That Podcast Show #51 - the blog entry

My colleagues at That Podcast Show, have put out their last issue of podcast reviews, containing:

The Brain Science Podcast with Dr. Ginger Campbell
Category: Science and Medicine
Dr. Ginger Campbell gives in-depth discussions on advancements in neuroscience - the study of the human brain. Dr. Campbell is a well-informed and well-spoken host, but the specific material being delivered in each episode is crucial to whether this show is interesting or monotonous. The Brain Science Podcast is heavily dependent on which guest Dr. Campbell is able to interview. When Campbell serves as the only voice for a specific episode, it can be quite dull because of the monotonous delivery and dryness of the material being covered. Guests are able to balance-out Campbell thus allowing her to demonstrate her ability to interview. This show could also benefit from being shortened and somehow broken into smaller segments with more bumpers, such as the currently used instrumental music, to break up the monotony. The Brain Science Podcast is well-produced and professional and worth a listen to anyone interested in the human mind.

DVD Weekly Podcast
Category: TV and Film
Don and Jarrod Schockow are two brothers who discuss upcoming DVD releases each week. As brothers, they have excellent chemistry and talk animatedly about their subject within a regular format consisting of upcoming releases, that week’s most wanted DVD, and funny or unusual DVD titles. Each host gets random bursts of energy as if he were receiving shots of caffeine throughout the show. Both cover their topic in great detail, at times running a bit long. They are very opinionated and should be careful about alienating listeners with their opinions. Also, the blowing of fans and children playing are heard numerous times in the background. Overall this is a well-produced show with good sound quality, presentation, and consistency. Some listeners will find it to be very entertaining.

HYH Radio: The Yvonne Pierre Show
Category: Personal Journals
Host Yvonne Pierre interviews a variety of guests on different topics relevant to personal growth and emotional health. Her goal is to uplift, inspire, and inform. Yvonne shows a clear interest in her topics and her guests and seems to be driven by a desire to help others achieve inspiration and satisfaction in their lives. Yvonne, while passionate in intent, suffers in her delivery. More time spent in post-production to eliminate unnecessary transition words such as “um” and “uh” would greatly improve the presentation. HYH Radio also employs the easy-to-use yet sound quality-compromising Blog Talk Radio. While this causes some problems with audio, it does a fair job of getting the material across. It is evident that Yvonne is trying to find her feet, and we encourage her to keep going.

(This is a quotation from Edgy's blog)

This weekend on Anne is a Man (or afterwards)

Dear Readers,

This weekend I am planning to make the following posts:

• An announcement of That Podcast show relating what podcasts they reviewed on their 51st podcast
  
• A review of the Hebrew podcast מה שהיה היה, which is a recording of Radio Har HaTsofim, the radio station of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem
  
• A review of the new podcast Science & the City, a podcast of the New York academy of science. Among others there was an episode dedicated to Philip Zimbardo's research on how people experience time and how this affects their decision making and well-being in life.
  
• A review of the last episode of Historyzine, which turned out to be an especially good one.
  

Other reviews that are to be expected are among others about Veertien Achttien, the Dutch podcast about World War I. On a side note, the maker of Veertien Achttien, Tom Tacken, told me he had misspelled the last name of one of the soldiers in the Great War. When discussing Otto Weddigen, he thought the name was Weddingen. This has been corrected, also by me in my review of this cast.

I have also found yet another blog that points to mine: Gwyn's Blog, the personal blog of a Welshman named Gwyn Hughes. Gwyn is a Man, so to say!

Happy weekend to all of you,

Anne

Pieces of history - קטעים בהיסטוריה

קטעים בהיסטוריה is a small Israeli amateur history podcast. There are no more than four episodes out, two of which I have listened to. They are entertaining, informative and lightened up with sound and music effects.

The first episode I listened to was about the Lewis and Clark expedition. This was the better of the two episodes. The host of the show, Yuval Malchi, spent his 50 minutes well on retelling the story. The expedition is also a singular event which bears retelling in one show. The punctuation with musical intersections also adds some cliffhangers and thus add to the entertainment.

A bit less effective was the next installment which took on all of the crusades for one show. This of course spans too much time and reduces what is to be told in 50 minutes to too many facts that are barely related. If Yuval succeeds well, it is only because he has a great narrative talent and again uses the musical interjections as cliffhangers, here and there with a humorous touch even. (I think some of the music was not podsafe, but that is just an aside) He also has the habit of stopping his last sentence before the music in an upturn tone, as if mid-sentence.

