Early Christianity - podcasts review

There is a new podcast I can add to the list that gives some insight in the history of early Christianity. I have to thank Dara from DIY Scholar (a great blog about educational podcasts, other audio and other media on the web).

It is unfortunate that a most widely extending overview, delivered by a historian is no longer available on the web: MMW3 from UCSD. Why UCSD removes their podcasted lectures immediately after the closing of the course is beyond me. Maybe they think only their students are to be served, but in that respect they are alone in the world of academic podcasts. Other institutions offer a formidable backlog for us to browse from.
As to early Christianity, the content is largely delivered by theologians. The first era to discuss would be the life of Jesus, or Yeshua, himself. This is covered in The Historical Jesus, by Thomas Sheehan from Stanford (feed). Not only is this an excellent series, you can also access a lot of the source material on-line, free of charge.

The next phase is the early apostolic period. This is covered by the podcast DIY Dara pointed me to. Canadian professor Philip Harland analyzes Paul's letters, Acts and the Gospels and other sources where available in a historical reconstruction under the title Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean. This is a very accessible series. Again there is a lot of theology, but the historical construction stands in the foreground.

The widest range I know of is Covenant Seminar's Church History, which kicks off with the early apostolic period, quickly moves on to the early church years and eventually ending before the Reformation. In this series the theology, doesn't necessarily overshadow the history, but the narrative and lecture carries very noticeably the Presbyterian signature of the producer.

Relevant other reviews:
Church History,
World history guided by the religions,
The Nicene Creed - IOT,
Historical Jesus - Tom Sheehan, Stanford.

The Ethics of Stem Cell Research

I have discovered an earlier enhanced podcast from Stanford University on Stem Cells, Straight Talk About Stem Cells (feed), but I started with Stem Cells: Policy and Ethics (feed), because it by virtue of its title promised to touch upon the ethics involved - and that is where I want to get at. I have written about the subject before and bumped into a problem that roughly goes as follows: you either have an ethical podcast, that rejects Stem Cell Research on religious grounds and doesn't explain much about the technical side of it, or you have a technical podcast that implicitly approves, but doesn't discuss much in the way of justifications.

Out of the five lectures in this podcast, only the last lecture really attempted to bridge the gap, but also the first four are rather interesting just the same. To have the basic technique explained (with pictures), helps a lot. The lecture on the various regulations also was instructive. The guest lectures of one specialist and one patient who had undergone stem cell therapy, were a very instructive.

Even if there isn't much in depth ethics discussed, at least the concrete examples of techniques, research and therapies, allow for giving a good inventory and some narrowing down into very specific ethical issues. In short, of all the podcasts I have heard in this subject, this one ranks among the very best.

More bioethics:
Human rights and the body,
Life and bio-engineering - podcast review,
Bioethics without Christ, please,
A useful map into Bio-Ethics,
Stem Cell Research: Science, Ethics, and Prospects,
Stem Cells - Biology and Politics.

The Arab Conquests - In Our Time review

The latest program of In Our Time talks about the Arab conquests. This is a great listen and goes very well together with a wide range of other podcasts, some of which I have reviewed and listed below.

Arabic was the language of nomadic tribes on the Arabian peninsula. The tribes were never united until the death of Mohamed. Upon their unification, they could start on a conquest, which first of all took from two neighboring empires: the Byzantines and the Persians (Sassanians - also featured in In Our Time). Throughout history, more nomadic peoples have raided into the more urbanized lands, but they either hit and run or they stayed and while ruling the land, became assimilated. Such we see barbarians turn into Romans on one side of the globe and into Chinese on another.

The Arabs, however, maintained their religion and their language and consequently, the people they ruled, adapted to them. At the expense of Christianity and Zoroastrianism, Islam took root in the Arab empire and the language of Greek, which had served as an international language since the days of Alexander was replaced by Arabic. Apart from Spain, all what was conquered remained Muslim and Arab speaking till this very day.

In Our Time brings this history in the usual elegant, accessible and concise style. More time was spent in the MMW3 lecture series by Charles Chamberlain, but unfortunately the University of San Diego has purged the feed.

More on the Arab Conquests:
Bob on Tours - history podcast review,
Europe and the Middle East,
Islam and Europe - LSE podcast review,
World history guided by the religions,
Islam meets Europe.

