Thursday, October 23, 2008

Pieces of history - קטעים בהיסטוריה

קטעים בהיסטוריה is a small Israeli amateur history podcast. There are no more than four episodes out, two of which I have listened to. They are entertaining, informative and lightened up with sound and music effects.

The first episode I listened to was about the Lewis and Clark expedition. This was the better of the two episodes. The host of the show, Yuval Malchi, spent his 50 minutes well on retelling the story. The expedition is also a singular event which bears retelling in one show. The punctuation with musical intersections also adds some cliffhangers and thus add to the entertainment.

A bit less effective was the next installment which took on all of the crusades for one show. This of course spans too much time and reduces what is to be told in 50 minutes to too many facts that are barely related. If Yuval succeeds well, it is only because he has a great narrative talent and again uses the musical interjections as cliffhangers, here and there with a humorous touch even. (I think some of the music was not podsafe, but that is just an aside) He also has the habit of stopping his last sentence before the music in an upturn tone, as if mid-sentence.

The audio-levels bear some improvement, but all in all this is a very pleasant history podcast that deserves to be continued.

Picture: Wikimedia Commons

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