Always recommended: New Books in History

The weekly interviews on New Books in History will always draw my attention and it is extremely rare I do not listen until the end. This is the most valuable history podcast and it should be able to offer something for literally everybody. In addition, for those who take a closer look, there are some grander themes that can be picked up by combining several of the issues. A lot can be learned about Jewish history, about the history of the Cold War, World War II, World War I, American History and the history of Fascism/Nazism to name some recurring themes on top of my head. (feed)

Three recent episodes I especially liked are:
Jerry Muller, “Capitalism and the Jews”
In the Jewish theme and carefully discussing the actual and alleged ties of Jews and Judaism to both Capitalism and Socialism.

Ruth Harris, “Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century”
Look also at other podcast about the Dreyfuss affair and then listen how Ruth Harris adds new perspective. As Marshal Poe says in this interview: history is never definitively written.

Heather Cox Richardson, “Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre”
The traditional last question in an NBIH interview is: what is your next project and it serves to know ahead of time what Richardson's next project will be: a history of the Republican party. Then listen to her analysis of the defeat of the Indians in the US. Party politics does not feature in the title in vain, though it took me some time to figure out its importance.

More NBIH:
The best varied history podcast,
The Caucasus,
The genocide and the trial,
Nation and Culture,
Three New Books In History.

VPRO's Marathon Interview

Het is een produktie die past bij de zomer. In podcast brengt de VPRO de oude marathon interviews uit. Dat gebeurt al tijden overigens, maar de levering geschiedt onregelmatig en vandaar deze post. In de afgelopen maand is er een grote lading interviews geherpubliceerd, waarvan ik menigeen al van een recensie heb voorzien. (feed)

Dit zijn ze:
Rijk de Gooijer
Jan Leijten
Louis Th. Lehmann
Abram de Swaan
Jan Blokker
Remco Campert
Martin Simek

Meer Het Marathon Interview:
Hans Galjaard,
Bert ter Schegget,
Lea Dasberg,
Rudi Kross,
Ina Muller van Ast,
Jan Wolkers.

Watch a World Cup stream with foreign IP

Besides being busy with a lot of serious stuff, I am also kept away from podcasts because of the World Cup. This is even a bit of a quest, as I love to watch football with Dutch commentary and I am stuck with Israeli TV. The Dutch national broadcaster offers live streams, but they are open to Dutch IP's only. So, I am shut out with my foreign IP. But there is a solution.

I found out that at Eurovision Sports, one can see the national broadcasts of the World Cup from some 36 European television stations - among them the Dutch. If you go to the Eurovisionsports site, you will get the game without commentary - which is also not bad, especially if internet traffic is heavy, as this stream is the most robust. In the sidebar you can click channels (1-12, 13-14 and 25-36) and choose your preferred broadcaster. Once you do, you get to enjoy the entire football broadcast from that station just as you would with a national IP on their own site.

Apart from the Dutch channels (Netherlands, Belgium), there are channels in French, German, English and many other languages.

Irish History Podcast

Here is a new podcast that is off to a promising start. The Irish History Podcast started a couple of months ago and has produced two fascinating episodes so far (feed). It has paid some attention to the earliest known inhabitants of Ireland - those barbarians the Greeks and Romans referred to. And it has begun a series about the Vikings.

When I was listening to this podcast I was reminded of the beginning of the Celtic Myth Podshow. This series kicked off two years earlier. It vividly retells Celtic myths and at the time started with the Irish myths. These Irish tales contained a lot of coming into existence and historized narrative. At the time I would have loved the CMP to compare the myths to history. And in exactly the same way, I was hoping, and am still hoping, the Irish History Podcast will take on Irish tales and address them as some kind of source for the earliest history of Ireland, or at least as a viable source to compare with what regular history makes of Irish history.

Maybe this is to come when the podcast reaches the middle ages, when most of those old tales were written down or to the later ages when Celtic culture was rediscovered as the roots of many from the British Isles. In any case, no history can go without historiography and the construction of histories, the imagined history if not as the actual history than as the cultural history. Yet, even without that, the Irish History podcast is a welcome addition to the world of history podcasts especially since it addresses a realm that nobody else pays that kind of attention to.

Reith Lectures 2010 (2)

Here is a quick heads up. The second lecture in the Reith Lecture series came out. Download it before the BBC takes it off line.

Martin Rees speaks of the challenges to science in the modern era. This lecture is aptly titled: Surviving the century.

Astronomer Royal Martin Rees explores the challenges facing science in the 21st century. Can we survive this century or will we destroy ourselves through bio-error or bio-terror? Professor Rees looks at the problems and explores some of the solutions science can provide.

