such as NASA and Space X. As we briefly discussed in a post yesterday on the huge amount of public domain space photography freely available for use, private space exploration makes research proprietary, mitigating the potential public benefits of government programs. As Chomsky puts it, "the environment, the commons… they’re a common possession, but space is even more so. For individuals to allow institutions like corporations to have any control over it is devastating in its consequences. It will also almost certainly undermine serious research." He refers to the example of most modern computing—developed under publicly-funded government programs, then marketed and sold back to us by corporations. Krauss makes a case for unmanned space exploration as the cost-effective option, and both thinkers discuss the problem of militarizing space, the ultimate goal of Cold War space programs before the fall of the Soviet Union. The conversation is rich and revealing and makes an excellent supplement to the already rich discussion Krauss and Chomsky have in the videos above. Related Content: The Origins Project Brings Together Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Bill Nye, Ira Flatow, and More on One Stage Noam Chomsky Spells Out the Purpose of Education Noam Chomsky Explains Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness Watch Noam Chomsky & Lawrence Krauss Talk About Education, Political Activism, Technology & More Before a Sold-Out Crowd is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

The lag time between our imagining of social equality and its arrival can be significantly long indeed, or it least it can seem so, given the limitations of human mortality. 113 years may not be an especially long time for a tree, say, or even a very healthy Galapagos tortoise, but if you or I had been alive in 1902, chances are we’d never know that in 2015 the president of Europe’s most powerful nation is a woman, as are two major presidential candidates in the United States. Given the amount of inequality we still see worldwide, this may not always feel like a triumph. In 1902, it might have seemed like "nothing but fantasy." And yet even then, it was certainly possible to foresee women occupying all the roles that men did, through the lenses, writes Laura Hudson at Boing Boing, of "fantasy and science fiction," which "can often help us open our minds behind the limitations of the world we live in and imagine a better one instead." In 1902, artist Albert Bergeret was commissioned to create the trading cards you see here—just a small selection of twenty total photographs called "Les Femmes de l’Avenir"—Women of the Future. Only one theme among many in a series of different sets of cards, this "retrofuturistic attempt to expand the role of women in society" showed us a "small and fashionable world" where "women were given a more equal role in society, not to mention spectacular hats." That may be so, but just as we can never accurately see the future, we can also never reach consensus on the meaning of the past. The Daily Mail’s Maysa Rawi agrees with Hudson about the "pin-up quality to many of the images," which show "an awful lot of arm."  And yet Rawi disparages the entire set as "meant to capture men’s fantasies rather than be part of any feminist movement." I’ll admit, I don’t see the cards this way at all, nor do I think the categories are mutually exclusive. Pin-up girls have also represented social power, albeit mainly sexual power. Scantily-clad female superheroes like Wonder Woman, though crafted to appeal to the fantasies of teenage boys, are also powerful because… well, they have superpowers. Perhaps that’s one way to look at Bergeret’s cards. He is not mocking his subjects, nor hyper-sexualizing them, but presenting, as each card indicates, advanced futuristic beings who didn’t yet exist in his time. The Daily Mail captions several of the photos with factoids about women’s advances in French history. In some cases, Bergeret did not have to extrapolate far. Women could practice law in 1900; women served in the army during the French Revolution, but did not fight. Colleges had been open to women since 1879. A few women worked as doctors and journalists in Bergeret’s time. Marie Curie, you’ll recall, had discovered polonium, coined the term "radioactivity,"  and would win the Nobel Prize in 1903. Queen Victoria had ruled over half the world. But French women would have to wait several more decades to enter most of the professions represented. No matter how sexy—and in some cases ridiculous—some of the costumes in these photos, Bergeret shot the models with poise, style, and dignity. Perhaps he and many in his audience could easily imagine female generals, mayors, firewomen, soldiers, etc. Yet one particular card stands out. It portrays a self-satisfied, Bohemian model labeled "rapin"—which a reader below informs us is "an argot word for (bad) painter." via Boing Boing Related Content: In 1900, Ladies’ Home Journal Publishes 28 Predictions for the Year 2000 How French Artists in 1899 Envisioned Life in the Year 2000: Drawing the Future Mark Twain Predicts the Internet in 1898: Read His Sci-Fi Crime Story, "From The ‘London Times’ in 1904" Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness 1902 French Trading Cards Imagine "Women of the Future" is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

