China and India - LSE podcast

At the LSE podcast (feed) Professor Pranab Bardhan appeared with two consecutive lectures comparing China and India. As the title of both his book and his two lectures, Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay, both powers are rising quickly, but in spite of their increasing economic weight, each has their own set of major problems to overcome.

The first lecture is the more technical of the two. Bardhan delivers the figures of both economies and gives an analysis how these should be interpreted. There is a funny line he recalls from his Indian socialist friends in the past. They would say, China is doing better, because they are better socialists than we are. Today, Bardhan jests, probably the Chinese do better, because they are better capitalists than the Indians. Although some of the figures seem to indicate that, India is not lost without advantages. And we awaited the second lecture to find about problems on both sides.

In the second lecture, when the huge problems of both countries, poverty, illiteracy, the position of women, minorities, lack of democracy, corruption and lack of accountability and so on, are summed up, India does not come out better or with better prospects than China. The challenges each country faces is very different from the other. The conclusion is that it very much remains to be seen how India and China will handle them and how they will come out and whether they indeed will rise to the kind of power that everybody seems to believe they do.

More LSE:
The China Hegemony,
The myth of work,
Pasts and futures of Christianity,
Global capitalism - the Gray view,
Israeli at the London School of Economics.

Returned from hiatus: A History of the World in 100 Objects

The series A History of the World in 100 Objects (BBC) returned, as announced. I sort of forgot when it was supposed to continue, but here is where RSS subscriptions help you out: the new chapter simply appeared. As you may recall, this history podcast is made by Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, and it attempts to tell the history of the world by means of objects in the museum's collection. The podcast comes out every workday and each week takes on a theme.

This week the theme is Empire Builders and the first issue is about Alexander the Great. Alexander, as we learned from Entitled Opinions just now was good at conquering the empire, but not exactly at keeping it. Yet, as we learn here at the BBC, his name was made and for all those who wanted empire, identifying with Alexander was the way to go. This explains why the coin that is examined on the podcast bears Alexander's head, when it was minted by another.

It is really exciting this podcast is back and you are well advised to pick it up and follow.

More A World History in 100 Objects (in short: AHOW):
Indus Seal,
First AHOW Review.

Another Memory Palace fantastic find

The Memory Palace is a great podcast I cannot recommend enough (feed). I have been saying in the past that it was five minutes every two weeks you should not miss, but it is not necessarily every two weeks and the last, great, issue lasted even 9 minutes. This is not a record, there has been an episode of over 10 minutes.

Still, every time The Memory Palace comes out, you have a short (even ten minutes is short) piece of history narration that is extremely well done. Host Nate DiMeo has an exquisite feel to take a history trivia and turn it into a story full of suspense and humane irony. This he did just now with a dear and sensitive story about a serial conman. On occasion he knows how to deliver a cliffhanger, or a stark contrast with our modern mentality, but this time around none of that is the case. And still, also this time, his story is so compelling, so well delivered. It only goes to show that a good story is a good story, even if it has no dramatic turn of events, no stunning feats accomplished or any other such hyperboles.

Get this podcast. Take a subscription, do not miss any issue. It is one small download and it is tremendous fun, guaranteed.

More The Memory Palace:
The Death of Edgar Allan Poe,
A Great Escape,
The Memory Palace,
Ferris Wheel and other historic experiences,
The hollow earth.

Kashmir - Rear Vision

Rear Vision is a wonderful Australian radio program and podcast that is always there to inform you with historic background about one hot spot or another in the world. Thus I have learned about the history of Fiji, Haiti and Yemen among many other places and subjects that were tackled. Within this wonderful repertoire another region was added just now: Kashmir.

Kashmir was not only the complicated testing ground of the partition between India and Pakistan, it continued also to be focal point of the strained relation between these two nuclear powers. Mostly Kashmir has shown the failures on these two subjects, but in addition, Kashmir has always shown a local political landscape that runs away from what, respectively India and Pakistan would want to have and are able to control. The state of affairs is so complex, one must listen at least twice.

I have been writing a lot about podcasts related to the history of India. This issue of Rear Vision about Kashmir can be seen is fitting into the broad subject and there were more relevant podcasts I have heard of late, from the London School of Economics, Radio Open Source and TVO's Big Ideas - all with more politics and economics. More about that in the coming days.

More Rear Vision:
UK Elections - recommended podcasts,
Two podcast issues on the history of Haiti
History of Yemen,
Freemasons,
China.

Total Football Soccer Show

Did you know the color of my iPod is orange? This is not by chance or fashion, this is rooted in an embarrassingly unintellectual trait of mine: I root for the Dutch national football team. They will be playing in the upcoming World Cup in South-Africa and obviously, I have been looking for some relevant podcasts.

The first one I found is the Total Football Soccer Show (feed) which is an American show, which explains the word soccer in its title. Over the past weeks they have begun reviewing the participants of the World Cup. Initially their approach seems just comical, teams are awarded points for the national anthem, their nickname and for some national figurehead, unrelated to football, that appealed to the panel of hosts. However, in between the lines of banter, you find that these guys really do understand a thing or two of the game and they find ample room to also evaluate the quality of the players, the qualification and the coach. In the Preview of Group E, I was happy to find that The Netherlands (with the help of Vincent van Gogh and Johan Cruijff) won most of the points and made it to the next round.

In spite of the poor relevance of it all, this helps to jack up the feverish excitement and exaggerated expectations that I should not give in to for this tournament. In an attempt to stay sane, I have begun writing about this personality flaw, in another blog, Gezond WK. In Dutch of course; that is the befitting language.

Pink Floyd - Entitled Opinions

Previously on Entitled Opinions there was a fantastic show about Jimi Hendrix. It was only too bad that I knew Hendrix only from legend, I just a tiny bit too young to have experienced him. How different is this for the last show, where Robert Harrison and his brother Thomas Harrison will talk Pink Floyd. I collected many Pink Floyd albums, I analyzed the lyrics, I lived the music, I loved them. Admitted, this is the Pink Floyd of Roger Waters. Just as I missed out on Hendrix, I missed out on Syd Barrett, but hey, there was quite some Floyd after him. So, now, let's listen.



It is amazing. Robert and Thomas say exactly the things I feel about Pink Floyd, they pick out exactly those features, those songs and those lyrics that have struck me. Now I have to go find those albums, because apart from 'Hey You' I have none of that digital...

By the way, I have not hijacked the podcast and placed it in my blog. I use an embedding solution offered by Huffduffer, which directly points at the podcast's servers.

More Entitled Opinions:
Alexander the Great,
Athanasius Kircher (Giordano Bruno),
King Lear,
Albert Camus,
Unabomber world views.