The Depression - EconTalk podcast review

These days there are plenty of podcasts taking one economic take or another at the current economic downturn that is going on. I am not sure yet whether it may already be sufficiently termed a depression, but surely it is repeatedly compared with The Depression of the 1930's. Very few, however, take a comparative delve into the 1930's depression.

The latest edition of EconTalk is an exception to that (EconTalk podcast feed). In this chapter Russ Roberts speaks with Eric Rauchway the author of The Great Depression and the New Deal: A Very Short Introduction. The one hour talk makes a couple of points about later economic crises, but first of all thoroughly describes what went wrong in The Depression, starting with 1919.

1919 is a bit of an unexpected starting point, yet, with it being the date of the Treaty of Versailles, it is almost naturally the starting point of nearly everything in the twentieth century. While kicking off, Rauchway uses Keynes to say something about pre-1914 Europe that I have heard mention before, but never so neatly and never so specific to economics: Before the Great War, the world and most notably Europe, was a kind of free trading zone, allowing for a global economy and this was killed off by 1919. And the world would revert back into isolationism, until only recently. In broad terms, this development lays the basis to the Depression. There is of course much more and much is comparable to today, but this starting point was a great refreshing insight which makes the podcast right from the get go.

More EconTalk:
Wildlife, Property and Poverty.

Heat - BBC and Berkeley podcasts

BBC's In Our Time is the weekly program that from subject to subject reveals some aspect of the history of ideas. Obviously the history of science and scientific theory and discovery is also vbery relevatn. Hence, from time to time, In Our Time delves into a physics subject, as this week with Heat. In some ways this proved to be a bit of a confusing program. I'll come back to the strength of it, but first of all want to turn to another podcast which much more effectively explains why heat is so difficult to grasp and what it, in modern theory, actually is.

This podcast is Berkeley's returning, math-free,Physics for future Presidents which is named in the fall of 2008 Letters and Science and receives a new name virtually every semester, but is best titled Physics for future Presidents after all (as in the fall of 2006). Around the third and the fourth lecture, professor Richard Muller, in easy steps explains heat and runs the basics of atomic theory, which eventually is needed to capture the modern framework in which heat is understood. With that baggage we can turn back to the more historically oriented In Our Time edition.

So, the strength of In Our Time is to tell the history of how we deconstructed heat and how we came to understand it apart from temperature and heat flows. It gives the names and dates that Muller does not give. It also shows how this scientific development goes hand in hand with practical application in the technologies that sprout the industrial revolution. And what the industrial revolution actually is, for this you must turn back to Berkeley's History 5 . (see: Industrialization and Agricultural Revolution)

More In Our Time:
Baroque,
Neuroscience,
Simon Bolivar,
The Translation Movement,
Miracles.

More Physics for future Presidents:
Letters and Science
Roswell New Mexico,
Nukes,
Hydrogen versus Gasoline.

Piet Hein Eek - Simek podcast recensie

Nu Simek 's nachts op het einde loopt, de show gaat binnenkort uit de lucht, en er geen tekenen zijn dat er een doorstart in podcasting wordt gemaakt, mogen we voorzichtig veronderstellen dat Martin Simek met pensioen gaat. Althans als interviewer, althans voorlopig. In alle berichten is de man zelf nooit aan het woord gekomen en is er geen enkele aanwijzing of hij het wel best vindt zo, of met tegenzin stopt. In de show zelf is er niet zo heel veel van te merken.

Ik vond Simek halverwege 2008 wat zwakker, ongeinspireerd haast en misschien is dat het moment geweest dat intern duidelijk werd dat het programma zijn beste tijd gehad had. Dat hoeft niet zo te zijn, want de interviewstijl van Simek is een wat riskante. Zijn intuitieve, impulsieve benadering van de gast kan heel gemakkelijk misgaan. Er moet iets klikken tussen de gast en Simek anders is er niets aan. Het soort van gasten dat naar mijn observatie de meest nadrukkelijke garantie op succes bieden zijn de iets minder bekende, maar wel geinspireerde en toch ook weer nuchtere gasten. Simpel gezegd, de kunstenaars met wortels in de Hollandse klei.