One my very first acts as a new New Yorker many years ago was to make the journey across three boroughs to Woodlawn cemetery in the Bronx. My purpose: a pilgrimage to Herman Melville’s grave. I came not to worship a hero, exactly, but—as Fordham University English professor Angela O’Donnell writes—"to see a friend." Professor O’Donnell goes on: "It might seem presumptuous to regard a celebrated 19th-century novelist so familiarly, but reading a great writer across the decades is a means of conducting conversation with him and, inevitably, leads to intimacy." I fully share the sentiment. I promised Melville I would visit regularly but, alas, the pleasures and travails of life in the big city kept me away, and I never returned. No such petty distraction kept away a friend-across-the-ages of another 19th-century American author. "For decades," writes the Baltimore Sun, "Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday was marked by a mysterious visitor to his gravesite in Baltimore. Beginning in the 1930s, the ‘Poe Toaster’ placed three roses at the grave every Jan. 19 and opened a bottle of cognac, only to disappear into the night." The tradition, which continued until 2009, is currently being revived with an American Idol-style competition (do you have what it takes?). The identity of the original "Poe Toaster"—who may have been succeeded by his son—remains a tantalizing mystery. Today, October 7th, marks Poe’s death-day, and in honor of his macabre sensibility, we visit another morbid mystery—the mystery of how Edgar Allan Poe died. Most of you have probably heard some version of the story. On October 3, 1849, a compositor for the Baltimore Sun, Joseph Walker, found Poe lying in a gutter. The poet had departed Richmond, VA on September 27, bound for Philadelphia "where he was to edit a volume of poetry for Mrs. St. Leon Loud," the Poe Museum tells us. Instead, he ended up in Baltimore, "semiconscious and dressed in cheap, ill-fitting clothes so unlike Poe’s usual mode of dress that many believe that Poe’s own clothing had been stolen." He never became lucid enough to explain where he had been or what happened to him: "The father of the detective story has left us with a real-life mystery which Poe scholars, medical professionals, and others have been trying to solve for over 150 years." Most people assume that Poe drank himself to death. The rumor was partly spread by Poe’s friend, editor Joseph Snodgrass, whom the poet had asked for in his semi-lucid state. Snodgrass was "a staunch temperance advocate" and had reason to recruit the writer posthumously into his campaign against drink, despite the fact that Poe had been sober for six months prior to his death and had refused alcohol on his deathbed. Poe’s attending physician, John Moran, dismissed the binge drinking theory, but that did not help clear up the mystery. Moran’s "accounts vary so widely," writes Biography.com, "that they are not generally considered reliable." So what happened? Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center theorize that Poe may have contracted rabies from one of his own pets—likely a cat. This diagnosis accounts for the delirium and other reported symptoms, though "no one can say conclusively," admits the Center’s Dr. Michael Benitez, "since there was no autopsy after his death." As with any mystery, the frustrating lack of evidence has sparked endless speculation. The Poe Museum offers the following list of possible causes-of-death, with dates and sources, including the rabies and alcohol (both overimbibing and withdrawal) theories: Beating (1857) The United States Magazine Vol.II (1857): 268. Epilepsy (1875) Scribner’s Monthly Vo1. 10 (1875): 691. Dipsomania (1921) Robertson, John W. Edgar A. Poe A Study. Brough, 1921: 134, 379. Heart (1926) Allan, Hervey. Israfel. Doubleday, 1926: Chapt. XXVII, 670. Toxic Disorder (1970) Studia Philo1ogica Vol. 16 (1970): 41-42. Hypoglycemia (1979) Artes Literatus (1979) Vol. 5: 7-19. Diabetes (1977) Sinclair, David. Edgar Allan Poe. Roman & Litt1efield, 1977: 151-152. Alcohol Dehydrogenase (1984) Arno Karlen. Napo1eon’s Glands. Little Brown, 1984: 92. Porphryia (1989) JMAMA Feb. 10, 1989: 863-864. Delerium Tremens (1992) Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar A1lan Poe. Charles Scribner, 1992: 255. Rabies (1996) Maryland Medical Journal Sept. 1996: 765-769. Heart (1997) Scientific Sleuthing Review Summer 1997: 1-4. Murder (1998) Walsh, John E., Midnight Dreary. Rutgers Univ. Press, 1998: 119-120. Epilepsy (1999) Archives of Neurology June 1999: 646, 740. Carbon Monoxide Poisoning (1999) Albert Donnay The Smithsonian adds to this list the possible causes of brain tumor, heavy metal poisoning, and the flu. They also briefly describe the most popular theory: that Poe died as a result of a practice called "cooping." A site called The Medical Bag expands on the cooping theory, a favorite of "the vast majority of Poe biographies." The term refers to "a practice in the United States during the 19th century by which innocent people were coerced into voting, often several times, for a particular candidate in an election." Oftentimes, these people were snatched unawares off the streets, "kept in a room, called the coop" and "given alcohol or drugs in order for them to follow orders. If they refused to cooperate, they would be beaten or even killed." One darkly comic detail: victims were often forced to change clothes and were even "forced to wear wigs, fake beards, and mustaches as disguises so voting officials