Monocle - Saeed Ahmed

Here is another guest-post written by Saeed Ahmed:

Monocle is a relatively new magazine (launched 2007) that takes great pride in it's real-paper format, putting tremendous thought into the look, feel and emotional appeal of the visual and tactile aspects of its product. However, don't let this retro-focus fool you. Since 2008, Monocle has been "airing" a around the clock radio schedule. I recently discovered this and after sampling a couple of its program offerings, decided to immerse myself in the Monocle experience for a week, which included listening its podcasts and watching videos posted on the Monocle website.

On weekdays, Monocle has five daily hour long news shows which start at 6am (UK time) and end at around midnight. The Monocle staff are prompt in posting the podcasts (much faster than news podcasts from the BBC it seemed to me). Each of these has news headlines at the start and in the middle of the show. In between, there are pre-recorded reports from correspondents, live interviews, and a review of newspapers from different regions of the world, usually with a studio guest. Each of the five shows (Globalist, Midori House, Briefing, Globalist Asia, and Monocle Daily) has its own flavor, and what I found remarkable was the very small amount of redundancy. I didn't listen to every show every day, but when I did listen to two or three of these in a row, generally only one or two stories were repeated at the most.

In addition to the weekday news shows, Monocle has weekly shows on that cover design, urban living, food, movies, books and magazines (yes, magazines, in a show called the "Stack" in which they discuss developments in in-print magazines because this is something they consider important and enduring).

Monocle is also somehow able to maintain a correspondents in several countries (all of whom are good on air), to find interesting studio guests, and to maintain good relationships with other news outlets whose representatives call in regularly and provide reports. Perhaps my favorite thing is the Monocle radio personalities, who come from many different places including the UK, US, Canada, Australia and Finland. Unlike the dry presentation of Al Jazeera, BBC or the US networks, the Monocle broadcasters inject a quite healthy dose of humor in between the news headlines, features and interviews.

I don’t know how Monocle does maintains this prolific output and very high standard in print and broadcast media with what must be a small staff and budget (compared to BBC, CBC, ABC RadioNational, RTE and US networks). It is amazing! I hope they can keep it up.

After my week long immersion, I felt like I had been on a vicarious vacation of sorts, and made new friends. Give it a try, and perhaps you will feel the same way about Tyler Brule, Andrew Tuck, Emma Nelson, Barney Burnham, Markus Hippi, Aisha Speirs, Fiona Wilson and the rest.

You can check out Monocle’s Wikipedia page or read an article about it (The Independent - Monocle, the media project I have always wanted to do). Brule also has his own page, and enough of an internet presence that someone generated a somewhat tongue and cheek fan site.

If I could give feedback to Monocle, I would suggest four things:
1) include some information about it’s radio personalities on its website,
2) provide some links to features that come up in it’s shows,
3) during the news shows perhaps mention some of the videos that are posted on it’s website so that people know to look at these and enrich their experience, and
4) provide the podcast RSS feeds (rather than just i-tune links). This last mentioned one can be a bit irritating to those who don’t use i-tunes. However, there is a technical way to retrieve the RSS feed from the i-tunes site, which can be accessed here (after you go to each of the Monocle show pages and click on “subscribe in iTunes”):

More Saeed Ahmed:
Brain Dichotomies,
Taking courses with Saeed Ahmed,
Optimizing Brain Fitness,
Wittgenstein,
Political and current affairs podcasts,
International Political Economy.

Our brain dichotomies - Saeed Ahmed

Here is another guest-post written by Saeed Ahmed:

Have you ever thought about the question “Who am I?” or the question “Why do I do the things I do?”

On the surface, perhaps these seem trivial questions, and yet they have been discussed by philosophers for thousands of years, with no firm answers, and the dialog continues.

Modern neuroscience has reached a point that it can in some ways inform this dialog. Three recent podcast interviews, based on books written for lay audiences, illuminate slightly different aspects of the debate, provide some answers, and raise many more questions.

Two dichotomies are emphasized in these podcasts; conscious and unconscious mental processing, and the functions of the left and right hemispheres.

Each author has been interviewed several times, and I have posted below links for sessions with three very experienced interviewers.