The audio-levels bear some improvement, but all in all this is a very pleasant history podcast that deserves to be continued.

Picture: Wikimedia Commons

The History of 2050 - UChannel podcast review

UChannel podcast served a lecture and Q&A session with futurist Richard Watson at the RSA. For the podcast listener there was a lot to be expected, yet also a lot to be missed. Expectations were high because of the subject:  the history of the next 50 years. The RSA public was similarly affected and arrived in great numbers.

The lecture disappointed me. Fun though it is, to be informed about current trends and to let someone project them onto each other - even if the charts were not made visible for the iPod audience. (It would do to serve these as enhanced podcasts. Also in vodcast the element of charts and maps goes lost. We do not need to see the speaker, we just need the occasional glimpse at the slide. If one looks for a comparison, one needs only to look at Stanford.) However, getting the hotchpotch of trends only resulted in some sexy one-liners, but hardly in some coherent image that could serve as a history, let alone anything close to a narrative.

The real value, for me, was, that Watson taught me to look at trends, not only as far as new and upcoming developments, but also to look at things that are disappearing. As a new medium user, I can only agree TV and Radio are to disappear, but to my dismay, Watson also included blogging - let's hope not. Anyway, some food for thought, but a much ado about very little.

More UChannel:
The Arab-Israeli Conflict,
Civilization and the Hills,
New World Order,
The Invisible Hand,
The Second World.

Making History - Hebrew podcast review

Ran Levy of עושים היסטוריה replied to my previous review about his podcast with a delicate hint about my Hebrew. He suggested to write my reviews about Hebrew shows in English, because the audience masters English anyway. I took this as a discouragement to write in Hebrew. Too bad, I could do with the exercise, but maybe he is right that here is not the place.

Since the last review Ran has made a new episode of Making History and continued on a sidetrack of the previous subject. Previously, when dealing with simultaneous discoveries in science, he already mentioned how Leibniz and Newton discovered differential equations. In the latest episode this comes back because ran has decided to deal with Newton altogether. The differential equations are a side in a much larger tale of a poor boy who by chance got the opportunity to learn and become the genius he became.

Rather than the picture of the genius, Ran paints us Newton as the sociopath. In all stages of his life, Isaac Newton, in Ran's biography is unstoppable in his career and not willing to share the fame with others. Among his victims are not just Leibniz, but also Robert Hook. Newton took Hook's findings in optics and elaborate upon them without reference to Hook as if the findings were his, Newton's that is. It seems a leading thought in Ran's podcast: without sweeping away what stands as well accepted in history (Newton was a genius with the most important effect on science), but Ran feels the need to make some marks on the side and put all this in perspective.

Previously:
Making History with Ran Levy

This week on Anne is a Man (and afterwards)

There are a couple of podcast reviews in the making. In addition there are some podcasts I have listened to that in one way or another will enter some reviews soon. I would like to list some of those and together with that give you some insight in my listening schedule for this week.

Some of the podcasts that are to be reviewed in the coming days are:

Making History with Ran Levy.
Ran enters with the question who was the most influential scientist of all time and while you may have expected an expose about Einstein, you are getting one about Newton. Newton, the eccentric, the egomaniac, the ruthless self serving politician and Newton the rags to fame genius. In addition I'll explain why I review this Hebrew podcast in English.

More Hebrew podcasts to be reviewed soon are: קטעים בהיסוריה and מה שהיה היה.

I have listened to In Our Time's chapter about Godel's Incompleteness Theorems and I am about to take on Vitalism. Even though I feared the Godel issue a bit, on account of the mathematics, I was pleased to be able to follow, yet I still have to work some more on what I have to say about it. I might make a combined review of the last programs.

In the making is also another review of the Celtic Myth Podshow. A two-part series about the fate of Fintan, Erin's great story-teller has started. I'll have to decide whether I'll wait for the second part with the review.

Furthermore, I have listened to issues of Philosophy Bites, Philosopher's Zone and UChannel podcast that need reviewing.

In the series of university lectures, I am not sure I will give more reviews, but to give you an idea what I am following completely, here is the list:
Berkeley's History 5 (A survey of Europe from the Renaissance to the present), Philosophy 6 (Man, God, and Society in Western Literature), Philosophy 7 (Existentialism in Literature and Film).
UCSD's MMW4 (World History from 1200 to 1750) and Poli 113A (East Asian Thought).

Some more podcasts I am about to listen to are:
Veertien Achttien
Science & the City

Before the weekend I will update you again on what to expect on Anne is a Man.

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