Israeli at the London School of Economics

I do not usually write about podcasts I found a waste of time listening to. The Israeli deputy minister of foreign Affairs Dani Ayalon was invited to the London School of Economics to present Israel's view on the Israeli-Arab conflict and most of this resulted in a tedious repetition of the atmosphere and rhetoric that inevitably hangs around this issue. Not only did Ayalon's speech hold much that had not been said many times before, also the restless audience did not bring much news to make life really difficult for this spokesperson.

It seems, the more the atmosphere is heated, the fewer discourse there is. Especially on this podcast, one is presented with a lot of shouting - it takes the event about 15 minutes to actually manage to begin. The prickly retorts Ayalon has for the disruptive elements in the audience boil down to: when your argument is weak, you voice will go up. However, also his own talk was, in my ears, not particularly strong. I would rather have real powerful speakers really engage with each other in argument, not in a shouting match.

The reason I write is in the end that as a sample from the LSE lecture series, this was a very exceptional case. Contrary to the usual quiet academic hearings, this one was full of action and from that point of view, it was fascinating to witness how the action developed. Fascinating not only how Ayalon, but also how the mediator, the majority of the audience and the protesters dealt with the raucous affair.

More LSE
Michael Sandel,
Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung,
Natural Resource Management,
The Iran power struggle,
Justice.

Dacher Keltner on happiness and health

In modern psychology more than in traditional psychology there is attention for happiness. This new psychology is called positive psychology and it holds as tenant that what allows people to function well in their lives are their strong qualities and that what helps people who need psychological help more than anything is emphasis on their strong points. It makes for a psychology that is less busy with neuroses and deficiencies, but rather with emotional strengths, social intelligence, compassion, well-being and therefore, eventually happiness.

Consequently, on psychology podcasts, both lecture series (see more below) and specialized interview podcasts such as Shrink Rap Radio there is a lot of attention for the proponents, subjects and findings in positive psychology. In that respect an especially noteworthy issue was the interview with Berkeley professor Dacher Keltner (Shink Rap Radio #217). Keltner is a specialist in happiness and shared a great wealth of insight with the listeners. One of those are his arguments that positive emotions such as compassion are actually a product of evolution and hence, paraphrasing Darwin, evolution is not survival of the fittest, but rather of the kindest. He even argues Darwin himself believed this. (Shrink Rap radio feed)

Shrink Rap Radio's interview with Keltner is a fine way to get 45 minutes of his thought, but if you want more, you are advised to continue through to UC Berkeley and pick up his lecture course on happiness and health: Letters and Science C160V, 001, Psychology C162, 001 - Human Happiness (feed) Here you can find out much more about positive emotions, about the parts of the brain responsible for this, about touch, compassion, forgiveness and much much more.

My colleague podcast reviewer DIY Scholar has written two very relevant reviews of Keltner's course to which I happily refer you: Human Happiness and Are we a touch Starved Culture?

More Shrink Rap Radio:
Resurrection after rape,
Life Changing Lessons,
Shrink Rap Radio - 200 great podcasts,
Technology and The Evolving Brain,
Nova Spivack.

Learn German through podcast

One of the most helpful tools in language learning is to hear the target language being used. Hence, podcasting is a medium especially fit for teaching a language and the supply of free language learning podcasts is amazingly large. You can pick almost any (living) language and find at least a handful of podcasts offering you to teach it to you. Last time I wrote about one podcast teaching Dutch, today I want to relate my adventure into German teaching podcasts. And I can promise a post about Hebrew learning podcasts very soon.

As was to be expected, the amount of German learning podcasts is staggering. I have made a quick survey of five of them, each with different starting assumptions, levels and method. I am not going to recommend any one in particular. I think language learning eventually is both very personal and also in need of a multi-method approach. In general I'd say one should not rely on podcasts alone and neither on one podcast alone. Try them all and soon you will find what combination works for you.

My Daily Phrase German (feed)
This is a podcast by Radio Lingua Network which seems to have podfaded and been followed up by One Minute German and A flavour of German. This course starts with the basics and concentrates on phrases. A general remark about phrase podcasts should be: phrases alone will not help you very much. Without grammar and vocabulary, you will not know what you are actually saying and you will hardly succeed in understanding, let alone, dealing with replies. Nevertheless, phrases are part of language learning, they are a good addition and a nice starting point.

Learn German (Germanpod101) (feed)
Also a podcast with basics. Apart from phrases there is also basic grammar. These first two podcasts I mentioned are a nice place to start.

German GrammarPod (feed)
German grammar is not particularly easy, not even if you come from familiar languages such as English and Dutch. In spite of it being a rather intimidating subject, I advise anyone who wants to learn German to pay ample attention to grammar. The German Grammarpod systematically goes through German grammar and you will find it a good supplement to your German learning. For more advanced learners, this podcast is also a good refreshment and testing tool.

Deutsch - warum nicht? (Deutsche Welle) (feed)
This course in German leans heavily on letting you get the flavor of German. I totally agree that you will have to listen to naturally used language in order to effectively picking it up, but it cannot replace systematic learning. Try Deutsche Welle and see if it matches you. If you have a starting basis in German, it may be fun.

Slow German (feed)
At any stage of advancement in German learning, I would recommend Annik Rubens's podcast Slow German. Annik reads a complete text in a slightly slower and meticulously pronounced German as to make it easier to follow for non-native speakers. Even from a very low level starting point it makes sense to listen in. Even if you do not understand all, you will be able to tell the words apart and get a good feel of the pronunciation and free use of the language. Slow German will expose you to German and a regular listen will prove to be a tremendous support to all other efforts you put in German learning.

Many of these podcasts have additional learning materials, frequently at a premium. I would say you should use anything you can lay your hands on for free. After some time you will have figured out with which podcast you connect particularly well and then should consider spending some money to make the investment complete.

