The playlist these days

While I have virtually stopped blogging about podcasts, I am still listening. There are a couple of podcasts I keep following and here is a list.

The Early Middle Ages - Yale course. (iTunesU)
I have done this course before, but I was caught by it again. The reason I pick up certain history podcasts is because I want to wrap my mind around something. The point that was brought to my attention first by Europe from its origins is that the Roman Empire did not 'fall' in 476. Even if that was clear to anyone who was aware that it proceeded as the Byzantine Empire, which finally fell in 1453, an additional point is how Western Europe kept on developing at the hand of the Church, not being the Roman Empire, but also, in many ways as a continuation of it in its own way. The overall question being, how much western society can be coherently taken as one culture and as such be regarded as Roman.

A new podcast I have taken up is The History of World War II by Ray Harris. This is an amateur podcast which takes on the vast and unwieldy task of telling the entire history of WW2, which professionals do not begin to tackle. The result is very interesting shedding light on some less familiar parts such as Mussolini's rise in Italy. It pays ample attention to the nuts and bolts of the military campaigns in the war, which have to be to your liking of course. (feed)

Other podcasts I stick with are The China History podcast - which just finished a series about the history of Hong Kong (feed) - and David Crowther's History of England (feed). Needless to say, I also persist in listening to each week's issue of BBC's In Our Time (feed).

Apart from having a writer's block (I feel I am repeating myself on the blog and cannot bring myself to continue repeating), I also find that with the latest upgrade of iTunes, a crucial feature has been removed: the advanced subscribing to podcasts. That seems like a minor change, but I find it has great meaning and implication and first of all renders irrelevant almost all of the feed links I have been posting over the past years - 2000+ posts hurt, ouch!

I would like to revive this blog. I love to write about audio on the web, but I have to find a new way of doing it. Feel free to drop suggestions. In the mean time, I'll be silent, but there will be another guest post by Saeed coming up and maybe I'll give in to a rant about iTunes.

Reith Lectures 2012 - BBC Podcast

Here is a quick heads up to announce that the Reith lectures Podcast has begun publishing the lecture series that was held about a month ago. Speaker is historian Niall Ferguson and the series title is The Rule of Law and Its Enemies. (feed)

This title is rather reminiscent of Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) in which he pointed at Fascism and Communism as the ideologies that held the greatest threat to society. Underlying these ideologies were theories that, in Popper's view, had the kind of tendency towards totalitarianism that brought these ideologies about and what similar dangerous ideologies could emerge.

In 2012 such discourse is not taken to ideologies, as is to be expected. Ferguson takes a look at the institutions and their role in society. But the question is still the same: what helps and what threatens the kind of nation we would like to live in?

Reith Lectures 2011:
Reith Lectures 2011.

Reith Lectures 2010:
Reith Lectures 2010 (2),
Reith Lectures 2010.

Reith Lectures in 2009:
A new politics of the common good,
The bioethics concern,
Morality in Politics,
Morality and the Market.

Shakespeare’s Restless World

When the excellent BBC history podcast History of the World in 100 Objects arrived at its 100th episode and discussed the 100th object, sadly, this series had to end. (feed) Sadly, because with Neil MacGregor discussing history by analyzing an object from the British Museum or any other museum, the BBC had found a formula for radio and podcast that could be applied to much more than just a 100 pieces. A new subject had to be found for Neil MacGregor to tackle with the help of Museum collections, and fortunately a new subject has been found and a very promising new series has started.

Shakespeare's Restless World has Neil MacGregor discuss the history of Shakespeare's time, by looking at objects from its period and, as with the previous series, calling in various specialists to add their knowledge to the podcast (feed). Just as the previous series, these programs are carefully edited and delivered in comprehensive 14 minute episodes. An additional feature is that the series not only looks at an object, but also has quotations from Shakespeare's work to illustrate the subject at hand. Also, as an improvement on the previous series, the object is pictured in the podcast logo of the episode, so if you have a player that displays the logo while you listen, you can even take a glance at the prop that is being discussed. The podcast is published every workday. Considering that it is not called, Shakespeare in 54 objects or some such numbered title, the makers have not limited themselves from the start to a particular length.

