The wonderful open mind of Shrink Rap Radio

For a podcast to be successful, one would expect the makers to somehow connect to the main stream. On the other hand, if they won't, then consistently anchoring in a certain niche may be the right thing. What is great and also courageous of Shrinkrapradio, the best Psychology Podcast in my humble opinion, is that it does neither. In Shrinkrapradio there is a place for content that represents main stream psychology as well as whatever catches the eye of host David van Nuys, even if it is rather inaccessible and on the fringes of the field.

The latest issue of Shrinkrapradio is an example of such. In Confronting Death, Dr. Dave speaks with Steven Shaps about dealing with death and accepting death in life. Apart from having death as a subject, tough by nature, the guest Steven Shaps is not easy to be listening to for the regular audience. His dreamy voice, his intuitive speech, long sentences and rather general statements make for tough listening. I think this is a very good episode (well done, Dr. Dave!), but one that takes considerable effort to take in.

Another example is Undoing the Ego. Nouk Sanchez, and her collaborator, Tomas Vieira, explain their world view and the therapy they have developed. The views are far away from common sense, fundamentally, as they regard reality, the real world as common sense holds it, to be a dream. Consequently, it is not so easy to bear with them as they explain their views on love, miracles and the proper way to conduct life. Again this is an interesting and engaging episode and I have enormous respect for Dr. Dave to pull this one off, but one needs to be prepared for the content, lest this seems totally wasted listening.

More Shrinkrapradio on this blog:
Process Work,
Authoritarianism,
Leadership and AI,
Dysfunctional personalities in the workplace,
Adventure Therapy

More Steven Shaps: Wise Counsel.

The Charge of the Light Brigade - IOT

The Crimean war was fought between Russia on one side and an alliance on the other side with among others the Turks and the Brits. Most of the fighting took place on the Crimean peninsula and this was where the British experience their historic Charge of the Light Brigade, October 25th 1854. BBC's In Our Time had the Charge of the Light Brigade as its subject in the last show.

Melvyn Bragg, more stubbornly than in other shows where a historic event was discussed, put in a huge effort to get all the facts straight of how the charge went, who were involved and so on. Only when we have the complete picture on the table, we make a move on to how this event was received back in England.

It was received pretty quickly and rather effectively as the Times had a reporter on the scene of the war and there was no censorship - yet. Even though the war was won, this particular scrimmage was lost and took on a huge meaning as it was perceived as exemplary of what was wrong with how the war was fought, how the army was organized and in a way, how England was organized and developing from an aristocratic power into a modern industrialized liberal democracy. Lord Tennyson writes a famous poem about the charge and its effects are lasting, not on England alone.

More In Our Time
Albert Camus,
The Nicene Creed,
Four humor medicine,
The Sassanian Empire,
Mutations.