Heads-up for 8 December 2010

Forgotten Classics
Genesis, chapters 8-9
In which Noah and family leave the ark and God promises rainbows.
(review, feed)

Rear Vision
Irish lament
Ireland's turbocharged transformation from rural poverty to global affluence overshot the mark and now the British and German banks that funded the building boom want their money back. Rear Vision looks at what went wrong.
(review, feed)

Witness
John Lennon
Two days before he was killed outside his New York apartment, John Lennon spent several hours talking to a young BBC music journalist. Andy Peebles remembers that interview.
(review, feed)

KMTT - The Torah Podcast
Parshat Vayigash
By Rav Alex Israel - Joseph's Economics
(review, feed)

History, Holocaust and Human Rights

The great history lecture series in Berkeley History 5 (feed) has ended this week. As usual it has been a delight in history teaching. Never listened to History 5? Go and try.

Here I would like to add some information to Lecture 26 which deals with the Holocaust and its aftermath. Professor Thomas Laqueur pays less attention to the size and methods of the Holocaust, but rather emphasizes the reception of it. How got it to be treated as not just another massacre? He talks of the trials and of the conception of the term genocide.

He also refers to a broader course he teaches, which is about the history of human rights. It just so happens that this course can be had on podcast: Letters and Science 140D (feed), The history and practice of human rights. This is a very intensive course which needs, in my experience, closer listening than History 5, but once you dedicate the attention is all the more worth it.

More History 5:
The fall of democracies,
Lecture mix up,
5 Podcasts I listened to when I was away from the blog,
Berkeley History 5 by Thomas Laqueur 2010.