The Moral Foundations of Politics (Yale)

Currently on my iPod features prominently an open Yale course The Moral Foundations of Politics with Professor Ian Shapiro (feed). This course kicks off with the promise to delve into questions of legitimacy of the political order, but as I am through half the course, we are for the time being, still, mostly delving into the history of political theory, with an additional emphasis on political economy. A lot of Bentham, Mill and by now Marx with a lot of Pareto, Ricardo and Adam Smith.

I am happy though with the four lectures' attention to Marx in this framework. It helped me to understand a little bit more, what I somehow could not digest in the all out reading of Marx's Das Kapital a podcast with Richard Harvey (feed)

Shapiro's delivery of Marx is more distant, more concise and applied. All in all a very interesting course, though I am still waiting to get less economics and more moral philosophy. Maybe in the second half...

More open Yale courses:
History of epidemics,
Early Modern England,
European Civilization 1648-1945,
France since 1871,
New Testament, history and literature.

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

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.

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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.

Age of Unequals - Big Ideas

There is also a Philosophy Bites issue in which Alex Voorhoeve argues what is bad about inequality, but that is more on a theoretical level. (see Three issues of Philosophy Bites)

Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett took on the practical approach and collected data from all over the world and compared the social fabric of societies where equality is greater to those where inequality is greater, as far as wealth is concerned. On Big Ideas you can hear a lecture in which Wilkinson brings that point with a stream of examples home. What is interesting to find out is that not only is inequality bad for the poor. In societies where there is greater inequality there is more crime, more psychiatric disorder and people are less happier and live less longer and this affects the rich as well.

More Big Ideas:
Dan Dennett: what should replace religion?,
Chris Hedges,
Needham about China,
The Reluctant Fundamentalist,
Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the quest against Islam.

Money, finance and an unexpected link in history

When you learn about finance, you do not exactly expect to find out new data about Florence in the Renaissance or about the Dutch revolt against the Spanish in the 16th century. But it just happened to me.

This morning I was continuing my listening in on the Berkeley Lecture series Geography C110. As I have written before, this is a course in economics with excursions in to history, geography and politics. For all who tend to shy away from economics - this might just be the course that is going to do it for you. And for all those who like geography; eventually this is geography, but there is a lot of economics to take. (feed) And then there is history...

The first few lectures had a lot of history and after that, we sort of reached the late modern era and the lecturer, Professor Walker, spent more time in laying out the economics and their geography as we experience them today. He systematically went through the economics of areas, from global capitalism all the way down to city economies and discussed production and labor and then reached finance. And finance is not the easiest part of the course, as money is eventually abstract and the mechanics of it are often counterintuitive and the terminologies inconsistent.

So you might as well skip finance. However, now that we live in a world with a financial melt-down, the interest is renewed and some of the shady mechanics are more self-explanatory as we have seen them in action (and fail). And where did this strange abstract world come from? Walker explains how it is thoroughly modern, but finds its roots in late medieval Europe. And then in lecture 19 throws a couple of statements about history that are worth pondering: The Medici family started out as bankers and financed the Florence government and this is how they got to control the city themselves. And: the bankers from the Netherlands (this includes nowadays Belgium) financed the Habsburgs and when the Habsburgs defaulted, the Dutch revolted.

The bit about the Dutch Revolt seems a bit off. I have read and listened to quite a lot about the Revolt and never found this bit. However, I wouldn't rule out that if the Habsburgs defaulted to banks in Antwerp this would have added to the grievances.

Geography C110 - Berkeley

This lecture course is about history, geography and economics all merged into one didactic presentation and it has me very excited. This is the way I like to be taught history, or economics and geography for that matter. Professor Richard Walker is a captivating, outspoken and effective lecturer who gets the job done very well, time and again. We are talking about the course Geography C110, Economic Geography of the Industrial World at Berkeley, which I have praised before and is being taught again this semester. (feed)

In case you have done some following in previous semesters, you still may consider following again as Walker makes numerous references to what is currently going on in politics and economics. He has a wonderful talent to clarify the interactive mechanics of regions (geography), economics, politics and historic developments. Not only does this make for a very integrated and comprehensive course in modern history - from the industrialization until today. It also explains a lot about what is going on today, whether it is the financial crisis, the rise of China and India (or not), the downfall of Europe and its creature the EU (or not) and the stagnating hegemony of the US as well as failing states and developing states.

