Bhopal, Russell and more

Binge Thinking History - Amateur history podcast that currently retells the history of the British Navy. In the latest episode: New tactics and technology help the Navy. And the loss of the US, seems to also serve the British Empire more than it harms. (site, feed)

Rear Vision - This radio program on Australia's ABC had a rerun of their excellent issue about the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, more widely known as the conference that produced the controversial Treaty of Versailles. Read my former review of this show: Versailles 1919.

Indicast - A new podcast I started following. About current affairs in India. The episode I would want to recommend, in spite of very poor audio quality is a discussion about the continuous harm from the Bhopal gas disaster and the poor handling of the affair. (site, feed)

Philosophy Bites - This is undoubtedly one of the best intellectual podcasts on the web. Very good was the edition with AC Grayling on Bertrand Russell. (site, feed)

UChannel Podcast / LSE Podcast - In conversation with Amartya Sen. This edition took me a long time to listen to. The audio was too poor to allow for listening in the car or in the mall (I love listening to podcasts while shopping), but nevertheless a very interesting and engaging talk - as usual with Amartya Sen. (LSE site, UCP feed)

I am checking a number of book and publisher podcasts:
Beyond the Book (feed) - About issues of copyright
Chicago Audio Works (feed)
Harvard Press; authors off the page (feed)
MIT press podcast (feed)
Stanford University Press Podcast (feed)
University of California Press podcast (feed)
Yale press podcast (feed)

My son is 5 years old

Yesterday, Jonathan, my youngest son turned 5. It marked the end of a week of birthday celebrations - each celebration in its own group of relevant others. It added to the preceding week of Hanukkah yet another festive week.

It was a delicate pleasure to see him enjoy his birthday and being the center of attention.

8 podcasts I listened to

Exploring Environmental History - Jan Oosthoek speaks with Christian Pfister about the memory of extreme weather conditions. As memories are culturally determined, so are the data as historic sources deliver them to us. He argues that with cultural interpretation valuable data can be salvaged from the sources that would otherwise be discarded as scientifically untrustworthy. (site)

Norman Centuries - had a short edition about Richard the good. This is a podcast by history podcast veteran Lars Brownworth. (site)

In Our Time - BBC's excellent program about the history of ideas. Since my last review this weekly pprogram has continued with one jewel after another. Especially noteworthy are the issues about The Silk Road, about Pythagoras, radiation and Schopenauer. (site)

Religious Studies (Berkeley) - This is an introduction by Niklaus Largier about the development of Christian Theology. It should have been called Christian Studies, by the way. I tend to pick out lectures that address figures I want to know more about. Here I want to recommend the lecture about Luther - lecture 11. (site)

Hardcore History - Dan Carlin's very special podcast about history. Carlin is an artist in telling history. If you have problems listening to the latest issue (Suffer the children - about the history of children), delete the chapter, unsubscribe and resubscribe to the new feed. You will get a fixed version. (site, feed)

Dante (Yale) - Professor Guiseppe Mazzotta promises to take us through Dante's Divine Comedy (in English translation). I have heard the first lecture and plan to continue. (site)

History of India - I have reminded you before of UCLA's course by Vinay Lal, but here is another reason to do it again. A blog about the History of India (Varnam) produced a commentary regarding the Saraswati controversy. He disagrees with Lal that the 'Saraswati hypothesis' is held by Hindu nationalists only.

Ersatz TV - Last but not least, there was a new vodcast issue of Ersatz TV.

Five free university lecture sites

New readers to the blog and especially those that are new to podcasting tend to ask me where they can find podcasts themselves. A long time a go, I have written a post about my sources, but this is not one I have been updating all the time. So, here I want to give you a five sites to go to, to find university lecture series for yourself.

There are more universities than these five that offer their lectures on-line. If you go to iTunes U and check the list of Universities and Colleges, you will be surprised to find scores upon scores of institutions that share their educational content. However, not all audio players can handle the formats offered and not all of the offered content is of the same consistent quality. So let me begin to limit you to these five: Berkeley, Yale, UC San Diego, UCLA and Stanford.