David Eagleman, interviewed by Terry Gross, is a neuroscientist and talks about a competition for attention among the myriad of neural processes (central, peripheral, sympathetic, parasympathetic) that we all possess. Volition and action occur on the basis of which processes “win.” Virtually all of the competition occurs unconsciously. In a way, Eagleman provides an organic basis for what an aspect of “unconscious: may be. In the latter part of the book, he discusses implications of this, including those for our legal systems. Fresh Air - (feed)


Daniel Kahneman, interviewed by Leonard Lopate, is a nobel-prize winner in economics. While this may seem a bit odd (why economics; isn’t that about supply and demand curves, utility functions and mathematical models?), it isn’t really, because aspects of behavior, particularly “non-rational” behavior, are becoming very important in economics research, as it has become more and more apparent that participants in markets often do not act as rationally as traditional models have assumed. Kahneman describes two neural systems: one that operates quickly with virtually no sense of voluntary control and a second that allocates attention to effortful activities. He too speculates about legal implications, e.g. the effect of judicial decisions on whether judges are hungry or have just eaten. Leonard Lopate Show - Feed

Kahneman also wrote an article on the same subject matter as his book for Scientific American, which can be accessed here.

My favorite interview of the three, was of Iain McGilchrist a British psychiatrist, who sat with Phillip Adams of Australia’s Radio National, who discusses the implications of the left-brain/right-brain dichotomy. The left-right dichotomy is just as fundamental as the conscious-unconscious one (although both ultimately are reductionist). Briefly summarized, just as one may hypothesize that the phenomena of perception/conception/volition/action are determined in some way by a competition between multiple unconscious processes, so too may one say that these phenomena occur due to states generated by the cooperative/competitive “discussion” between the two “persons” who exist inside us, and very different persons they are, apparently. McGilchrist goes beyond mechanistic explanations, and it is his foray into the implications of this dichotomy that I found quite compelling, speculative though they might be. The basic hypothesis he puts forth is that due to a predominance of left-dominant thinking, certain tendencies of western civilization have become damaging. In his own words (from his book’s introduction):

“Here I suggest that it is as if the left hemisphere, which creates a sort of self-reflexive virtual world, has blocked off the available exits, the ways out of the hall of mirrors, into a reality which the right hemisphere could enable us to understand. In the past, this tendency was counterbalanced by forces from outside the enclosed system of the self-conscious mind; apart from the history incarnated in our culture, and the natural world itself, from both of which we are increasingly alienated, these were principally the embodied nature of our existence, the arts and religion. In our time each of these has been subverted and the routes of escape from the virtual world have been closed off. An increasingly mechanistic, fragmented, decontextualised world, marked by unwarranted optimism mixed with paranoia and a feeling of emptiness, has come about, reflecting, I believe, the unopposed action of a dysfunctional left hemisphere.”

Right/Left brain speculations, in books and blog posts on the hidden power of the right brain, are becoming quite fashionable, but they sometimes overstate the implications of the evidence they put forth to support their claims. Gilchrist advocates balance between the left and the right hemispheres. It is always hard to judge how far one may speculate, given any line of evidence, and I don’t think Gilchrist went too far, but not everyone may see his suppositions about social and humanistic issues well-grounded in research in this area. But few will fault his effort to reach this far.

More about the three books can be found at Amazon, Wikipedia (thinking fast and slow) (the master and his emissary).

Taking courses with Saeed Ahmed

Here is a guest-post written by Saeed Ahmed:

Jean Jacques Rousseau “was a charlatan,” a “moral leach,” who “consciously set out to tickle the fancy of the cultural elite in France.”  Hegel “used technical terminology but wasn’t sure what he meant”; “he thought that the way to greatness was through obfuscation.”   “Nobody invented jargon with the viciousness and vengeance of Kant.” 
Containing such declarations, it is not surprising that Ronald Nash’s course on Modern Philosophy gets mixed reviews on itunes. 
https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/modern-philosophy/id412910038
Nash (who died in 2006) was an unapologetic Christian apologetic.  His lectures are full of attacks on moral relativism, modernism, post-modernism, enlightenment thinking, and just about anything that does not conform to his absolute, foundational belief in the Christian God.  
When it comes to worldview, there is virtually nothing that I find appealing in Dr. Nash’s ideas.  Nevertheless I found his course compelling at 3 levels. 

First, he has a surprisingly engaging style; he is not bashful, neutral or balanced.   You know exactly where he is coming from.  His is a full frontal assault on virtual all liberal ideas.  This is strangely refreshing and a change from the nuanced and “balanced” presentations in many lecture courses.  Agree with him or not, he will capture your attention.  His view is a full, undiluted measure of unabashed fundamentalist thought. There are no hidden levers; it’s all visible.  

