Listening ideas for 8 April 2011

Witness
Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams
When a young African chief fell in love with a white English girl in post-war London they both expected their families to object. But soon he had to give up his throne for his wife.
(review, feed)

In Our Time
Octavia Hill
From the 1850s until her death in 1912, Octavia Hill was an energetic campaigner who did much to improve the lot of impoverished city dwellers. She was a pioneer of social housing who believed there were better and more humane ways of arranging accommodation for the poor than through the state. Aided at first by her friend John Ruskin, the essayist and art critic, she bought houses and let them to the urban dispossessed. Octavia Hill provided an early model of social work, did much to preserve urban open spaces. She was also one of the founders of the National Trust. Yet her vision of social reform, involving volunteers and private enterprise rather than central government, was often at odds with that of her contemporaries.
(review, feed)

Thinking Allowed
Street Politics and Tahrir Square
Street Politics: protests, policing, revolution and just getting about - Leif Jerram and John Clarke discuss how the geography of cities have contributed to the development of society. Laurie also talks to Jeffrey Alenxander about 'perfoming' the revolution in Tahrir Square.
(review, feed)

Times Talks
Cole Porter’s Classic: “Anything Goes”
Tony winners Sutton Foster and Joel Grey and director Kathleen Marshall discuss the new production of “Anything Goes” with Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times
(review, feed)

Joseph Lelyveld about Mahatma Gandhi

In the past week I have heard three podcast interviews with Joseph Lelyveld, the author of the recently published biography of Mohandas Gandhi: Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India. The book has given rise to a lot of commotion as it should portray Gandhi as a bi-sexual, possibly homosexual and a racist or at least politically incompetent - to the extent that in the Indian state of Gujarat the book has already been banned.

From the interviews one gets a very different idea. Lelyveld has delved into the histories of Gandhi and tried to take a fresh look at it and while Gandhi has come to be a more human, more struggling individual and a sometimes naive and opportunist politician - as politicians usually are - there remains still much to be admired. In the interview with Leonard Lopate (The Leonard Lopate show on WNYC - feed) he especially emphasizes the last year and a half of Gandhi's life to be most impressive.

What comes out as central is a man first of all struggling with his need to be pure and elate in a religious and moral sense, which means he is obsessed with diet and celibacy. When politics become relevant in this personal strife, his main themes are Indian independence with Hindu-Muslim unity, abolition of the social excesses that come with the caste-system (especially for the untouchables) and non-violence. What I see, is a man intertwining the theme of personal morality with social justice and being deeply committed to that.

As Lelyveld points out in all three interviews, (the other two are at Roundtable (feed) and the NYT Book Review (feed) to this background, the relationship with Hermann Kallenbach is not very likely to be sexual and much more a case of two close friends being engaged in a spiritual search. And he goes on to emphasize the complexity of the political relationship between Gandhi and the untouchable activist Ambedkar. They politically find each other on the issue of social justice for untouchables but fall out on the finer details of this politics.

Also on the politically not so smart quotes one can find about Gandhi, Lelyveld has something to say. It mostly boils down to this that Gandhi is a politician like so many and while always pressed to speak out, not always is sufficiently informed. It marks an opportunism that goes with the territory, but Lelyveld comes with an example where Gandhi's opportunism made for an impressive piece of action.

Gandhi as a dietician restrained from salt and had he been a thorough consistent philosopher, he had not come up with the salt march. But he was smart enough to see the opportunity, seize it and make out as if he really believed salt was an essential and as such should not be co-opted by the colonial ruler. It seems Gandhi becomes all the more interesting. In any case the talks with Lelyveld are.

Listening ideas for 7 April 2011

Exploring Environmental History
Energy utopia or dystopia? - A historical perspective on nuclear energy
For the past decade nuclear energy has been increasingly promoted as a carbon neutral source of energy. The Japanese Tsunami of March 2011 threw a spanner in the works when the Fukushima One nuclear power plant was flooded destroying its cooling system. The accident highlighted the potential hidden risks of nuclear technologies and fuelled fear of radiation and contamination of the environment with nuclear materials among the general public. Considering past nuclear incidents it is doubtful if the Fukushima emergency will prevent the construction nuclear plants in the long run. On this episode of the podcast Horace Herring of the Open University in Britain will explore the utopian origins of nuclear energy and how it became a dystopian illusion. He argues that economics and distrust in science and big government undermined nuclear energy more than environmental or health concerns.
(review, feed)

Science Talk aka Scientific American Podcast
Can It Be Bad To Be Too Clean?: The Hygiene Hypothesis
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine researcher Kathleen Barnes talks about the Hygiene Hypothesis, which raises the possibility that our modern sterile environment may contribute to conditions such as asthma and eczema.
(review, feed)

Elucidations
Ben Laurence discusses collective action
In this episode, Ben Laurence discusses the difference between what an individual person does and what a group of people does.
(review, feed)

Fresh Air
Why The Future Of Yemen Is So Important
Story: New Yorker writer Dexter Filkins recently returned from Yemen, where he met with demonstrators who have called for President Ali Abdullah Saleh's immediate resignation. Filkins explains why Yemen's uprisings are particularly worrisome for U.S. counterterrorism officials.
(review, feed)

The Economist
Ginny Hill on Yemen's uprising
Despite a bloody crackdown, protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh continue across Yemen. Could democracy emerge from the unrest?
(review, feed)



