October 21, 2011

2000 New Free Audio & Video Resources

It has been months in the making, and we have now added over 2000 new free audio & video learning resources to our free directory. We’ve added hundreds of audio books, lectures, speeches, interviews, and every free college course on audio & video that we could find. This now brings our free directory to over 5000 of the very best free audio & video learning resources from across the web!

Browse Over 5000 Free Audio & Video Learning Resources in Our Free Directory

These new free titles come from a variety of sources and in choosing them we sifted through 1000s of titles and picked out the best ones featuring the highest quality content from 100s of the leading thinkers, authors, professors, and speakers of our time. We’ll be featuring these resources more in depth in the coming months in our newsletters and our Free Resource of the Day Emails, but in this blog post we’ll just mention what we’ve added with some brief descriptions of the content.

We’ll break it down by the type of resources we added starting with the new university courses we’ve added to our site, then featuring the talks & interviews we’ve added, and finishing with the free audio books we’ve added. Probably the best way to browse the new free stuff is with the links listed below as these new titles haven’t risen in popularity yet and are currently a little buried in our free audio & video directory. Enjoy over 2000 of great new free audio & video learning resources that we found on the world wide web!

New Free Courses We’ve Added

In the past few years the number of freely available courses on audio & video has greatly increased as universities have opened up their classrooms to the world by giving away a number of their courses. Recently YouTube launched YouTube EDU which now features videos from 100s of universities around the globe and a number of these universities are offering full courses available for free on video through YouTube. Also prestigious universities like MIT and Yale have launched “OpenCourseWare” sections of their own sites and universities like UC San Diego and UCLA have started podcasting a number of courses on audio. We searched high and low for every free audio or video course we could find and have now added them all into our free directory (with the exception of courses available exclusively through iTunes U because Apple gave us a cease-and-desist notice that we can no longer link to iTunes U unfortunately). For the video courses from YouTube we’ve embedded the video playlist right on our pages. Here’s what is new:

Harvard University – We’ve added 15+ free courses on video from this Ivy League university including a half dozen computer science courses.

Khan Academy – While not an official university (yet!), this not-for-profit educational organization has risen in popularity from the over 2500 micro video lectures that educator Salman Khan has created mostly in the area of mathematics. We’ve added all their major video playlists to our site and the math ones take you from the Arithmetic Playlist all the way up to the Calculus Playlist and beyond.

MIT OpenCourseWare – We’ve added 30+ free courses mostly available on video with some available on audio download from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT’s free courses include ones on science, technology, and engineering, but they also include courses on law, business, biology, psychology, and philosophy.

New York University – 5 great video courses from NYU including “American Literature I: From Beginnings to the Civil War” and “Introduction to Sociology”.

Stanford University – We’ve added 15+ free courses on video from Stanford University which include 9 physics courses by the brilliant professor of theoretical physics Leonard Susskind. Included in these listings from Stanford is a collection of individual lectures delivered at the university.

UC San Diego – We’ve added 50+ free courses that are podcasted on audio from the University of California at San Diego. These courses are in a variety of subjects from many of the schools of study at UC San Diego including many courses in biology and psychology. Download them on MP3 or stream them right through our podcast player.

UCLA BruinCast – We’ve added 40+ free courses that are podcasted on audio from the University of California at Los Angeles. Again these courses are from a variety of subjects from many of the schools of study at UCLA. Download them on MP3 or stream them right through our podcast player.

University of Houston – We’ve added 35 free courses on video from the University of Houston. The courses cover world history, literature, psychology, and a whole lot more.

University of Notre Dame – We’ve added 8 free courses available on audio download or video download through the OpenCourseWare section of Notre Dame’s site.

Yale University – We’ve added 30+ free courses on audio download & video from Yale University. They offer many courses on literature, history, economics, and more.

And along with all of these great courses we’ve also added one or two courses or series of lectures from the following institutions:

Biola University
Cambridge University
Columbia University
Dominican University of California
McMaster University
Otis College of Art and Design
Oxford University
Rutgers University
Spring Arbor University
Stony Brook University
U.S. Army War College
UC Davis
UC Irvine
University of Michigan
University of Missouri-Kansas City
University of New South Wales
University of Virginia
University of Washington
Vanderbilt University

Enjoy these many courses on audio & video!

