Out of the comfort zone

Everywhere on my blog is an open invitation to submit podcasts, any podcast, for review. Occasionally, it is really hard to carry out the promise of giving a review. For some podcasts I am just not the target audience and since I find it of no use to make remarks on technical points alone (like the audio quality), I am left without words. Here are a few of those podcasts.

Cat Crave (feed) is a podcast for fans of the Carolina Panthers - American Football. Goodness, apart from the fact I hardly follow sports, some football (soccer) and cycling at best, I know absolutely nothing about American Football, let alone the Carolina Panthers. I found myself listening to incomprehensible jargon that sometimes bounded to the ridiculous. A new player of the panthers was praised for being fast by one speaker and the next added that he also 'had great speed'. Only when a prolonging of the football season was discussed, I could make out some logic. More injuries, shorter careers for professional players - that I can recognize from other branches of sport.

Masters of None (feed) is a conversational podcast in which comics and movies are discussed that I do not know. And then, when you are detached from the subject you are stuck with the playfully teasing banter between the participants. Until you get to know them, you are shut out from that as well.

The BMS World Mission podcast is a show made for the partners of the Baptist Mission world wide (feed). It is a rather light radio rubric style program that sounds exactly like regular radio, only its items are always Christian, related to missionary work and the dedication of one's life to The Lord. Again, I am not the audience and in this case, you are shut out if you are not. This constant returning to the mission has a self-congratulatory character that applies to the makers and the audience that are IN the faith; for others it can only be off putting. On top of that there is prayer at the end.
There was one item that I did like though and that was, maybe surprisingly, the meditation. Mark Woods takes a piece of scripture and gives a short interpretation that conveys a critical look at missionary work. Even if one is not of the same view, thoughts are provoked and, importantly, at long last the self-congratulatory atmosphere is traded for a much more genuine discourse.

The Trial of King Charles I - In Our Time

In Our Time will be on BBC Radio Four tomorrow with a new program. The latest issue about the trial of King Charles the first will by then be taken out of the feed.

The trial of King Charles is treated as an exceptional novelty at the time. It replaces the sheer coup with regicide to a process in which the leader of the nation is held responsible before the law. This seems like a logical follow-up to the chapter about the Magna Carta, where also the reign of the king is bound to the law. The next step was to bind the King also to values and principles of Justice. Thus Charles could be beheaded for this and set a precedent for the trial of King Louis in the French Revolution up to the War Crime tribunals after WW II.

The interesting thing in the discussion is that Charles saw it otherwise. He was the sovereign, who but God could hold him responsible. It took him by surprise that they were actually going to execute him. And so this trial also has traits of a staged case. In that respect it also sets precedent for the future that followed. Show trials all over.

More In Our Time:
St. Paul,
Whale evolution,
Magna Carta,
BBC's In Our Time - always recommended,
Brave New World.

World history between 100 BCE and 1200 CE - MMW 3

Here is a final recommendation for the history lecture series MMW 3 The Medieval Heritage by Matthew Herbst from UC San Diego. If you remotely consider looking into this one, go and get your files before UCSD take them off line, as they usually do.

MMW 3 gives world history from 100 BCE to 1200 CE in the widest sense. Whereas most general history courses focus on Western history, MMW attempts to take on every region in the world. This I already wrote in my previous review, that covered the first half of the course and this is all the more true for the second half that I have finished just now. There is attention for West-Africa, Ethiopia, Medieval Europe, Sung China and even the Incas and other nations of the New World, that were still isolated from the rest in this time period.

The strength of this series, that it covers indeed the whole world, comes at a price. Especially by the end, the chronology is very difficult to get a grip on. It is therefore especially important to pick up the last lecture in which Professor Herbst summarizes the main learning points of the course, one of them being contact and exchange. Apart from the Inca Empire, no part is completely isolated and through trade routes, not only goods but also cultural content is exchanged to and fro.

More MMW:
MMW 3,
UCSD's lecture podcasts,
MMW 2,
MMW 4,
MMW 6.

Three recommendations on New Books In History

An excellent podcast of which I try not to miss a single installment is New Books In History. With the amount of podcasts on my playlist, I continuously lag behind on this podcast. Here I will recommend three of the not so recent episodes that are all worth a listen.

The most commendable is Mashall Poe's interview with Matthew Algeo who wrote about Harry Truman's road trip. After Truman left the White House and became a regular citizen again (that was still more or less possible at the time) he took one summer off to make a road trip through the US. Algeo discloses the way the former president had to make ends meet, how the trip was conceived and in how far it could be carried out incognito. Aside from being very entertaining, this podcast gives a great insight in the culture of the early 1950's.

A more specific episode is the one with William Beezley about the Mexican Revolution. Beezley carefully paints out how modern Mexico came into being. The revolution, as it turns out, is more of a process over several decades rather than a sudden shift in a single date.

Joel Lewis wrote a book Youth Against Fascism: Young Communists in Britain and the United States, 1919-1939. This looks like a rather marginal subject, but it is very interesting and also connects quite well with a number of other issues in NBIH. Simply put, communists were the first to recognize the threat of fascism and probably this was so because the fascists saw the communists as the prime targets for their aggression.

More NBIH:
American Exceptionalism,
The Great War in short,
How Rome Fell,
Glancing over the backlog,
Jews in the Russian army.

Defining Environmental History - EEH podcast review

The Environmental History Podcast has begun a series of short podcasts addressing the question how to define environmental history. Host Jan Oosthoek interviews Donald Worster (mp3) in the first chapter.

As it turns out, the field is quickly defined as being about the interaction of humans with the natural world in historical perspective. Even though 'humans' and 'natural world' admittedly may need additional definition, the major points are how this is different from other, main stream history and from other sciences. Is this just a minor field within history that has an strong interdisciplinary character with for example geology?

Worster argues that Environmental History is to be regarded as a major line of historical research. Just as it is of major importance to historically view humans in their societies, whether states or social groups, also the natural world is crucial and has man historically embedded. And just as history has linkages with the social sciences, it necessarily has with the natural sciences. With the profound importance of the climate in the 21st century, the central position of environmental history will only become more apparent. Thinking of the environment requires an historian's help, Worster concludes.

More Environmental History:
Natural Disasters,
Canada and New Zealand,
Environmental history,
Climate Change in recent history,
Urban Air Pollution.

John Gray's cultural pessimism

On LSE Public Lectures and Events I have heard two appearances of the British philosopher John Gray, the first of which will be reviewed here. What both lectures have in common is that Gray forces us to critically evaluate what is taken for grand truths, implicitly or explicitly, in modern thinking.

Under the title Gray's Anatomy: Thoughts on Politics, Religion and the Meaning of life, Gray makes a couple of thought provoking and refreshing observations about the modern world and the thought patterns we tend to take for granted. Examples are belief in progress, in technology, in knowledge coupled with moral progress. Also the idea that prosperity will serve morality and poverty will harm it. During this, he never steps away from common sense.

The result is rather pessimistic and does not point to concrete alternative theories in ethics, politics and on the human nature. The great value, as I see it, is that Gray brings us to stop fooling ourselves and this is done not only by sharp thinking, but also by very practical and recognizable examples, clear language and a very pleasant and patient tone of voice. This is the kind of lecture everybody should hear, if not for conviction then for challenge.

In the next lecture with Gray he will refute the idea ongoing secularization (Religion and the Market).

More LSE Events:
Omniculturalism,
Controversies in the Economics of Climate Change,
Nudge: decision architecture,
The EU and the Middle East,
The British Mandate in Palestine.