Sunday, October 28, 2007

Patrick Hunt on Hannibal (and more)

I have already reviewed a singular lecture Patrick Hunt gave on Hannibal's journey across the Alps. I have had some feedback from Stanford, boiling down to a rejection of my criticism how difficult it is to find their audio content. Too bad for them. By now I have found they are not the only one. More universities have given a monopoly to iTunes U and I fail to see how you could get those podcasts through other channels than iTunes.

Stanford makes it worse by not syndicating the content. If only one could extract the RSS url, one could bypass the iTunes bother and subscribe wherever one wants. Again, this is too bad for Stanford, but it is also too bad for the listeners and for exceptionally outstanding lecturers such as Tom Sheehan and the already mentioned Patrick Hunt. His Hannibal lecture was a true jewel and it turns out that Stanford has begun publishing a series where Hunt delves into his analysis in seven or more lectures of 90 minutes. EDIT: this situation has changed. Stanford has now syndicated its audio.

When I wrote about the singular lecture, I forwarded the link to Hunt and he replied by having me send his book: Ten discoveries that rewrote history. Yesterday I received that book (after my 95 year old neighbor had been hogging it for god knows how long). Soon I will write about that. Thank you very much Patrick.

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