More In Our Time:
BBC's In Our Time (podcast review),
General review of In Our Time,
Library of Nineveh,
The Brain: A History,
Yeats, Enclosures and Materialism.

Memory and the construction of History

I was discussing Margaret MacMillan's lectures, I wrote about earlier this week, with podcaster Tony Cocks of BTHP. He pointed to another podcast. A co-production of the Open University and BBC's radio four: The Things We Forgot To Remember. Here we have yet another history podcast that is looking into how history is made.



The podcast is styled like BBC's In Our Time, as a panel discussion with specialists, but in stead of digging into an entirely new subject each week, as IOT does, The Things We Forgot to Remember has a detectable linkage between issues. Two of the episodes that are currently in the feed, deal with memories and the question how memories contribute to history. This meta-standpoint vis-a-vis history is maintained as the subject of memory is finished and the series moves on. There is a build up from the individual up to the supra-national. A returning example for analysis is how the history of the Great War was constructed. It is shown how the narratives depend on perspective, how they take on a national meaning. When, for example, a historian dared to describe his own nation as the war-monger, his work turned into the hottest controversy. Here we see what MacMillan also pointed out: where history allegedly is about sources, collecting and ordering data into a narrative, sooner or later it turns into a story with great meaning that acquires a near religious value. Invariably, that is where history as a science perishes.

More on history:
The big idea of History,
BBC's In Our Time (podcast review),
Thinking Outside the European Box,
The battle of Tours,
Islam and Europe - LSE podcast review.

Birth of the Modern - a history lecture podcast

The Arizona State University had a summer course in 2006, The Birth of the Modern, which was published as a podcast and is still available (feed). Dr. Andrew Barnes brought this exclusively as a new media course. The lectures are on podcast alone; not recordings of live lectures.

The object of the course is to take on the transition European culture made through from before the renaissance to the early modern time. It results in a couple of very interesting analyses professor Barnes makes. I have heard only six out of the thirty podcasts and can therefore not entirely assess what he does with what is proposed as a very central theme: how the Europeans deal with 'the other' (and whom they view as such). Obvious candidates in this respect are Jews, Africans, Asians, but there are more than that.

I have dropped out of this course because of two factors one has to take into account before embarking onto the course. For one the audio quality is very low. The course is from 2006 and you can hear it. In addition, despite Barnes's enthusiasm, intelligence and dedication, his monologue is hard to follow. His talk doesn't seem too structured upon initial impression and his speaking style is somewhat faltering. This is not 'infotainment'; this is a course for those who seriously want to study the subject and are ready to embark upon it with full attention.

More history podcast reviews:
History 5 - the end,
The blitz on London - Binge Thinking History,
Whittaker Chambers - History 7B,
The year 1703 - Historyzine,
World history outside the European box - MMW3.

The big idea of History

The Canadian broadcaster TVO publishes a lecture podcast Big Ideas. If this is basically a TV program, I must say, the visuals are hardly missing, if at all. As a full audio production, it works out very well. Here I want to report one absolutely outstanding lecture by Margaret MacMillan.

MacMillan speaks in two consecutive lectures (two podcasts) about the current use of history. She observes history had less of a meaning during the Cold War, but since we have come back to a less orderly world, people are obsessed with history. We have returned to the understanding that we can and must learn from history. She notices the rise in media attention, to which we can add the fantastic amount of history podcasts around. All nice and well, but there is a catch.

She tries to warn us, we must not turn history into a religion; into a narrative that cannot be questioned and that serves to elate, teach, justify and redeem us. She cringes how history is used by the likes of George Bush, Islamists, Israeli's and Palestinians. She proposes that history should teach us to ask questions. She throws a couple of attempted historical analogues (Munich 1938, Vietnam, Cuban Missile Crisis etc) and manages to show how what seems to be applicable can be off and a different analogue can point into a wholly other direction.

These two lectures are a must listen to anybody who thinks about history, policy and the world and certainly for you history podcast listeners out there.

Relevant other posts:
Church History - podcast review,
Post-1945 Europe,
The Great Dictators,
Thinking Outside the European Box,
Islam and Europe - LSE podcast review.