Listening ideas for 11 April 2011

The History of Rome
The Milvian Bridge
On October 28, 312 AD Constantine and Maxentius fought a battle at Rome's doorstep for control of the Western Empire.
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The Tolkien Professor
WC Faerie Course, Session 12
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Part 1, in which we discuss happy endings and relatively jolly green giants.
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Mighty Movie Podcast
Cinefantastique Spotlight: SOURCE CODE
Those Who Fail to Stop an Exploding Train are Doomed to Blow Up Again: Jake Gyllenhaal is a reluctant time-traveller in SOURCE CODE. Marty McFly only had to be sure his mom ‘n’ dad fell in love. Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) has to keep a bomb from killing a trainful of Chicago commuters, identify the bomber, foil his plan for detonating a dirty bomb in the heart of the city, connect with a pretty passenger (Michelle Monaghan), and do it all within the same eight minutes that a secret military time travel program called SOURCE CODE permits him. In his sophomore effort, director Duncan Jones explores the same theme of a man alone and at the mercy of shadowy machinations that was explored in his rightly-praised debut effort, MOON. Has the director expanded his palette, or is SOURCE CODE just an action film with a lot of flatscreens and flashing lights in the background? Come join Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons as they discuss the outcome.
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Beyond the Book
Arab Spring Update
As popular uprisings have spread across the Middle East and North Africa, media pundits have credited Twitter and Facebook. But one Egyptian-born journalist based in New York says the acclaim for social media is misplaced, even though she admits to a Twitter addiction herself.“It was a revolution of courage, rather than a revolution of Twitter or Facebook,” says Mona Eltahawy. “Social media connected real-life activists with online activists, and with ordinary Egyptians whose only exposure to politics came through Facebook and through tweets that they read. And through that connection, [Twitter] brought people out on the ground. But it was a tool. It was a weapon.”
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Listening ideas for 10 April 2011

Philosopher's Zone
How do octopuses think?
How do animals think? Do they have consciousness? If your answer to that question is `yes´, you´re probably thinking of your pet dog. But dogs are easy: they´re domesticated, they more of less co-evolved with us. Apes are easy too: they´re our cousins. But what about octopuses? An octopus has neurons in its arms, and it has eight arms, so does it have eight brains, or nine counting the one in the head? This week on The Philosopher´s Zone, we investigate an intelligence very unlike our own,
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Tapestry
Richard Holloway
Mary Hynes talks to Richard Holloway. Richard Holloway was the Bishop of Edinburgh from 1986 - 2000. Debate over his liberal views about homosexuality in the church, shook his faith in the church and in part led to his retirement in 2000. Shortly before retiring, he published what may be his best-known book: Godless Morality: Keeping Religion Out of Ethics (1999). In his role as a writer, Richard Holloway explores what it means to be human.
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Zencast
Bodhisattva
Dharma teaching by Jack Kornfield
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Veertien Achttien
Percy Clare en de helmen aan de kolven
'Ik heb geen idee hoe we het overleefd hebben', is het gevoel dat soldaat Percy Clare aan de eerste dag van de Slag bij Arras heeft overgehouden.
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Listening ideas for 9 April 2011

The China History Podcast
The Qing Dynasty Part 4
Here we begin the turbulent, bloody and historically humiliating 19th century in China. The first half century sees two emperors, Jiaqing and Daoguang stand by helplessly as China is torn apart by uprisings, anti-Manchu discontent, a financial crisis, opium addiction on a massive scale, foreign invasion and the usual deadly floods and other natural disasters. By the time the Daoguang emperor passes from the scene in 1850, it is clear to all that the Qing have long lost Heaven's Mandate.
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Philosophy Bites
Noel Carroll on Humour
What is humour? Why do we have a sense of humour? Philosophers have been asking this sort of question for a while. Noel Carroll gives some answers, and tells some jokes, in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. Philosophy Bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.
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Big Ideas
Sara Seager on Exoplanets, the Search for Habitable Worlds
Big Ideas presents Sara Seager of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discussing Exoplanets and the Search for Habitable Worlds
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Shrink Rap Radio
Practical Life Philosophy with Brian Johnson
A few years ago Brian decided to sell the business he was running and give himself a Ph.D. in Optimal Living. He couldn’t find a program that integrated everything he wanted to study—from old school philosophy, positive psychology and spirituality to nutrition, health & fitness, creativity, business and modern self-development. So, he decided to create his own doctoral program.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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