Previously about the Reith Lectures 2010:
Reith Lectures 2010.

About the Reith Lectures in 2009:
A new politics of the common good,
The bioethics concern,
Morality in Politics,
Morality and the Market.

The usual suspects

Another weekend has passed. I am too busy to write extensive reviews, but here is a list of podcast whose newest episodes I listened to:

History 1c (UCLA)
New Books In History
Veertien Achttien
Volkis Stimme
Norman Centuries
In Our Time (BBC)
A History Of the World in a 100 objects (BBC)
Russian Rulers Podcast
Binge Thinking History

History of Jerusalem - UCLA

UCLA offers a course Jerusalem: The Holy City: A History of Jerusalem from Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel which initially had an audio feed, but that was discarded which left us with just the video feed.

There is a lot wrong with this way the course is offered. The sound of the video is poor, the camera is static so there is not much of a gain in seeing the lecturer (Professor Robert Cargill) and also the view on the screen with his slides is rather poor. What one might gain in seeing a bit of the slides is traded for the general drawbacks of vodcast: the files are big, the download takes a lot of time (and often fails), the material takes a lot of space and many players do not support the format.

Still, all you needed to know about the Middle-East in a 3000 year span nut shell is offered in this course. It shows how Jerusalem takes on huge meaning for everyone involved in spite of its poor military and economic weight. More than anything this course shows how politics and the course of history can be dominated by our constructions of holiness alone.

Kai Bird - Radio Open Source

Radio Open Source had a most fascinating conversation with Kai Bird, which I highly recommend. (feed) Before you go and listen it would be useful to know (what is left implicit on the show) that he is the son of a US foreign service employee and as a result of that spent most of his youth abroad. Among places such as Cairo and Beirut, he grew up in East Jerusalem and as such he experienced the Arab-Israeli conflict from nearby. He has written a book about it: Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978.

What I like especially in this show is that the Arab Israeli conflict was discussed with criticism, but without the righteousness that is so common when the subject comes up. I was especially pleased by that as I feel that this sense of righteousness, whether it lives on either side of the conflict or within the rest of the world has a devastating effect on the conflict. It somehow feeds the extremists on both sides, it compels more propaganda war and media attention that is also drawn to the outspoken.

The lesson Bird wants to teach with his book is that Jews and Arabs can and should be able to peacefully live together in one land. Among others, he gets his inspiration from an old zionist from the nationalist, revisionist flank: Hillel Kook. This came as a surprise to me as Kook stems from the same roots as the less peaceful political stream in current Israel.

More Open Source:
Amartya Sen on India,
Mustafa Barghouti,
Jackson Lears,
Two communities in one region,
We want Obama.

399 podcasts reviewed on Anne is a Man

Here is just a quick post to point you to the updated podcast list. We now have 399 podcasts reviewed. There are over 1600 posts on the blog.

This month I switched to the new design (how do you like it), which is tremendously flexible - I will be able to play with background pictures and color schemes without messing anything up and I may be doing that just for the fun of it. Be prepared to not always find this light blue atmosphere.

For example it might turn orange if my craze for the Dutch national football team gets the better of me, during the coming World Cup. For readers of Dutch, you might want to read at my World Cup blog at Gezond WK. For the not so versatile in Dutch, there are quite a number of embedded videos with footballing scenes, which you might like.

New podcasts in May 2010 - Anne is a Man

In the past month, I have reviewed eight podcasts for the first time, four history podcasts, two philosophy podcasts and two podcasts about football (soccer).

Center for Jewish Studies Podcast (Duke) (review, site, feed)
The audio that sits in the feed reflects the sessions of a conference that was held at the center on the subject of Archaeology, Politics and the Media.

Ancient Rome Refocused (review, site, feed)
An excellent new history podcast. It is not just about Roman history, which is grippingly narrated, but it is also about contemporary parallels.

Romanticism (Open University) (review, site, feed)
Six useful audio essays delineating critical aspects of nineteenth century Romanticism.

Russian Rulers History Podcast (review, site, feed)
The history of Russia, told by means of going through its rulers successively.

Heidegger (review, site, feed)
Lecture series on Heidegger by J. Drabinski.

Reith Lectures 2010 (BBC) (review, site, feed)
Lecture series by Martin Reese about challenges to science in the modern world.

World Cup Buzz (review, site, feed)
Football podcast, dedicated to this summer's World Cup.

Total Footbal Soccer Show (review, site, feed)
Soccer show that among others relates to World Cup 2010.


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