Sowing Crisis - Rashid Khalidi

Last week I announced I was going to review a podcast with Rashid Khalidi again. Khalidi was a guest at the University of Chicago and held a lecture under the title Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East. The lecture was recorded and published (also) in the compiled feed of UChannel Podcast.

Khalidi gives a very convincing historic analysis of the dealings of the Cold War opponents in the Middle East, especially the US. The point he makes is that the powers have used the Middle East to wage their war by proxy and that the tragic consequence of the matter has been, and still is today, that in the region radical and extremist elements are enforced and moderates are at a loss. In most recent times, the USSR has been replaced by Iran and still the cold war with the US is waged in Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Jordan.

If you choose to listen to the podcast (you must), be advised to also sit through the question and answer section. Among others there will be informative dialogs about the Israeli lobby in the US and about the democratic powers in the Arab world. Khalidi proves to be a very engaging, sharp and enlightening speaker.

More UChannel Podcast:
Taming Religion - Ian Buruma trilogy,
Averting the disasters of climate change,
Interfaith and Compassion,
Talent is overrated,
Ronald Reagan, a rebel.

Ferdinand I van Bulgarije - Veertien Achttien

De podcast Veertien Achttien (feed) vereist geen grondige voorkennis over de eerste wereldoorlog, maar ik kan me zo voorstellen dat het wel helpt om de themas, de rivaliteiten en de allianties op voorhand te kennen. De podcast gaat weliswaar chronologisch door de oorlog, maar doordat het dit doet in de vorm van korte biografietjes en springt daardoor van front naar front, van land naar land en van thema naar thema.

De grote kracht daarvan is dan weer dat het de doorgewinterede fan soms op een onverwachte plek brangt, zoals deze week. Hoevelen kennen het reilen en zeilen van de Bulgaren in de Grote Oorlog. Er is wel eens gezegd dat de Eerste Wereldoorlog eigenlijk de derde Balkanoorlog had moeten worden en voor de de Bulgaren was ze dat zeker. Tom Tacken vertelt hoe de Bulgaarse Tsaar (van Duitse komaf) pragmatisch kiest om zich aan de Centralen te verbinden en hoe het met zijn verlanglijstjes met betrekking to grond in Servie, Roemenie, Griekenland en zelfs Turkije schuift.

Dat was dan weer een verrassende en informatieve aflevering en ik verheug me nu al op de volgende. Aangekondigd wordt dat het over Rudyard Kipling zal gaan.

Meer Veertien Achttien:
Veertien Achttien in transit,
Pegoud, Grimm - Veertien Achttien,
Emmeline Pankhurst,
Lord Kitchener,
Walther Rathenau.

Wars, Empires, Nations 1648-1914 - Berkeley History

A reader of this blog left a comment and wrote: I love your informative blog, one of the best out there. BUT, I must disagree strongly with your comments on David Wetzel. He may very well have a distinctive style, but his lectures are mesmerizing! Anyone interested in this period of European history would do well to listen. A google search of Wetzel will show that he is truly a self made historian, and certainly of the first rank!

This is about the Berkeley history lecture series History 162A: Europe and the World: Wars, Empires, Nations 1648-1914 (audio feed). David Wetzel as a lecturer is unlike any other lecturer you will find on podcast. His teaching style is didactic and adapted, so it seems to me, to attentive students who are taking extensive notes. What stands out is that he uses a lot of repetitions in his speech, which is not as easy for leisure listening on the iPod.

If you can find a way of listening to Wetzel's lectures, you will gain access to a very interesting series on the geopolitics of Europe in early modern Europe. He quickly paints the picture of the uneasy equilibrium in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and then the series kick off. He shows how Napoleon could rise, had to fall and then Europe entered a period of a century of nearly complete peace. After seven lectures I am eagerly looking forward to the next milestone, which is expected in the eighth: the revolutions of 1848.

The reply to my reader has to be: you are probably right that Wetzel is mesmerizing - he surely seems to be that way if you are present in class. I can also appreciate his didactics, but I stick with the statement I made from the start: the lecturing style is not the most accessible through the ear buds and you have to be prepared for that.

More Berkeley:
Introductory Topics in Religious Studies,
UC Berkeley webcasts Fall 2009,
Biological Anthropology,
History of Europe from the renaissance until today,
Economics,

Confronting the bomb - NBIH

Every issue of the podcast New Books In History is noteworthy. Each week Marshall Poe interviews the author of a book that was just published in the field of history. It allows us to listen to historians talk on a subject one of them is a specialist in - what more could the history podcast audience want?

The latest issue featured Lawrence Wittner who has done extensive research on the anti-nuclear weapons movement and has written a number of books on the subject, the last of which is somethign of a summary called 'confronting the bomb'. Wittner's claim is that the movement has been in existence ever since nuclear technology was feasible for weaponry. That is, as soon as scientists figured the military application an opposing movement came into existence. This was in the 1930's, long before the technology was actually researched and applied.

Wittner takes us through the history of the movement and wants to assure that the movement has been instrumental in the relative abolition we see today. This I find much less convincing, but surely the history is very interesting to have laid out.

More NBIH:
Henry Hudson's fatal journey,
Substance abuse in the midwest,
How could they continue - NBIH on WW1 soldiers,
After slavery was abolished,
Populism.

St. Thomas Aquinas - In Our Time

While preparing for Rosh Hashana, which will be a long weekend and will mostly keep me away from my blog, I want to quickly alert you to the fact that BBC's In Our Time is back and has delighted me in the first show with Thomas Aquinas.

The meaning of Thomas is that he took the theology of the Church further from St. Augustine (see previous review) and succeeded in incorporating Aristotelian philosophy and world view into the dogmas of Christianity.

More In Our Time
Logical Positivism,
The Sunni - Shia split,
Revenge Tragedy,
The Augustan Age,
The trial of king Charles I.

St. Augustine - Berkeley podcast lectures

One of the Berkeley lecture series on podcast I have been listening into is Introductory Topics in Religious Studies (audio feed) by Niklaus Largier.

This series as my impression is after the first four lectures, looks very much like an introduction into Christianity in a historic theological way. The lecturer Niklaus Largier has a rather strong German accent in his English, which takes some getting used to, but is no hurdle after all. I am not sure if I can keep up until the end, but we will see.

The reason I highlight the course today, is because the first four have St. Augustine feature centrally. I knew very little of Augustine, neither of his history, nor of his theology. This course gives some connection and shows how he marks a historic change in the Church, transforming it from a early religious movement into a full fledged tradition with a theology. In this theology he was influenced by Plato. In the next review I'll point to the next mile stone in Church theology, Thomas Aquinas, who took in Aristotle.

More Berkeley:
UC Berkeley webcasts Fall 2009,
Biological Anthropology,
History of Europe from the renaissance until today,
Economics,
Cyber Culture.