Zo had Simek er weer een te pakken in Piet Hein Eek. Ik hoef niet al te veel over het interview te zeggen - het is weer vanouds gezellig. Wat rest te zeggen is dat ik benieuwd ben hoe lang het (drastisch ingeperkte) Simek archief on-line blijft. Gezien de geringe tegenstand van de ster zelf, zal er vrees ik niet veel overblijven. Houdt U van Simek, download hem dan nog in 2008, voordat het niet meer kan.

Meer Simek:
Ernst van de Wetering,
Ageeth Veenemans,
Marc de Hond,
Geen podcast?,
Marjan Berk en Johnny Kraaykamp jr..

To Nudge or not to nudge - UChannel podcast review

Legislators love to steer people's behavior. When I taught the sociology of law, I found myself repeatedly emphasize legal rules do not shape behavior and changing laws are the last means in policy making one should expect to affect how people act. Yet legislators keep making laws in order to, for example, steer the populace into not smoking, waste energy or eat unhealthy food.

If rules won't succeed and force is not an option (both morally and practically) what can be done? An answer can be heard in a UChannel podcast lecture on the technique of Nudge, delivered by Richard Thaler. Thaler explains nudge in general as well as in proposed examples. A known example is, if you want people to enter a pension plan, it is not going to help if you make a rule to force them, or make the option available. The proven way is to enroll them automatically, inform them and offer the possibility to opt out. Hardly anybody opts out. The general idea is to nudge people into the kind of behavior and decision pattern you prefer, which after all is not just a policy option, but rather also a marketing technique.

A more controversial example is the proposition to couple smoking to a permit. Smoking is to be allowed, but in order to be entitled to buy tobacco products one must have a permit. The permit can be easily obtained, even if it needs to be renewed every year. The idea is not to make smoking difficult, or illegal. The permit is not to draw fees or involve a bothersome bureaucracy. The idea is just that people who want to smoke, must make a conscious decision in advance. Expectation is that this will cause a more drastic fall of smoking stats than any other option. Somehow the example evokes a lot of resistance. I also wonder about fundamental legal and moral implications, but first of all am struck by a certain quality of nudge. It has a technology flavor to it. There is no dimension of proper persuasion and hardly any cognitive approach to it. It is all about efficacy.

More UChannel:
Hot, Flat and Crowded,
In 2050,
The Arab-Israeli Conflict,
Civilization and the Hills,
New World Order.

Desiring walls - LSE events podcast review

There is indeed a paradox. In a world that is ever so more connected and globalized and in which nation-states are surrendering sovereignty either out of decision or of necessity and in a world where the threats are coming from ever so tinier intruders, electronic or physical, there is a new trend. The trend is for nations to build walls on their borders. Most profoundly known examples are the American wall on the border with Mexico and the Israeli wall (or fence) that is to shut off Israel proper from the occupied territories.

Professor Wendy Brown lectured at the London School of Economics and was recorded for the LSE Events podcast under the title Desiring Walls. Brown borrows from discourse analysis, psychoanalysis, and feminist theory in an effort to understand the deeper reasons why these nations desire to build walls around their territory. Her approach assumes a certain nationwide pathology and although I can agree there is a wider sense of crisis on issues of national sovereignty, identity and security there are two major problems I see, which she either ignores or chooses to set aside in order to sketch the pathology.

She seems well aware there is a generic problem with using wide sweeping theories such as psychoanalysis, because they have a tendency of being irrefutable. Once the desire for walls is defined as a pathology, the various traits of the walls, the decision-making around them and the discussion become part of the same pathology and can never serve to show there is no pathology. She alludes to that in her speech, but wants to set that aside as well for the sake of gaining understanding.

