India and the Mahabharata

Professor Vinay Lal (UCLA) can be heard again on podcast with his History of India (UCLA - History 9A) (feed), about which I have written before in 2009 when it was also podcast. As then, also this time, there is a considerable difference in the characteristics of the material delivered between the first lectures and that those towards the end of the course. Whereas the history is more recognizably history, that is political history, economic history, as we approach the present, the very early history of the Indian subcontinent is presented by Lal with very little political and economic data. Much of the first 10 lectures are spent on discussing culture, religion (as much as the term can be applied, which is doubtful according to Lal) a bit of archeology and the literary traces of old India the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

Two years ago, the series of lectures that discussed hardly any data, but delved into those texts were very hard for me to follow and I am happy to report it is different this time around. The kudos in this respect go entirely to another podcast: The Mahabharata Podcast (feed). Lawrence Manzo's retelling of the Mahabharata, which has progressed to the 90th episode (Bhisma's Final Teachings part 2), has made the story as well as the cultural scope of the epic much more familiar to me. As a consequence, whenever Lal is referring to the Mahabharata's characters and anecdotes, they are familiar, easy to place and his point is coming through.

I want to recommend Manzo's podcast to anyone, regardless whether you are thinking of latching on to History 9A. The Mahabharata is a most fascinating, entertaining and at times mind boggling tale to engage with. Should you seek some shorter preparation, you can also turn to Rick ALbright's series on World Literature (feed) which has a two part issue addressing the Ramayana.

Next on Lal's schedule is the Kama Sutra, which, incidentally was also discussed on the last program of BBC's In Our Time. (feed)

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

More Mahabharata:
The Temptation of Karna,
Flood tales; Noah, Gilgamesh and Manu,
Indian roots of the Unicorn,
Endless cloth,
The Mahabharata Podcast.

More Rick Albright's English 205:
World Literature.

More In Our Time:
In Our Time Archive,
A reminder of the great BBC podcasts,
Diarmaid MacCulloch in podcast,
The Indian Rebellion of 1857,
Frankfurt School.

In Our Time archive

How long has this been going on? I do not know since when, but this morning I suddenly noticed that the BBC has opened up the entire In Our Time archive for podcast.

I used to write that one should always download the In Our Time podcasts and keep for ever. The BBC used to keep only the last episode in the feed. In case one had not kept the episode, the only option to listen was to go to the on-line archive and listen while streaming. While that has become less and less of a bother with WiFi all around and capable smartphones, it still was a pity you had no option. All of this now belongs to the past; the archive is also available for download and one can lay ones hands on any chapter ever.

The archive has been broken down in five subject feeds:
In Our Time Archive - Culture, (IOT Culture feed)
In Our Time Archive - History, (IOT History feed)
In Our Time Archive - Philosophy, (IOT Philosophy feed)
In Our Time Archive - Religion, (IOT Religion feed)
In Our Time Archive - Science, (IOT Science feed)

I immediately tried the history archive in order to find an issue from 2006, that I remembered as especially informative and the copy of which I had long lost: The Diet of Worms - which has nothing to do with food, in case you wondered. The Diet was an imperial assembly held in the German city of Worms and this program was about the one in 1522, during which Martin Luther had to defend his theology in public. If you ever needed 40 minutes to get a handle on Luther, the man and his ideas, this is the place to go.

Not only the Diet of Worms can be found in the feed, I saw the archive goes back as far as 1998 with promising titles such as Money, Byzantium, the Celts, the Aztecs, the East India Company, the Mughal Empire and on and on. A veritable treasure trove.

Melvyn Bragg and the Written World

It is in the style of Tintin and the Secret of the Unicorn or Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom that the BBC offers us Melvyn Bragg and the Written World. What showed up in the podcast feed of In Our Time (with Melvyn Bragg) and consequently disappeared, has now been published as an independent podcast: Written World with Melvyn Bragg (feed).

As I reported in the past days about this series, I got a comment from reader Richard Walker, to point out that this podcast had been spawned from In Our Time. Thanks Richard.

Update to the break update for 2012

Did I write In Our Time started a miniseries The Written World? Well they did and for 24 hours the first two parts were in the feed. Even the third part was there for a couple of minutes, but now, the feed has been cleaned. The series exist, but not in podcast - what a shame. And sorry about sending you on a wild goose chase.

In case you really want to listen, check with In Our Time, The Written World and invoke the BBC iPlayer.

Break update for 2012

Also in 2012 I will be on a prolonged break for the blog. 2011 has been a very busy year, simply too busy to engage in blogging. What has contributed to that, among others, is the fact that I have changed jobs twice. However, I have not stopped listening to podcasts and so let's have a couple of recommendations from my playlists.

The first is In Our Time, which has started a five part series about the human invention of writing and how writing and its innovations have had a fundamental impact on human history. Subscribe to In Our Time's feed and look for the episodes about The Written World.

The second is a sub-series in the China History Podcast which has been going on for 7 episodes already and is still running. Laszlo Montgomery is telling us the biography of Deng Xiaoping and this is the best introduction to recent Chinese history I have had in a long time. (feed)

Break update

Dear Readers,

Here is to tell you I am still on my break. It is a relief to be exempt from the pressure of posting every day. It is also a relief to be listening fewer podcasts and only those that I feel like listening to and not all those that I have to get a bite of in order to be able to write about them. The blogging and the listening had begun to resemble a job rather than a hobby. If it were a job, I'd do it with pleasure and ten times better than I ever did. But it is not and to have to squeeze it in with a real job and family life, while the blog was becoming more and more demanding (more and more podcasts to keep track of) got just a tad too much.

So, that is why I am away. That is why I listen less, but surely,while updating you, I might as well relate what I am listening to these days.

I find myself with three podcast about the First World War:
Veertien Achttien, the unmatched weekly bio of a participant in the war, be it on war or the home front. This remarkable Dutch podcast aims to supply a weekly bio for as long as the Great War itself lasted, that is for some 230 weeks. By now the podcast has reached week 170 without ever failing and at an outstanding constant quality. Another aim is said to translate the podcast into English and to start repeating the weekly feat from 2014 until 2018. Stay posted! (feed)

First World War Centenary podcast by the Imperial War Museum, offering extracts from their unique oral history program.

History of the First World War, an amateur podcast that offers a very accessible military history of the first world war. Currently the podcast is on hiatus, hopefully not for long. (feed)

As the Palestinian bid for statehood is pending at the UN, I also want to point you to a couple of podcast episodes that offer an unexpected perspective on the Middle-East conflict, but that I will report in another post. Stay tuned.

Anne