Christopher Hitchens

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Hitchens

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Hitch

Freedom.

Audio stripped from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yr5OLePNlI

The End ~Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens delivers an anthem for free speech

Christopher Hitchens On Free Speech

"Try and live your life as if you were a Free Person, that you didn't have to wonder what anyone else's opinion was; that you should take the risk of believing that if you were the only person who thinks what you think, that that still might well mean that you were right." - Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens - The Courage to Believe in Yourself

A rare 1929 recording by the Dominion Gramophone Company. Background and story here: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/02/13/a-a-milne-reads-winie-the-pooh-1929/

A.A. Milne reads from Winnie-the-Pooh, 1929

Why Christianity Is Impossible To Believe - Christopher Hitchens

Ten Commandments - Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens sits down with Salman Rushdie to discuss Hitchens’ searing memoir, Hitch 22, that lays bare the many contradictions in his life and affirms his conviction that all personal is also political. This was recorded June 8, 2010 at 92nd Street Y.

Christopher Hitchens with Salman Rushdie: 92Y Talks Podcast Episode 3

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PN5JJDh78I

This excerpt from A Pale Blue Dot was inspired by an image taken, at Carl Sagan's suggestion, by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pale_Blue_Dot.png). As the spacecraft left our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system, engineers turned it around for one last look at its home planet. Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size.

Music: Ludovico Einaudi with a track titled, very fittingly, "The Earth Prelude"

For more, visit www.sagantime.com

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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

-- Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

Carl Sagan - You Are Here (Pale Blue Dot) [Sagan Time]

Recorded January 30, 2008 at 92nd Street Y

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and Christopher Hitchens: Does God Exist? | 92Y Talks

Audiobook excerpt from The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice 

"A religious fundamentalist, a political operative, a primitive sermonizer, and an accomplice of worldly secular powers. Her mission has always been of this kind. The irony is that she has never been able to induce anybody to believe her. It is past time that she was duly honored and taken at her word."

Among his many books, perhaps none have sparked more outrage than THE MISSIONARY POSITION, Christopher Hitchens's meticulous study of the life and deeds of Mother Teresa. 

A Nobel Peace Prize recipient beatified by the Catholic Church in 2003, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was celebrated by heads of state and adored by millions for her work on behalf of the poor. In his measured critique, Hitchens asks only that Mother Teresa's reputation be judged by her actions-not the other way around.

With characteristic élan and rhetorical dexterity, Hitchens eviscerates the fawning cult of Teresa, recasting the Albanian missionary as a spurious, despotic, and megalomaniacal operative of the wealthy who long opposed measures to end poverty, and fraternized, for financial gain, with tyrants and white-collar criminals throughout the world.

Available now on CD and as a digital download in from Hachette Audio, and as an eBook and in print from Twelve Books. 

http://twelvebooks.com/catalog/this-season-spring-2012/christopher-hitchens-reissues/

THE MISSIONARY POSITION by Christopher Hitchens, read by Simon Prebble - Audiobook Excerpt

Christopher Hitchens speaks on “Crucibles: Past and Present” followed by a conversation with PEN World Voices Festival Chair, Salman Rushdie. Hitchens replaces Sherman Alexie who was previously scheduled.

Christopher Hitchens Freedom to Write Lecture

Background: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/08/08/carl-sagan-message-to-mars/

Carl Sagan's message for Mars

An extract from the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl, including the 5 'missing pages' discovered by the Anne Frank Foundation in 2001. Insightfully read by the actress Helena Bonham Carter. 

The book is now also available digitally, watch the app trailer here: po.st/hTXSEh 

In Amsterdam, in the summer of 1942, the Nazis forced teenager Anne Frank and her family into hiding. For over two years, they, another family and a German dentist lived in a 'secret annexe', fearing discovery. All that time, Anne kept a diary.

An intimate record of tension and struggle, adolescence and confinement, anger and heartbreak, Anne Frank's diary is one of those unique documents, famed throughout the world.It portrays innocence and humanity, suffering and survival in the starkest and most moving terms.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (Saturday, 20th June 1942) read by Helena Bonham Carter

The Real King's Speech: Empire Broadcast Message by George VI September 3rd 1939.

The Real King's Speech - Episode 1

This is Hitchens' Introduction to his book, the Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever read out to you in all its majesty. Enjoy.

Christopher Hitchens On Free Speech

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