New Talks & Interviews We’ve Added

Along with all the great new courses we’ve added we also went back to some of our favorite resources for free talks & lectures by notable authors and public figures. We’ve updated a number of these providers with the latest talks that they’ve added over the past years. And we’ve also added some new providers that feature great talks on audio & video. For all these providers we’ve chosen talks that are from the most popular authors and public figures along with other talks that we thought would be of interest. Most of these providers have many more talks on their sites which you can further explore. We’ve added some of the best talks from these providers:

bloggingheads.tv – We’ve added 30+ videos and MP3 audio downloads of dialogues from bloggingheads.tv featuring two prominent intellectuals, journalists, or bloggers discussing via video chat important contemporary issues involving politics, science, religion, and more.

Book TV and C-SPAN – We’ve added over 300 titles featuring videos and speakers on the C-SPAN video library. C-SPAN has been broadcasting since 1979 and they now offer a complete, freely accessible archive going back to 1987. They offer 160,000 hours of archived programming in the C-SPAN video library! We can’t say that we went through all of their 150,000 programs, but we went through a lot of them. And we found that the C-SPAN video library much more than hours and hours of Senate committee meetings, White House press briefings, and House sessions (although that stuff is all there if you’re interested). Instead we picked out special programs from the most well known political figures, the most highly regarded authors, and some of the most popular thinkers that we feature on our site. Many of the people we feature have numerous videos on C-SPAN and for them we are linking to the page on C-SPAN that features all of their C-SPAN appearances.

C-SPAN also features authors on their Book TV weekend programming and we’ve separated the C-SPAN political videos from the Book TV author videos if you’re more interested in authors than in political figures. We’ve added many titles from Book TV’s In Depth series which is a 3-hour interview and call-in show that covers an author’s life and career. We could go on pointing out other C-SPAN series but we’ll save that for later. For now check out over 200 new titles from Book TV and over 100 new titles from C-SPAN. We’ve embedded many of these videos, and we saw on C-SPAN’s video library blog that for many of their programs they are now offering the MP3 audio downloads for $0.99 per program. A small price to pay for some of these recorded gems!

Charlie Rose – We’ve added over 350 of the best videos from the Charlie Rose talk show on PBS. Charlie Rose has been conducting interviews on his show since 1991 and his entire archive of over 4000 hours of video is online at www.charlierose.com. We went through the entire archive and picked out his best interviews with notable politicians, authors, artists, actors, film directors, and many other figures he has interviewed over the past 20 years. Truly the best of Charlie Rose!

Conversations with History – From the Institute of International Studies at the University of California at Berkeley host Harry Kreisler talks with leading thinkers and public figures in the areas of global politics and world history. We’ve chosen 80+ talks from the over 500 interviews that have been conducted since 1982. All of these talks are available on streaming video and many of them are available on MP3 audio download from the UCTV website.

Forum Network – We’ve added over 250 new talks from The Forum Network (formerly the WGBH Forum Network) which is a collection of talks recorded at over 150 locations on the East Coast. Many talks feature authors on book tour discussing their latest book. Political figures and public intellectuals are also featured on many of the talks discussing specific contemporary issues. All of these talks are available on streaming video and many of them are available on MP3 audio download from the Forum Network website.

Google Talks – Google brings in many authors and speakers into their offices often to talk about their latest book and Google captures them all on video. They’ve posted 1000s of these talks to YouTube and from those we’ve added over 200 new talks. Most of these come from their “@Google Talks” channel and their “GoogleTechTalks” channel on YouTube. For authors speaking about a book we’ve also added the name of the book into the title. They feature many talks from business authors including their Leading@Google series, and they also feature many personal growth authors from their personal growth series.

MIT World – We’ve added over 50 new talks from MIT World. They offer streaming audio and video lectures of speakers at events that occur at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Many of these talks feature business & technology leaders, along with lectures from MIT faculty.