Number one is Berkeley which as been offering free courses on podcast and vodcast for years. All the material is still available, going as far back as 2001. All conceivable disciplinary fields are covered. Among others are indisputable classics such as History 5 (European Civilization from the Renaissance to the Present) and Descriptive Physics (aka Physics for future presidents). Most courses are offered in formats every player can handle

Fewer courses are available at Yale, but the quality is persistent and high and all in regular format.

UC San Diego (UCSD) offers a large amount every semester as Berkeley does and also these podcasts are in regular mp3 format. However, UCSD has two major drawbacks you have to keep in mind: the lectures are no edited and therefore contain inconvenient silences and abrupt starts and stops. Also, lectures are removed at the end of the semester. Yet, this is compensated by splendid lecturers such as Victor Magagna and Matthew Herbst.

UCLA's course list is also extremely long and varied and also goes back quite a number of years. Not all courses are publicly available though. You can identify those with the padlock icon.

Stanford has little but great material just like Yale. Yet, Stanford is one of those many institutions that are mainly reachable through iTunes U only and this means occasionally strictly Apple format for the content. Yet, some of this stuff is splendid like the Historical Jesus and the History of the International System and Stem Cells policy and ethics and Global Geopolitics and Hannibal.

Current listening overview

Here is another summary post concerning what I have been listening to of late.

Philosophy Bites - Several new issues of this wonderful concise philosophy show have become available since the last review. I have listened to the interview with Jeff McMahan about killing in war. This takes on a specific aspect of the problem of just war.

From Israelite to Jew - A very good amateur podcast about the history of Jewry since the beginning of the second temple period. With the last two issues we have been informed about the 1 Century CE and its main chronicler, Josephus.

Formations of Art - An informative and entertaining art history lecture series at UCSD with William Bryson. Be quick to download these lectures if you want them, because UCSD will very soon take them off line.

History of India - UCLA history lecture series with Vinay Lal.

European Civilization - Yale's modern history series with John Merriman. I have finished this series and the surprises in the last lecture are Merriman's verdict over the petty bourgeois - blaming them for that went wrong in the last 150 years. And the fact that the series continued beyond 1945.

In other languages I have continued to listen to:

Hoorspel Bommel - Dutch Audio drama

Ronflonflon avec Jacques Plafond - Dutch radio satire

Veertien Achttien - Outstanding Dutch series about WW1

Volkis Stimme - On occasion of Advent a special series of this news satire in German

Making History with Ran Levi - Excellent Hebrew podcast about the history of science and technology

Anne is a Man! -- Hot Tips

A writer's block for the blog, a blog block as it were, is still bothering me. In the mean time, I am listening to podcasts as usual, which means I owe you a whole lot of reviews. Will I ever get round to them? I wouldn't know, but I can at least give you some quick hot tips.

The Memory Palace - two great new issues since my last review (site, feed)

Introduction to Theory of Literature with Professor Paul H. Fry (Yale) - An English course at Open Yale. (site, feed)

New Books in History - Every interview in this series is worth a recommendation. There were four new chapters I listened to since my last review. Each one of them is worth a mention. Rebecca Manley about the fate of refugees inside the Soviet Union during WW2; Michaela Hoenicke with a study about American views on Nazi Germany before the war and implicitly about her own struggles with German identity; Benjamin Binstock about reconstructing art history by example of the Dutch painter Vermeer; Sarah Ross about female intellectuals in the Renaissance with among others Christin de Pisan, whose City of Women I read some twenty years ago.

the New York Review of Books podcast had a fascinating interview with Andrew O'Hagan about Samuel Johnson. (site)

UChannel Podcast - with a lecture about a new Israel Lobby; Jeremy Ben Ami explains how the main stream, moderate Jews in the US as well as Israel have been excluded from the regular Israel Lobby on Capitol Hill. The alternative is his own J-Street. (site)

Entitled Opinions - with both challenging and thought provoking chapters about Borges, Plato and Machiavelli. (site)

Death with Professor Shelly Kagan (Yale) - a very promising philosophy course in Open Yale. I am still at the first lectures which explore the arguments around the existence of the soul, which means that until this point there is more talk about the essence of human beings and their identity than about their death. (site, feed)