Second, his summaries of philosophers, while reductionist, are quite pithy and at least to my non-professional view, accurate enough to be good introductions.   His basic approach is often something like “this guy was an idiot, but here are the three points he made” and then he lists them very systematically.  For Kant he summarizes: “Concepts without percepts are empty; Percepts without concepts are blind.”  Further, “Kant integrated rationalism and empiricism…rationalism entered Kant’s system because it encompassed the apriori set of categories with which experience was worked upon “; “With the categories, our minds organize percepts in ways that produce knowledge.”  Kant put “human mind at the center”.  “The reason we are conscious of space and time is not just because we apprehend something out there, but because our minds contribute notions of space and time to what we see.”  “There are 12 apriori categories (such as unity, equality, and causation) that allow the mind to organize and relate ideas.” “Laws of nature are in a way a product of the knowing mind.” “We believe x causes y because our minds force us think in this way.”  “We are never conscious of raw percepts; the moment we become conscious, of a raw percept, it has already been acted upon by the knowing mind; it has been given a structure, organization and a set of relationships.” “We cannot have knowledge of what we cannot perceive, thus we cannot know knowledge of our self” (the unifying transcendental self).
Category (apriori) -> Concept (direct object of human awareness) -> unified coherent field (transcendental unity of apperception). 

Not bad.  I am not a professional philosopher, and I would be very curious to know what people who really know the subject well think of Nash’s summaries.

Third, it is kind of fun to listen to someone who is confident enough to unabashedly bash some of the greatest minds of the last few thousand years.   Wrong or right (and usually wrong, I would submit), this is just plain fun to listen to at times.

If Nash leaves a bad taste in your mouth, and a ringing in your ears, I recommend four  antidotes:  1) Peter Milican’s general philosophy introduction (available in audio and video from Oxford), 2) Mythology by Gail Lavender, 3) episode 328 of Shrink Rap radio featuring an interview with the extremely erudite Dutch Jungian Analyst Robert Bosnak and 4)  and Buddhist Psychology by Eleanor Rosch.

Unlike Nash’s survey course, Dr. Milican’s is much more balanced and accurate.

http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/podcasts/general_philosophy

In Lavender’s course, I particularly direct you to the lecture on psychological theories of mythology, in which she mentions the dictum “dreams are the myths of the individual; myths are the dreams of the race”, then goes on to explain this using concepts developed by Freud and Jung. 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/mythology/id497995501

In the Shrink Rap podcast (#328), Bosnak discusses the astonishing Red Book of Carl Jung (that was published in 2009 for the first time) and in a very short time.   He mentions a plausible hypothesis about why religious fundamentalism is so prevalent these days.

http://www.shrinkrapradio.com/2012/11/29/328-the-red-book-and-cycles-of-change-with-jungian-analyst-robert-bosnak/

In the Buddhist Psychology course, Rosch demonstrates how in many ways, she is the polar opposite of Nash.  Her style is generous, open, non-judgmental, liberal, and compassionate.  She has a very deep knowledge of Buddhist philosophy and modern psychology, so is able to discuss the former, and place the latter in its context, and vice versa.   I would recommend starting this course from the beginning, but if time is limited, then skip ahead and listen first to the third lecture, where a specific form of meditation is introduced.  I have been doing this, and have noticed changes in me after only a few days. 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/psychology-107-001-fall-2010/id391538994

These courses complement each other.  Listening to lectures from all contemporaneously really blows one’s mind due to the sheer breadth of material that creates conflicts and tensions in one’s understanding and perspectives.  

Saeed Ahmed

More Saeed Ahmed:
Optimizing Brain Fitness,
Wittgenstein,
Political and current affairs podcasts,
International Political Economy,
A podcast on climate, energy and food,
Two podcasts on the brain.

Optimizing Brain Fitness - Saeed Ahmed quick post

Hi Anne
I wanted to draw your attention to this:

***************************
Dr. Richard Restak is a neuroscientist who, for several decades, has been writing about the brain and its function for the layperson.

Now, he has put together a course for the Teaching Company, and one of his lectures is available for free for 7 days, and available here: Optimizing Brain Fitness.

