Listening ideas for 18 May 2011

Rear Vision
Life after the GFC
The Global Financial Crisis had its roots in the collapse of the US housing bubble, which caused the values of securities tied to US real estate to plummet, in turn threatening the existence of many of the world´s biggest financial institutions. Rear Vision looks at how the aftershocks of the crisis are playing out around the world.
(review, feed)

Radio Lab
Dogs Gone Wild
In this short, a family dog disappears into the woods...and the mystery of what happened to him raises a big question about what it means to be wild.
(review, feed)

Mahabharata Podcast
The Bhisma Parva
Episode 58 - The Battle Books, but not the battle, begin here. Since we are at the second most important beginning of the epic, aside from the very beginning, there is a lot of unnecessary material stuffed into the narrative. I tried my best to make sense of it, and to leave out the voluminous details that had nothing to do with the story at hand. I also tried to iron out the repeated descriptions of the armies' dispositions, and the scene of the two sides lined up prior to battle. This is one of the most difficult episodes I've had to produce, so I hope I was able to make some sense out of it.
(review, feed)


New Books In History
Blair Ruble, “Washington’s U Street: A Biography”
I used to live in Washington DC, not far from a place I learned to call the “U Street Corridor.” I really had no idea why it was a “corridor” (most places in DC are just “streets”) or why a lot of folks seemed to make a big deal out if it.
(review, feed)

New Books in Public Policy
Reuel Marc Gerecht, “The Wave: Man, God, and the Ballot Box in the Middle East”
In his new book The Wave: Man, God, and the Ballot Box in the Middle East (Hoover Institution Press, 2011), Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, looks at the push for democracy in the Middle East and suggests that Americans need to back the democratic impulse, even if it is messy. Gerecht, who is also a former Middle East specialist in the Clandestine Service at the Central Intelligence Agency, recognizes that Americans may not like what Middle Eastern democracy looks like, certainly at first, but – echoing Churchill –he says that it is much better that the alternatives. In our interview, we talked about Iran, the Arabs, Turkey, and how America should deal with it all. Read all about it, and more, in Gerecht’s timely new book.
(review, feed)