One Useful Thing is a weekly newsletter of well-designed and helpful things.
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If I’ve learned anything publishing this newsletter it’s that our readers love free stuff.
The issue featuring Standard Ebooks’ free, beautifully designed public domain ebooks was insanely popular.
What’s better than free ebooks? How about free movies and ebooks and audio books and college-level courses?
Open Culture is a directory of all those things and more from around the internet, hand-selected by Open Culture editors and it’s absolutely free.
Open Culture’s directory includes links to:
1,150 Free movies including film noir, John Wayne Westerns, Hitchcock, Oscar Winners, documentaries and more.
1,000+ Free Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) from great universities like Yale, Stanford and Oxford University, on topics ranging from Chemistry to Math and Political Science.
Fancy a read?
Open Culture found 30 free essays and stories by David Foster Wallace. And these by Neil Gaiman. And Stephen King. And Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro. Here are over 800 free full length ebooks ranging from literary classics to the golden age of comics. But wait, there’s more!
Seventies Kung Fu movies more your style? Open Culture has you covered with links to Bruce Lee the Invincible and dozens more fist-smashing classics.
In the mood to learn? Here’s a fascinating look at history from Univ. of Houston: Pirates, Smugglers and the Modern World. Turns out governments of the time sort of liked pirates because, you know…money.
And a personal favorite, Monty Python’s Eric Idle breaks down his most iconic characters, including the cowardly Brave Sir Robin from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
It’s a lot, I know. The good news is Open Culture has a free daily email that highlights the best offerings on the website. It’s a great way to discover interesting new things.
If you use an ad blocker there is a popup that requires you to disable it. Annoying, but it’s understandable given the amazing free resources Open Culture curates.
Previously from One Useful Thing: Recomendo: Personal recommendations of cool stuff.
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Keith Monaghan writes the One Useful Thing newsletter and is a researcher who works with creative teams on projects for companies like Nike, The CW Network and Upworthy. He can be reached at useful@keithmonaghan.com or follow him on Twitter @keithmonaghan