The only question I have is: how well does this course work for listeners who do not have a clear view on the historical narrative of modern states and economy, of a map of the world and the specifics of its regions and the mechanics of macro-economics? For me, this course is a beautiful welding of these three separate disciplines into one whole picture. If you are fuzzy on some of the elements, will that help explain more, or will it cause you to drop out and fail to follow what Walker is on about? Can I get some comments on that?

By the way, if you want to see the power points, Walker promises in his first lecture to send them to anyone who applies for it by email to him. walker@berkeley.edu

More Geography c110:
Geography C110 - Berkeley Lecture series 2008.

Also recommended in this respect:
Geography of World Cultures, (review, site:Stanford on iTunes U, feed).
Enhanced podcast (maps are added to the audio) about the spread of languages and religions in the world. We see that the political and cultural boundaries are not the same as the boundaries of language and religion.

Global Geopolitics (review, site:Stanford on iTunes U, feed).
Martin Lewis systematically discusses, in nine lectures, all areas on the globe and disclose the problems in geopolitics. Enhanced podcast (maps are added to the audio).

Geography 130 (Berkeley) Natural Resources and Population (review, site, feed)
Lecture series that explains how our earth is populated, why it is populated the way it is, how we use our resources and in the process we come to understand how the system is strained.

Amar Bhide in podcast

The economist Amar Bhidé has recently written a book "A call for Judgment" which compares major segments of the economy where imagination and judgment rule the day with the financial sector that is marked by the excessive use of models which are increasingly centralised, distanced, and mechanistic. Bhidé would like to see the same kind of imagination and judgment (or would one have to call this common sense) to be applied in finance as it is elsewhere.

He goes as far as to call it the REAL economy as opposed to some kind of virtual or theoretic economy of the financial sector. Needlessly, this analysis is a response to the disastrous effect the crisis in the financial sector has had on the whole economy.

Bhidé can be heard on Harvard Business IdeaCast in August 2010 "Bringing Judgment Back to Finance" (feed) and on The Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show in February 2010, which reran an old phone call with him: "Amar Bhide Break Up The Fed" (feed) And he is also to be found in the 2009 archives of Econtalk, where he spoke aboput his previous book. "Bhide on Outsourcing, Uncertainty, and the Venturesome Economy." (feed, 2009 feed)

He is expected to speak at the London School of Economics in October and I would expect this lecture to appear in the LSE podcast then. (feed)

More EconTalk:
Helprin on Copyright - EconTalk,
Jimmy Wales on Wikipedia,
New Deal and War Economy,
The Depression,
Wildlife, Property and Poverty.

More Harvard Business IdeaCast:
Silver lining in the sky,
Harvard Business IdeaCast review.

More LSE Podcast:
Quest for Meaning,
The plundered planet,
China and India,
The China Hegemony,
The myth of work.

Reading Marx's Das Kapital - David Harvey

By the end of the lecture David Harvey tells Marx once said: "I am not a Marxist." It appears that even in his own time, many things were ascribed to Marx which Marx did not intend. Furthermore, Harvey claims at the beginning, few people integrally read Marx's central work - Capital (Das Kapital). Mostly it is quoted in part, which is prone to misquote or taken into the wrong context. In this podcast David Harvey takes us with him in his 2008 version of the course he has been teaching over 40 years: about Das Kapital, volume one, as a whole (Reading Marx's Capital).

The course is available in an audio feed as well as a video feed. I have embedded the video of the first lecture below and with me, you will find that there is hardly anything you miss out on if you take only the audio.

After the (nice) addition of the little conversation at the beginning, it kicks off with the first lecture about the first chapter and generally how this book is to be read. It had me excited right from the start. Not only is it worth to engage into the question how one should address any author's major work with Marx as an example, for it is not just him who is victim of endless quoting in snippets and stereotypical interpretation. I was also thinking of Mills, Darwin, Keynes and Freud to name but a few. In addition Marx kicks off with taking us to pondering the value of a commodity - to analyze the value transitions of any simple product we purchase any time any day without much thought.


Class 01 Reading Marx's Capital from David Harvey on Vimeo.

I want to thank my reader Naveh for pointing me to this series.