Of course, the Teaching Company would like people to view this with the hope they would buy the course, but after viewing this myself, I think it is quite good standing alone, as a general but very accurate introduction to the brain, free of jargon and details that is common in many, even introductory, university courses.

The free 30 minute video lecture is available until August 8.

***************************

Best,

Saeed

More Teaching Company:
Abraham Lincoln

More Saeed Ahmed:
Wittgenstein,
Political and current affairs podcasts,
International Political Economy,
A podcast on climate, energy and food,
Two podcasts on the brain.

Wittgenstein - Saeed Ahmed guest post

Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein are arguably two of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. However, whereas Heidegger is well-represented in academic podcasts (see previous reviews by Anne on offerings by Hubert Dreyfus of Berkeley and Sean Kelly of Harvard), Wittgenstein is not heavily featured.

Therefore, I would like to point out a recent post in Philosopher's Zone (ABC Radio National, Australia), in which Gavin Kitching, professor at University of New South Wales discusses Wittgenstein with Alan Saunders, the interviewer. What I liked about this podcast was the clarity of the questions and responses, culminating with a devastating and foundational critique of methodology used by the Social Sciences in the 20th century, specifically the deliberate removal of the personal voice from academic discourse. It is difficult to deliver such a blow after a 30 minute conversation, but this Kitching and Saunders make a case worth considering, which follows from principles laid down by Wittgenstein. (feed)

Generally speaking, Philosopher's Zone podcasts are kept on for about 4 weeks, so download while you can.

Saeed Ahmed

More Saeed Ahmed:
Political and current affairs podcasts,
International Political Economy,
A podcast on climate, energy and food,
Two podcasts on the brain,
Comedy podcasts and philosophy.

More on Heidegger:
Heidergger in podcasts - news,
Entitled Opinions - conversation,
J Drabinsky - university course,
Dichter und Denker in Freiburg - lecture (in German).

Political and current affairs podcasts - Saeed Ahmed guest post

Political and current affairs podcasts have evolved considerably both in quantity and quality over the last several years. The number of choices that are available is staggering, ranging from postings of long-standing radio shows to those from podders on their home computers. The problem now is not finding something interesting, but rather choosing from the myriad of great options. Depending on one's interest and available time during the week, a few offerings go particularly well together, all of which have stood the test of time.

The Economist posts a editor's highlights podcast midweek, which consists of professional readings of selected articles from the current issue, and is usually 45-60 min in length. In the sense that this magazine has been a current affairs standard bearer for decades, and these stories are some of the most pertinent within any given weekly issue, this podcast is near the top of the list for anyone who wants to keep up with what is going on globally. What it lacks is the conversational tone of panel or interview shows (can one now call a podcast a "show", or is that too retro?). (other Economist podcasts)

Other good options for global issues is one of the many options from the Financial Times newspaper, “Late Night Live” from ABC Radio National (Australia), and “the World Next Week” from the Council of Foreign Relations. For those who want a daily news offering, the BBC has five news shows (“newspod”, “global news,” “Newshour,” and “the World Tonight,” “BBC World Update; Daily Commute”), which update a different times, and not always promptly. Newshour and Daily Commute are updated every day of the week, the others only Monday through Friday. Deutsche Welle has two good news podcasts: “Newslink” and “Newslink Plus” with overlapping content; the “plus” version adds some more local news.

If there is interest in US politics, then there are five really good panel shows: Slate's political weekly podcast or “Gabfest”, KCRW's Left, Right and Center, PBS's Washington Week with Gwen Ifill, NPR's Diane Rehm Show's Friday new's roundup (there are many others), and the Young Turks daily podcast . My favorite current is Slate because the three co-hosts are very smart, have established a great online chemistry, and seem to genuinely enjoy each other's company, which allows for an engaging, conversational tone as they analyze issues from a variety of perspectives. They often disagree with each other, and things are the most fun when they do.

All these offerings are available on i-tunes or on their own websites.

Saeed Ahmed

International Political Economy - Saeed Ahmed guest post

One of the key tensions in the 20th century has been the relentless advance of an international economic system running up against local, regional and national interests. States, while susceptible to hegemony, are not usually governed by anything other local sovereignty. Strong states have always had greater sway than their weaker neighbors, but in the 20th century, the way this played out was different from previous epochs in several significant ways.

