History of Marriage - Wise Counsel

Wise Counsel is a psychology podcast in which Dr. David van Nuys interviews a wide variety of researchers and practitionners in the world of psychology and pyschotherapy. The sponsor of the podcast is Mentalhelp.net a website about mental health education and research. As such the podcast serves as high quality audio content on the web.

The latest edition consists of an interview with Kristin Celello about the history of Marriage. Celello is an exceptional guest on the program since she is a historian and not a psychologisty or psychiatrist. However, her research on marriage, divorce and the emergence of marriage counseling makes her befitting the podcast. Marriage counseling has been
the subject before (Marriage maintenance) and the historical perspective brings a refreshing perspective with new insights.

I recommend anybody who wants to hear Celello, also to listen to her appearance on another interview podcast: New Books in History. Celello's research shows how the definitions of marriage, success in marriage and proper marriage counseling have developed and consequently resulted in shifts within the phenomena of divorce, marriage advice in media and the profession of marriage counselor.

More:
Kristin Celello and others New Books in History,
Self-help with PTSD on Wise Counsel,
Wise Counsel - psychology podcast review,
Irvin Yalom on Wise Counsel,
Getting together and staying together (Wise Counsel).

The nightmare of lice - a history of pandemics

The series עושים היסטוריה! עם רן לוי (Making History with Ran Levi) had yet another excellent edition. For a moment I thought Ran Levi had surpassed his regular level of humorous remarks, by calling the podcast episode about pandemics 'The greatest nightmare of lice'. Like it is bad news for lice when mankind is struck by a lethal pandemic.

Obviously he relates the history of the Black Plague. Interestingly, this podcast came out in the same week cases of plague were reported from Lybia. This germ is not dead yet. Nowadays we know better how to deal with it, but at the time it did in a huge proportion of the early urbanized Europe of the Middle Ages. And so we move on to virus.

Based on sheer numbers, the Spanish Flu of 1919 was more lethal than the Black Plague, yet the Black Plague is engraved in our minds as the pinnacle of pandemics. More so also than Typhus and this is where the louse's nightmare kicks in. Typhus is conveyed by lice and before it hits man, it kills the louse. Even if this undermines a bit of the wit, the narration is excellent as usual. A perfect podcast.

More Making History with Ran Levi:
Surviving the atom bomb,
Robert Heinlein,
Diamond Rain and other phenomena,
Blood,
Myths and pseudo-knowledge.