TED Talks – We’ve added over 100 of the best talks from TED. We’ll feature more about this later, but we’ll let you know that at LearnOutLoud.com we’ve watched almost all of the most popular and most viewed TED talks and from the 900 that they offer and we’ve picked out the ones we thought were the very best. In the future we’ll feature our selections for the Top 100 TED Talks of All Time.

UCTV – University of California Television – UCTV features talks from all of the University of California campuses. They offer all of these talks on YouTube and many of the talks are also available on audio download on the UCTV website (which we link to when the MP3 is available). The talks feature visiting authors along with lectures from UC professors. We’ve added over 100 new talks from them.

Talks by the Dalai Lama – Also we’ve added over 20 talks by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama has their own YouTube channel and we’ve added many of their talks along with featuring other talks that the Dalai Lama gave at various locations. In all we now have 50 free talks by His Holiness the Dalai Lama along with over 20 of his audio books for sale on CD and audio download.

In all we’ve added over 1000 talks to watch or listen to! Enjoy!

New Free Audio Books We’ve Added

And if all this wasn’t enough, we’ve also added about 200 new free audio books. Last year we picked over 1000 new free audio books from LibriVox to add to our site. Now we’ve added even more free audio books from a couple sources. Here they are:

Lit2Go – Years ago we discovered Lit2Go which is a collection of audio books made freely available by the University of South Florida’s Educational Technology Clearinghouse. They offer 100s of free classic literature audio books, poems, and short stories on MP3 audio download and we’ve now added over 150 of their audio books to our site. The narration of these audio books sounds basically professional and they offer some of the greatest works of classic literature of all time. We’ve also picked out 30 of their audio books that are devoted mostly to kids and put them on our Kids.LearnOutLoud.com site. You can access them here:

Over 30 Free Kids Audio Books from Lit2Go on Kids.LearnOutLoud.com

And our other source of free audio books that we’ve added:

Mises Institute – The Mises Institute offers lots of free media on their site and they cover the ideas of economist Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian School and modern free-market libertarian movement that followed. On their site they now feature many audio books along with courses and lecture series available on MP3 audio download. Their audio books are professionally narrated and they feature them on podcast RSS feeds which we’ve added onto our site as well. Learn about economics, libertarian politics, and history from the Mises Institute.

So that’s about it. If you notice any mistakes in the data for all these titles or you run into any issues with them please let us know. We are very excited to be offering all these new free audio & video learning resources. We can’t wait to watch and listen to them and do more in depth features in the future. With the addition of all these great free resources, we feel we are well on our way to our goal of becoming the best destination for audio & video learning on the internet! Spread the word! Learn Out Loud!

October 5, 2011

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs on Audio

The godfather of the modern positive psychology movement is humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow, who coined the term “positive psychology” in his 1954 book Motivation and Personality. Maslow created a theory on the hierarchy of human needs placing self actualization at the top of his pyramid. His focus on human potential and peak experiences would lay the groundwork for authors like Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to further study the science of human happiness.

We are pleased to be offering a free audio book which is an audio recording of Maslow’s 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation. This work is the cornerstone of psychiatrist Abraham Maslow’s concept of the human hierarchy of needs. In this paper, Maslow describes humanity as a “wanting” species, and traces a chain of needs from the most basic (hunger), to the most self serving (personal safety, financial security), to the most social (esteem) and finally to the most transcendent (self-actualization).

Download A Theory of Human Motivation by Abraham Maslow

This paper was originally published in Psychological Review in 1943 and is now in the public domain as the copyright was not renewed. The audio book is 1 hour in length and read by our very own Seth Anderson. Download this audio book for free on MP3 audio download today!

