A Podcast Playlist for 28 July 2011 (2)

Engines Of Our Ingenuity
What Did The Ancients Eat?
Episode: 1783 What did the ancients eat?
(review, feed)

Scientific American Podcast
Nobel Laureate Avram Hershko: The Orchestra In The Cell
Nobel Laureate Avram Hershko, who determined cellular mechanisms for breaking down proteins, talks about his research in a conversation recorded at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau, Germany. And Scientific American editor-in-chief Mariette DiChristina discusses the recent inaugural Google Science Fair.
(review, feed)

Het Marathoninterview
van Kooten en de Bie
Onlangs op een postzegel en in het najaar op TV: in een driedelige documentaireserie over wat begon als Klisjeemannetjes. Van Kooten en De Bie praten dan met Coen Verbraak. Op de radio werden ze al in januari 2004 drie uren lang door Arend Jan Heerma van Voss over geluk en gewoon en vroeger en schuifdeuren bevraagd.
(review, feed)

But thinking makes it so - Bloom on TED

I was about to propose today's TED Talks as a listening tip, when I just could not stop watching and found us a real gem: The origins of pleasure - Paul Bloom
(feed)Bloom's talk kicks off by showing how pleasure works for us. By extension, but noted in passing rather, for pain goes the same. It is not enough to say: It is all in the mind, because it is very real. So watch and as a bonus, Bloom is also very entertaining. Want more Bloom? Check Yale - see below.



More Paul Bloom:
Psychology course at Yale

More TED:
David Christian: Big History,
Naomi Klein: Addicted to risk,
Rise of women, fall of men - inequality again,
Rory Sutherland,
Dimitar Sasselov,

A Podcast Playlist for 28 July 2011 (1)

Africa Past & Present
Episode 54: Political Biography
Heather Hughes (University of Lincoln) on her new biography of John Langalibalele Dube, founding president of the African National Congress of South Africa, which celebrates its centenary in 2012. Hughes focuses on Dube’s rich connections to the United States; his educational work and political beliefs; and the previously overlooked role of Nokutela Dube.
(review, feed)

Thinking Allowed
Martha Nussbaum
Is there a better way to judge the development of a country than to measure its GDP? The philosopher Martha Nussbaum tells Laurie about her 'human capabilities' approach.
(review, feed)

Leonard Lopate Show
Theodor Fontane’s Effi Briest and Irretrievable
This summer’s first Underappreciated segment is on 19th-century Realist writer Theodor Fontane. Professor Edith H. Krause, Professor of German and Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Duquesnes University, discusses Fontane’s best known works—his 1896 novel Effi Briest, considered a masterpiece of realist fiction alongside Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, and his 1892 novel Irretrievable, which was recently re-published by New York Review of Books.
(review, feed)

History According to Bob
History of Tea Drinking Part 3
This show is part3 of 3 on the History of Tea Drinking.
(review, feed)

SALT - Seminars About Long Term Thinking
Geoffrey B. West
Why Cities Keep on Growing, Corporations Always Die, and Life Gets Faster
(review, feed)

Logan on Language - Big Ideas (TVO)

Finally I have regained some time and on-line connection to write a little more on the blog. I would like to take the opportunity to dig through a long list of podcasts I listened to in the past months and give them short reviews as yet.


The first I bump into, was relatively recently on my playlist. An issue from Big Ideas (TVO). They rerun a short lecture from 2002: Robert K. Logan on The Origin and Evolution of Language. In this lecture Logan not only explains how, in his view, language evolved, but also how it continues to evolve and affects human evolution until this day. In this respect he treats the internet also as 'language', which sounds more confusing than it pans out in the lecture. The basic tenet is that humanity has been able to progress dramatically every time it improved the efficacy and abstract quality of its communications. (feed)

The result is a stimulating and thought-provoking lecture. The only drawback is that the lecture is too short (24 minutes) to dig deep enough and with the amount of mental leaps Logan presents, I got to feel rather uncomfortable and unconvinced. It all seemed a bit too simplified. An example of such is to explain the progress of the West in comparison with China from the alphabet, which is more abstract and reductional than the Chinese character-based script. Really? That takes more than a claim, that needs quite a lengthy argument.

More Big Ideas:
Meaning Systems
The Elegance of the Hedgehog,
Age of Unequals,
Dan Dennett: what should replace religion?,
Chris Hedges.