The wonderful open mind of Shrink Rap Radio

For a podcast to be successful, one would expect the makers to somehow connect to the main stream. On the other hand, if they won't, then consistently anchoring in a certain niche may be the right thing. What is great and also courageous of Shrinkrapradio, the best Psychology Podcast in my humble opinion, is that it does neither. In Shrinkrapradio there is a place for content that represents main stream psychology as well as whatever catches the eye of host David van Nuys, even if it is rather inaccessible and on the fringes of the field.

The latest issue of Shrinkrapradio is an example of such. In Confronting Death, Dr. Dave speaks with Steven Shaps about dealing with death and accepting death in life. Apart from having death as a subject, tough by nature, the guest Steven Shaps is not easy to be listening to for the regular audience. His dreamy voice, his intuitive speech, long sentences and rather general statements make for tough listening. I think this is a very good episode (well done, Dr. Dave!), but one that takes considerable effort to take in.

Another example is Undoing the Ego. Nouk Sanchez, and her collaborator, Tomas Vieira, explain their world view and the therapy they have developed. The views are far away from common sense, fundamentally, as they regard reality, the real world as common sense holds it, to be a dream. Consequently, it is not so easy to bear with them as they explain their views on love, miracles and the proper way to conduct life. Again this is an interesting and engaging episode and I have enormous respect for Dr. Dave to pull this one off, but one needs to be prepared for the content, lest this seems totally wasted listening.

More Shrinkrapradio on this blog:
Process Work,
Authoritarianism,
Leadership and AI,
Dysfunctional personalities in the workplace,
Adventure Therapy

More Steven Shaps: Wise Counsel.

The Charge of the Light Brigade - IOT

The Crimean war was fought between Russia on one side and an alliance on the other side with among others the Turks and the Brits. Most of the fighting took place on the Crimean peninsula and this was where the British experience their historic Charge of the Light Brigade, October 25th 1854. BBC's In Our Time had the Charge of the Light Brigade as its subject in the last show.

Melvyn Bragg, more stubbornly than in other shows where a historic event was discussed, put in a huge effort to get all the facts straight of how the charge went, who were involved and so on. Only when we have the complete picture on the table, we make a move on to how this event was received back in England.

It was received pretty quickly and rather effectively as the Times had a reporter on the scene of the war and there was no censorship - yet. Even though the war was won, this particular scrimmage was lost and took on a huge meaning as it was perceived as exemplary of what was wrong with how the war was fought, how the army was organized and in a way, how England was organized and developing from an aristocratic power into a modern industrialized liberal democracy. Lord Tennyson writes a famous poem about the charge and its effects are lasting, not on England alone.

More In Our Time
Albert Camus,
The Nicene Creed,
Four humor medicine,
The Sassanian Empire,
Mutations.

Herman Finkers bij Martin Simek

Is de postproduktie van Simek 's Nachts zo moeilijk dat de podcasts in tweetallen uitgebracht worden en je dan vervolgens weer een maand moet wachten? Vandaag vielen er twee aflevering in de bus van afgelopen December. Herman Finkers, daar zal ik nu over schrijven, en Bas Heijne, de uitzending die ik volgende week zal bespreken.

Tijdens de inleiding valt Martin Simek zichzelf in de rede. Hij vindt dat hij de introductie van Herman Finkers te treurig maakt. Schuw jongetje wordt moeizaam cabaretier en lijdt ook nog aan kanker. Een vergelijkbare interuptie geschiedt later in het gesprek; Simek vraagt zich hardop af of hij Finkers wel geloven mag. Op mij kwam de tukker wel authentiek over en ik vroeg me ook af of het er wel zo verschrikkelijk toe doet of hij liegt of niet. Ook door te luisteren naar het verhaal dat de man over zichzelf wenst te vertellen leren we hem kennen. Daar ging het toch om?

De interupties zouden een sfeerbreuk betekend hebben, als Herman Finkers niet onverstoorbaar doorgaat. Het geeft hem de kans om van de onderwerpen weg te manoevreren waar hij kennelijk niet te diep op in wil gaan. Finkers is gelovig, maar meer dan dat hij Rooms-Katholiek is, kwam ik niet te weten. Hij wilde het ook niet teveel over zijn huwelijk en kinderloosheid hebben - al schijnt dat tien jaar geleden aan de orde te zijn geweest. Gelukkig valt er te genieten van verhalen over Finkers als performer. Mooie verhalen, ook als het niet waar is.