at polling stations wouldn’t recognize them." This theory is highly plausible. Poe was, after all, found "on the street on Election Day," and "the place where he was found, Ryan’s Fourth Ward Polls, was both a bar and a place for voting." Add to this the notoriously violent and corrupt nature of Baltimore elections at the time, and you have a scenario in which the author may very well have been kidnapped, drugged, and beaten to death in a voter fraud scheme. Ultimately, however, we will likely never know for certain what killed Edgar Allan Poe. Perhaps the "Poe Toaster" was attempting all those years to get the story from the source as he communed with his dead 19th century friend year after year. But if that mysterious stranger knows the truth, he ain’t talking either. Related Content: 5 Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Stories Read by Vincent Price & Basil Rathbone Édouard Manet Illustrates Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, in a French Edition Translated by Stephane Mallarmé (1875) Download The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Stories as Free eBooks & Audio Books Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness The Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Death: 19 Theories on What Caused the Poet’s Demise 166 Years Ago Today is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

As you know if you saw our previous posts featuring Leonard Nimoy’s readings of stories by Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, the late Star Trek icon could — unsurprisingly, perhaps — tell a science-fiction tale with the best of them. It turns out that he could also give masterful readings of science fiction from other eras too, as far back as the earliest works to define the genre, which we’ve discovered after hearing his performance of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, an out-of-print edition recently digitized from cassette tape and posted to Youtube in two parts. With this story of Earth invaded from "across the gulf of space" by aliens with "minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic," Wells did much to help give science fiction the form we recognize today. The War of the Worlds came out in book form in 1898, preceded by such similarly speculative and innovative works as The Time Machine and The Invisible Man, and then followed by the likes of The First Men in the Moon and The Shape of Things to Come. (Find most of these works neatly packaged in the HG Wells Classic Collection.) This Leonard Nimoy recording originally came out in 1976, published by the record label Caedmon, known for doing plenty of innovation of their own in the then-yet-unnamed field of audiobooks. Caedmon put out not just this album and the one with Nimoy reading Bradbury, but others featuring Kurt Vonnegut, Vincent Price, Tennessee Williams, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and Sylvia Plath. As much as science-fiction die-hards will enjoy hearing this pairing of Nimoy and Wells here, some will certainly want to track down the actual LP — not just for the collectors’ value, but because it features liner notes by none other than that other vastly influential creator of sci-fi as we know it, Isaac Asimov. It looks like there’s one used copy on Amazon. The reading, we should note, is an abridged version of the original text. Related Content: Leonard Nimoy Reads Ray Bradbury Stories From The Martian Chronicles & The Illustrated Man (1975-76) Isaac Asimov’s Favorite Story "The Last Question" Read by Isaac Asimov— and by Leonard Nimoy Leonard Nimoy Narrates Short Film About NASA’s Dawn: A Voyage to the Origins of the Solar System Colin Marshall writes elsewhere on cities, language, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, and the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future? Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook. The Great Leonard Nimoy Reads H.G. Wells’ Seminal Sci-Fi Novel The War of the Worlds is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Back in June we highlighted Neil Halloran’s 15 minute film, The Fallen of World War II, which used "innovative data visualization techniques to put the human cost of WW II into perspective, showing how some 70 million lives were lost within civilian and military populations across Europe and Asia, from 1939 to 1945." It’s a pretty staggering illustration of the deadliest war. As the film went viral, Halloran raised money that would enable him to develop new films exploring "other trends of war and peace - from drones and terrorism to democracy and peacekeeping." He has also translated the film into six different languages. They all went online in the last few weeks. Here they are: Russian, Japanese, Polish, French, German, and Serbian. Above, you can watch the original in English (certainly worth doing if you were vacationing in June), and you might also explore the accompanying interactive web site here. Follow Open Culture on Facebook and Twitter and share intelligent media with your friends. Or better yet, sign up for our daily email and get a daily dose of Open Culture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts definitely appear in your Facebook newsfeed, just follow these simple steps. Related Content: Free Online History Courses Watch World War II Rage Across Europe in a 7 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1939 to 1945 31 Rolls of Film Taken by a World War II