Fear - Tapestry

CBC's Tapestry had a very interesting show in which Mary Hines spoke with Rabbi Harold Kushner about Fear. Leaving all theology and philosophy aside - Kushner characterizes this theorizing as a kind of Sudoku - and concentrating on what really bothers us in everyday life and cannot be easily set aside by ratio or faith.

One might expect a lot of talk of fear of death, or of disease and disability, but eventually the attention drives to fear of failure, fear of being left behind or leaving others behind, fear of meaningless existence and most of all, what it all seems to boil down to: fear of rejection. Kushner tries to get the message passed that in this life it is not a matter of success or failure (and then, consequently rejection), but a matter of success or forgiveness. But it does require a net around you of people who care, who will forgive. Kushner emphasizes the importance of community.

He also leads us to a kind of leap of faith. He shows that in many situations in life you are so utterly unable to analyze outcomes and reactions, you eventually are presented with a choice between believing in the goodness of people, in a meaningful existence, or not. And if neither has no better or worse arguments and indicators, one might as well allow to belief optimistically. It is an fascinating show and eventually the thought stuck with me: everything Kushner says, one can take to heart and he could have said exactly the same thing had he not be a Jewish religious rabbi, but rather a proponent of any other faith or a secular. And that makes it all the more strong.

More Tapestry:
Karen Armstrong,
Terry Eagleton.

Podcasts on Ancient History

I have reported on so many podcasts in the realm of history that I have deemed it necessary to take my history directory and order it into subdivisions. There will be subdivisions into eras, into regions and into themes, to whatever extent the division is useful, accepting the overlap and holes that remain - just to cut up an unwieldy list of over 130 podcasts into reasonable chunks.

Here is the first subdivision: Ancient History. All history podcasts that purposely are dedicated to some era, place or theme that sit in time between the dawn of times until the early Common Era. Most of these are about Greece and Rome, but also fit into this section are podcasts about other early civilizations such as those in the Nile basin, Mesopotamia, Indus Valley and China, the early roots of World Religions as well as the pre-history of man. It needs to be noted that many podcasts that I will stick in the general category, because they cover so much more, will deliver most noteworthy content on ancient history as well.

Ancient History - Alternative Theories (review, site, feed)
Esoteric reconstruction of ancient history.

From Israelite to Jew (review, site, feed)
Bible Scholar and religious Jew Michael Satlow in a podcast series revealing the history of the Jewish people in the pivotal transitional post-exilic period in which they transformed from being a nation (Israelites) to a religious ethnic group (Jews). There is also a very loosely related episode about the Talmud in this series.

Hannibal, (review, site:Stanford on iTunes U, feed).
Stanford University delivers some phenomenal audio, but you have to have iTunes in order to get there. This lecture series about Hannibal gives insight in the history of Hannibal, his trip over the Alps and Professor Patrick Hunt's efforts to reconstruct Hannibal's route over the Alps.

Historical Jesus, (review, site:Stanford on iTunes U, feed).
The very best of Stanford is a lecture series, including syllabus and link to the central book, by theology professor Thomas Sheehan about the Historical Jesus. Sheehan carefully takes the listener through the intricacies of dissecting Scripture to the most authentic sources to Yeshua of Nazareth himself.

History 106B, (Berkeley) The Roman Empire, (review, site, feed).
Professor Isabelle Pafford deals in a few lectures with early Roman history and dedicates the bulk to the history of Rome as of the moment it becomes an Empire.

History 4A (Berkeley) The Ancient Mediterranean World, (review, site, feed).
Professor Isabelle Pafford's lecture series, rapidly taking the listener through the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations and then landing in detail on the Greeks and Romans.

History of Rome, (review, site, feed).
This podcast is entirely dedicated to Roman History. It goes through Roman history in chronological stages, by means of weekly 20-30 minute podcasts, monologue style.

Introduction to Ancient Greek History (Yale) (review, site, no feed)
Open Course on Yale delivering the history of the Ancient Greeks tracing the development of Greek civilization as manifested in political, intellectual, and creative achievements from the Bronze Age to the end of the classical period.

Introduction to the Old Testament / the Hebrew Bible (Yale) (review, site, feed)
Excellent course about the Bible by professor Christina Hayes - now also syndicated!

MMW 1 by Tara Carter (UCSD) (review, site, feed)
Inspired course at UCSD in human evolution, anthropology and prehistory.

MMW 2 - The Great Classical Traditions, (UCSD) (review, site, feed)
History of the classical era covering not just the west. Professor Charles Chamberlain

Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean, (review, site, feed)
History of Christianity in the early apostolic phase.

