Heads-up for 25 August 2010 - Anne is a Man

A blog to follow is Open Culture which not only points out some excellent podcasts, but also other free cultural and educational stuff. For example last month I was happy to be alerted about Tarkovsky films (all of them) that can be viewed for free on-line. And this weekend it has begun posting about places on-line where you can acquire free text-books.

Naxos Classical Music Spotlight Podcast
JoAnn Falletta and the music of Marcel Tyberg: Were it not for Dr. Enrico Mihich, the music of Marcel Tyberg would almost certainly be lost forever. Tyberg entrusted all of his scores with Mihich, just before he was deported to Auschwitz. For more than six decades, Mihich carried the scores with him, trying to find a conductor who would pay attention to them. Finally, in 2005, Dr. Mihich met with JoAnn Falletta, Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic. Maestra Falletta saw what so many others had failed to see – that Tyberg’s music was original, beautiful and worth performing. This podcast, with it’s interview with JoAnn Falletta, traces the history of how she and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra came to rescue the music of Marcel Tyberg.
(review, feed)

Rear Vision
Understanding Pakistan: Pakistan was born on 15 August 1947 and when it emerged from British India, Muslims around the world rejoiced, believing they were witnessing the birth of the first democratic Muslim nation. So why has it all gone so wrong?
(review, feed)

Three new issues of Engines of our Ingenuity. (review, feed)

KMTT - The Torah Podcast
Rav Soloveitchik on Shofar - part 1: The first part of a four-part series on the mitzva of shofar, based on a lecture of Rav Y.B. Soloveitchik delivered in Boston in 1968.
(review, feed)

The Lonely Funeral

I guess this does not happen in small communities, but it does happen every so often in big cities: someone has died and no one shows up to take care of the funeral. Then it is up to the authorities to handle the affairs. The municipality of Amsterdam has some 10-20 of such cases each year. On The State We're In, a podcast by the RNW (Radio Netherlands Worldwide) (feed), there was a documentary by Michele Ernsting about a civil servant and a poet who have taken it upon themselves to do the honors for the municipality in a more special and dignified manner. (Broadcast as part of Last Respects)

I was alerted to this documentary by a podcast from the RTE (the Irish national broadcaster). RTE's Doc on One has a rubric, The Curious Ear, which brings interesting sound bytes such as The Lonely Funeral. (feed)

Ernsting speaks with the civil servant Ger Frits and the city poet Frank Starik. We learn how Frits took up elaborating the municipal funerals. Starik learned about this effort and managed to convince Frits to let him join in. Since they started the anonymous funerals by the city of Amsterdam are attended by them, accompanied by music and ritual, part of which is the reciting of a poem that was specifically written for this lonely case.

Last Respects can no longer be had in the feed of The State We're In, but it can be reached through the website. The Lonely Funeral is available there for download and so I have used Huffduffer to make this documentary a podcast. Check out this feed: Huffduffer funeral.

Reports about Lonely funerals in Amsterdam and other Dutch cities can be read on the blog Eenzame Uitvaart.

Heads-up for 24 August 2010

Occasionally I am looking for a transcript of a podcast show and especially when the show consisted of a conversation, such is not available. The interview podcast Shrink Rap Radio does frequently offer transcripts, but usually this takes some time after the issue has first come out. Recently a transcript was added for show #231 - The meditating brain with Richard Davidson.
Shrink Rap Radio transcripts are a community effort; volunteers from the audience step up and transcribe. It goes to show how a podcast can be a community as well as an audio-product.

Hidden Heritage (National Heritage Week Podcast Series)
Bog Bodies & Iron Age Human Sacrifice: Examining the Iron Age in Ireland and the mysterious Bog Bodies! The Iron Age is an era when celtic culture arrived and dominated life in Ireland. It remains one of the most mysterious and least understood periods of Irish Archeology.
(review, feed)

Omega-Tau Podcast has an issue about the Mountain Wave Project (MWP web site). This interview is in German. The podcast is part English, part German. (review, German feed, English feed, combined feed)

TED Talks
David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization David McCandless turns complex data sets (like worldwide military spending, media buzz, Facebook status updates) into beautiful, simple diagrams that tease out unseen patterns and connections. Good design, he suggests, is the best way to navigate information glut -- and it may just change the way we see the world.
(feed)

Rory Sutherland - TED

Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man
Another great video on TED Talks (feed)



Thanks to Pablo Brenner and Sergio Fogel for this find.

More TED:
Dimitar Sasselov,
Sir Ken Robinson,
Photos that changed the world - Jonathan Klein,
Karen Armstrong on The Golden Rule,
Media revolution and the effect on power - Clay Shirky.

Heads-up for 23 August 2010

Baxter Wood recommended on his blog (The re-education of Baxter Wood) to follow Columbia University's history of Iran. I have immediately taken a subscription to this course on iTunes U (feed). The lecturer is Professor Richard W. Bulliet whom we have met twice before speaking about Iran on the UChannel Podcast. (Iran Today, Iran in 2009) I have only just begun listening, so reviews will have to wait, but if Baxter recommends, it is worth for you all to try.

The History of Rome
106- Barbarian at the Gate: After bungling a campaign in the east, Alexander headed to the Rhine where he was assassinated by Maximinius Thrax in 235 AD.
(review, feed)

Social Innovation Conversations
Paul Pastorek and Andres Alonso - Education: Tackling the Turnaround Challenge: Can schools be turned around, and can the system change? Yes, say an experienced district and state school leader in this panel discussion during the Driving Dramatic School Improvement conference at Stanford. Navigating questions by moderator Jordan Meranus, they talk about what they are doing in Louisiana and Baltimore to radically reform schools so that more children can meet state standards and receive an excellent education.
(review, feed)

SFF Audio has an issue with Julie Davies of Forgotten Classics.

Media Matters with Bob McChesney had Nicholas Carr on the show yesterday. Nicholas Carr writes on the social, economic, and business implications of technology. He is the author of the 2008 Wall Street Journal bestseller The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, which is "widely considered to be the most influential book so far on the cloud computing movement," according the Christian Science Monitor. His earlier book, Does IT Matter?, published in 2004, "lays out the simple truths of the economics of information technology in a lucid way, with cogent examples and clear analysis," said the New York Times. His new book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, was published in June 2010.

Bhagavad Gita - Librivox

Here is a short review, especially for those who are following The Mahabharata Podcast just like me (feed).

You might be tempted to try the audio reading of the Bhagavad Gita. Librivox offers a free podcast in which the English version by Sir Edwin Arnold is being read. I would love to hear of other versions of the Gita being read, or retold. This particular one is apparently more fit for reading rather than listening. The sentences are hardly intelligible and add to that the overt hardship the reader has with the exotic names and the Librivox podcast just turns into very tough listening. (feed)

More Mahabharata:
Endless cloth,
The Mahabharata Podcast.