Soldier Get Discovered & Developed Before Your Eyes Dramatic Color Footage Shows a Bombed-Out Berlin a Month After Germany’s WWII Defeat (1945) Innovative Film Visualizing the Destruction of World War II Now Available in 7 Languages is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Like many American stories, the story of the National Parks begins with pillage, death, deep cultural misunderstanding, and venture capitalism. According to Ken Burns’ film series The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, we can date the idea back to 1851, with the "discovery" of Yosemite by a marauding armed battalion who entered the land "searching for Indians, intent on driving the natives from their homelands and onto reservations." The Mariposa Battalion, led by Captain James D. Savage, set fire to the Indians’ homes and storehouses after they had retreated to the mountains, "in order to starve them into submission." One member of the battalion, a doctor named Lafayette Bunnell, found himself entranced by the scenery amidst this destruction. "As I looked, a peculiar exalted sensation seemed to fill my whole being," he wrote in his later accounts, "and I found myself in tears with emotion." He named the place "Yosemite," thinking it was the name of the Indian tribe the soldiers sought to force out or eradicate. The word, it turned out "meant something entirely different," referring to people who should be feared: "It means, ‘they are killers.’" In 1855, a failed English gold prospector turned the place into a tourist attraction, and people flooded West to see it, prompting New York worthies like Horace Greeley and Frederick Law Olmsted to lobby for its federal protection. In 1864, Abraham Lincoln deeded Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove, with its giant sequoias, to the state of California. Ever since then, National Parks have been threatened—if not by the occasional political candidate and his billionaire backers hoping to privatize the land, then by oil and gas drilling, and by fire, rising seas, or other effects of climate change. Though the U.S. emptied many of the parks of their inhabitants, it is ironically only the actions of the federal government that prevents the process begun by the Mariposa Battalion from reaching its conclusion in the total despoliation of these landscapes. It is these landscapes that have most come to symbolize the national character, whether as background in Frederic Remington’s paintings of the Indian Wars or in the photographs of Ansel Adams, who began and sustained his career in Yosemite Valley. "Yosemite National Park," writes the National Park Service’s website," was Adams’ chief inspiration." Adams first became interested in visiting the National Park when he read In the Heart of the Sierras by James Hutchings—that failed English gold prospector. Thereafter, Adams photographed National Parks almost ritually, and in 1941, the National Park Service commissioned Adams to create a photo mural for the Department of the Interior Building in DC. The theme, the National Archives tells us, was to be "nature as exemplified and protected in the U.S. National Parks. The project was halted because of World War II and never resumed." It must have felt like an especially sacred duty for Adams, who traveled the country photographing the Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Kings Canyon, Mesa Verde, Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Carlsbad Caverns, Glacier, and Zion National Parks; Death Valley, Saguro, and Canyon de Chelly National Monuments," and other locations like the Boulder (now Hoover) Dam and desert vistas in New Mexico. The photographs you see here are among the 226 taken by Adams for the project. They are now housed at the National Archives, and you can freely view them online or order prints at their site. At the top, we see a snow-covered tree from an apple orchard in Half Dome, Yosemite, where Adams had his first photographic "visualization" in 1927. Below it, the "Court of the Patriarchs" in Zion National Park, Utah. Further down, we have a breathtaking vision of the serpentine Grand Canyon, and just above, one of the few manmade structures, "Cliff Palace" at Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. And here can you see a photograph of the Snake River in Grand Teton National Park. The mural project may have been abandoned, but Adams never stopped photographing the parks, nor advocating for their protection and, in fact, the protection of "the entire environment," as he told a Playboy interviewer in 1983. "Only two and a half percent of the land in this country is protected," said Adams then: "Not only are we being fought in trying to extend that two and a half percent to include other important or fragile areas but we are having to fight to protect that small two and a half percent. It is horrifying that we have to fight our own Government to save our environment." You can peruse the collection of Ansel Adams’ national park photos here. Related Content: Ansel Adams Reveals His Creative Process in 1958 Documentary 200 Ansel Adams Photographs Expose the Rigors of Life in Japanese Internment Camps During WW II How to Take Photographs Like Ansel Adams: The Master Explains The Art of "Visualization" Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness 226 Ansel Adams Photographs of Great American National Parks Are Now Online is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.