Cultural Criticism Free Audio & Video

Techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci encourages us to think about the consequences of highly personalized artificial intelligence in disseminating information on the Internet from popular sites like Google, YouTube, Facebook, and others.

The Silent Scream is a 1984 anti-abortion educational film directed by Jack Duane Dabner and narrated by Bernard Nathanson, an obstetrician, NARAL Pro-Choice America founder, and abortion provider turned pro-life activist, and produced in partnership with the National Right to Life Committee.

In this free half-hour talk delivered for the Authors@Google program, Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, reads an excerpt from her bestselling book which gives a background to the quest she undertook to Italy, India, and Bali, to explore her competing urges for earthly delights and divine transcendence.

Written in 1784, "Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?" is one of philosopher Immanuel Kant's most influential and famous essays.

Novelist Chimamanda Adichie talks about the danger of only knowing a single story about a particular culture and relates it to events that have happened throughout her life.

Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, discusses some of the observations he makes in his book in this talk from the TED conference.

In this talk at TEDGlobal philosopher Alain de Botton looks at the contemporary notion of success and why he feels it is such a source of anxiety for so many people.

Listen to Alexis de Tocqueville's great work of political philosophy and history Democracy in America. Published in two volumes (in 1835 and 1840 respectively), the French political thinker Tocqueville wrote about America as a social scientist after his travels there...

In this 30-minute interview from UCTV, Dr. Robert Lustig presents some of the ideas in his book The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains.

In this superb follow up to his Frontline documentary The Merchants of Cool, Frontline filmmaker Douglas Rushkoff tries to figure out what is happening at the intersection of teens and corporate marketing in this new digital age.