Very few available courses (in podcast form) in the internet cover this in a digestible way. From time to time, UCSD has some offerings that cover the economic aspects well, but are often a bit too technical to be easily digestible in audio form. Therefore, I want to alert podcast listeners to a very good course offered by James Morrison of Middlebury College, which covers the political economy of the international system (International Political Economy(). It is from 2009, and I didn't discover this until recently because I was looking specifically for something that covered the global economic and political developments in the 20th century, and I googled until I found something. (feed)

Dr. Morrison is quite engaging, and involves his students. In this case, it is both a good thing and not so good for the podcast listener. It is good because it is somewhat Socratic, but it is often hard to hear the students. There is considerable class discussion, because this is not a big lecture course. Dr. Morrison tries to get to know all his students, and usually calls on them by name. The syllabus, slides and even online discussions are still available on the website. I would recommend downloading the slides because they really make it easier to digest the material even if one looks at them later (in my case, I review them quickly in the evening usually after listening to the podcast).

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like there will be podcasts from Middlebury routinely, and it isn't clear how long this one will be available, so download this series while you can.

Saeed Ahmed

More guest posts by Saeed Ahmed:
A podcast on climate, energy and food,
Two podcasts on the brain,
Comedy podcasts and philosophy,
John Searle, Philosophy of Mind,
Politics 114B (United States Political Thought; 1865 to the Present).

A podcast on climate, energy and food - Saeed Ahmed guest post

I am very happy and proud to present you another guest post by Saeed Ahmed. Saeed is a psychiatrist, a Pakistani by origin who lives and works in the US, where he has also received his professional training. He is a very thorough podcast listener, taking on themes and building wide playlists around them. Or he takes on podcast university courses and carefully goes through the whole series.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Despite the fact that food and energy are probably the two most important "things" (after air and water) for us to live, a remarkably small number of available academic podcasts have focused on these. Classes on environment may mention or perhaps spend a few lectures on these, but in general these don't get a comprehensive treatment. Furthermore it is shocking how few non-academic podcasts are devoted to these topics, although you'll find science podcasts will cover these sporadically.

It may be of some interest to podcast listeners to check out BIBC 140: "Introduction to Biofuels" by Stephen Mayfield, currently offered from UCSD (feed). As with other UCSD podcasts, if you are interested in this, get it now, before it might disappear (although I hope it is one of the one's they retain, and both the material and delivery is excellent.

Everyone has heard of global warming by now (despite the best efforts of Fox News), but how many people realize that this is the century when many things we take for granted will start to run out? Peak oil in the US occured in the 1970s, and worldwide peak oil is probably occurring now (there is some dispute about this, because for a variety of reasons, oil-producing countries and companies are not very transparent about the reserves they control). But peak oil isn't all we have to worry about; there is peak coal, and peak gas, and peak phosporus. Peak phosphorus? Turns out it is may become one of the rate limiters in food production. Food and fuel are more tied together than ever before. The reason food is comparatively cheap is because of fossil fuel. Locovores may be on to something, despite what some pundits say, who discount the transportation element, which is going to become much more expensive. On the flip side, renewables aren't cost-effective yet. But things are improving. Storage, intermittency, and grid issues limit growth here. At some point in the not to distant future, they will catch up economically.

Mayfield covers these topics and their interrelationships systematically and comprehensively, occasionally with the help of other lecturers. It seems to, given where we are in the early part of the 21st century, we may all benefit from learning about this material (even if much of it is very scary). In addition, I believe that after listening to these lectures, many items in the news and market trends become much more comprehensible, and often faulty analyses by medial talking-heads become more apparent.

Comedy podcasts and philosophy - Saeed Ahmed guest post

I have been writing about academic podcasts on philosophy for quite some time. After getting a bit stuck on the notion of "synthetic apriori," I have decided to take a diversion and have been sampling funny podcasts.

Not surprisingly, there is plenty of philosophy to be found here. The series I previously posted about, WTF by Marc Maron, provides an example.

Mark talks about a heavy "WHAT THE FU**?" and a light "what the fu**?" The first, according to Marc is "external", like when you are surprised or shocked by something. The latter is "kind of an internal thing," like when you are ready to take a risk. Take that, Bishop Berkeley.
He even covers the notion of temporality when he discusses leaving his cats for more than a few weeks, and they don't treat him quite the right way when he comes back. "They probably think I died and are bit confused when they see me". "Is it really the same guy, they may wonder." Martin Heidegger must be turning in his grave, but in sort of good way. (feed)

I am getting addicted to Maron's musings and interviews (he is a very good interviewer, and generally interviews other comedians). But if he is not for you, there are a number of other good comedy podcasts out there.