So far, we have had five issues published, four of which I have already heard. I especially liked 'Snacking through Shakespeare' that taught me what were the 16th centuries equivalent of a box of popcorn and a can of soda. In other words: what did people eat while they attended the theater in Shakespeare's time. I was surprised by how accurate this question could be answered and how varied the menu was. Next time you try to silently open your can in the theater and dread the fizzy noise, know that in the 16th century, you'd be in the same spot, but in stead of a can with a fizzy soft drink, you'd pop a bottle of fizzy ale.

More:
A reminder of the great BBC podcasts,
AHOW is back again,

Returned from hiatus: A History of the World in 100 Objects,

Indus Seal,

First AHOW Review.

In Our Time archive

How long has this been going on? I do not know since when, but this morning I suddenly noticed that the BBC has opened up the entire In Our Time archive for podcast.

I used to write that one should always download the In Our Time podcasts and keep for ever. The BBC used to keep only the last episode in the feed. In case one had not kept the episode, the only option to listen was to go to the on-line archive and listen while streaming. While that has become less and less of a bother with WiFi all around and capable smartphones, it still was a pity you had no option. All of this now belongs to the past; the archive is also available for download and one can lay ones hands on any chapter ever.

The archive has been broken down in five subject feeds:
In Our Time Archive - Culture, (IOT Culture feed)
In Our Time Archive - History, (IOT History feed)
In Our Time Archive - Philosophy, (IOT Philosophy feed)
In Our Time Archive - Religion, (IOT Religion feed)
In Our Time Archive - Science, (IOT Science feed)

I immediately tried the history archive in order to find an issue from 2006, that I remembered as especially informative and the copy of which I had long lost: The Diet of Worms - which has nothing to do with food, in case you wondered. The Diet was an imperial assembly held in the German city of Worms and this program was about the one in 1522, during which Martin Luther had to defend his theology in public. If you ever needed 40 minutes to get a handle on Luther, the man and his ideas, this is the place to go.

Not only the Diet of Worms can be found in the feed, I saw the archive goes back as far as 1998 with promising titles such as Money, Byzantium, the Celts, the Aztecs, the East India Company, the Mughal Empire and on and on. A veritable treasure trove.

Melvyn Bragg and the Written World

It is in the style of Tintin and the Secret of the Unicorn or Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom that the BBC offers us Melvyn Bragg and the Written World. What showed up in the podcast feed of In Our Time (with Melvyn Bragg) and consequently disappeared, has now been published as an independent podcast: Written World with Melvyn Bragg (feed).

As I reported in the past days about this series, I got a comment from reader Richard Walker, to point out that this podcast had been spawned from In Our Time. Thanks Richard.

Update to the break update for 2012

Did I write In Our Time started a miniseries The Written World? Well they did and for 24 hours the first two parts were in the feed. Even the third part was there for a couple of minutes, but now, the feed has been cleaned. The series exist, but not in podcast - what a shame. And sorry about sending you on a wild goose chase.

In case you really want to listen, check with In Our Time, The Written World and invoke the BBC iPlayer.

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)

Summer time tip: In Our Time

During the summer in podcasting just as in other media, there is a slight dip in activity. Although there is still enough new audio coming out every day to keep you very busy, I can imagine that during the month of August you may be looking for something else. So, here is are a short series of posts where to look for old material that is worth listening to again.

My first recommendation is the famous BBC four programme and podcast In Our Time. As you probably already know, this podcast offers 40 minute episodes in which Melvyn Bragg discusses one subject from the history of ideas with a panel of three specialists.

In the past I could not have reasonably point you at this podcast over the summer, as the BBC always removed the podcast episode from the feed as soon as a new one was added. This however changed in the last season. The whole of 2010 / 2011 is still available and there is much to choose from.

An additional quality of In Our Time has become apparent to me: in the world of podcast it has authority. I have noticed over the years an increasing number of (history) podcasters that refer to In Our Time in their own audio. These references are more and more explicit, but I have also noticed implicit ones - where the content was obviously directly informed by an issue of In Our Time. For me this is very much as in books the way authors refer to standing works on the same subject within the text or within footnotes. While this kind of referencing is not yet common within podcast, where it happens, it has frequently involved reference to In Our Time.