Download A Theory of Human Motivation by Abraham Maslow

At LearnOutLoud we are also excited to be offering some exclusive audio recordings available on audio download from Abraham Maslow. During the 1960s, Abraham Maslow gave many excellent lectures and workshops at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Maslow was an easy speaker to listen to and he speaks on psychology with the same enjoyment that Joseph Campbell spoke of mythology and Alan Watts spoke of Eastern religion. The audio programs we feature have been selected from the recordings of Maslow’s many lectures and workshops at Esalen. We feature seven of these audio programs and have created descriptions for the content of each of them. Here they are:

1. The Aims of Education

This lecture on the aims of education attempts to reconceive the goals of education under a Maslow framework:

• How do we develop the humanness of a child? What are the ingredients?
• What do we lose when we become adults that we should have been taught earlier?
• What system of values is most important for a child to remember? How do we train teachers to instill these values?
• How do we enhance peak experiences within a child so we retain that into adulthood. Why do we lose this as childhood gives way to maturity?

These, and more fascinating questions are brought up and discussed in Maslow’s exploratory dialogues. Ultimately he feels the primary aim of education is in nurturing the child towards the self-actualization that is the primary goal of all healthy human beings.

2. The B-language Workshop

In the B-Language Workshop, we listen in as Maslow presides over a group think-tank on how to convert Maslow’s concept of B-Values into a workable language. What comes about is a series of discussions on such topics as the role of humor, transcendent love, why power motivates us, how we should define success in our culture and ultimately what all of these conversations mean when we try to find certain words for vague, sometimes elusive (yet interrelated) concepts. This workshop is an interesting time capsule of an era where several like-minded people came together to suss out a novel vocabulary of experience steeped in a psychological framework they all agreed was exciting.

3. The Eupsychian Ethic

In this workshop Abraham Maslow confronts the humanist alternative education community of the Esalen Institute about what is to be done with the psychological growth and personal insights they’ve learned. Maslow worries that for many the journey towards self-actualization becomes self-absorbed and he lays out his idea of the “Eupsychian Ethic” where the personal growth knowledge is taken to the practical level of helping to improve individuals in the community and towards making a more peaceful and united world.

4. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature

In this in-depth workshop Abraham Maslow looks at human potential in many aspects of modern culture from business to science to family to education and more. He applies his hierachy of needs to these different aspects of society and gives examples, from the basics of survival in these areas up the pyramid to the self-actualization or transcendence beyond these social institutions. With humor and candor he lays out the methods of achieving these farther reaches of human nature.

5. Psychology and Religious Awareness

Through his own scientific pursuits and his determination to shatter psychiatric dogma, Maslow came to believe that the best scientists are looking for the same thing as the saints: a transcendence of dichotomies. He argues that scientific breakthroughs are akin to religious euphoria in that both experiences provide a rare understanding of our existence. Thus science can be “the religion of the non religious person, or the music of the man who can’t sing” as he puts it. He concludes that if we all tried to seek higher, probe deeper, and leave room for doubt as we search, we might form a new brotherhood of man, where we combine previously trivial divisions into a single force that is dedicated to an open minded approach to learning more about life’s mysteries.

6. Self-Actualization

This lecture on Self-Actualization recorded in 1966, sketches out a definition of the ideal self-actualized person. What he traces here are common traits he noted after studying self-fulfilled people, such as:

• Selfishness: how being good to yourself is the best way to be good to the world.
• Vocation: how the self-actualized person tends to link what they do inextricably with their sense of who they are.
• B-Values: How these people derive the most excitement from their work the more it correlates with universal human, or as Maslow terms it “B-values”.

Maslow goes on to point out that Self-Actualization is only possible after our biological needs are met and thus spiritual motivation emerges only after lower, physical needs such as hunger, safety, love and other bodily motivations are satisfied. In general this lecture is a great introduction to some of the ultimate aims of Maslow’s project.

7. Weekend with Maslow

In this weekend workshop, Abraham Maslow lectures on a wide variety of topics related to his ideas on psychology. He looks at the idea of success and goals and tells how he discovered his purpose. He addresses the potential for positive change and the problem of evil from the perspective of his hierachy of needs theory. He talks about values and counter-values, gratitude and entitlement, and many more interesting topics that he had explored throughout his life.

Enjoy this exclusive audio from Abraham Maslow!

If you want a free sampling of some of these audio recordings check out: The Maslow Podcast