Listening ideas for 20 March 2011

Omega Tau Podcast
Bitcoin – a Digital, Decentralized Currency
This episode covers Bitcoin, a digital, decentralized currency. In our conversation with Gavin Andresen, the technical lead of the project, we cover basic economics of money, the way users interact with Bitcoin, as well as the technical implementation of the system. Bitcoin uses a couple of clever ideas about implementing distributed clocks and global ordering, and is a very nice example of applied cryptography.
(review, feed)

Shrink Rap Radio
Whole Psychiatry with Robert Hedaya
Dr Hedaya believes that better mental and physical health can be achieved with less medication by correcting bodily systems and getting to the roots of ill health. Using traditional and integrative approaches, Dr Hedaya assesses digestion,, nutrition, immune function, inflammation, detoxifiction, oxidative stress, hormones and genetics in every person he evaluates. Although he is a certified psychopharmacologist, through this method Dr Hedaya has found that his patients can achieve better physical and mental health, with less medication.
(review, feed)

SBS Hebrew program
Special featue: Purim 2011
Purim is one of the favorite festivals, liked by children and adults as well. Get into the spirit of the holiday, with this special feature produced by Nitza Lowenstein, with the history, customs and songs of the day.
(review, feed)

Veertien Achttien
Sholem Schwarzbard
Voor, tijdens en na de Grote Oorlog rollen de pogroms over Oost-Europa. Sholem Schwarzbard, Jood in Parijs, heeft zijn familie gewroken.
(review, feed)

Our Haggadah - Cokie and Steve Roberts

Here is a quick review in order to recommend listening to KQED's Forum and especially the conversation with Cokie and Steve Roberts.

These two journalists have been married for 45 years and managed to integrate the fact that Cokie is a Catholic and Steve a Jew. One of many ways in which they have integrated each others background is in the way they celebrate passover and have assembled their own interfaith Haggadah - the liturgical guide to the Seder, the passover meal. They have written a book, Our Haggadah, which first of all reflects their Haggadah, but also addresses more broadly the issue of interfaith marriage.

Also on the program, they tell a bit about their Seder, but eventually, sweep the whole subject of integrating their two backgrounds.



More KQED's Forum:
All things shining,
The Iranian Elections,
Irvin Yalom,
Susan Jacoby,
Christopher Hitchins.

Listening ideas for 19 March 2011

Witness
Isherwood in Berlin
The English author Christopher Isherwood lived in Berlin throughout the 1930s - his vision of the city has become inextricably linked with the German capital.
(review, feed)

New Books In History
Giancarlo Casale, “The Ottoman Age of Exploration”
Like their “European” counterparts, the Ottoman explorers were pursuing two interests: spices and salvation. The former were found (largely) in Southern Asia and the latter was of course in Mecca. To ensure access to both, the Ottomans built–nearly from scratch–an large, ocean-going navy and set out to dominate the Indian Ocean. And they almost did it, though they faced fierce competition from the Portuguese, Safavids, and Mughals. Read all about it in Casale’s terrific book.
(review, feed)

The Economist
Disaster in Japan
After a devastating earthquake and tsunami, our Tokyo correspondent describes Japan's response to a crisis on many fronts
(review, feed)

Argos
De dood van een zwangere asielzoekster
Een zwangere Somalische asielzoekster overleed vorig jaar zomer in het asielzoekerscentrum in Leersum. De Inspectie voor de Gezondheidszorg (IGZ) deed onderzoek en ook het Openbaar Ministerie rondt momenteel een onderzoek af naar de omstandigheden rond de dood van de vrouw. Volgende week spreekt de Tweede Kamer over de bevindingen van de IGZ. De medische opvang voor asielzoekers is 2 jaar geleden ingrijpend veranderd. Zijn die veranderingen mede debet aan het overlijden van de vrouw? In Argos reageren twee oud-inspecteurs IGZ, een kamerlid en Marja Dijkstra van het Gezondheidscentrum voor Asielzoekers.
(review, feed)

Michel Montaigne

I knew the name Montaigne before I knew the person. There was a Montaigne school in Amsterdam, but I had no idea who Montaigne was. Michel Montaigne was a French writer from the 16th century who wrote philosophical essays about just anything that popped to his mind. Some of this I learned bit by bit, but a very fine summary I got from a recent issue of Philosophy Bites.