More In Our Time:
A reminder of the great BBC podcasts,
Diarmaid MacCulloch in podcast,
The Indian Rebellion of 1857,
Frankfurt School,
The history of the Royal Society.

Reith Lectures 2011

Here is a quick heads-up to let you know that this years' Reith Lectures are about to begin and will be podcast again as in previous years. The feed is the same as in previous years. The speakers will be Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and former MI5 director-general Baroness Manningham-Buller. There will be five lectures in total and the subject will be "Securing Freedom".

If you are looking back into the lectures of the past, I want to recommend you listen to the 2009 series which were an outstanding performance by Harvard professor Michael Sandel.


Previously about the Reith Lectures 2010:
Reith Lectures 2010 (2),
Reith Lectures 2010.

About the Reith Lectures in 2009:
A new politics of the common good,
The bioethics concern,
Morality in Politics,
Morality and the Market.

A reminder of the great BBC podcasts

Regular readers of this blog may be well aware of the two great history podcasts the BBC has been producing that I admire and recommend whole-heartedly, but only recently I ran into someone who somehow had missed out on one of them and was so happy with my recommendation, that I learned once again that the really good stuff cannot be mentioned often enough.


A History of the World in a 100 Objects
The director of the British Museum, Neil McGregor takes us in 100 episodes through the history of mankind and uses objects from the museum as an illustration. This is not only most original, it is also enlightening and we can trust the BBC to produce such a podcast at the highest standard. Contrary to regular BBC podcast policy, all of the chapters are downloadable.
(review, feed)




In Our Time
Each week Melvyn Bragg meets with three top of the bill specialists to discuss one subject from the history of ideas. Over the years I have been advising to keep your subscription to this podcast active at all times as the BBC used to remove each issue after one week. This season however has remained available ever since it started in its entirety. Go back and take your pick, if you have not done so yet. Enjoy Maimonides, or Free Will, or The Industrial Revolution (two parts), or Daoism, or The Volga Vikings or Imaginary Numbers and more.
(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.

Raking up Roswell - Witness

The Roswell incident has a knack of turning up over and over again. Believers in UFO's and extraterrestrial sightings as well as government conspiracies cannot get enough of the story, but why do serious sources return to it as well, that I wonder. A few years ago I reported on Berkeley's science course Physics for future presidents, to claim to have solved the Roswell incident. Now it is the BBC to open the file again.

In Witness the program presents the son of one of the people who found debris of the alleged flying saucer. This US airman later changed his story to make it fit the official cover up, but as the son persists: the debris father had brought home did not fit the descriptions of the official statements. He and his father have over the years come up with this testimony and so the whole affair continues to be fed.

For all you believers and debunkers, listen to this issue of the podcast it sure is something to chew on.

More Witness:
Silent Spring,
Oslo Accords,
Witness BBC.

Diarmaid MacCulloch in podcast

As usual it was a great pleasure to listen to BBC's In Our Time. The latest issue contained a discussion of Foxe's Book of Martyrs which was published at the height of the stormy Reformation in England in 1563 and was frequently republished afterward. Foxe's historic work gave the new Protestant Churches a legitimacy by making a connection between Christian martyrs through the ages. (feed)

One of the guests at the BBC was historian Diarmaid MacCulloch whose voice I recognized from a lecture I fondly remember at the LSE about the pasts and futures of Christianity. Here he showed the enormous varieties of Christianity through the ages and in all corners of the world. It made me search for his name in iTunes.

My search brought me to the 24th episode of the podcast Some Books Considered (feed). Historian Diarmaid MacCulloch spoke with podcast host Dan Skinner about his book Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. MacCulloch chose the title to indicate that the history prior to Christianity is important to understand the context of the of religion’s birth and also to indicate that it still has a long history yet to unfold. The book has been described as the first truly global history that examines the great ideas and personalities of Christianity. MacCulloch also examined how Christianity is currently being expressed in different cultures around the world.