Plundered Planet - LSE

The natural resources of our planet are being squandered. Not only are the very few profiting, in stead of many, but also the revenues are consumed in stead of invested such that also future generation are being robbed of the wealth the earth has to offer. And in case you thing this is a problem of the poor countries, also rich countries make this mistake, as we can learn from a recent lecture at the LSE podcast (feed).

Guest speaker was Paul Collier, author of The Plundered Planet and he has been on LSE before, last September he spoke about Resource Management and this talk is partly a repetition, partly a continuation of the previous lecture; Collier has fine-tuned his analysis as well as his presentation. What I find both impressive and attractive is that he finds a way between conservational ecologism and market fundamentalism. Which means that neither does he say that we should not exploit nature, nor does he argue that we should let market forces steer the exploitation of natural resources. As in his previous lecture he argues for resource management.

To this extent he has written his book and he hopes to give sound advice to both the developed as well as the developing countries. Simply put, in his view, natural resources must be exploited in such a way that the whole population of profits from the income (which demands proper taxation and administered extraction) and that also future generations profit (which demands ample investment in infrastructure and new industries). When done properly, a country can exploit a resource to exhaustion (some resource are limited by nature), but in the end this will have cause an economic evolution which lifted the whole community to a higher and sustainable level.

More LSE:
China and India,
The China Hegemony,
The myth of work,
Pasts and futures of Christianity,
Global capitalism - the Gray view.

Amartya Sen on India - Open Source

We have encountered Amartya Sen on several podcasts. He spoke on Justice at the LSE at Cornell on Capitalism and Confusion (UChannel), there was a more free conversation with Amartya Sen at the LSE again and he even made a short appearance on A History of the World in 100 Objects (BBC), when they discussed the Pillar of Ashoka.

At Radio Open Source the host Christopher Lydon interviewed Amartya Sen on India in general. (feed) It is very interesting to listen to this interview in conjunction with two other podcasts that relate to the current state of affairs in India. Pranab Bardhan on LSE and Palagummi Sainath at Big Ideas. All three Indians, each with their own professional perspective, make an analysis of where India stands today. All three mark the widely noticed economic rise of India and all three make critical comments.

Amartya Sen comes with a very personal view of India and its history. One of the distinctive elements, in his view, is the variety and tolerance of variety in India. What this also means is what Sainath called the great Inequality: the huge differences in literacy and wealth. It also means that India shows a large variety of religions, including fundamentalist streams. A variety towards science and technology is quite surprisingly illustrated with Gandhi; Sen discloses the Mahatma's opposition even to railways. Just as Sainath, Sen is worried about the inequality and he catches it in the phrase, India is becoming part California, part sub-Saharan Africa. There is more - one should listen.

More Open Source:
Mustafa Barghouti,
Jackson Lears,
Two communities in one region,
We want Obama,
The end of Hegemony.

The Age of Inequality - Big Ideas

In our series of podcasts about India, I want to direct you to TVO's Big Ideas which had a lecture delivered by Palagummi Sainath on the problem of poverty. Sainath makes a passionate demand for attention to the problem of poverty in India. His point concerns one of the most devastating faces of poverty: starvation. Sainath argues more people than ever are starving in India.

Should this surprise us? Just as we were being informed of the rising economic power if India, you would not immediately think of starvation happening the same time. Yet, if you have listened to Professor Pranab Bardhan at LSE, poverty already stood out as a serious challenge to India. Also the interview Christopher Lydon did with Amartya Sen (review coming soon) touched on t his subject. Yet, Sainath is most outspoken. He addresses India's successes, but claims that this reflects only the upper realm of society. In fact, he argues, the increased wealth is ending up with an increasingly smaller portion of the population. For the masses, the opposite is the case: a descent into poverty. And if statistics indicate that Indians eat better than ever, this also goes only for the upper portion. Per head, there is less food and therefore, for the absolute bottom of society Sainath asks: 'What the heck do they eat?'

He adds, that the poorest people, also do the hardest work and as a consequence are in need of more calories than the middle class office dwellers (who have the food). The implication of his argument is not only the stunning injustice and a revelation of desperate human suffering, but also a warning of great social upheaval to come. Unless the problems are addressed. A bail-out is needed for the poor and this would be a global truth, not just one for India. Bail-outs, unfortunately, in this world, are devised for the rich, not the poor.