Sarah Blakewell was on the show to tell us about this writer and made me appreciate him a whole lot more. It turns out, Montaigne is more or less the inventor of the essay and with his essays he influences many thinkers of later age, from Descartes to Nietzsche. And it also seems he is very readable. It think I am off to the library to get a copy of his works. (feed)

More Philosophy Bites:
Justice according to Michael Sandel,
Three issues of Philosophy Bites,
Morality,
The genocide and the trial.
Dirty Hands,

Listening ideas for 18 March 2011

The China History Podcast
The Qing Dynasty Part 1
In this first episode covering the Qing Dynasty we look at the Shunzhi emperor and his son, the Kangxi emperor. The 61 year reign of the Kangxi emperor was the longest in imperial Chinese history. The Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong eras saw the Qing dynasty reach its greatest heights and China was economically the wealthiest and intellectually the most advanced and artistically refined empire on earth. In this episode we examine the life of the first of these three great emperors.
(review, feed)

London School of Economics: Public lectures and events
Grasshoppers, Ants and Locusts: the future of the world economy
The financial crisis was the product of an unstable interaction between ants (excess savers), grasshoppers (excess borrowers) and locusts (the financial sector that intermediated between the two). In view of this history, is the current recovery solidly built? Or do the weaknesses the crisis revealed remain pervasive? Martin Wolf is the associate editor and chief economics commentator at the Financial Times.
(review, feed)

Radio Open Source
C. D. Wright in Triumph: One With Others
C. D. Wright is well known for assembling her patchwork poetry from local and vernacular fragments. Even with fame and standing, she has still the one-of-a-kind comic, passionate, choleric sound of an offbeat oracle of the Arkansas Ozarks, where she grew up. So the National Book Critics Circle award last week for her book-length poem One With Others — after a near-miss for the National Book Award — seals a distinctly individual triumph of voice and art.
Our conversation is about V., about Arkansas then and now, and about the mixed-media of One With Others. Food price lists of the time and place (“Jack Sprat tea bags only 19 cents. A whole fryer is 59 cents… Cherokee freestone peaches, 5 cans for $1.”) are juxtaposed with Dear Abby advice columns in the local paper (“DEAR TOO MUCH IRONING, I would iron his underwear. You are wasting more energy complaining and arguing than it takes to iron seven pairs of shorts once a week. Everybody has a problem. What’s yours?”) and intercut with the poet’s interviews 40 years later.
(review, feed)

Distillations
Women's History Month
In this episode we learn about lesser-known women in chemistry. We start with Dorothy Hodgkin and end with a tour of integral females highlighted in CHF's museum.
(review, feed)

The elegance of the hedgehog

Robert Adams is a book reviewer from Canada. He was born in Wales in 1937, which he frequently reminds us of in his talks, but came to Canada a life time ago in 1964. He features, from time to time, on the podcast Big Ideas where he lectures extensively reviewing a book that by virtue of that lecture, you immediately begin to love. (feed)

The latest subject of this elation was The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (translated from French into English). Adams retells the tale of the twelve year old girl from the haughty Parisian upper class, the concierge in their luxurious apartment building and the new tenant from Japan. It is not just the drama of the people who won't fit in and the youngster planning her suicide. Barbery is a philosopher and the novel, as Adams tries to reveal, is a vehicle of her ideas about the good life and the lies, big and small, of society.

Robert Adams's enthusiasm is contagious. As with the previous reviews, you are drawn in by how compelling he retells the story, convinced by his interpretations and in the end you feel you have read the book with him. The only thing that remains is to re-read it alone. Adams not only makes you appreciate a certain piece of literature, he makes you love and teaches you to close-read literature in general.

More Big Ideas:
Age of Unequals,
Dan Dennett: what should replace religion?,
Chris Hedges,
Needham about China,
The Reluctant Fundamentalist.