Break update for 2012

Also in 2012 I will be on a prolonged break for the blog. 2011 has been a very busy year, simply too busy to engage in blogging. What has contributed to that, among others, is the fact that I have changed jobs twice. However, I have not stopped listening to podcasts and so let's have a couple of recommendations from my playlists.

The first is In Our Time, which has started a five part series about the human invention of writing and how writing and its innovations have had a fundamental impact on human history. Subscribe to In Our Time's feed and look for the episodes about The Written World.

The second is a sub-series in the China History Podcast which has been going on for 7 episodes already and is still running. Laszlo Montgomery is telling us the biography of Deng Xiaoping and this is the best introduction to recent Chinese history I have had in a long time. (feed)