Listening ideas for 1 April 2011

Distillations
Placebos
This week, we celebrate April Fools' Day with a little medical trickery. First, we learn about Franz Mesmer's questionable 18th-century cures. Next we hear how fooling the brain is sometimes the only way to get accurate scientific results.
(review, feed)

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History
Death Throes of the Republic V
The last great generation of the Roman Republic emerges from the historical mists. The dynamic between Caesar, Cato, Cicero, Crassus and Pompey forms the axis around which the rest of this tale revolves.
(review, feed)

Wise Counsel
Stanislav Grof, MD on Transpersonal Psychology and the Meaning of Psychedelic Experience
Dr. Grof, a psychiatrist, transpersonal theorist and noted researcher of psychedelic experience, first encountered LSD as a young doctor working in Prague when the Sandoz company asked him to see if the compound had any psychiatric utility. Personal and research experience with LSD and its effects (including visual hallucinations, pre-natal and transpersonal memory and expansive, disembodied consciousness) profoundly changed his worldview away from the mainstream mechanistic view to a vision of the universe as essentially conscious.
(review, feed)

Naxos Classical Music Spotlight Podcast
Edward Seckerson about his new choral release
John Rutter talks to Edward Seckerson about how a confirmed agnostic became immersed in a world of churches and choral paeans of praise. He recalls his gentle childhood, his doodlings at an old upright piano which was only there because the previous occupants couldn’t get it out of the door. He reflects on why he has never written a musical when his love of the genre and his ear for a good tune dictated he should. And on that note, what it was like to be a tunesmith at a time when it was so deeply unfashionable to be one.
(review, feed)

Africa Past & Present
Political Change in Africa and the Diaspora
Horace Campbell (African American Studies and Political Science, Syracuse U.) on political change in Africa and the Diaspora. Focus is on the revolution in Libya, popular revolts, war, peace, and neo-liberalism in Africa and beyond. Campbell also shares insights from his new book: Barack Obama and 21st Century Politics: A Revolutionary Moment in the USA.
(review, feed)

Listening ideas for 31 March 2011

The Korea Society
Modern Korean Literature: Searching for Identity at Home and in the World
On February 17, 2011, The Korea Society’s Korea In-Depth Lecture Series hosted scholar Ann Choi Wan for a lecture entitled, “Modern Korean Literature: Searching for Identity at Home and in the World.” Wan contrasted the themes of romantic love and individualism in the first “modern” Korean novels with earlier genres, which were heavily influenced by Confucian values of social harmony. The 2011 Korea In-Depth Lecture Series by noted scholars of the history, politics, literature, art, and architecture of Korea is supported by a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities.
(review, feed)

In Our Time
The Bhagavad Gita
The Bhagavad Gita, a 700-verse section of the Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata, is one of the most revered texts of Hinduism. Written in around 200 BC, it narrates a conversation between Krishna, an incarnation of the deity, and the Pandava prince Arjuna. It has been described as a concise summary of Hindu theology, a short work which offers advice on how to live one's life. The Gita is also a philosophical work of great richness and influence. First translated into English in the 18th century, it was quickly taken up in the West. With: Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University, Julius Lipner, Professor of Hinduism and the Comparative Study of Religion and Fellow of Clare Hall at the University of Cambridge, and Jessica Frazier, Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and Lecturer in Religious Studies at Regent's College, London Producer: Thomas Morris.
(review, feed)

China History Podcast
The Qing Dynasty Part 3
In this episode we look at the bittersweet reign of the Qianlong emperor. The longest reigning emperor in Chinese imperial history, the Qianlong era saw the most splendid three decades for the Manchu's of the Qing Dynasty. China reached its greatest territorial extent and was still the marvel of the world. But during the second half of the Qianlong era, Westerners became more aggressive in their ongoing attempts to increase China trade. In addition to Westerners and their demands for China to open up, domestic problems increasingly plagued the Qing emperor. The stage was being set for the turbulent 19th century. The remaining six Qing emperors were powerless to control the cataclysmic series of events that would change China forever.
(review, feed)

Witness
Poll tax riots
On March 31, 1990, a demonstration against a new tax, degenerated into some of the worst riots London has ever seen. Two protestors remember that day very differently.
(review, feed)

Listening ideas for 30 March 2011

Indicast
India Vs Pakistan
India takes on Pakistan in the second semi final later today at Mohali. In the universal set of India and Pakistan, if set A were cricket and Set B were politics, then A intersection B is confusion, tension and a false sense of security. But we do rely on hope. In this podcast, we talk about this and more. Warren Buffet is in India. The DGCA spanking continues on pilots who have forged their way into the service. And Adityas better half makes her debut in a film titled Bal Gandharva which is going to the Cannes Film Festival.
(review, feed)

Witness
Reagan assassination attempt
On March 30 1981 a man tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan, the President of the United States. Special Agent Jerry Parr was one of the men who helped save the President's life.
(review, feed)

Rear Vision
The history of nuclear power
The magnitude 8.9 earthquake that hit Japan caused a massive tsunami that killed thousands and flooded the Fukushima nuclear power plant. As Japan comes to terms with its worst nuclear disaster, we take a look at the history of nuclear power.
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The Economist
Malcolm Grimston on a nuclear future
As Japan struggles to cope with the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, what next for the nuclear industry?
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KQED's Forum
The California Supreme Court's New Chief Justice
Tani Cantil-Sakauye took over as chief justice of the California Supreme Court in January, making her the second woman and first Asian-American to hold the job. She joins guest host Scott Shafer in the studio.
(review, feed)

August Willemsen

Even een korte recensie.

