Thursday, June 23, 2011

Today in Podcast - 23 June 2011

New Books In History
Christopher Krebs, “A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus’s Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich”
Beginning about half a millennium ago, people began to say all kinds of wrongheaded things about Tacitus’s thin volume: that Tacitus was writing about “Germans” (he wasn’t); that he knew a lot about “Germans” (he didn’t); that he uniformly praised “Germans” (nope); that the traits he ascribes to “Germans” can be found among modern German-speakers (wrong again).
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Mahabharata Podcast
Kurukshetra, Day 1: Concluded
Episode 62 - Let's admit it, we were all impatient for this war to get started. Like the characters in the story, we concluded many episodes back that there was never going to be a peaceful solution, and it would take nothing less than a massive bloodletting to make sure the bad guys were punished and the good guys got their rightful honors.
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Witness
Fermat's Last Theorem
Solving the problem that had intrigued mathematicians for centuries.
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In Our Time
Malthusianism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the ideas of Thomas Malthus, the Victorian clergyman whose work, 'An Essay on the Principle of Population', forecast that soon the population would outstrip food supply. His philosophy regarding population became known as 'Malthusianism'. But was there any truth in his predictions and what impact did his essay have at the time? Melvyn is joined by Karen O’Brien, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education at the University of Birmingham; Mark Philp, Lecturer in Politics at the University of Oxford; and Emma Griffin, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of East Anglia.
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