The Brothers Grimm - In Our Time podcast review

The latest programme of BBC's In Our Time about the Brothers Grimm has a bit of a slow start, but if you are willing to bear with that a lot of good is to be had.

The project of sampling folk tales turns out to have a much wider importance than that of a kind of anthropological or historic or linguistic effort. Even though the tales eventually make up the landscape of children's tales, their meaning are that of a romantic search for the German. The culture that was so shattered and that was coming together in this new nation and needed some unity. This also explains the liberties that were taken with the material.

The thought struck me that the meaning went even further. If the tales spoke so profoundly to the whole of Europe, even if it were as children's tales, in a way this collection took on some unifying meaning of European culture. And then you may see that there is the romantic idea there is such a beast and there is the forced construction of one, in order to supply the need.

More In Our Time:
The modest proposal,
History of history,
Darwin special,
The Consolation of Philosophy,
The Great Fire.

De wetenschappers in veertien achttien

Er zijn episodes in de podcast serie Veertien Achttien, die ruimer zijn dan een biografie. De laatste aflevering, die over Marie Curie, is daar een voorbeeld van. Natuurlijk wordt uitgebreid stilgestaan bij het leven van Curie, maar het onderwerp reikt door middel van een aantal verhalen over anderen net even verder. Curie en anderen, in dit geval, de wetenschappers.

Curie begaf zich naar het front om met de moderne stralingstechnieken de medici te assisteren. Meneer Roentgen, naar wie de stralen vernoemd waren, ging niet zover, maar schreef wel, samen met vele andere Duitse intellectuelen een publieke brief waarin hij achter de Duitse oorlogsinspanning ging staan. En dat is dan het meer uitgebreide onderwerp van presentator Tom Tacken in deze aflevering: waar stond de Europese intellectele elite in dit conflict.

Hoewel de meesten hun vaderland steunden zijn er ook de uitzonderingen, met name Albert Einstein. In het universum van Tacken, waarin helden en schurken bestaan, zijn dit de helden, de visionairen en hij laat zien hoe ze in hun kritiek op de oorlog de tijd ver vooruit zijn en ook ver vooruit aan zien komen.

Meer Veertien Achttien:
August von Mackensen,
Franz Hipper,
Enver Pasha,
Veertien Achttien premium,
Hindenburg.

Bill Gates on TED

With Bill Gates talking about how to battle malaria and emphasizing how important it is to improve education TED has kicked off for 2009. It has been noted elsewhere Gates is even funny. Well, he surely attempts to be and fortunately doesn't wander off with it.



If you choose to watch Bill Gates on the TED site, you will be offered to continue with a talk from 2007 by Bjorn Lomborg which gives the problem of global warming a rather surprising rating in the list of world problems. The problem of malaria rates higher, to name one that Gates addressed.

More TED:
Stephen Petranek,
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
Philip Zimbardo,
Jonathan Haidt,
Lennart Green.

Anne is a Man in De Standaard

Here is just a short update for those of you who didn't know it yet: I have been invited to blog for the Belgian newspaper De Standaard (Weblogs - En nu even elders - Israel). There I write about once a week about daily life in Israel. The latest entry is about the elections. Previously I have written a lot about the war in Gaza.

The stark difference in experience is that in De Standaard, the blog attracts much more comments. And since it turns out to be a political statement to BE an Israeli, the comments are very frequently molded as personal attacks, where they actually are attacks on Israel or expressions of frustration with the situation in Israel.

The blog is in Dutch.

Slavery - Hardcore History podcast review

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History has the occasional 'blitz' show. Obviously distinct from the interview shows, they are, but less so from the regular shows. However, taken in mind the previous blitz show which was about drug use (mostly alcohol) through the ages and the last one which is about slavery through the ages, the blitz shows are, apparently more thematic.

On the theme of slavery Dan Carlin argues that slavery is of all times and of all places. He goes over a series of examples and appears to use as his main source Milton Meltzer's book Slavery: a World history. On the one side slavery turns out to be a humane alternative to death, but all in all the whole feature of enslavement, servitude and hard labor is problematic. It also remains so, in spite of the numerous attempts to justify it.

The bottom-line Carlin steers to, is that slavery exists still today and not only that, but also that we all, Carlin and his audience, profit from slavery. There are just enough grades of separation that allow us to not actively know of it and feel we can reject slavery as immoral. Carlin takes the additional step, suggesting, if people are like this, they are really evil. The thought that arose with me, however, was that if low-wage work is similar or even equal to slavery, how different is it with higher-wage work if apart from the higher wage, the employee is just as much owned by his employer and his life is governed by his work.

More Hardcore History:
Gwynne Dyer Interview,
Interview with Victor Davis Hanson,
Punic Nightmares III,
Punic Nightmares II ,
Punic Nightmares I.

Science and Religion - LSE podcast review

The public lectures at the School of Economics are podcast in the LSE podcast and afterward at the compiled Uchannel Podcast (sometimes nearly immediately, sometimes up to months later). The latest lecture I listened to was held on January 21st with speaker Professor John Worrall about the incompatibility of science and religion.

Worall operates from the perspective of Science in this matter and examines a variety of ways to define religion such that it might be compatible with science, yet is not too widely or so vaguely defined. Too widely defined would mean that in the definition either science gobbles up religion or vice versa. Too vague would mean religion is watered down to such an extent the definition no longer covers what in practice is understood as religion.

It struck me that Worall, coming from science, was not particularly dedicated to haul in religion. He was, so to speak, rather indifferently weighing modern understanding of religion and see if the religious way to understand the world would meet his starting point requirements of science. His view on science was that of a method rather than a body of knowledge or a view of the world; the method of testing all claims it makes by systematic observation - one feels the influence of Karl Popper. As close as a free version of religion comes to it, Worall supposes the two just might be compatible in that light. But otherwise they would not and he doesn't seem to be particularly worried about this.

This, in my view, might have been very different had we had a talk by a religious person, trying to save science for his or her world view. Any religious person (obscure fundamentalists apart) will try to salvage science and this in itself goes to show what profound authority science has acquired in the modern world. I think there are many like Worall, who wouldn't want to reject religion out of hand, but would lose any sleep over the conclusion the two were incompatible. The division of task, Worall suggests by the end, in which science explains the how and religion the why in the world, smack of being reduced and simplified for both the large body of science as well as the large body of religions, leaving the matter totally unresolved.

More LSE Events:
The crisis,
Desiring walls,
The Post-American World,
Reparing Failed States,
Europe and the Middle East.