However, what serves as a prerequisite in her thinking is that those walls that the US, Israel and other countries decided to build are desired at all. From up close here in Israel, for one, I can say that the wall (or fence as people prefer to call it) is not something anybody, let alone the whole nation, particularly desired, but rather a product of political compromise between available options, diplomatic and political restraints. That sovereignty is crumbling, that national security is scrambling to deal with modern threats we knew without applying Freud to the soul of the nation. It seems to me the pathology describes little more than what we already knew and sheds no light whatsoever on what can be done otherwise than building walls.

There are some indicators Brown has a more sophisticated analysis in mind, but what becomes clear from the reactions in the audience one can hear on the podcast, what the listeners takes away from this talk is merely that the walls are pathetic and the nations who build them are sick. Usually the LSE events carry more quality. Although, as an observation of how eager the public jumps to this conclusion the podcast is very instructive.

More LSE Events:
The Post-American World,
Reparing Failed States,
Europe and the Middle East,
Nuts and bolts of empire,
Islam and Europe - LSE podcast review.

Podcast hits headlines - Freedomain Radio review

On November 15th an article appeared in the Guardian: You'll never see me again. An 18 year old has drastically broken with his parents and the parents blame this on an internet cult, that is an on-line community. The leader of the so-called cult is to have encouraged the boy to break up as he propagates an idea that personal development is hampered by involuntary relations and one should engage just in voluntary relations.

BBC radio gave the leader of the community, Stefan Molyneux from Canada, the chance to react in a telephone interview that lasted some 9 minutes. Molyneux's defense was he was merely running a philosophy show (this is the podcast Freedomain Radio , feed ) and in his conversation with the runaway boy had merely pointed out that maintaining a relationship with your family should be a decision. On a more offensive note he continues to throw doubt on the harmonious picture painted of the broken family. How can this family be so close and harmonious is contact with a philosopher all the way in Canada could have such a devastating effect? More likely it is that more has been going on and there could even be good reason for the boy to run off.

This is not something I had seen before. I had sort of gotten used to podcasts being a rather niche phenomenon and not capable of stirring headlines, let alone controversy. However, as Cameron Reilly (of The Podcast Network) pointed out, podcasting is about creating community. Molyneux's Freedomain Radio is the most prolific podcast I have ever seen, in under three years he has produced over 1200 episodes and indeed has managed to build an on-line community. And as communities go, they are bound to be controversial to at least some outsiders.

Molyneux's podcasts, website, community and books are the means by which he spreads his philosophy which I think can be easily (if crudely) summarized as an ideology of anarchism. His idea of freedom and personal development is colliding with authority, especially institutionalized authority. In Molyneux's view the state and the church and their emissaries are suspect. In his view, state and church are effectively teaching their flock to be obedient, not to ideals, but to officials such as state functionaries and priests. The role of the family in the whole of these ideas comes out much more hybrid. He doesn't believe parents are suspect the way for example priests are, but surely the reflex of obedience is taught in the family. It is in family that the frustration of personality is internalized and the greatest harm is done.

One of the most interesting and - frankly - admirable issues of the podcast, is the episode (#1221 ) in which Stefan expresses his own personal involvement in the family issue. He goes beyond the philosophical construction and relates his own history of struggle with a dysfunctional family and the misery he had to grow up in. For this reason he declares not to want to sit back and let situations of individuals suffering from their families slide.

I am tempted to ascribe the success Molyneux had by building a community to this personal dedication. Other than that, I assume that the radicalism of the ideas also play a part. Anybody drawn to ideas that are rather far away from main stream will find himself in solitude and here internet communities can become much more important than otherwise. The article in the Guardian can be read such that Molyneux is taking advantage of his vulnerable following. Any off the beaten track movement has been accused of such. It certainly doesn't seem that way in the case of Freedomain Radio. It is a voice speaking to his own community. It is just not a regular preacher with a parish.

I have sympathy for the ideas and for the stamina, but there is also a point where I found it hard to make a connection with the podcast. Molyneux speaks for and to his community. He refers to 'the movement' and its ideas as a given. You have to be part of the deal to fully comprehend. As an outsider I felt a bit shut out. It takes a full immersion to fully appreciate and this means that you need to subscribe to the majority of the ideas and be inspired by them in order to connect. Otherwise it is a curiosity at best.