Heads-up for 6 September 2010

Ideas (CBC Radio)
Beauty Will Save the World
While imprisoned in the Soviet gulag, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn would compose speeches expressing the cruelty he suffered. However in 1970, upon receiving the Nobel Prize he simply said: "Beauty Will Save the World!" CBC producer Frank Faulk explores this provocative statement.
(review, feed)

Het Marathon Interview
Harry Kuitert
Er moet toch Iets zijn… Ethicus en theoloog Kuitert dacht na over de mens, het geloof, de kerk en het ietsisme. Daarmee opende de zomerreeks van het Marathoninterview in 1993. Piekeraar Ger Jochems sprak met Harry Kuitert.
(review, feed)

SFFaudio Podcast
The SFFaudio Podcast #074 - Jesse and Scott talk about the recently arrived audiobooks with assistance and commentary by Luke Burrage
(review, feed)

EconTalk
Kling on Knowledge, Power, and Unchecked and Unbalanced
Arnold Kling of EconLog and author of Unchecked and Unbalanced, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the book and the relationship between knowledge and power. In a modern economy, specialization has increased and knowledge is increasingly dispersed. But political power has become more concentrated and fails to exploit the potential for decentralization. Kling discusses these trends and the potential for decentralization of power under different policies.
(review, feed)

What is the Stars - RTE podcast

RTE, the Irish national broadcaster has a short weekly radio program that superficially looks like an astrology item. However, it is a short monologue by astronomer Frances McCarthy who points out a tidbit of astronomy and the history of astronomy.

The title of the item 'What is the Stars' has me puzzled a bit. It looks like a sentence missing something or mixing singular with plural. I guess I first read it as: What is in the stars, to make the astrology connection. Considering the charmingly done serious content, I wonder why it was not What are the stars or even What is it with the stars. (feed)

What is it with this name?

History of Japan - Cameron Foster

In the past weeks I have found a number of podcasts addressing the history of a certain nation state. Consequently I gave them a short review and thus we have had, in short succession been reading about the histories of Korea, China and Pakistan. Today we follow up with Japan.

A Short History of Japan is an amateur podcast by Cameron Foster. If you click through to the website, you will see a message that this podcast has run out of bandwidth. That was the case in August and I have been waiting until the beginning of September to be able to begin downloading. Under these circumstance the bandwidth may run out again and so I would advise you to grab the issues before the connection is used up. (feed)

I have begun this series with the first episode Myths and Migrations which digs into the origins of Japanese history. Foster works with the legends around Japan's origins and its mythical first emperor and tries to make as much hard history facts from them as possible. This may sound rather tentative, but it turns into a very entertaining and informative chapter. It surely wets my taste for more.