Selected listening for 2 February 2011

Kol Hadash
Politics In America
Rabbi Chalom discusses the political climate in America and analyzes the most recent election results.
(review, feed)

Europe from its Origins
Episode 3 AD 500-650
[This is an extended and enhanced version of the episode first published in March 2009]
The Roman Empire continued through the 400s and 500s - at Constantinople.
A sub-Roman order settled on the West, presided over by Theodoricus in Italy, with Goths forming the ruling élite in Spain and Franks that of Gaul. A new Roman emperor, Justinian, launched a great war to reunite the West to Constantinople, which largely succeeded.
But the Black Death and the struggle with the great power of Parthia in the east undermined the Roman state’s hold on Italy, where its allies the Lombards descended and took half of the peninsula. The Goths in Spain and the Franks in Gaul took over Roman territories and underwent a process of political consolidation, forming the kernel of a future European political paradigm that differed from the Roman one.
In 613 the Sassanids launched a massive invasion of the Roman Empire, taking Syria and Egypt. A Great War ensued, in which the Roman Emperor Heraclius was ultimately triumphant.
But both the civilized great powers, Roman and Persian, had exhausted one another. To their south in the deserts of Arabia, their Nemesis was stirring - Islam.
(review, feed)

Radio Open Source
Shiva Balaghi: Egypt in the Spotlight; the US on the Spot
Shiva Balaghi is relaying cellphone news from her friends in Tahrir Square in Cairo. Between calls, so to speak, she is weighing the warnings, heard in Israel and the States, that it could be Iran all over again, Egypt on a road to mullocracy. It’s the sort of suspicion, she’s saying, that could create the scenario that it fears the most. An Iranian-American, born in Nashville, grown up in Tehran, Shiva Balaghi trained as a Middle East historian at the University of Michigan. She’s now a post-doc fellow at Brown, and was one of several stars at the Egypt teach-in on the Brown campus last night.
(review, feed)

Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean
Jesus as Prophet
Here I discuss first-century Judean concepts of the prophet and place Jesus within the context of other contemporary figures who were viewed as prophets. This is part of series 5 (The Historical Jesus in Context) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.
(review, feed)

The 1953 North Sea Flood - Witness

I assume that outside the Netherlands and possibly the UK, the 1953 North Sea Flood is hardly known. The BBC Program Witness had an issue about this flood on 31 January, the 57th anniversary of this natural disaster. (feed)

A combination of spring tide and a severe storm swept the seas to a level that was too much for the coastal defenses in England, Belgium, France, Denmark and most notably in the Netherlands. As the waves got past them and swept over the lands in the dark winter night. Many homes and farmlands were destroyed and numerous cattle as well as around 2400 people died, over 1800 of them in The Netherlands. In Witness one hears a Dutch survivor of the flood retell her experiences fleeing from the tides and spending over 24 hours on a rooftop awaiting rescue and many consecutive months until repatriation to their patch of land.

More Witness:
Raking up Roswell,
Silent Spring,
Oslo Accords,
Witness BBC.