On Comedy and everything else, one of the regulars asked "has someone ever dared you 'if I give you a million bucks, would you do a naked handstand in times square.'" "What kind of a question is that; I don't acknowledge it as test of moral standing, and don't enter the hypothetical." Now if it truly were a million, then perhaps he would enter the discussion. (feed)

A couple of others:
Comedy Death-Ray Radio (feed)
Nerdist Podcast (feed)

And they are all free, although contributions are welcome, as many of these comedians are not regularly employed and do these podcasts between gigs.

Saeed Ahmed

Anne is a Man readers report podcasts

Here are some podcasts reported by readers of the blog:

Flat 29 (feed)

Hi Anne,

I realise you don't focus on comedy podcasts too much, but wondered if you might fancy a brief look at our new podcast, Flat 29's Big Book of Everything? We would love to see what you think of it! Its available at www.flat29.com/podcast

Here is a brief description of the show:
Flat 29's Big Book of Everything is a weekly comedy podcast cataloguing and discussing the contents of our universe. Each week a new chapter is released tackling a new and exciting subject.

Full of useless trivia, rambling anecdotes, ludicrous discussions, and a new comedy song every week, Flat 29's Big Book of Everything is an enjoyable way to expand your knowledge about everything (as long as you currently know nothing at all about anything)
Hope you enjoy it!
Thanks
Dan

WTF with Marc Maron (feed)

Reported through the Podcast Parlor:

It is VERY funny and philosophical. In fact It is the philosophical angle which connects with of the other things I have been discussing. If you decide to listen the the most recent episode (featuring Dave Hill), you will hear Marc expound on his relationship with his cats. You'll have to listen for yourself because I don't want to ruin it. Suffice it to say he quickly covers the metaphysics of "self", "identity," and "religion," in this context.

Enjoy this; pure fun.
Saeed Ahmed

Bob and Dan Cast (feed)

Hey Anne,

I like the site and wanted to request a review.

The Bob and Dan Cast (bobanddancast.com) It's comedy and film mostly but sometimes it goes other places.

I won't leave a review, as doing so would be a tad unethical (I'm the Dan in "Bob and Dan")

Not sure if you take requests from the podcasters themselves, but thought I'd give it a shot anyway.

Keep up the good work!

-Dan

The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (feed)

From a post at SFF Audio:

Damn and blast both David Barr Kirtley and John Joseph Adams!

These two rogues are the hosts of The Geek’s Guide To The Galaxy podcast. I have had good reason to curse them publicly. Their podcast is both a terrific listen week after week, and is often horning in on SFFaudio’s territory (by talking about audiobooks). I’ve held my tongue until this latest incident. These two hoseheads, Kirtley and Adams, have now gone too far! They’ve poached Dan Carlin as their guest for next week’s podcast.

This is a scandalous thievery. We posted our plan to get Carlin a full 4 Hours and 44 minutes before they did!

And so while I cannot possibly condone their unwarranted guest poaching, I cannot also, in good conscience, deny their podcast’s high quality. Thus it is with disgust I must hold my nose and recommend you subscribe to The Geek’s Guide To The Galaxy podcast.

But also let it be know, across the internet, that The Geek’s Guide To The Galaxy is formally ON NOTICE as of right now. You’d better not wander into any dark alleys Kirtley/Adams.

Jesse Willis

The Reel Pour podcast (feed)

I just recently found this really interesting podcast... I thought you might want to do a review of. These 3 guys in Chicago pair wine and movies together.... They taste, discuss and review both at the same time... it's really interesting, and kinda funny too. I actually learn a little about wine too. (it's not condescending which is nice) it's called "Reel Pour" and I found it on itunes, check it out.

- Brian Bondragazon

More readers' recommendations:
Reported podcasts in January 2010.

Two podcasts on the brain - Saeed Ahmed guest post

I am very happy and proud to present you yet another guest post by Saeed Ahmed. Saeed is a psychiatrist, a Pakistani by origin who lives and works in the US, where he has also received his professional training. He is a very thorough podcast listener, taking on themes and building wide playlists around them. Or he takes on podcast university courses and carefully goes through the whole series.

