Here’s a holiday season deal worth mentioning. The Great Courses (formerly The Teaching Company) is offering every course for $40 in digital format (or $60 in DVD format). The deal lasts through midnight on Black Friday. If you’re not familiar with it, the Great Courses provides a very nice service. They travel across the U.S., recording The Great Courses Offers Every Course for $40 Until Midnight Tonight 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.

FYI: Masterclass is running a Buy One, Share One Free until November 30. Here’s the gist: If you buy an All-Access pass to their 90+ courses, you will receive another All-Access Pass to give to someone else at no additional charge. An All-Access pass costs $180 (or $15 per month), and lasts one year. For that fee, you–and a Masterclass Is Running a “Buy One, Give One Free” Deal (Until November 30) 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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OpdRFuqVjU “For a normal person back in the day,” says LEGO designer/architect Rok Kobe about the Colosseum in Rome, “You had never seen a building that was over a story high. And to be confronted with such an amazing piece of engineering that’s almost 200-meters wide and 50 meters tall, it was unprecedented.” Similarly, any With 9,036 Pieces, the Roman Colosseum Is the Largest Lego Set Ever 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.

Images by Brown Harris Stevens I will tell you how I began to be a writer. I was a reader. —Toni Morrison Those of us who might have grown up harboring literary ambitions may have been humbled and inspired when we first read Toni Morrison. She proves over and again, in novels, essays, and otherwise, Toni Morrison’s 1,200 Volume Personal Library is Going on Sale: Get a Glimpse of the Books on Her Tribeca Condo Shelves 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.

Image by Michael Maggs, via Wikimedia Commons FYI: In 2011, Ward Farnsworth published a two-volume collection called Predator at The Chessboard: A Field Guide To Chess Tactics (Volume 1 – Volume 2) where he explains countless chess tactics in plain English. In this 700-page collection, “there are 20 chapters, about 200 topics within them, and over 1,000 A Free 700-Page Chess Manual Explains 1,000 Chess Tactics in Straightforward English 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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpAowE542Eo You’re most likely to know Mark’s work from the string introduction to REM’s “Shiny Happy People,” but he’s been a staple of the New Orleans recording scene since he moved there in 1982, producing groups like Flat Duo Jets, Glenn Branca, John Scofield, Marianne Faithful, and the Rebirth Brass Band. He and his studio Famed New Orleans Music Producer Mark Bingham Discusses His Songs and Collaborations: A Nakedly Examined Music Conversation (#136) 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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5_8U4j51lI Around the country today, along with a food-coma inducing serving of turkey, ham, stuffing and all the trimmings, a great many of you will be following another tradition: listening to Arlo Guthrie’s 1968 song “Alice’s Restaurant.” According to one YouTuber, when her kids were young, she’d “sit them down together and play this/torture them The Story Behind “Alice’s Restaurant,” Arlo Guthrie’s Song That’s Now a Thanksgiving Tradition 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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erj_mz30SDI “A secret question hovers over us, a sense of disappointment, a broken promise we were given as children about what our adult world was supposed to be like,” the late anthropologist David Graeber once wrote in the Baffler. This refers to “a particular generational promise — given to those who were children in the fifties, A Flying Car Took to the Skies in Back 1949: See the Taylor Aerocar in Action 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 earliest known non-human visual artists, Congo the chimpanzee, learned to draw in 1956 at the age of two. Moody, fiercely protective of his work, and particular about his process, he made around 400 drawings and paintings in a style described as “lyrical abstract impressionism.” He appeared several times on British television before The Beatles Create an Abstract Collaborative Painting, <i>Images of a Woman</i>, During Three Days of Lockdown in Japan (1966) 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.

A quick heads up. From November 23rd through December 31st, you can stream for free all classes offered by Nikon School Online. Normally priced at $15-$50 per course, this 10-course offering covers Fundamentals of Photography, Dynamic Landscape Photography, Macro Photography, Photographing Children and Pets, and more. Finding the courses on the Nikon site is not very Nikon Offers Free Online Photography Courses During the Holidays 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.