London School of Economics: Public lectures and events
The End of Remembering
Once upon a time remembering was everything. Today, we have endless mountains of documents, the Internet and ever-present smart phones to store our memories. As our culture has transformed from one that was fundamentally based on internal memories to one that is fundamentally based on memories stored outside the brain, what are the implications for ourselves and for our society? What does it mean that we've lost our memory? Joshua Foer studied evolutionary biology at Yale University and is now a freelance science journalist, writing for the National Geographic and New York Times among others. Researching an article on the U.S. Memory Championships, Foer became intrigued by the potential of his own memory. After just one year of training and learning about the art and science of memory, he won the following year's Championship. Foer is the founder of the Athanasius Kircher Society, an organization dedicated to 'all things wondrous, curious and esoteric' and the Atlas Obscura, an online travel guide to the world's oddities. Moonwalking with Einstein is his first book.
(review, feed)

New Books in Public Policy

One of the new podcasts that come out of the recently instituted New Books Network is New Books in Public Policy. On this show that has produced three interesting issues already, Tevi Troy interviews the authors of recently published books in this field. (feed)

The first two issues immediately reveal a theme that Troy is engaged in: the dangerous consequences of unscientific medicine in general and the anti-vaccine movement in particular. He had first Robert Goldberg on the show to talk about his research into the workings of the internet as a source for medical information. Although also the scientifically supported medicine is described on the internet, the medium is giving equal footing to quackeries. At best this gives the uninformed public an illusion of two equally valuable perspectives, but frequently, the unscientific is propagated if only for the attention effect it can resort. Goldberg's opinion is that this is done for profit and for fear mongering.

The other interview was with Dr. Paul Offit which explicitly looks at the anti-vaccine movement. His point is that among specialists there is not a shadow of a doubt that vaccines are much needed and basically harmless. He describes the awful consequences of the diminishing percentages of people who have their children not vaccinated. Not only do these children get sick and often suffer terrible long-term handicaps or even death, but in general the population is less well protected than a decade ago. Diseases that could have been exterminated by now are in fact returning.

Troy is a very engaged interviewer which makes this podcast a valuable addition to the NBN.

Listening ideas for 6 April 2011

Entitled Opinions
The Human Brain - Stuart Edelstein
A conversation with Stuart Edelstein, Professor Emeritus of biology and neuroscience (University of Geneva) and member of the French Académie des Sciences.
(review, feed)

Witness
The Rwandan genocide
A wave of killing in Rwanda started on April 6 1994. Almost a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus lost their lives. Jean-Francois Gisimba lived through it all, expecting to die on a daily basis.
(review, feed)

Indicast
Point Blank with Nitin Chandrakant Desai
In our film industry, what Amitabh Bachchan or Dilip Kumar is to acting, Nitin Chandrakant Desai is to art direction. The winner of four national awards and many successful movies such as Lagaan, Devdas, Jodha Akbar, Hum Dil Dechuke Sanam, Munnabhai, etc talks about his craft and the challenges of his everyday job. He takes us through his experiece of working with directors like Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Sanjay Leela Bhansai, Danny Boyle and Ashutosh Gowarikar. His job demands him to think on his feet and deliver results in open sets where temperature can soar up to 45 degrees.This podcast charts the journey of the man who once lived in a 10X10 Worli chawl and today is Indias most respected Art Director who still maintains the modesty of a newcomer.
(review, feed)

Radio Open Source
For a New Moral Map of the Middle East
Imagine Professor Melani McAlister at home in North Carolina, breaking down this Arab spring for a grandmother who’s not entirely convinced that President Obama is not Muslim.
(review, feed)

Rear Vision
Ivory Coast
In Ivory Coast, the world's major source of cocoa, there are two men claiming to be president. But only one of them won the recent presidential election and the tense four month stand-off threatens to plunge the country into civil war.
(review, feed)

De oren van mijn vader

Zo begint Martin Simek het interview met de psycholoog Nico Frijda: "Laat me even goed naar u kijken. U heeft precies dezelfde oren als mijn vader." Wie anders dan Simek zou dit zo doen? In 2009, toen dit interview als podcast verscheen, heb ik er een recensie over geschreven, zie Nico Frijda - Simek 's Nachts.

Nico Frijda en Martin Simek

Tien jaar eerder was Frijda te beluisteren bij de VPRO in het marathon interview, dat zojuist ook per podcast is verschenen. (feed) Dat interview is ook zeer de moeite waard, al was het maar om samen met het Simek interview te beluisteren, maar ik wil nu eerst iets meer over Simek 's Nachts in het algemeen schrijven.

Simek 's Nachts was tot 2007 of 2008 een van de meest fascinerende interviewprogramma's op de Nederlandse radio en toen het een podcast werd, mijn vaste stop op de iPod. Ik begrijp nog steeds niet waarom de RVU het programma stopte. Want Simek was goed en Simek wilde zelf niet stoppen. Bij Elsevier heeft hij in 2009 nog dertien afleveringen op het internet gedaan, maar toen was het uit. En niet alleen is daarmee het programma verdwenen, de feeds zijn ook opgedoekt en dat is al helemaal doodzonde. Samen met lezers van dit blog ben ik voortdurend op zoek naar downloads van oude Simek interviews en via Huffduffer heb ik er een feed voor gemaakt. Neem een abonnement op deze Simek via Anne is a Man feed en je krijgt alle interviews die ik heb weten te vinden, met als nieuwste het interview met Nico Frijda. Help ook bij het vinden van meer. Weet je een opname van Simek te vinden, laat me weten waar die te downloaden is en ik voeg hem toe aan de feed.

Meer Simek 's Nachts:
Ernst van de Wetering,
Wachtkamer van de dood - Anne-Mei The,
Pieter Winsemius,
Jan Lenferink,
Sjoerd Kooistra.