More Big Ideas:
Disappearing cultures,
Waiting for Godot,
Religion as culture - Camille Paglia,
Christopher Hitchens on the Ten Commandments,
The empire.

China and India - LSE podcast

At the LSE podcast (feed) Professor Pranab Bardhan appeared with two consecutive lectures comparing China and India. As the title of both his book and his two lectures, Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay, both powers are rising quickly, but in spite of their increasing economic weight, each has their own set of major problems to overcome.

The first lecture is the more technical of the two. Bardhan delivers the figures of both economies and gives an analysis how these should be interpreted. There is a funny line he recalls from his Indian socialist friends in the past. They would say, China is doing better, because they are better socialists than we are. Today, Bardhan jests, probably the Chinese do better, because they are better capitalists than the Indians. Although some of the figures seem to indicate that, India is not lost without advantages. And we awaited the second lecture to find about problems on both sides.

In the second lecture, when the huge problems of both countries, poverty, illiteracy, the position of women, minorities, lack of democracy, corruption and lack of accountability and so on, are summed up, India does not come out better or with better prospects than China. The challenges each country faces is very different from the other. The conclusion is that it very much remains to be seen how India and China will handle them and how they will come out and whether they indeed will rise to the kind of power that everybody seems to believe they do.

More LSE:
The China Hegemony,
The myth of work,
Pasts and futures of Christianity,
Global capitalism - the Gray view,
Israeli at the London School of Economics.

UK Elections - recommended podcasts

With the elections coming up in Great Britain on May 6th, there are several ways to go following it in podcast and getting good background information. Always good is The Economist (feed) which does weekly updates. A week is a long time in politics, especially during the election season.



Australia's Rear Vision had a special: UK Elections 2010. As usual with Rear Vision, it puts the current situation in a historical perspective. It goes back to the early 1970's when Labour reign came to an end. Labour failed on economics and the conservatives took over with Thatcher. Labout only could take over after having reformed itself to a centrist party under Blair. In 2010, Labour seems to be losing, but the Conservatives have a hard time to capitalize on that.

I would like to recommend diving deeper into the history of the UK in modernity and take up Berkeley's History 151c - The Peculiar Modernity of Britain (feed). Professor James Vernon is a very captivating lecturer with good British Humour thrown into the academic mix. His grand theme on Britian's peculiar modernity, is that the kingdom developed into a liberalist democracy full of paradoxes. (History 151c syllabus) Tomorrow will be the last lecture 'Thatcher and Blair: the return of liberalism'.

I love the way Vernon typifies the austere character of the socialists (and liberals) and the savoir vivre of the conservatives, which explains why the conservatives appeal to the masses (for being fun) when in fact, we might assume that the socialists have the mass's interest served in their politics. The liberals go back and forth between socialists and conservatives and occasionally have a feeble life on their own. Yet, the just might take on a significant role in 2010 as the Liberal Democrats.

Quick update: There is also a lecture at the LSE podcast about women voters in this election.

More of The Economist:
Avi Shlaim on Israel and Palestine,
A crisis of authority in Iran,
Comfort with Obama,
Democracy in America - podcast review,
Issues of Race.

More Rear Vision:
Two podcast issues on the history of Haiti
History of Yemen,
Freemasons,
China,
A history of the Israeli-Arab conflict.

More History 151c:
The Great War in podcasts,
The Indian Rebellion,
Friday Portion for Anne is a Man.

Podcasts in Spanish?

After having asked you about podcasts in Russian and podcasts in Swedish, I turn to Spanish. Do you know of podcasts in Spanish to recommend?

My reader Jacky wrote to me about the following four:

The first one La Rosa De los Vientos (compass rose) is a three hours radio program broadcast, and podcast from Spain (feed). They talk about history, archeology, astronomy, science, secret services and much more.

In fact, one of the segments of the program Pasajes de la Historia (journeys of history) is a podcast by itself (feed).

Ciencia y Genios (science and genius) is a podcast about the great brains of our history. Their lives and investigations are told in first person (feed).