Kan je een stotteraar voor de radio (of podcast) interviewen? Een hardnekkig haperende August Willemsen verscheen voor de VPRO microfoon in 1999 en die Marathon van drie uur is nu als podcast uitgekomen. (feed)

Ik kende Willemsen niet alleen van de vertalingen uit het Portugees, maar ook van een aantal gedichten die hij in Paradiso had voorgedragen. Wat je er bij krijgt in het interview is heen en weer gepraat over zijn alcoholisme. De AA in Australie duwden hem naar contact leggen met Hogere Machten, maar daar moet hij niets van hebben...

Meer Het Marathon Interview:
Ernst van de Wetering,
Isaac Lipschits,
Ger Harmsen,
Het Marathon Interview met Kerst 2010,
Michiel van Erp.

Listening ideas for 29 March 2011

Mahabharata Podcast
The Kauravas React
Episode 50 - Sanjay returns to Hastinapur with messages and intelligence from the Pandava camp. The king's charioteer delivers this information before the royal assembly, while Dhrarastra, Duryodhana, Bhisma and Karna argue over the significance of these threats.
(review, feed)

EconTalk
Vincent Reinhart on Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and the Financial Crisis
Vincent Reinhart of the American Enterprise Institute talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the government interventions and non-interventions into financial markets in 2008. Conventional wisdom holds that the failure to intervene in the collapse of Lehman Brothers precipitated the crisis. Reinhart argues that the key event occurred months earlier when the government engineered a shotgun marriage of Bear Stearns to JP Morgan Chase by guaranteeing billion of Bear's assets and sending a signal to creditors that risky lending might come without a cost. Reinhart argues that there is a wider menu of choices available to policy makers than simply rescue or no rescue, and that it is important to take action before the crisis comes to a head.
(review, feed)

Witness
Bangladesh independence
It is 40 years since a brutal crackdown by Pakistani troops marked the beginning of the war of independence in Bangladesh. Meghna Guhathakurta lost her father to 'Operation Searchlight'
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Inspired Minds
Gregor Zubicky – Artistic Manager of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra
Gregor Zubicky was an internationally renowned oboe soloist and principal cor-anglais with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra until medical problems with a hand forced a change in his career path. Today he is artistic director of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. This week Gregor Zubicky talks to Breandáin O’Shea about this career change, establishing a chamber music festival and the challenges he faces in his new position within an orchestra.
(review, feed)

Lyrics Undercover
Landslide – Fleetwood Mac
A wistful song written in Aspen, reflecting the humbling landscape, is the topic of this week’s Lyrics Undercover. “Landside” first appeared on Fleetwood Mac’s self-titled 1975 album.
(review, feed)

TED Talks
Don't insist on English! - Patricia Ryan
At TEDxDubai, longtime English teacher Patricia Ryan asks a provocative question: Is the world's focus on English preventing the spread of great ideas in other languages? (For instance: what if Einstein had to pass the TOEFL?) It's a passionate defense of translating and sharing ideas.
(review, feed)

Hans Kundnani about Germany's left after the war

The flag ship of the New Books Network is of course the podcast New Books in History. Marshall Poe interviews authors of newly published, interesting, history books (feed). He has been doing it for three years and there is a wonderful wealth of subjects to choose from. One of them is the modern history of Germany.

A very particular and not often described (at least not in English) part of the history of Germany is the kind of intellectual struggle with the Nazi past that took place in West-Germany. Especially the more left-leaning generation after the war had an intense confrontation with its parents' and teachers' past. On NBiH Marshall Poe interviews journalist Hans Kundnani about his book Utopia or Auschwitz: Germany’s 1968 Generation and the Holocaust (Columbia UP, 2010).

Kundnani (who grew up in Britain and is the son of a Dutch woman and an Indian man) investigated the new left in West-Germany - he calls it the Federal Republic. He describes how they began to view almost the entire previous generation as 'fascists' and therefore politically bankrupt and began to heavily theorize about right politics. Many of them seriously radicalized, but not all of them ended up as RAF (Rote Armee Faktion) terrorists. Notably Joschka Fischer made it to German foreign minister, for the Green Party. Kundnani is a very captive guest on the show and wonderfully effectively explains the intricacies of the leftist intellectual landscape of West-Germany in the sixties and seventies.

More New Books in History:
Ottoman Age of Exploration
The mysteries of whites and of mass,
A Soviet Memoir,
This I accomplish,
Not your idea of World War II.