An excellent history podcast for everybody

Today the BBC delivered the last chapter of A History of the World in 100 Objects (AHOW). This has been a most outstanding production made together with the British museum. In 100 chapters, led by looking at 100 objects, clustered in 20 themes, the director of the British Museum has retold us human history spanning 2 million years. It was effective, entertaining and highly informative in one blow. This history podcast is a delight for the discerning as well as for the occasionally interested.

Usually the BBC stores only a limited amount of podcast episodes in the feed, but AHOW is an exception. You subscribe now and can obtain the full hundred. Do so, I highly recommend it.

More AHOW:
AHOW is back again,

Returned from hiatus: A History of the World in 100 Objects,

Indus Seal,

First AHOW Review.

5 Podcasts I listened to when I was away from the blog

First of all, allow me to apologize for not posting on the blog for such a long time. Off-line life caught up with me. Issues have still to be resolved, but at least I am back to some blogging again. In the mean time I have also not stopped listening to podcasts and here are 5 podcasts I have faithfully followed up to the last episode.

Geography C110 (Berkeley)
This is a course in economic geography. It kicks off with a lot of interesting history and slowly fades out of geography into economics. I got a comment at the feedback page from a reader thanking me for pointing at this course which he dubbed 'THE econ class' he had been looking for. In the last lecture (Lecture 15: Class Struggle in the U.S.A.: Neoliberalism and Capital Triumphant) it even moves out of economics and shows professor Richard Walker take the liberty of venting his left wing political views. (feed)

History 5 (Berkeley)
Unfortunately a couple of lectures were not properly recorded in this course. As a result we have had a bit of bumpy road from the Enlightenment to the Industrial Revolution, but whatever we did get had professor Laqueur in full swing. There are a bunch of general history courses that cover the last centuries and give an indispensable insight into modernity, but Berkeley's remains the best of them. (feed)

A brief history of mathematics (BBC)
Here is a podcast that I was directed to by a reader of the blog. In ten easy to digest episodes Marcus du Sautoy (whom we have heard also frequently on In Our Time) introduces us to the history of modern mathematics. (feed)

New Books in History
Here is my weekly treat. Marshall Poe interviews authors of recently published history books. Although one might get the impression this podcast jumps back and forth just as the subjects come up, the regular listener can surely discern a couple of themes that have special interest. The recent issue 'Stalin's genocides' fits into both the recurring them of genocide as well as that of modern Russian history and biographies of important political figures. Similarly, the interview with Fred Spier (Big History and the Future of Humanity) fits into a group of issues about meta- and mega-history. And so on. (feed)

Forgotten Classics
Julie Davies reads to you the books that are classics we might have forgotten about. She has now embarked on a most ambitious and titillating project: reading Genesis. This will be of course in English and this opens the door to a whole lot of preemptive deliberating about translation. The translation she has chosen (Robert Alter's translation of Genesis) contains a whole preface addressing the issues the translator faced and explanations and justifications for how he treated it. Julie has begun by reading that preface. (feed)

Silent Spring

We have seen a diametrical change of mindset in our life time. We started off by thinking that Nature was huge, robust and inexhaustible, but today many people view Nature as fragile, sensitive, nearly exhausted and in need of protection. We can replace nature in the the previous sentence with Earth or Eco-System, if you like, and improve the accuracy of what has happened, but I think you see what I am driving at. And I recall it from my youth: if you protested against throwing garbage in the river next to our village and said something about pollution, you were laughed at. The whole idea seemed ridiculous, but today there are cleaning systems at work, huge fines for polluting and tremendous social control. It is the same river and it may even be cleaner than thirty years ago, but it is treated fundamentally differently.

Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring is frequently credited to have set this major shift in motion, or at least profoundly contributed to it. If you listen to Witness (BBC), you can hear one of last week's issues (that will soon be taken out of the feed, so hurry with download) that talks with Carson's adopted son and discusses the conception and reception of the work. Carson was among the first to warn the world for fatal pollution of the environment. She was ridiculed and attacked. Today nobody doubts that the environment can be fatally polluted and many think we are very close to doing so and in some realms already have passed that point.

