Frankfurt School - IOT

Last week BBC's In Our Time delivered a four part series about the history of the Royal Society which, I have to admit, I abandoned in the middle. Somehow it didn't take me in as the single part, 40 minute, concise and too short, regular episodes do. And as did the latest show, which was a normal one again.

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discussed the Frankfurt School and it was good to hear this history again. In addition to the history, it was a challenge to engage in the kind of critical thought the School propagated. I appreciated the idea of being critical of all systems, not only the leading system, but also the alleged alternatives. This was not cheap, cynical criticism but a thrust to think further and beyond, in eternal search for a better place. No wonder such School (of Sociology? Political Science? Philosophy? Art?) had to pass out of existence, but I was a little surprised by one suggestions the best had already been over when the School went into its American Exile.

I thought it had had its heyday in America and an additional heyday in its second period back in Germany. Surely there were several versions of the Frankfurt School. There are not many podcasts that pay attention to them. The only I know of was one issue of New Books In History about The Frankfurt School in Exile, that is, the American part of the story.

More In Our Time:
The history of the Royal Society,
The weekly treat,
New season of In Our Time,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
Logical Positivism.

Trade - A Story of India (3)

Michael Wood's video series The Story of India (BBC) is beginning to take me in completely. I tremendously enjoyed the third chapter, which you will find below. As I explained before, the series goes chronologically through the history of India and this chapter covers, roughly the first centuries CE. What is added, again, is a theme and the theme is trade. Trade made foreigners come to India since forever. The examples that receive much attention in part 3 are for one the Romans and the Greeks, who figure out how to use the monsoon winds to cross the Indian ocean and the Kushan, a people from Central Asia that controlled the silk road and planted an empire that stretched from north east China until the Deccan plains, from Bengal to Afghanistan.



This series I compare with Vinay Lal's lecture series at UCLA. The advice is to take the BBC before UCLA - although I got them in the reverse order. The story of the Kushan did not stick so well after I had heard Lal. Now, after seeing Wood, I feel like trying again. However, Lal has just started a new series, a podcast lecture course on the History of British India. (feed)

More Story of India:
The power of ideas - A Story of India (2),
The earliest history - A Story of India (1).

More Vinay Lal's History of India:
History of India - the search goes on,
8 podcasts I listened to,
History of India or Europe?
History of India.

Where are my files?

In my recent post Useful tools for podcast listeners, I introduced to you three tools that allow you to alter your podcast files to your needs and liking. This assumes that you know where to find your files, but this needs not be an easy task.

If you download your podcasts manually, you should be aware where the files end up. If however you use a download client such as iTunes, Juice or gPodder, the files are stuck in a place that the client designates and then it can be worry where they end up. It is useful to know in general how these clients work. Both iTunes and gPodder stick the files in their own directory. Under gPodder you will find a folder downloads and inside, under the podcast names, the files. For iTunes there is a folder iTunes Music, under which is a subfolder podcasts. Juice makes a folder in My Documents named Received Podcasts.

Juice and iTunes also give a quick and individual way to the file. If you right click a podcast, iTunes allows you to choose 'Get Info' and on the bottom of the first tab you will see the path to this podcast file. Juice even offers the option to open the file's folder and you then will be directed to the place where the file sits.

More instructions:
Other podcatchers than iTunes (1),
Useful tools for podcast listeners,
Devising your own podcast feed - Huffduffer,
iTunes 9 - help for the podcast listener,
put feeds in iTunes.

Philosophy, The Classics - Nigel Warburton

Here is a book I would like to have: Philosophy, The Classics by Nigel Warburton. Philosopher Warburton gives us an entry point to philosophy by means of an introduction to a series of classical works in philosophy. From Plato's Republic to Kierkegaard's either/or.

Does the name Nigel Warburton ring a bell? Yes, he gave us also the podcasts Philosophy Bites, Ethics Bites and Prospect Magazine. True to his podcasting nature, he has made a promotional podcast for his book, a podcast by the same name: Philosophy: The Classics. (feed) Here we can enjoy the material, bite sized, as usual.

Be prepared though that Warburton is conducting a monologue here. What makes Philosophy Bites so easily accessible, is in part the format of interview, which is so much easier, so much more natural to listen in to. On The Classics, Warburton reads a summarized version from his book, complete with paragraph titles. This works less well on podcast and if Nigel is considering to continue this series I would want to suggest to him to find a way of livening the podcast up a bit. Nevertheless, for the prepared listener, these are veritable jewels to collect and to listen to at least twice.

Historical Jesus - Philip Harland

Several podcast series can be had that deal with the history of Early Christianity. A subset of that history is the quest for the Historical Jesus. Apart from the gospels there are few and little references to either Jesus or the Jesus movement. Two are mentioned by Canadian professor Philip Harland: Tacitus and Josephus.

Philip Harland has been conducting a very interesting podcast series on Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (feed). He has been successively going through the stages of Christianity and treated the history and theology and sources. By now he has reached the 5th section of the series which went off on a promising start and which intends to tackle the specific issue of the Historical Jesus.

Another series on the historical Jesus is a veritable classic from Stanford, The Historical Jesus by Thomas Sheehan (feed), which is very thorough (some 14 hours solely on this subject). More in passing Dale Martin's course Introduction to New Testament History and Literature at Yale (feed). Martin tells in this course he also teaches a course on the Historical Jesus and we hope this one will one day be podcast as well.

More on Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean:
New Testament, history and literature,
Da Vinci Code,
Early Christianity podcasts.

The power of ideas - A Story of India (2)

You know I have been asking for podcasts about the history of India and since there is so little around and since one of the comments on my History of India posts recommended Michael Wood's BBC documentary The Story of India, I am going over that one for you too. And here is part two of that series.



This chapter takes off where the previous one, that dealt with the earliest history, left off. But in addition to carrying along the chronology it also applies a theme The Power of Ideas. What is special in the history of India is that ideas have not only played an important role in it, India also produced many ideas and in turn influenced the rest of the world. In this chapter there is a lot of attention for the Buddha and after an Intermission about the Greeks, Chandra Gupta with a passing hint at Jainism, to the Mauryan Empire with its powerful leader Ashoka, who turned back to the Buddha.

An important reason why I am reviewing a series of non-syndicated videos is because of the criticism at UCLA's podcast about the History of India. In this podcast Professor Vinay Lal is so heavily entrenched in dealing with the political implications of views on India's history, that one easily loses track of the narrative, of whatever interpretation. I would recommend to go through the BBC documentary first and that will make you better prepared for Lal's course. With regards to the theme touched upon here, the power of ideas, Lal and Wood make a fine complement. For example, Jainism is only briefly mentioned on the BBC, where at UCLA Jainism's origins and content are expanded upon.

More History of India:
The earliest history - A Story of India (1),
History of India - the search goes on,
8 podcasts I listened to,
History of India or Europe?
History of India.