El Bloguipodio (feed): La Bloguera and Dabloguiman from Washington DC talk about news, politics and more. (It needs to be pointed out that these two are very entertaining, but speak with a microphone on the table in a room which does not have the best of acoustics)

The China Hegemony - LSE Podcast

The LSE podcast is one to keep an eye on constantly. The London School of Economics publishes here guest lectures on a weekly basis and offer the best on insights on the most compelling issues of the day. Especially in the realm of economics and geopolitics you will have a constant stream of information from the best minds. In addition to their lectures, you will frequently find much interest in the consecutive Q&A sessions. The audience is frequently as knowledgeable as the speaker.

Apart from top academicians, economists, policy makers and diplomats, you occasionally have journalist speakers who have distinguished themselves with noteworthy writings. One such speaker was Martin Jacques who wrote a book and held a talk with the same title: When China Rules the World. The typical way in which this is a work of journalism and not of an academician or a politician - and we have seen this several times at the LSE podcast - is that Jacques has written the book and holds the lecture extrapolating freely from indicators, in this case, as if it is already a given that the world will soon live in a Chinese hegemony. Whereas this free reasoning can sometimes weaken the talk, in this case it works very vitalizing.

His picture of the Chinese hegemony is an analysis of Chinese culture, Chinese history, Chinese strength and the mere application to an assumed future is just the icing on the cake. What is to learn is how one should expect China to act more in accordance with its history rather than as a copy of western hegemony. In this respect Jacques uses the term 'civilization state' as opposed to a nation state, which not only emphasizes the difference between the western way of thinking in nations, but also to show the continuity of the People's Republic within millenniums of Chinese history and culture. Of course China will modernize, but in a Chinese way. It will not colonize like the west, but it will more likely rule according the old Chinese tributary ways.

Did I say that the audience poses interesting questions? Not always, but here it does and draws from the speaker also analysis of the weaknesses of China. In short: what can stop China from ruling the world? And the short answer is: China. Listen in order to find out how.

More LSE:
The myth of work,
Pasts and futures of Christianity,
Global capitalism - the Gray view,
Israeli at the London School of Economics,
Michael Sandel.

Divorcing the Union - BBC Analysis

BBC Analysis took on a juicy subject: could Britain leave the EU? The answer to the question is as plain as it is predictable. Leaving the EU is possible, but the price may be high. Some citizens will benefit, some will pay and the extent to this is difficult to fathom. The elaboration of this answer seem more a means to convey the sentiments around Britain and the EU.

Apart from a nice trivia tidbit that Greenland was the first to leave the EU, the real interesting bit is how these sentiments are being played out. Especially as it becomes clear that the price of leaving may actually be so high as that for all practical purposes the UK is stuck in the EU. The politician pleading for divorce lashes out to the leading politicians and media for being, if reluctantly, in favor of staying a member. I have more trust in the common sense of the people, he plays his demagoguery and this reminded me of how uninformed underbelly politics is usually presented: as the higher wisdom of the common but silent people.

More BBC Analysis:
Shia theology against Ahmedinejad,
The future of Pakistan.

Ceasefire - UChannel

Who is not against war? Who won't have peace? When there is a speaker who pleads for a ceasefire in the most general sense, who pleads against war all over - who would not agree? What arguments are there that war should stop and that this will benefit people are actually unknown and would surprise us?

I set out to listen to a podcast issue at UChannel Podcast with exactly these questions. Professor Gordon Fellman spoke at the Brandeis University under the title Cease-Fire: The case for ending war. Fellman proposes three main, bad, reasons for war. One is that war serves the economy. Two is that war is an expression of a kind of cultural masculinity that needs to express itself in competitiveness and aggression in order to be satisfied. Three is that justified anger about serious issues is redirected towards enemies and war. Of course economy would be better off with peace, of course we could have self-esteem as nations without competition and aggression. And obviously internal politics should better be directed at the real issues in stead of redirecting towards external, imagined, adversaries.

How useful is it to propose these truisms? Apart from extreme war ideologists such as Adolf Hitler, no leader sent his nation off to war with the idea that war was actually laudable. War has been seen as the inevitable evil. To ascribe its rationalizations to economic conspiracy, false ideas about self-esteem and what are the true issues are a kind of unfalsifiable trick. It pushes people who feel threatened and think armament and if necessary war, are their only way to go as stupidly mistaken. It evades the question whether threats can indeed be serious, whether enemies can indeed be lethal and what needs to be the policy in such a situation. And then an argument for a case that could hardly be lost is wasted.