Meer Simek op dit blog:
Tijs Goldschmidt,
Truus Menger,
Eva Maria Staal,
A. C. Baantjer,
Ida de Ridder.

Social Innovation Conversations

The Stanford graduate school of business has a Center for Social Innovation, which publishes, among others, a podcast called Social Innovation Conversations. The center searches for social innovations that can help solve the major problems the world faces today, from poverty to environmental breakdown. The publications, hence also the podcast, are considered to be a means for spreading the various ideas and make them more fruitful.

In the podcast series, quite a number of lectures are carrying the caption: Making Supply Chains Socially Responsible. The latest of these features Willard Hay of Starbucks. Hay lays out the structure Starbucks is building under the name C.A.F.E. Practices, by which they attempt to purchase the best of coffee under the best conditions.

C.A.F.E. Practices is a program that covers the entire supply chain of Starbucks's coffee. The intent is to make sure workers and farmers can earn a good living as well as the middle men and the company and its employees. The program involves heavy auditing in order to make completely transparent where all coffee comes from and it is produced and sold properly. In addition the company engages in health care and education on the ground as well as agricultural advice. The aim is to make for a good and sustainable business. We can only hope it works as wonderful as Hay makes it sound.

The Social Innovation Conversations podcast is produced by The Conversations Network a non-profit organization that publishes podcasts from various lecture and conference realms that otherwise would not have had their audio content on line, let alone be syndicated. I learned of the Conversations Network when Doug Kaye was on the podcast expo and had himself interviewed on Shrinkrapradio.

My review of that Shrinkrap.
More Doug Kaye.

Berkeley's Spring 2008 courses

It is only January and spring is in the air. Why? University of California Berkeley has just published the courses that will be podcast (and vodcast) this semester.

Spring 2008 naturally serves some good oldies such as Physics 10, otherwise known as Descriptive Physics or even better: Physics for Future Presidents.
See also the reviews Nukes and Roswell)

As every semester we also have the incomparable History 5, European Civilization from the Renaissance to the Present, this semester delivered by Margaret Lavinia Anderson. I am planning to actively blog about History 5 this semester.
More History 5 on this blog: From the Renaissance Until Today, Agricultural revolution first, Thomas Laqueur.
More Professor Anderson: Antisemitism, The genitals of Christ (1 and 2).


New courses that I plan to follow are:

• English 117S Shakespeare
• History 181B Modern Physics: From The Atom to Big Science
• Geog 130 Natural Resources and Population

The American Constitution's British roots - BTHP

The Binge Thinking History podcast (BTHP) claims to have been inspired by Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. Host Tony Cocks follows Dan Carlin's example in his relatively natural speech. He doesn't read from a piece of paper. Or if he does, he does it really well. He also follows Dan's example in combining history telling with analysis. His first project: showing the British roots of the American constitution.

Tony argues the American Constitution is thoroughly British in its origins and takes us in the first four podcasts through the political history of England and Britain to show this is so. Already before the Magna Carta, in the charter of liberties he finds the starting point for the political thinking and organization that will ultimately lead to the American Constitution as we know it. Hence, he three Brits to be added to the list of founding fathers.

His first nominee is Henry VIII. The king that founded the Anglican Church and thus caused the Americans to be Protestants. The second is Oliver Cromwell, who showed the head of state need not be in a hereditary line. The third and the first to star in the cast is Simon de Montfort (who actually has a plaque at the United States House of Representatives), who made a point that the state need not be lead by a king.

Has Tony succeeded in emulating Dan? In a way he has. He delivers a bit more history and thus founds his points more solidly. He also is an engaging speaker and delivers a good audio quality in his podcast. What is left to be desired is to prevent this cast from turning into a monologue podcasts, such as British History 101 and the podfaded Medieval Podcast. There are many of those and, as shown by the examples, ones that already cover British History. Monologue style is hard to pull off, even for talents like Bob Packett. Tony could invite a female voice on the podcast and dialog with her. He could record in front of an audience. He could try to keep the podcast short - 20 minutes or less.

From Dan Carlin's Hardcore History:
Meeting James Burke,
Assyrians,
Depression,
Succession in Macedon,
The Plague.