Dagelijks genoegen: hoor geschiedenis podcast

Een van de meest geslaagde podcasts van de laatste tijd begeleidt me elke dag. Het is Hoor! Geschiedenis, van Feico Houweling. Ik vind het indrukwekkend hoe Houweling er in slaagt om stipt elke dag een nieuwe vijf minuten uit te brengen. Elke dag ook weet hij zich te beperken tot een miniem aspect van de aanloopgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden. Een aspect dat klein genoeg is dat hij het in vijf minuten kan uitleggen en dat weer aansluiting zoekt bij de grote lijn van de historie.

Het is een knappe prestatie in meerdere opzichten. Het is knap om in vijf minuten een verhaal af te krijgen - de meeste podcasters lukt dat niet. Het is knap om de connectie met de grote lijn vast te houden. In kortere historische podcasts beperkt de verteller zich meestal tot het oplepelen van feiten. En het is knap om de gestage, dagelijkse productie op peil te houden. Vele podcasters knokken om een wekelijkse of tweewekelijkse productie vol te houden. Dagelijks is iets dat alleen Bob Packett klaarspeelt in History According to Bob. Bob daarentegen meandert door de geschiedenis en weet mij niet te binden zoals Houweling dat kan.

Zoals gezegd, voor mij is het een groot genoegen, iets dat het begin van elke werkdag markeert. Behalve zondag, want dat is voor Houweling geen werkdag, maar dan is er de onvolprezen Volkis Stimme.

Meer Hoor! Geschiedenis:
Hoor! Geschiedenis - historische podcast recensie.

Meer History according to Bob:
Pick and choose,
1000 AD according to Bob,
The battle of Tours,
The Franks,
Virginia Oldoini.

Meer Volkis Stimme:
Angela Merkel in Volkis Stimme,
Volkis Stimme - recensie van een Duitse podcast.

Doubt - Speaking of Faith review

On Speaking of Faith Krista Tippett spoke with Jennifer Michael Hecht about Doubt. Doubt seems like an enemy of faith or at least a problem to wrestle with, an emotion that is not welcome in faith and therefore, neither in religion. Doubt seems the realm of a negative philosophy, but as we find out in the program, none of that is the case.

Hecht made a study of the great doubters in religion and philosophy and apart from finding about thir tremendous contribution, she also found them to be negative hardly at all. Doubt can give rise to freedom, love of life and dedication to faith even. If anything, you leave this program optimistically happy with your own doubts.

The tradition of doubt is traced back to the Greeks with Socrates, with the Cynics and with the Epicures, but also to the Jewish sources, most notably Job. The effect is fundamental on both Christianity as well as modern philosophy and science. Doubt comes out as a quality, an essential element in thinking. Without doubt, there is no search, no development, no depth. There will be only fundamentalism.

More Speaking of Faith:
Listening Generously - Rachel Remen, (recommended)
The Sunni-Shia Divide and the future of Islam,
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel,
Karen Armstrong,
Wangari Maathai.

Mesopotamian sources - MMW 2 podcast review

The first three lectures of UCSD's MMW 2 (Making of the Modern World - Classical Traditions) I learned something I did not know before. I knew the Sumerians were the first culture in Mesopotamia we know of, but I did not know it was only with the archeological discoveries in the area in the 19th century that we actually found out about them. The clay tablets of Ashurbanipals library mentioned them and this is how we know they preceded the Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians, to name a few. Those were in the Bible and hence were 'known' until then.

It makes Professor Chamberlain's lectures all the more interesting. As is his style, he takes this one through the texts. The two he discusses in the third lecture are the old Babylonian Enuma Elish and Atra-Hasis which are told to have roots as far back as Sumer, but are Babylonian after all. The first is a creation story and the second a flood story. Much is different with the stories of creation and of Noah's flood in Genesis, but by all means, there are parallels and unquestionably, the Babylonian version precede Genesis.

In the fourth lecture we are supposed to get some more insight in those Sumerian roots and I hope we will still get them. However, what is passed as Lecture 4 in the feed is an empty mp3 file. Maybe there was no lecture and we will still get this craved content. Otherwise, the recording may have failed and we have missed out on the Sumerians, once again and must wait until a later round of MMW 2.