More UChannel Podcast:
Capitalism and Confusion - Amartya Sen,
Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and the Middle East,
Taming Religion - Ian Buruma trilogy,
Averting the disasters of climate change,
Interfaith and Compassion.

Global capitalism - the Gray view

The triumphalism has thoroughly passed. In the past twenty years there has been some period when stark, global capitalism was cherished with unconditional belief. But the trust has cracked, especially since economic crisis set in. Since then, the likes of Keynes are back in vogue. And also, one who never shared the excitement, London School of Economics professor John Gray.

It is always a pleasure to hear Gray on podcast (though you have to get used to his careful, toned down and understated speaking style) and on Global Capitalism he was invited to speak at the LSE podcast just recently. Gray reports of many 'unfruitful' discussions he has had with Francis Fukuyama who resembled part of the capitalist triumphalism with his famous book The End of History (1992). Gray's point was and is in this podcast: history never ends. This means that there will always be crises. No system, no ideology, no empire ever vanquishes for ever. Gray was proven right when he argued that old dormant conflicts would awaken again after the old conflict of the Cold War had gone.

So, with this prophetic power appearing in hindsight, he is challenged to look ahead. And even though he quotes Woody Allen that predictions are generally hard to make, especially when they are about the future, he gives it a try. Climate Change figures dominantly in his predictions as well as a continuation of the current economic crisis. Not only does he forecast, he also explains how he arrives at his ideas about where we are going - and that is what makes this lecture tantalizing.

More LSE:
Israeli at the London School of Economics,
Michael Sandel,
Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung,
Natural Resource Management,
The Iran power struggle.

Changing medical profession - NYRB

The podcast of the New York Review of Books (feed) is actually a promotional podcast for the paper. In the case of the issue where Jerome Groopman was interview about the changing medical profession (mp3) it actually worked. I went to read Groopman's article Diagnosis: What Doctors Are Missing.

In the podcast Groopman gets under twenty minutes to make some of his points, but apart from the bottom-line you will not be able to take away too much of them. It really helped to go and read the article and get more reference.

It is not all bad with the medical profession. Groopman begins to point out that crazy hours and the absence of team work and support are things of the past. Yet he points at a couple of new problems that have arisen. Obviously the economizing aspects that reduce the time doctors are with their patients can be bad and we need not too many examples to understand what he means. However, when he wants to argue that the trend to rely on evidence-based medicine has bad side-effects, at least I was surprised. Surely Groopman doesn't want to open the doors for untested alternative medicine, so what IS his point? In a nut-shell, medicine is not as general and empiric as evidence-based wants to have it and it cannot be totally formalized. Doctor's need the room to make decision about treatment based on the individual case without fear of roaming into malpractice.

More NYRB podcast:
David Cole,
Amateur Science - Freeman Dyson,
Roger Cohen in Tehran,
Ronald Dworkin.

Jennifer Burns on Ayn Rand - two more podcasts

Podcaster Chris Gondek did one interview with Professor Jennifer Burns about Ayn Rand whose biography she has written under the title Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. This one interview he edited to fit each on of two of his podcasts, The Biography Podcast (feed) and The Invisible Hand (feed).

I would have loved to hear the unedited interview, or at least the extended version that contained all the material for both podcasts. As it went now, I heard one and was excited about Gondek's announcement by the end that there was yet another interview on the other. Then I listened to the other and heard so much twice that I can't tell in hindsight what is fundamentally different between the two. So, listen to either one and choose depending upon the touch you'd like to get.

The Biography Podcast is, obviously, about biographies and has Burns talk about Rand's life, career and development. The Invisible Hand is a podcast about 'business, economics and strategy' and therefore puts the emphasis on Rand's political thought. Both versions start however with a questions about Rand's childhood and both interviews close with the question of what Rand would have thought was her legacy today. Although these are two professional, polished and to the point productions, my personal preference goes to the more raw and less balanced interview Burns gave at New Books In History.

More Jennifer Burns:
Jennifer Burns about Ayn Rand - NBIH,
History 7b - history podcast review,
American Civil Rights Movement,
Whittaker Chambers,
Scopes Trial.