Two interesting podcasts

I have listening to podcasts that explore relationships of "world" to "brain" and "brain" to "world". One way the world clearly influences the brain directly (not just behavior) is by actually changing the structure of the brain.

This is elucidated by Ginger Campbell in episode 10 of her long-standing Brain Science Podcast. (feed)

What is interesting is that many parts of the brain can change function quite dramatically, given the proper stimulus.

Dr. Campbell generally has a fairly mainstream view of mind/brain interactions (i.e. materialistic), and she doesn't go deeply into philosophical issues. The strength of this podcast is exploring the scientific aspects and medical applications. There are a number of other interesting topics she covers in various episodes, and I hope to have some time to listen to these.

Another good podcast is The Philosopher's Zone, from ABC radio national in Australia. A currently available episode has an interview with psychologist Nicholas Humphrey, who differentiates between "sensation" (what the outer sensory organs do) and "perception" (the processing of the sensory information in the central nervous system). It is of course possible to have sensation without perception. What is more surprising is that it is possible to have perception without sensation, e.g. in a phenomenon known as "blind sight," where patients who have non-functioning primary visual cortices can still perceive (accurately describe) certain types of visual phenomenon.

The material Campbell and Humphrey cover is interesting, and both cover certain philosophical issues related to the mind/body and free will/determinism problems, but I find this aspect of the discussion in each case somewhat off the point.

It may tempting to conclude from the phenomena of environmentally stimulated neuroplasticity that it is somehow countering "genetic" determinism, but it is important to recognize that is not the deep determinism that philosophers think about, the type that leads to a "causally-closed system."

Furthermore, demonstrating certain examples of perception without sensation (most often in the context of pathological states) does not really address the hard problem in mind/body philosophy.

However, I have to think about how these two things inform the "synthetic apriori" notion of Kant, and perhaps through that we may be able to make some progress.

More Saeed Ahmed:
John Searle, Philosophy of Mind,
Politics 114B.

More Philosopher's Zone:
Isaiah Berlin,
Philosopher's Zone,
Mary Shelley and Frankenstein.

John Searle, Philosophy of Mind - UC Berkeley

I am very happy and proud to present you yet another guest post by Saeed Ahmed. Saeed is a psychiatrist, a Pakistani by origin, who lives and works in the US, where he has also received his professional training. He is a very thorough podcast listener, taking on themes and building wide playlists around them. Or he takes on podcast university courses and carefully goes through the whole series. Here he writes his findings about a course at Berkeley about the Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy 132, 001, delivered by Professor John R. Searle. (feed)

When I first went here a few weeks ago, they had posted that most of the lectures wouldn't be available, but it looks like that has changed, so I have started listening.

Unlike Philosophy 138, 001 - Philosophy of Society (Searle's previous course - feed), which I think is a relatively recent interest of Searle's (or so it seems), the Philosophy of Mind is something he has thought about for decades and is one the world authorities on the subject.

I can't report much yet beyond lecture 1, which I think in itself is worth listening because it provides a very nice synopsis of the Cartesian influence and a summary of big problems in the field. Four of the problems: 1) How can one know one's own mind exists, 2) how can one know other mind's exist, 3) how can one know other objects exist and 4) free will.

Here Searle is at his best, in command of the material, lecturing without any aids (notes, powerpoint slides, etc), and taking interesting digressions from time to time.

I don't know which course to recommend more, this one or the one from last quarter (Philosophy of Society), however I think at least one of these should be sampled by anyone who has the remotest interest in philosophy, and I would say this is nearly mandatory for anyone interested in philosophy of mind, consciousness, or free will.

More Saeed Ahmed:
Politics 114B - UCLA political science course.

More Berkeley:
The Indian Rebellion 1857,
Human Evolution and Prehistory,
Dacher Keltner on Happiness and Health,
Modern Western History in podcasts,
Wars, Empires, Nations 1648-1914.

The battle of The Podcast Parlor

There is small on-line community that every reader of this blog should be a member of: The Podcast Parlor. I have set up this place for my readers together with podcast reviewers Dara, Baxter and Saeed (and their readers) to have a single place where the good, educational, intellectual podcasts can be discussed.

So far this community has not succeeded in flourishing too well. Not only do we need more people to join and to actively participate. We have also been drowning in spam. We would have fake members join by the scores and then flood the Parlor with irrelevant postings and comments, the likes of which you can easily imagine especially after one glance in the spam section of your email inbox. But this has changed.

