Benefitting from the labels (and search) on the blog

This blog contains over 1500 posts, 90% are podcast reviews or lists of podcasts that you would want to check out. The question is: how can you find what you are looking for? I try to help you by adding links to relevant other posts whenever I publish a new one. I also add labels, which link up to sets of posts in the same category (or of the same language). But there are more options.

In addition you can use the search engine that sits on top of this page. It allows you to "google" through my pages on any keyword or combination of key words.

While looking at the labels on a specific post, you may feel limited to that particular subject. What about other general areas? Look down in the left margin of the blog and find a complete list of labels on the blog. The number between brackets indicate how many posts there are labelled with this category. Here are a few labels you might be interested in:

Ancient History - there are so many history posts, but here is an option to narrow down. I intend to make more of these, just like I intend to add these as directories to the big, big history podcast directory.

Berkeley, UCSD, Yale - Great suppliers of collections of podcasts.

deutsch, Nederlands, עברית - other languages you may want to check out

economics, philosophy, psychology, science - podcasts in the various disciplines

uchannel, New Books In History, Dan Carlin's Hardcore History - great podcasts that I regularly review

History of British India - Vinay Lal at UCLA

A lot of action has been going on around the history of India on this blog. The few podcasts on the subject are lecture series by Vinay Lal at UCLA: History of India (feed) and History of British India (feed). The main criticisms on Lal's work are that his lectures are not well organized, his knowledge seems limited and his interpretations are heavily politicized.

This has been voiced in comments and in blogs that refer to the course on the whole history of India. Lal is supposed to be a specialist on British India and hence the new course (History of British India (feed)) is having me listen in closely.

So far the outcome is slightly disappointing. We have had five lectures, the last of which was not podcast (only 1 minute came through) and what Lal has been teaching is almost completely identical to what he has also said during the previous course (History of India (feed)). Also, since he seems to be giving the narrative in a chronological way, but in effect goes on thematic tangents. So we are still presented with material that is not immediately well ordered. As to the politics and the quality of the knowledge, I am looking forward to find what other listeners will write - either in the comments below, or in their blogs.

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

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.

Fear - Tapestry

CBC's Tapestry had a very interesting show in which Mary Hines spoke with Rabbi Harold Kushner about Fear. Leaving all theology and philosophy aside - Kushner characterizes this theorizing as a kind of Sudoku - and concentrating on what really bothers us in everyday life and cannot be easily set aside by ratio or faith.

One might expect a lot of talk of fear of death, or of disease and disability, but eventually the attention drives to fear of failure, fear of being left behind or leaving others behind, fear of meaningless existence and most of all, what it all seems to boil down to: fear of rejection. Kushner tries to get the message passed that in this life it is not a matter of success or failure (and then, consequently rejection), but a matter of success or forgiveness. But it does require a net around you of people who care, who will forgive. Kushner emphasizes the importance of community.

He also leads us to a kind of leap of faith. He shows that in many situations in life you are so utterly unable to analyze outcomes and reactions, you eventually are presented with a choice between believing in the goodness of people, in a meaningful existence, or not. And if neither has no better or worse arguments and indicators, one might as well allow to belief optimistically. It is an fascinating show and eventually the thought stuck with me: everything Kushner says, one can take to heart and he could have said exactly the same thing had he not be a Jewish religious rabbi, but rather a proponent of any other faith or a secular. And that makes it all the more strong.

More Tapestry:
Karen Armstrong,
Terry Eagleton.

Podcasts on Ancient History

I have reported on so many podcasts in the realm of history that I have deemed it necessary to take my history directory and order it into subdivisions. There will be subdivisions into eras, into regions and into themes, to whatever extent the division is useful, accepting the overlap and holes that remain - just to cut up an unwieldy list of over 130 podcasts into reasonable chunks.

Here is the first subdivision: Ancient History. All history podcasts that purposely are dedicated to some era, place or theme that sit in time between the dawn of times until the early Common Era. Most of these are about Greece and Rome, but also fit into this section are podcasts about other early civilizations such as those in the Nile basin, Mesopotamia, Indus Valley and China, the early roots of World Religions as well as the pre-history of man. It needs to be noted that many podcasts that I will stick in the general category, because they cover so much more, will deliver most noteworthy content on ancient history as well.

Ancient History - Alternative Theories (review, site, feed)
Esoteric reconstruction of ancient history.

From Israelite to Jew (review, site, feed)
Bible Scholar and religious Jew Michael Satlow in a podcast series revealing the history of the Jewish people in the pivotal transitional post-exilic period in which they transformed from being a nation (Israelites) to a religious ethnic group (Jews). There is also a very loosely related episode about the Talmud in this series.

Hannibal, (review, site:Stanford on iTunes U, feed).
Stanford University delivers some phenomenal audio, but you have to have iTunes in order to get there. This lecture series about Hannibal gives insight in the history of Hannibal, his trip over the Alps and Professor Patrick Hunt's efforts to reconstruct Hannibal's route over the Alps.

Historical Jesus, (review, site:Stanford on iTunes U, feed).
The very best of Stanford is a lecture series, including syllabus and link to the central book, by theology professor Thomas Sheehan about the Historical Jesus. Sheehan carefully takes the listener through the intricacies of dissecting Scripture to the most authentic sources to Yeshua of Nazareth himself.

History 106B, (Berkeley) The Roman Empire, (review, site, feed).
Professor Isabelle Pafford deals in a few lectures with early Roman history and dedicates the bulk to the history of Rome as of the moment it becomes an Empire.

History 4A (Berkeley) The Ancient Mediterranean World, (review, site, feed).
Professor Isabelle Pafford's lecture series, rapidly taking the listener through the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations and then landing in detail on the Greeks and Romans.

History of Rome, (review, site, feed).
This podcast is entirely dedicated to Roman History. It goes through Roman history in chronological stages, by means of weekly 20-30 minute podcasts, monologue style.

Introduction to Ancient Greek History (Yale) (review, site, no feed)
Open Course on Yale delivering the history of the Ancient Greeks tracing the development of Greek civilization as manifested in political, intellectual, and creative achievements from the Bronze Age to the end of the classical period.

Introduction to the Old Testament / the Hebrew Bible (Yale) (review, site, feed)
Excellent course about the Bible by professor Christina Hayes - now also syndicated!

MMW 1 by Tara Carter (UCSD) (review, site, feed)
Inspired course at UCSD in human evolution, anthropology and prehistory.

MMW 2 - The Great Classical Traditions, (UCSD) (review, site, feed)
History of the classical era covering not just the west. Professor Charles Chamberlain

Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean, (review, site, feed)
History of Christianity in the early apostolic phase.

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.