Heads-up for 23 November 2010

Poetry Off the Shelf
Pass the Mashed Potatoes
W.S. Merwin and Dara Wier on gratitude and food.
(review, feed)

Forgotten Classics
Episode 142: Genesis, chapters 5-7
In which we encounter the "begots" and begin Noah's story
(review, feed)

London School of Economics: Public lectures and events
How to Avoid Financial Crises in the Future
Lots of people did many stupid things for us to get into the current financial mess. Now, the government is stepping up efforts to impose stricter financial regulations to ensure that such things do not happen in future. Will more regulation work? If history is any guide, the answer is no. Over the last 100 years, we've had a financial crisis every 15-20 years. Every time one took place, the government would step in and impose more regulation - only for another crisis to occur 15-20 years later. Why is that? Costas Markides is the Robert P. Bauman Chair of Strategic Leadership at the London Business School.
(review, feed)

Raking up Roswell - Witness

The Roswell incident has a knack of turning up over and over again. Believers in UFO's and extraterrestrial sightings as well as government conspiracies cannot get enough of the story, but why do serious sources return to it as well, that I wonder. A few years ago I reported on Berkeley's science course Physics for future presidents, to claim to have solved the Roswell incident. Now it is the BBC to open the file again.

In Witness the program presents the son of one of the people who found debris of the alleged flying saucer. This US airman later changed his story to make it fit the official cover up, but as the son persists: the debris father had brought home did not fit the descriptions of the official statements. He and his father have over the years come up with this testimony and so the whole affair continues to be fed.

For all you believers and debunkers, listen to this issue of the podcast it sure is something to chew on.

More Witness:
Silent Spring,
Oslo Accords,
Witness BBC.

Heads-up for 22 November 2010

Mahabharata Podcast
The Hawk and the Dove
The last three stories of the long series of tales in the Book of the Forest. Yavakrita, Jantu and the Hawk & the Dove.
(review, feed)

Archaeo News Podcast
Issue 179
British archaeology volunteers trace transport links back 4,000 years
Ancient Orcadians decorated their houses with homemade paint
Bronze Age hoard found intact in Essex
Tool-making technique is much older than thought
Prehistoric migrants found in Gloucestershire
Silbury Hill's construction process was more important than design
Copper Age history of Armenia revealed
Bulgarian archaeologist stumble upon 8000-year-old skeleton
10,000-year-old camp site unearthed along USA/Canada border
Neolithic knives found at Tirnony Dolmen
Ancient megalithic sites discovered in Russia
Archaeologists uncover early Neolithic activity on Cyprus
Modern humans emerged earlier than thought
(review, feed)

The History of Rome
116- Here Come the Illyrians
Claudius Gothicus became Emperor in 268 and promptly lead the legions to victories against the Goths and the Alamanni. Unfortunately he died before he was able to reunify the Empire.
(review, feed)

Paradigms
November 21, 2010
Rev. Dr. Katherine O'Connell of East-West Faith Seminary, Rabbi Roger Ross of The New Seminary for Interfaith Studies, and Rev. Tim Miner of the International Academy for Interfaith Studies join us to discuss Interfaith. We learn about World Interfaith Week, February 1 - 7, 2011.
(review, feed)

Zencast
288 - Joy & It's Causes
Dharma teaching by Jack Kornfield
(review, feed)

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Here is a podcast that I want to recommend you simply listen to. I do not want to say too much about it. On Big Ideas, listen to Robert Adams give his interpretation of Moshin Hamid's novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist. (feed)

The novel and Adams's interpretation give a personal touch to the clash of cultures. It also broadens the perception of Anti-Americanism beyond the world of Islam. As a matter of fact, Adams is of the opinion the novel is not about religion at all. It is about identity, about the identity one aspires and the culture to which one would want to belong. In that sense the whole discussion is thoroughly modern: culture has become a matter of choice, but that is not Adams's main point and probably also not Hamid's.

One thing I cannot resist to point out: Adams claims not to know of any other novel that has a monologue of the main character and a discussion partner who, although we do not hear his words, we get to know through the reactions of the speaker. My immediate thoughts of comparison went to the novel by Albert Camus, La Chute.

More Big Ideas:
Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the quest against Islam,
Jewish Humor,
JRR Tolkien versus CS Lewis,
Malcolm Gladwell,
The Age of Inequality.

Heads-up for 21 November 2010

Philosophy Bites
Nick Phillipson on Adam Smith on What Human Beings Are Like
Adam Smith, the great thinker of the Scottish Enlightenment, is best known as an economist. But much of his work was philosophical, and even his economic thinking is probably best understood as part of a larger project of attempting a science of humanity. Nick Phillipson, author of an acclaimed biography of Adam Smith, discusses Smith's philosophical agenda in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. Philosophy Bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.
(review, feed)

KMTT - The Torah Podcast
She'elot uTeshuvot 18-19 Century #05
Lessons by Rav Binyamin Tabory - Noda BeYehuda
(review, feed)

Indian roots of the Unicorn

It was not mentioned in the recent issue of In Our Time which dealt with the unicorn: there is a Unicorn story in the Mahabharata. You can hear that story in the Mahabharata podcast (feed).

Episode 31 - Rshyashrnga, you can hear this story be told by Lawrence Manzo. Manzo also mentions the hypothesis that the story made its way to the West in the form of the Unicorn myth.

The Mahabharata version tells of a Sadhu, a hermit who lives in abstinence, sits by a river after years of not having seen any woman. The river is being visited by some beautiful princess who takes a naked dip and this sight is too much for the Sadhu. He spills his seed, it falls in the water and is drunk by a deer who gives immediate birth to a boy who has an antilope horn growing from his forehead.

The boy grows up with his father the Sadhu who raises him as another hermit. Eventually, the boy, Rshyashrnga, grows up as a formidable yogi who has no knowledge of women. Yet, the moment comes when he is to be seduced and obviously it takes a maiden to conquer the Unicorn.

More Mahabharata Podcast:
Endless cloth,
The Mahabharata Podcast.