In order to be able to join the parlor you have to pass our, the admins Dara, Baxter, Saeed and myself, approval to join. Should that pose a problem? Not if you are genuinely interested in podcasts and have shed even the shortest glance at my blog, Dara's, Baxter's or Saeed's postings on the Parlor. In order to set up a profile, you will only have to give your email and mention a podcast review blog and a podcast you like and all of this informations stays confidential. This will show us instantly you are genuine and allow us to tell you from the spammers. Once in, you can meet like-minded people and find out what they listen to and what their opinions are.

I really urge you to join the Parlor. Not only is this going to serve your quest for good on-line audio. You also support the free podcast reviews you get from our blogs and you also, eventually support the many, many podcasters out there who give your their wonderful products for free.

Conceptual Foundations of International Policy - Columbia University

Conceptual Foundations of International Politics is an old (2007) political science lecture series from Columbia University. It has been reported on already by Dara from DIY Scholar and Baxter Wood. The feed of the course is no longer avaialable under iTunes as reported by Dara, but Saeed Ahmed found an old feed that is still available. Thanks to this, I could also check the series out.

By now I have progressed through to the fifth lecture in the series and I agree with my friends that it is an excellent course. As a matter of fact, all of you who pick up geopolitics oriented lectures from the UChannel podcast frequently, will be supplied with a very useful background to these.

It has been pointed out by Baxter that some fo the lectures are worth seeing because of the visuals. I found a youtube group that apparently, though not obviously ordered, contains video registration of this course.

Politics 114B - UCLA political science course

This is a guest post written by Saeed Ahmed

Politics 114B, "United States Political Thought; 1865 to the Present," taught by Brian Walker in the spring 2008, available in both video and audio formats in the UCLA Bruincast website, is divided into two parts (or units), which Dr. Walker refers to as American Political Theory, Here and Now and The Roots of Contemporary American Political Theory, respectively. The first comprises of lectures covering political philosophies starting with conservatism, neoconservatism, religious conservatism, libertarianism, and moving leftward to Rawls' ideas of justice, and eventually Chomskyisc progressivism. This unit is meant to describe, in summary fashion, what makes up the foundations of different schools as they exist today. Unit two is essentially a history of political philosophy from the post civil era to the present.

In the first lecture, Dr. Walker starts by listing major issues and social challenges that have caused political struggle over the last 150 years: Slavery, race and inequality; the women's movement; the importance of the military in American politics; the growth of the US as a hegemonic power; and the role of technology. These are some of the issues that provide the material of political philosophic dispute, which the course covers.

Much of the course is spent discussing subtleties. For example, it is emphasized that in US political thinking, nearly all intellectual traditions are essentially "liberal" (including conservatives), in that they believe in equality, justice and law. So the dichotomy is not between liberal and conservative, but rather consists of more nuanced distinctions based on what are considered proper responses to social challenges.

Conservative schools are distinguished: traditional (think William Buckley, George Will), neo- (e.g. Irving Kristol, William Kristol, David Fromm), religious, and liberatarian. On the other side are "progressive liberals", "welfare state liberals," and "anarchists".

Two key thinkers, who in many ways optimize the two streams of thought that the course is trying to contrast are John Rawls and Robert Nozick. Rawls elucidates a very complex notion of liberalism and justice, and Nozick persuasively advocates a individualistic, liberatarian philosophy. While not opposites, and not exhausitive in their coverage of all prior political philosophers, these two thinkers synthesize many of the key elements of the progressive liberal and conservative liberal traditions.

Absent from this course is the type of conservatism which is exemplified by certain elements of American media today, such as right-wing talk radio, and certain hosts on Fox News such as Glenn Beck. I think one or two lectures covering the liberal and conservative media would have been good to add to this course. That is because most people get more exposure to these, than the more heady journals, books, and manuscripts which are discussed in this course.

This is an upper division course, so to fully appreciate it, considerable attention, effort and diligence is required. Listeners should know some basic US history, and if they don't, probably could benefit by listening first to Gretchen Reilly's course on post-civil war history (currently available in Itunes). The reading list for the course (which can be downloaded from the course website) is quite extensive. Sampling some of these readings may also contribute to a better understanding of this challenging material.

More Political Science
Political Science 10 (UCLA),
Political Science 179 (Berkeley).

More UCLA
History 1c,
Israel Studies.