If you look for 'Silent Spring' in iTunes you will find a number of lectures that bear that name and even though they do not directly relate to Carson or her book, they do relate to the subject of it: how pesticides cause irreversible damage to flora and fauna. You can find an old issue of Science & The City that reports how DDT (which Carson warned about) is returning to the scene in 2007 (feed). And in iTunesU is a series from Carnegie Mellon University called Interdisciplinary Collaboration Audio which contains a fine lecture by Tyrone Hayes about the devastating effect of pesticides on amphibians which is a very captivating listen. (feed)

More Witness:
Oslo Accords,
Witness BBC.

In Our Time is back again

In case you had not noticed yet, here is to let you know that BBC's In Our Time is back. This is a podcast that is universally regarded as one of the most interesting and worth to follow productions around. Melvyn Bragg speaks every week for 45 minutes with assorted specialists on a subject in the history of ideas. There is hardly a better way thinkable to get a handle on an important topic than getting it on a silver platter through In Our Time. (feed)

The listener needs to be warned though: issues of In Our Time are only available as a podcast in the week immediately after its publication. After that it will only be available on line as a stream. It is therefore my advice to take a subscription, download each issue as it comes out and keep it for listening.

In Our Time also gives fantastic complementary listening to academic or other podcasts that cover the same topic. For example, next week the subject will be the Spanish Armada and in case we may expect that the focus will be either on Spain or England, it will be nice to also listen to the Irish perspective as can be found in the podcast Hidden Heritage.

More In Our Time:
The Indian Rebellion of 1857,
Frankfurt School,
The history of the Royal Society,
The weekly treat,
New season of In Our Time.

AHOW is back again

In case you had not yet noticed, make your way to the feed and get this week's new arrivals at A History of the World in 100 Objects (BBC) in one feel swoop.

It will allow you to enjoy this show in the way I think is the most delightful. Each week gives five issues along that week's theme and if you pile them up over the week, you will get the whole flow of thought and the interlocking connections more clear and in a pleasant 70 minutes or so.

This week's theme is The Threshold of the Modern World (1375-1550 AD) and it contains examples from China, South-America, the Ottoman Empire, Central Asia and Europe. It was an era of large Asian and American empires. In contrast the fringe area of Europe was an unruly and divided backwater. Yet it was here in Europe that maritime powers were springing up and casting a shadow forward of new empires to come.

More AHOW:
Returned from hiatus: A History of the World in 100 Objects,
Indus Seal,
First AHOW Review.

Oslo accords - Witness

There are walls here in Israel where the graffiti, translated, reads: bring the Oslo criminals to trial! It shows how a certain segment of the population considered the Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestinians as a crime and those who negotiated and signed them as criminals that should be brought to Justice - whatever Justice can be in this perspective.

BBC's Witness paid attention to the Oslo accords and recounted how they were secretly negotiated in an Oslo kitchen. The witness they let speak is the Norwegian host who had, among others Uri Savir and Abu Alaa in her house to make the breakthroughs. (feed)

While new talks seem to be on their way it is very timely to look back at those. And I am sure there will be enough who want to trial and convict the current negotiators. Seeking peace, is sometimes a crime.

More Witness:
Witness BBC.

Witness - BBC

I have taken up listening to a daily BBC podcast: Witness (feed). Every workday it delivers a short (9 minutes) program about a historic event that occurred around the same date. The event is briefly recounted and the elaboration is done by letting a witness talk about it. Hence the title.

Almost invariably the result is very impressive. The whole atmosphere of the episode is also greatly determined by the kind of event that is told. The issue about Hiroshima as a consequence is very austere and stylized, the issue about the Battle of Britain very narrative and so on. The partition of India was deemed to large to tackle in one program and last week saw one part and this week a second is expected. Part one was very impressive - a great recommendation.

Also recommended is the issue about the Kursk disaster. Obviously, no sailors from aboard the submarine could be interviewed, as there were no survivors. However, one of the British members of the rescue mission spoke and brought home the experience of the poor men trapped in the sunken ship as he had survived a similar fate several years previously.