Image: Cuneiform tablet of the Atra-Hasis in the British Museum on Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

More MMW 2:
MMW 2 - UCSD history podcast.

More Chamberlain:
MMW 3.

Philosopher's Zone - ABC podcast review

ABC's podcast Philosopher's Zone has not yet taken me in. Naturally, as with other philosophy podcasts, it is always a gamble, from issue to issue. Philosophy is so wide, there are necessarily only a few subjects and angles that appeal to you. Even then.

Philosopher's Zone is presented by Alan Saunders and the format is an interview with one or more guests on a specific subject. In the past weeks there were three subjects that I could make some connection with. The first was Asian Philosophy. The second was about Karl Popper. The third was an interview with Martha Nussbaum.

A recurring problem are the sudden interruptions which apparently correspond with the commercial breaks in the live program, but on the podcast they are outright disruptive. The speaker is in the middle of an interesting train of thought and you are waiting for continuation or a deeper question and then in stead you get a kind of reset and need to start all over. In the issue about Asian philosophy, the result is your are getting selected cuts from a lecture in stead of the whole and are reduced to the tip of the iceberg that is the tip of the iceberg of such a large subject as Asian philosophy. In the other two interviews it is less disruptive, but still a forced shift of subject or perspective.

Despite the quality of the subjects and the speakers, there is a fragmentation that bothered me most of all. More programs that are not live recordings are going through a director's cut, but Philosopher's Zone does not get comprehensive in the cut, it is just cut.

More Philosopher's Zone:
Mary Shelley and Frankenstein.

Power of Cities - UChannel Podcast review

Our Urban Future: The death of distance and the rise of cities, was the title of a recent podcast delivered by UChannel podcast which was a recording of a lecture by Professor Edward Glaeser at the London School of Economics. The title seemed paradoxical. The death of distance would entail the fall of cities. Alternately it would turn an entire territorial unit into one city.

My thinking was not far off. Indeed, in the historic part of the lecture, Glaeser explains why cities emerged and continued to exist over the long time of human history, despite a number of serious disadvantages for people to live in a city: it is crammed, expensive and usually not safe and not healthy. The forces that keep them in, explained by the Harvard economics professor, are proximity and numbers. Or in other words, the city itself.

With many people near, there is more productivity, more innovation. It attracts both the wealthy and the poor. Cities make for a powerful economic potion, however, with the modern technology, distance to the outlying territories are becoming less and less important. Proximity and numbers are one in the cyber-age, yet Glaeser observes in his studies, cities are still the centers of economic advancement. In addition to explaining this, he draws conclusions for city governments as to what are the right policies to stay ahead.

That last part of the lecture was less to my interest, but the analysis of the economic strengths and weaknesses of cities and the adaptation to the history of cities was very interesting and refreshing.

More UChannel:
Gaza (Tony Blair),
Whither the Middle East,
Kafka comes to America,
Lord Lawson and the alarmists,
Terror and Consent>.

New Deal and War Economy - EconTalk podcast review

It is EconTalk's host Russ Roberts's opinion that Roosevelt's New Deal did not repair the economic dire straits the US were in during the 1930's. In fact, he believes this policy only worsened the situation. Although he is the interviewer in the podcast episodes, his views get coverage as well. And this also happened in one of the last issue when he spoke with Robert Higgs about The Great Depression.

Higgs did extensive data research into the economic development in the US during the 1930's and 1940's. His work refutes the commonly held idea that by the beginning of the war, the depression was over and the War Economy itself meant a great boost to American economy and that in fact, as off 1940, it was up and up, thanks to war.

Higgs tries to show how the figures are skewed and how in practice the economy was still recovering and still not back anywhere near the level of 1929. Furthermore, the war meant no boost, it meant an additional burden and life went into yet another economic downturn, with shortages of all sorts. Higgs and Roberts agree to the point that even World War II in the US shows that war is only costly and never good for economy. And Roberts pushes again his view: The New Deal wasn't helping either.

More EconTalk:
The Depression,
Wildlife, Property and Poverty.