Melvyn Bragg and the Written World

It is in the style of Tintin and the Secret of the Unicorn or Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom that the BBC offers us Melvyn Bragg and the Written World. What showed up in the podcast feed of In Our Time (with Melvyn Bragg) and consequently disappeared, has now been published as an independent podcast: Written World with Melvyn Bragg (feed).

As I reported in the past days about this series, I got a comment from reader Richard Walker, to point out that this podcast had been spawned from In Our Time. Thanks Richard.

Update to the break update for 2012

Did I write In Our Time started a miniseries The Written World? Well they did and for 24 hours the first two parts were in the feed. Even the third part was there for a couple of minutes, but now, the feed has been cleaned. The series exist, but not in podcast - what a shame. And sorry about sending you on a wild goose chase.

In case you really want to listen, check with In Our Time, The Written World and invoke the BBC iPlayer.

Break update for 2012

Also in 2012 I will be on a prolonged break for the blog. 2011 has been a very busy year, simply too busy to engage in blogging. What has contributed to that, among others, is the fact that I have changed jobs twice. However, I have not stopped listening to podcasts and so let's have a couple of recommendations from my playlists.

The first is In Our Time, which has started a five part series about the human invention of writing and how writing and its innovations have had a fundamental impact on human history. Subscribe to In Our Time's feed and look for the episodes about The Written World.

The second is a sub-series in the China History Podcast which has been going on for 7 episodes already and is still running. Laszlo Montgomery is telling us the biography of Deng Xiaoping and this is the best introduction to recent Chinese history I have had in a long time. (feed)

Break update

Dear Readers,

Here is to tell you I am still on my break. It is a relief to be exempt from the pressure of posting every day. It is also a relief to be listening fewer podcasts and only those that I feel like listening to and not all those that I have to get a bite of in order to be able to write about them. The blogging and the listening had begun to resemble a job rather than a hobby. If it were a job, I'd do it with pleasure and ten times better than I ever did. But it is not and to have to squeeze it in with a real job and family life, while the blog was becoming more and more demanding (more and more podcasts to keep track of) got just a tad too much.

So, that is why I am away. That is why I listen less, but surely,while updating you, I might as well relate what I am listening to these days.

I find myself with three podcast about the First World War:
Veertien Achttien, the unmatched weekly bio of a participant in the war, be it on war or the home front. This remarkable Dutch podcast aims to supply a weekly bio for as long as the Great War itself lasted, that is for some 230 weeks. By now the podcast has reached week 170 without ever failing and at an outstanding constant quality. Another aim is said to translate the podcast into English and to start repeating the weekly feat from 2014 until 2018. Stay posted! (feed)

First World War Centenary podcast by the Imperial War Museum, offering extracts from their unique oral history program.

History of the First World War, an amateur podcast that offers a very accessible military history of the first world war. Currently the podcast is on hiatus, hopefully not for long. (feed)

As the Palestinian bid for statehood is pending at the UN, I also want to point you to a couple of podcast episodes that offer an unexpected perspective on the Middle-East conflict, but that I will report in another post. Stay tuned.

Anne

A break

Dear Readers,

I have begun taking a break from the blog. In due time I will be back to posting, but for the time being it will be very infrequent.

To keep you busy, here are a couple of recent finds I wish to recommend:

1- 2011 Reith Lectures; the lectures have resumed and a looking into the question of protecting Freedom in society. (feed)
2- History of England by David Crowther (feed) - a very nice history of England by following the line of the Royal Family of England as far as it can be traced back. One thing to keep in mind when you start: Crowther calls the Britons 'British' which can easily confuse or even confound (a war of the English on the British? That is between Britons and Anglo-Saxons)
3- History of the First World War - a history with emphasis on the military aspects of the war and with an interesting batch of stories about fronts other than the Western or the Eastern front. In stead of looking up the feed, I recommend to download from the site as the feed contains only the last handful of the entire 44 episodes so far.

Anne

Zomertip: Marathon Interviews

Ian Buruma kon in podcast beluisterd worden via het inmiddels ter ziele UChannel Podcast (Taming Religion). Dat was in 2009, er was toen ook een interview met hem op de VPRO radio dat ik niet kon achterhalen, maar ik kreeg wel het Marathon Interview met hem uit 2004 te pakken. Dat was echter in de oude feed en het werd wachten totdat de nieuwe feed dit interview opnieuw uit zou brengen. Dat duurde tot nu. (Djoeke Veninga in gesprek met Ian Buruma)

Het is een echte aanrader. Je kan Buruma trouwens ook kort horen in de podcast Voices on Antisemitism (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) (feed) (Ian Buruma on Freedom of Speech), maar dat is nogal kort.

Voor lange zomerdagen is het de moeite waard om meer interessante Marathon Interviews op te zoeken. Hier zijn een paar recente die ik zelf ook beluisterd heb:

Hanny Michaelis,
Theun de Vries,
Wim Kok,
Ayaan Hirsi Ali,
Afshin Elian,
W.A. Wagenaar,
Douwe Draaisma.

Meer Ayaan Hirsi Ali:
Ideas,
UChannel,
Interview Vrijdag.

Meer W.A. Wagenaar:
New Books In Law,
Simek 's Nachts,

Meer Douwe Draaisma:
Simek 's Nachts (1),
Simek 's Nachts (2).