What is hot on 8 January 2011

Science Friday
Paul Offit On The Anti-Vaccine Movement
In his new book, vaccine researcher Paul Offit contends that some parents' decisions not to vaccinate their kids are harming others. Offit discusses the anti-vaccine movement, and weighs in on a new report calling a 1998 study linking autism and vaccines an "elaborate fraud."
(review, feed)

The Memory Palace
Episode 36
Six scenes in the life of William J. Sidis, wonderful boy
(review, feed)

New Books In History
Ian Sample, “Massive: The Missing Particle that Sparked the Greatest Hunt in Science”
You’ve probably read about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It’s the biggest (17 miles around!), most expensive (9 billion dollars!) scientific instrument in history. What’s it do? It accelerates beams of tiny particles (protons) to nearly the speed of light and then smashes them into one another. That’s cool, you say, why all the smashing?
(review, feed)

Philosopher's Zone
Nietzsche and the will to power
Friedrich Nietzsche was the son of a preacher who came to despise Christianity. He was a scholar of the Greek and Roman classics who became better known as a philosopher. And he was a philosopher whose ideas -- rejecting the idea of pity, embracing the will to power and the ideal of the superman -- cast long shadows over the twentieth century. This week, we take a sympathetic look at this troubling, and troubled, thinker.
(review, feed)

KQED's Forum
Prescription Drug Abuse
Prescription drug abuse is on the rise. A new report says emergency room visits due to prescription drug abuse have doubled over the last five years, while the number of people seeking treatment for prescription drug use is also on the rise. We examine what some are calling the nation's fastest growing drug problem.
(review, feed)

What is hot on 7 January 2011

Being
Words That Shimmer
Poetry is something many of us seem to be hungry for these days. We're hungry for fresh ways to tell hard truths and redemptive stories, for language that would elevate and embolden rather than demean and alienate. Elizabeth Alexander shares her sense of what poetry works in us -- and in our children -- and why it may become more relevant, not less so, in hard and complicated times.
(review, feed)

Witness
Clinton impeachment
On January 7 1999 the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton began in the US senate. His press secretary at the time, tells Witness about the politics behind the Lewinsky scandal.
(review, feed)

Distillations
Nuclear Power
In this episode we learn about the history and future of nuclear power, in the U.S. and abroad.
(review, feed)

KQED - all things shining

Three days ago the radio program KQED Forum with Michael Krasny had a conversation with Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly about their book All Things Shining; Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age.



In podcast we know Dreyfus and Kelly from their philosophy lecture series on Heidegger. The work they have done at UC Berkeley in teaching a course, year in year out, about the meaning of being and how this can be learned from reading classical literature has found its way to this book. Dreyfus and Kelly count as the leading existentialist philosophers today and this, obviously, is the framework in which this book should be understood.

Here is a tiny hint I can give: the question of the meaning of life can also be framed as: what makes life worthwhile, or what is the good life. Dreyfus and Kelly draw our attention to peak experiences that we have from time to time. When what we do or undergo is especially elevated in some way, when our lives acquire an additional shine - hence the title 'all things shining'. They want to argue that this shining is what counts and that our intent in life, as well as our dedication should be directed to it. Yet, in a modern age things seem to shine less. As if the shining is more of a thing of magic, or sacredness, or non-repeatable singularity which apparently is less accessible in the secular, demystified and rational world, or at least within the framework of monotheism.

I find it not so easy to catch the idea, but I was very inspired by the show on KQED and can tell it is at least much more accessible than the courses Dreyfus and Kelly teach. I feel like buying and close reading the book after this as well.

More KQED Forum:
The Iranian Elections,
Irvin Yalom,
Susan Jacoby,
Christopher Hitchins.

See also:
Heidegger in podcast - news

What is hot on 6 January 2011

In Our Time
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Melvyn Bragg and guests consider the poem which allegedly made the Romantic English poet, Lord Byron, famous. 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' was a thinly veiled autobiographical poem recounting Byron's travels through the Mediterranean, the tales of the first and archetypal 'Byronic Hero'. Melvyn is joined by Jonathan Bate, Professor of English Literature at the University of Warwick; Jane Stabler, Reader in Romanticism at the University of St Andrews; and Emily Bernhard Jackson, Assistant Professor in Nineteenth-Century English Literature at the University of Arkansas.
(review, feed)

Documentary on One
Searching for Answers
In 1975 and 1976 two fishing trawlers sank at the exact same spot off the coast of Donegal with the loss of 11 lives - over 35 yrs later, a daughter goes in search of answers.
(review, feed)

The Economist
Confronting the public-sector unions
As austerity measures bite, our correspondents discuss a looming clash between governments and their unionised workers
(review, feed)

MMW5 - Revolution, Industry & Empire

UCSD's MMW series is the most complete history lecture collection you could want to follow. MMW stands for Making of the Modern World and in six series they offer the history from the earliest of times to the modern. The fifth in the series covers the period 1750 - 1914 CE and is likely the most accessible of the series. In addition MMW5 has many comparable series: History 5 from Berkeley, History 1c from UCLA, European Civilization from Yale. They all give this tale of Revolution, Industry & Empire and Europe that comes to dominate the world.

MMW5 is running again this semester with Professor Heidi Keller-Lapp as the lecturer. The first two lectures have been published already so now is the best time to join in. You won't miss much if you start listening from the second lecture. The first half of the first lecture is entirely dedicated to administrative details of the course and can be skipped by the podcast listener. Then Keller-Lapp proceeds to give a general intro to the course, boiling down to this: how is it that Europe in this period suddenly became the center of the world? (feed)

This question, either explicitly or implicitly also stars in the other courses as well as many other podcasts. Keller-Lapp gives a brief mention of a view that suggests that even if it seemed that the focus of the world moved from China to Europe, this was in fact not the case. Europe just briefly profited from the fact that China wanted to buy its goods and services. China was still the motor of things. And what is tangible in all of these debates obviously is also: China is back and Europe is about to lose its centrality again.

More MMW5:
Two podcast issues on the History of Haiti,
Revolution, Industry & Empire - UCSD.

What is hot on 5 January 2011

Witness (BBC)
Taleban
When the Taleban took power in Afghanistan.
(review, feed)

Forgotten Classic
Forgotten Tales 1: Great Claus and Little Claus
In which Hans Christian Andersen tells us about two Clauses who belong on Santa's naughty list.
(review, feed)

Big Ideas
Camille Paglia on The Future of Education
Educator and author, Camille Paglia, discusses The Future of Education at the 2010 Globe and Mail Open House Festival in Toronto. The event moderator is broadcaster, Valerie Pringle.
(review, feed)

Thinking Allowed
Softer Masculinities and Dr Who
New research shows secondary school boys to be more relaxed about their gender identity than was expected, Mark McCormack discusses with Laurie. Also it Dr Who a leftish, anti-American, radical polemic? Marc DiPaolo and Matthew Sweet debate.
(review, feed)