Religion as culture - Camille Paglia

Camille Paglia starts her lecture identifying as an atheist intending to defend religion. The lecture appeared on Canadian TV (TVO) and was podcast in the series Big Ideas. Paglia's central point is that understanding of religion is essential to fully understanding human civilization, or as she says is more succinctly: religion must be studied as culture.

Hearing the lecture on podcast will be unproblematic (as I did). If you feel like it you can see the video and take along the Hollywood examples Paglia brought, but apart from a Cecil B. DeMille section, she just tells it without showing. What the Hollywood materials do there in the second part of the lecture, is serve as an example for the first part of the lecture as the last, most modern expressions in culture of religion. Apparently she would argue that we all go and see these great movies and that more of these should be made.

The real important part of the lecture is the first part though. This is where Camille Paglia makes clear how essential religion is to our culture and argues that religion needs to be known, needs to be studied and taught, lest we become alienated from our traditions. The implicit point being that you do not need to believe in God, in the stories and revere the symbolisms in order to need to know and esteem them. More strongly this means that in her definition religion is just the form in which our cultural baggage has come to us and we can freely take it, study it, learn it, know it and use it and be modern people at the same time. Modern people that are rationalist, informed by science and agnostic or possibly atheist and that reject the actual beliefs completely, yes even reject the morals. Still, even then, the religions of our ancestors are our cultural inheritance. Throw the stories and the symbols away and we turn into ignorants.

More Big Ideas:
Christopher Hitchens on the Ten Commandments,
The empire,
Lawrence Freedman - Big Ideas,
New Learning - Don Tapscott on Big Ideas,
On Crime.

Ersatz

The incomparably elegant German vodcast Ersatz TV had a spring and summer season in which is appeared every two weeks. Then, after a long summer break it was back, yet, it has not arrived at the frequency where it used to be. The second issue after the break came out only now which is four weeks after the previous one.

Nevertheless, the new show is as good as ever. As usual a couple of subjects are covered, in this case swarm robotics, light art and the confusing sizes of mass produced men's suits.



More Ersatz TV:
Electronics, then and now,
The last before Summer break,
Ersatz TV from the Underground,
The way of the plants,
The experts love Ersatz TV.

Global capitalism - the Gray view

The triumphalism has thoroughly passed. In the past twenty years there has been some period when stark, global capitalism was cherished with unconditional belief. But the trust has cracked, especially since economic crisis set in. Since then, the likes of Keynes are back in vogue. And also, one who never shared the excitement, London School of Economics professor John Gray.

It is always a pleasure to hear Gray on podcast (though you have to get used to his careful, toned down and understated speaking style) and on Global Capitalism he was invited to speak at the LSE podcast just recently. Gray reports of many 'unfruitful' discussions he has had with Francis Fukuyama who resembled part of the capitalist triumphalism with his famous book The End of History (1992). Gray's point was and is in this podcast: history never ends. This means that there will always be crises. No system, no ideology, no empire ever vanquishes for ever. Gray was proven right when he argued that old dormant conflicts would awaken again after the old conflict of the Cold War had gone.

So, with this prophetic power appearing in hindsight, he is challenged to look ahead. And even though he quotes Woody Allen that predictions are generally hard to make, especially when they are about the future, he gives it a try. Climate Change figures dominantly in his predictions as well as a continuation of the current economic crisis. Not only does he forecast, he also explains how he arrives at his ideas about where we are going - and that is what makes this lecture tantalizing.

More LSE:
Israeli at the London School of Economics,
Michael Sandel,
Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung,
Natural Resource Management,
The Iran power struggle.

Changing medical profession - NYRB

The podcast of the New York Review of Books (feed) is actually a promotional podcast for the paper. In the case of the issue where Jerome Groopman was interview about the changing medical profession (mp3) it actually worked. I went to read Groopman's article Diagnosis: What Doctors Are Missing.

In the podcast Groopman gets under twenty minutes to make some of his points, but apart from the bottom-line you will not be able to take away too much of them. It really helped to go and read the article and get more reference.

It is not all bad with the medical profession. Groopman begins to point out that crazy hours and the absence of team work and support are things of the past. Yet he points at a couple of new problems that have arisen. Obviously the economizing aspects that reduce the time doctors are with their patients can be bad and we need not too many examples to understand what he means. However, when he wants to argue that the trend to rely on evidence-based medicine has bad side-effects, at least I was surprised. Surely Groopman doesn't want to open the doors for untested alternative medicine, so what IS his point? In a nut-shell, medicine is not as general and empiric as evidence-based wants to have it and it cannot be totally formalized. Doctor's need the room to make decision about treatment based on the individual case without fear of roaming into malpractice.

More NYRB podcast:
David Cole,
Amateur Science - Freeman Dyson,
Roger Cohen in Tehran,
Ronald Dworkin.

The Battle of Ramillies - Historyzine

First of all Historyzine is a history podcast that retells the War of Spanish Succession, a European war that took place 1701-1714. Host Jim Mowatt offers couple of additional rubrics that give a wonderful added value to the show and surely adds to the magazine feel of Historyzine. Over the last weeks, he has also produced episodes more frequently and that is what a magazine inevitably also needs.

The additional value for the latest show (#16) are for one a podcast review of Lars Brownworth's Norman Centuries; a review I can agree with (see my own about Norman Centuries). Another is once more a tidbit of language history. Mowatt reveals what he has found out about the origins of the expression nose to the grindstone. But of course, as usual, the main part of the show is the next story about the War of Spanish Succession.

A great improvement is that Mowatt starts his tale with a recap of what had happened so far an what this war was all about. It may have been a war about the throne of Spain, but most of the fighting went on in Belgium and Germany. There is some tale of what happens in Spain, but also in this show the main action is in Belgium: the battle around the village of Ramillies. In spite of advantages for the French and Bavarian forces, the Anglo-Dutch alliance raked in victory. Once again this is thanks to the great tactics of Mowatt's hero throughout the podcast: the Duke of Marlborough.

More Historyzine:
Winter diplomacy,
The lines of Brabant,
Historyzine at its best,
The battle of Blenheim,
Reliving the War of Spanish Succession.

Jennifer Burns on Ayn Rand - two more podcasts

Podcaster Chris Gondek did one interview with Professor Jennifer Burns about Ayn Rand whose biography she has written under the title Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. This one interview he edited to fit each on of two of his podcasts, The Biography Podcast (feed) and The Invisible Hand (feed).

I would have loved to hear the unedited interview, or at least the extended version that contained all the material for both podcasts. As it went now, I heard one and was excited about Gondek's announcement by the end that there was yet another interview on the other. Then I listened to the other and heard so much twice that I can't tell in hindsight what is fundamentally different between the two. So, listen to either one and choose depending upon the touch you'd like to get.

The Biography Podcast is, obviously, about biographies and has Burns talk about Rand's life, career and development. The Invisible Hand is a podcast about 'business, economics and strategy' and therefore puts the emphasis on Rand's political thought. Both versions start however with a questions about Rand's childhood and both interviews close with the question of what Rand would have thought was her legacy today. Although these are two professional, polished and to the point productions, my personal preference goes to the more raw and less balanced interview Burns gave at New Books In History.

More Jennifer Burns:
Jennifer Burns about Ayn Rand - NBIH,
History 7b - history podcast review,
American Civil Rights Movement,
Whittaker Chambers,
Scopes Trial.