Frankfurt School - IOT

Last week BBC's In Our Time delivered a four part series about the history of the Royal Society which, I have to admit, I abandoned in the middle. Somehow it didn't take me in as the single part, 40 minute, concise and too short, regular episodes do. And as did the latest show, which was a normal one again.

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discussed the Frankfurt School and it was good to hear this history again. In addition to the history, it was a challenge to engage in the kind of critical thought the School propagated. I appreciated the idea of being critical of all systems, not only the leading system, but also the alleged alternatives. This was not cheap, cynical criticism but a thrust to think further and beyond, in eternal search for a better place. No wonder such School (of Sociology? Political Science? Philosophy? Art?) had to pass out of existence, but I was a little surprised by one suggestions the best had already been over when the School went into its American Exile.

I thought it had had its heyday in America and an additional heyday in its second period back in Germany. Surely there were several versions of the Frankfurt School. There are not many podcasts that pay attention to them. The only I know of was one issue of New Books In History about The Frankfurt School in Exile, that is, the American part of the story.

More In Our Time:
The history of the Royal Society,
The weekly treat,
New season of In Our Time,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
Logical Positivism.

Trade - A Story of India (3)

Michael Wood's video series The Story of India (BBC) is beginning to take me in completely. I tremendously enjoyed the third chapter, which you will find below. As I explained before, the series goes chronologically through the history of India and this chapter covers, roughly the first centuries CE. What is added, again, is a theme and the theme is trade. Trade made foreigners come to India since forever. The examples that receive much attention in part 3 are for one the Romans and the Greeks, who figure out how to use the monsoon winds to cross the Indian ocean and the Kushan, a people from Central Asia that controlled the silk road and planted an empire that stretched from north east China until the Deccan plains, from Bengal to Afghanistan.



This series I compare with Vinay Lal's lecture series at UCLA. The advice is to take the BBC before UCLA - although I got them in the reverse order. The story of the Kushan did not stick so well after I had heard Lal. Now, after seeing Wood, I feel like trying again. However, Lal has just started a new series, a podcast lecture course on the History of British India. (feed)

More Story of India:
The power of ideas - A Story of India (2),
The earliest history - A Story of India (1).

More Vinay Lal's History of India:
History of India - the search goes on,
8 podcasts I listened to,
History of India or Europe?
History of India.

Where are my files?

In my recent post Useful tools for podcast listeners, I introduced to you three tools that allow you to alter your podcast files to your needs and liking. This assumes that you know where to find your files, but this needs not be an easy task.

If you download your podcasts manually, you should be aware where the files end up. If however you use a download client such as iTunes, Juice or gPodder, the files are stuck in a place that the client designates and then it can be worry where they end up. It is useful to know in general how these clients work. Both iTunes and gPodder stick the files in their own directory. Under gPodder you will find a folder downloads and inside, under the podcast names, the files. For iTunes there is a folder iTunes Music, under which is a subfolder podcasts. Juice makes a folder in My Documents named Received Podcasts.

Juice and iTunes also give a quick and individual way to the file. If you right click a podcast, iTunes allows you to choose 'Get Info' and on the bottom of the first tab you will see the path to this podcast file. Juice even offers the option to open the file's folder and you then will be directed to the place where the file sits.

More instructions:
Other podcatchers than iTunes (1),
Useful tools for podcast listeners,
Devising your own podcast feed - Huffduffer,
iTunes 9 - help for the podcast listener,
put feeds in iTunes.

Philosophy, The Classics - Nigel Warburton

Here is a book I would like to have: Philosophy, The Classics by Nigel Warburton. Philosopher Warburton gives us an entry point to philosophy by means of an introduction to a series of classical works in philosophy. From Plato's Republic to Kierkegaard's either/or.

Does the name Nigel Warburton ring a bell? Yes, he gave us also the podcasts Philosophy Bites, Ethics Bites and Prospect Magazine. True to his podcasting nature, he has made a promotional podcast for his book, a podcast by the same name: Philosophy: The Classics. (feed) Here we can enjoy the material, bite sized, as usual.

Be prepared though that Warburton is conducting a monologue here. What makes Philosophy Bites so easily accessible, is in part the format of interview, which is so much easier, so much more natural to listen in to. On The Classics, Warburton reads a summarized version from his book, complete with paragraph titles. This works less well on podcast and if Nigel is considering to continue this series I would want to suggest to him to find a way of livening the podcast up a bit. Nevertheless, for the prepared listener, these are veritable jewels to collect and to listen to at least twice.