Philosophy, The Classics - Nigel Warburton

Here is a book I would like to have: Philosophy, The Classics by Nigel Warburton. Philosopher Warburton gives us an entry point to philosophy by means of an introduction to a series of classical works in philosophy. From Plato's Republic to Kierkegaard's either/or.

Does the name Nigel Warburton ring a bell? Yes, he gave us also the podcasts Philosophy Bites, Ethics Bites and Prospect Magazine. True to his podcasting nature, he has made a promotional podcast for his book, a podcast by the same name: Philosophy: The Classics. (feed) Here we can enjoy the material, bite sized, as usual.

Be prepared though that Warburton is conducting a monologue here. What makes Philosophy Bites so easily accessible, is in part the format of interview, which is so much easier, so much more natural to listen in to. On The Classics, Warburton reads a summarized version from his book, complete with paragraph titles. This works less well on podcast and if Nigel is considering to continue this series I would want to suggest to him to find a way of livening the podcast up a bit. Nevertheless, for the prepared listener, these are veritable jewels to collect and to listen to at least twice.

Historical Jesus - Philip Harland

Several podcast series can be had that deal with the history of Early Christianity. A subset of that history is the quest for the Historical Jesus. Apart from the gospels there are few and little references to either Jesus or the Jesus movement. Two are mentioned by Canadian professor Philip Harland: Tacitus and Josephus.

Philip Harland has been conducting a very interesting podcast series on Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (feed). He has been successively going through the stages of Christianity and treated the history and theology and sources. By now he has reached the 5th section of the series which went off on a promising start and which intends to tackle the specific issue of the Historical Jesus.

Another series on the historical Jesus is a veritable classic from Stanford, The Historical Jesus by Thomas Sheehan (feed), which is very thorough (some 14 hours solely on this subject). More in passing Dale Martin's course Introduction to New Testament History and Literature at Yale (feed). Martin tells in this course he also teaches a course on the Historical Jesus and we hope this one will one day be podcast as well.

More on Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean:
New Testament, history and literature,
Da Vinci Code,
Early Christianity podcasts.

The power of ideas - A Story of India (2)

You know I have been asking for podcasts about the history of India and since there is so little around and since one of the comments on my History of India posts recommended Michael Wood's BBC documentary The Story of India, I am going over that one for you too. And here is part two of that series.



This chapter takes off where the previous one, that dealt with the earliest history, left off. But in addition to carrying along the chronology it also applies a theme The Power of Ideas. What is special in the history of India is that ideas have not only played an important role in it, India also produced many ideas and in turn influenced the rest of the world. In this chapter there is a lot of attention for the Buddha and after an Intermission about the Greeks, Chandra Gupta with a passing hint at Jainism, to the Mauryan Empire with its powerful leader Ashoka, who turned back to the Buddha.

An important reason why I am reviewing a series of non-syndicated videos is because of the criticism at UCLA's podcast about the History of India. In this podcast Professor Vinay Lal is so heavily entrenched in dealing with the political implications of views on India's history, that one easily loses track of the narrative, of whatever interpretation. I would recommend to go through the BBC documentary first and that will make you better prepared for Lal's course. With regards to the theme touched upon here, the power of ideas, Lal and Wood make a fine complement. For example, Jainism is only briefly mentioned on the BBC, where at UCLA Jainism's origins and content are expanded upon.

More History of India:
The earliest history - A Story of India (1),
History of India - the search goes on,
8 podcasts I listened to,
History of India or Europe?
History of India.

Who listens to Swedish podcasts?

One of the blog's readers turned to me quite some time ago recommending a podcast from the Göteborg University in Sweden, En akademisk kvart från Göteborgs universitet, in short En Akademisk Kvart (feed). Ever since, I have been on the look out for a Swedish reader who'd be able to tell some more about this podcast. I'd love to host a guest blog containing a review of En Akademisk Kvart or any other intellectual Swedish podcast for that matter.

En Akademisk Kvart is part of the popular science effort at the university and contains short podcasts (around 15 minutes, a 'kvart') about mostly historic issues. From what I can figure out from the titles, among others, there is a talk about early globalization, looking at the trade in sugar and slaves as an example. Another is about the Swedish migration to the US (over the centuries, I presume). This is the kind of podcast that would fit in this blog and considering the amount of Swedish hits on the blog, there should be enough readers who'd appreciate to be informed about it.

The reason I do not do the reviews myself, in case you had not yet guessed: I do not understand Swedish. I can figure some basic stuff out when reading it, but that is really not worth mentioning.

More:
Who knows Russian podcasts?

Classic Poetry Aloud

I asked for recommendations to podcasts with poetry and got them immediately. The most simple and straightforward of those is Classic Poetry Aloud (feed). In this podcast each episode consists of a classic poem from English literature read to the listener.

The podcast description of each episode contains the name of the poet, the year of his birth and death (or hers for that matter), the name of the poem and the text of the poem. The episodes will also, usually carry the portrait of the poet. And so, one can look, listen and read and contemplate. The choice is tasteful and the reading done quite well, although a tad too fast for this non-native speaker. I also felt that the reader had a better connection with some poems more than with others, but it surely is far from easy to read poetry.

This formula in its simplicity seems complete and evident (though I'd appreciate if the date of the poem could be added). Nevertheless I entertained thoughts of additional material. Why not add an introduction to the poem, why not let some discussion of the poem follow? But that would alter the nature of the show from pure poetry experience to a cerebral literature show. So what about music, just to get you in the mood? Same problem actually; it would influence the listener's reception of the work. And so, as pure as it is, it should stay. And the listener should be aware, should prepare for listening. And perhaps loop the episode. All in all this is quite the podcast experience.

Other podcatchers than iTunes (1)

Here is a field I have only just begun to explore: alternatives to iTunes for obtaining your podcasts. So, let me start to solicit any advice you readers can give. What catcher do you use, what catcher have you discarded? What should a catcher have in order to appeal to you?

Ever since I began listening to podcasts I have been using iTunes, but now I have begun to try out two other clients: Juice and gPodder. Juice was the first one I tried, since it was the first one I'd hear about when alternatives to iTunes were discussed. Yet, I prefer gPodder as it is more easy to use. I didn't have to search for elementary functions such as adding subscriptions and initiating download. I also very much appreciated what happened upon importing an OPML file with loads of subscriptions: gPodder allowed me to check which podcasts on the list I wished to add. Note that gPodder also knows to communicate (in principle) with iPod.

What neither client offers and is also sorely missing (for me) in iTunes is the possibility to categorize podcasts and stick them in folders. This is basic functionality that general rss readers offer and thus allow to be subscribed to a very large number of feeds and stay organized. I'll have to study more catchers, maybe with the help of this Podcatcher Matrix

Another option for podcatching is to go on-line. In stead of having a local client, one can setup a personal page with your podcasts. This allows you to access the same podcast collection from different computers, which would be ideal for users who use more than one computer to connect their player to. Such service is given at Odeo and Podnova. At Odeo I set up an account and found the site ot be slow and the procedure faulty and bothersome. The whole idea of having to manage yet another profile (in addition to Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, StumbleUpon, The Podcast Parlor etc etc etc) bothers ma and I was charmed by the fast, simple and anonymous solution at Podtopia: just enter the feed and there you go. But then: how much better is that than just directly downloading from the feed or the podcast's website?

More instructions:
Useful tools for podcast listeners,
Devising your own podcast feed - Huffduffer,
Suggestion for the advanced podcast listener,
What is RSS - Read Anne is a Man automatically.