Of course, if Slow German or any of the other podcasts begin to get too slow for you, try some regular podcasts in German. There are a considerable number I have reviewed on my blog:
Skythen-Podcast (history)
Leben und Überleben mit 45+ (life after cancer)
Junggesellenblog (personal audioblog)
Meiky's Podcast Show (audioblog and audio plays)
Geschichtspodcast (history)
Volkis Stimme (satire)
Schlaflos in Muenchen (audioblog)
Ersatz TV (science)
Deutsche Klassiker (literature)
Omega Tau (science and technology)
Dichter und Denker (Culture and thought)
Wanhoff's Wunderbare Welt der Wissenschaft (science)
Fraunhofer (science and technology)
Ganz einfach leben (ecology and economics)
Der Sontagssoziologe (sociology)
Brieftour (audioblog)

The Ossie twilight - New Books in History

On New Books in History Marshall Poe interviewed journalist Stevan Allen about the demise of the DDR, the German Democratic Republic or East-Germany as it is has mostly been referred to.

The DDR was never really an independent state. Between its establishment in 1949 and its merging into the Bundesrepublik, the Federal Republic of Germany, it had mostly been a satellite of the Soviet Union. However, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, there was a short period of a couple of months over which the DDR at least acted as an independent state. In a way it was suddenly dependent on West-Germany, but not all the way. It was almost certain it would rather soon than late merge into larger Germany. But for the time being, the DDR continued to live, if scrambling, in twilight. And this is where Allen took part.

It may be a generational thing. Marshall Poe, Stevan Allen and, yes, me too, observed these developments in awe, disbelief and fascinated dumbfoundedness. The citizens themselves, the Ossies, had a lot more to be confused and excited about themselves. Allen describes this in his book and on the show and I recognize it all. It makes for absolutely fascinating listening and I cannot imagine it to be otherwise for anybody else. However, if you haven't felt the Cold War from nearby, if you have known none other than one Germany, maybe it is less so. Or?

More NBIH:
The first day of LBJ,
Ayn Rand,
Atlantic History,
Political rationalizations in Nazi-Germany,
Whalen / Rohrbough.

Christopher Hitchens on the Ten Commandments

Do you know what are the Ten Commandments? I remember them vaguely from religious education and one day decided to actually look them up in the Torah. I found more than one version and they weren't clearly ordered from one to ten. I also remember reading the Torah as a Law student and was shuddering as I thought of what I was taught was proper law and proper wording of law.

This experience is also expressed by Christohper Hitchens as he speaks on the Ten Commandments on TVO's podcast Big Ideas. Needless to say, with Hitchens as a speaker, this alienating experience about the Ten Commandments culminates in a tearing down of it. Hitchens deconstructs the text to man-made, inspired by conflicting politics, but mostly driven by an underlying world view that allows for genocide, child molesting and what other immoral acts he can find sanctioned in the Bible.

Unless you completely agree in advance with Hitchens, you may find this a bit of a cheap trick. One can take any text out of its historic reference and find fault with it by modern standards. Even if this is a foundational text that is still considered valid today, it can hardly be taken without the huge tradition of explanation around it. In so far this is just a reply to simpleminded believers who take the Ten Commandments as ruling law in itself. A deeper quality of the lecture lies however in Hitchens' observation that god is a creation of man and what entails that creation. To that end, the debunking of the Ten Commandments is merely an entry point, a didactic method, rather than anything else.

More Big Ideas
The empire,
Lawrence Freedman - Big Ideas,
New Learning - Don Tapscott on Big Ideas,
On Crime,
Why isn't the whole world developed?.

Stem Cell confusion - Speaking of Faith

This weekend, out of curiosity, I listened to Speaking of Faith in a different way. Since the uncut interview was placed in SOF's podcast feed, I decided to listen to this raw material first and then go to the official radio broadcast (and podcast) Stem Cells, Untold Stories - interview with Doris Taylor.

To make a long critique short: the program is better. The raw material really is elevated to greater expression, greater meaning. The issues come out more distinct and more focussed. And this issue is Stem Cell therapy. Doris Taylor is a scientist who works with stem cells and gets all the room Speaking of Faith can give to show how Stem Cell therapy and research can be and should be done morally. She defuses the ideas that the use stem cells involve aborting embryos for the sake of science and medicine and lead to limitless quest for naturalistic knowledge. The way she sees it, the cells that are used are either not coming at the expense of life, or are cells from fertilized eggs that are otherwise thrown away and there, at least technically, do not go at the expense of life. And in turn, stem cell research and therapy, radicalize medicine and creates hope for life for people with heart conditions or with cystic fibrosis, to name but a few examples.

Though this certainly doesn't take the sting out of the critique of stem cell technology, she may have a point that the public debate has been contaminated. It has unnecessarily been drawn into this seeming discussion about whether 'life' could be 'used'. This she attributes to the terminology as it became established. Embryonic stem cells, are in the parlance and apart from making the term emotionally laden, it is technically wrong as the cells are not embryonic (not even those from fertilized eggs). The quality of this show was that it took the technical angle, without becoming too technical and could begin to enter the social and moral implications.

More SOF:
Preserving Ojibwe,
The story and God,
Fragility and Humanity,
The Sunni-Shia divide and the future of Islam,
Wangari Maathai.

More on stem cells:
The bioethics concern,
Regenerative Medicine - Stanford,
Straight Talk about Stem Cell Research,
The Ethics of Stem Cell Research,
Human rights and the body,
Life and bio-engineering - podcast review,
Bioethics without Christ, please,
A useful map into Bio-Ethics,
Stem Cell Research: Science, Ethics, and Prospects,
Stem Cell,
Stem Cells - Biology and Politics.