The Social Contract - IOT

The latest edition of In Our Time brings that good old subject The Social Contract that we have been taught in history, political science, law and philosophy - hardly anybody escapes it.

The thing that surprised me in the issue about the social contract was a connection that was made with ideas before the 18th century. That had not been done to me before. When talking of the social contract we always attend Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau - as if they totally invented it. What is special to them is that their contract is between the governed. However, what connection IOT made for me is with the previous ideas that had a contract idea. The Covenant with God in Judaism and Socrates' disposition in the Crito, where one can see him agreeing the contract with the polis, hence, feeling bound also to his own death penalty.

Hobbes, Rousseau and Locke are discussed, together with Grotius (Hugo de Groot). Most of this evolves around those good old lessons, I take it, nearly everybody has run into. It is done originally though, connecting in a much more profound fashion than I have encountered it in the past with connections to each other their context and other thinkers. Eventually, by mentioning John Rawls, the theories are taken to contemporary thought. A great podcast and a very useful addition for the student of history, political science, law and philosophy.

More In Our Time
Plate Tectonics,
The Fisher King,
The Charge of the Light Brigade,
Albert Camus,
The Nicene Creed.

Sign language for babies - SRR

There is a way to improve the communication with toddlers as of the age of five months. Shrink Rap Radio featured a fascinating interview with Nancy Hanauer. Hanauer was a special education teacher who got word of an idea to teach American Sign Language (ASL) to babies, and started doing so, also to hearing babies. She started out with several workshops, but soon found herself teaching parents and babies full time. In many ways this is a great success.

The vocal chords start to develop around the age of nine months to a sufficient degree that the beginning of speech becomes possible. However, at the age of five months, babies already have enough control over their hands to make the use of sign language possible. Nancy Hanauer and the parents she has educated, have managed to learn some sign language to babies already before the age of nine months, thus opening more effective communication at a very early stage. Long term advantages are better brain development, greater communication and social skills and better abaility to learn other languages and to converse with the deaf.

I backed of a little bit with an idea Hanauer addresses: if a toddler has already learned ASL, why would he start talking at all? It turns out however, spoken language has enough advantages for the child to pick up along the ASL. An additional interesting observation is that even when ASL has already been phased out, the child retains the ability and this is shown repeatedly, most notably when the next sibling arrives and needs to be taught ASL.

Host Dr. Dave has pulled off yet another unique and good quality issue of his podcast.

EDIT:
On March 5th I was contacted by Nancy Hanauer who expressed two concerns with this review. One was that I published her photo, which I removed immediately and the other was that I suggested she invented teaching sign language to hearing babies, which is not the case. I have rephrased the wording of this blog post accordingly.

More Shrink Rap Radio on this blog:
Doll Work and what with the brain,
Confronting Death (and more),
Process Work,
Authoritarianism,
Leadership and AI.

Conversion Therapies - My Three Shrinks

My Three Shrinks invited Dr. Chris Kraft from Johns Hopkins Hospital, clinical director for sexual behavior's consultation, to speak about conversion therapy. From Wikipedia I get this refers to methods aimed at changing gay, lesbian, and bisexual people's sexual orientations to heterosexual, or at eliminating or diminishing same-sex desires and behaviors. My first reaction: is this for real?

Kraft is a clinical psychologist, specialized in issues of sexuality and gender. He starts the subject by posing it as a question: "What can you do for people who feel uncomfortable with their sexual orientation?" There are conversion therapies - this is very controversial - but it is still used and tried. And there is a demand. Traditionally this is about homosexuality, but also other paraphilias. Of course this is culturally defined. Homosexuality used to be defined as a problem and in certain subcultures it still is. In such a constellation there is need for treatment.

What do you do as a clinician? Especially if you do NOT perceive the sexual tendency as wrong? The therapist could send the client to shop around until he finds a doctor with the same set of values. The clinician can even say this is not an option for treatment. One would not want to be at the mercy of the client's definitions and alternately the client had better not be at the mercy of the therapist's definitions.

Conversion therapy distinguishes between emotions, fantasies and behavior. The therapy is directed to the behavior and this has been reported to work. (There are statistics) It is really hard and rare that emotions and fantasies have changed. For paraphilias that are still widely considered problematic such as exhibitionism and pedophilia conversion therapy is the way to go.

Kraft's explanations are clear and the panel's questions are so as well. The light conversation style makes for very relaxed listening, hence the podcast allows for a very low threshold peek into the complicated and sometimes too technical world of psychiatry.

More:
My Three Shrinks Podcast,
Psychology, psychiatry and the brain,
David Lukoff at Shrinkrapradio,
Morality as a brain function.

Olaf Tempelman - Simek

In het gesprek met Olaf Tempelman, Volkskrant correspondent in Roemenie, raakt Martin Simek in zijn element. Het gaat over Oost-Europa, over het leven onder het communisme, de val van het sovjetrijk en het leven erna. En het gaat over vrouwen. (audio) (download)

Als Simek in zijn element is, wordt hij direct. Van Olaf Tempelman wordt gezegd dat hij haast helemaal Roemeen is geworden en dat traditionele vooroordelen over Roemenen speelt Simek meteen uit. "Jij zit als een Roemeen je boek te promoten." Het moet gezegd, Tempelman refereert vrij aan zijn boek, maar waarom zou hij het laten? Er zou veel te lachen zijn met het boek, maar het gaat toch ook over de dramatische omslag in Roemenie van gesloten communisitisch land tot wat het nu is.

Simek reageert ook heel direct op Olaf Tempelmans stem, die sleept en ongearticuleerd is, alsof hij gedronken heeft. Aan het eind, laat hij bovendien op pikante wijze het woord nuchter vallen, alsof hij misschien zou denken dat Tempelman inderdaad gedronken had. Maar wat hij vertelt is niet het incoherente gepraat van een dronkeman, maar de liefdevolle beschrijving van een vreemd land en een vreemde cultuur waar hij zich door heeft laten verrijken en waar hij van is gaan houden.

Meer Simek op dit blog:
Paul Gelderloos,
Bas Heijne,
Herman Finkers,
Tijs Goldschmidt,
Truus Menger.

Binnenkort: Lucie Stepanova.

Time’s Arrow - Missing Link 7

In episode 6 of the Missing Link, we have already enjoyed Scott Lough relating to us the history of time. Episode 7 takes this essay to a culmination and is entirely dedicated to it - rightfully so.

My favorite description of time and it's slipperiness (is that a word?) comes from Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg (The magic Mountain), where aside other observations it is simply reminding how time flies when you are having a ball and creeps all so slowly when you are bored. However, when you look back at the thrilling times, that flew by, they seem so filled, it is as if a lot of time went in that streak. Contrary to that, when you look back on the tedious, empty, slowly passed time, all is so uniform, it seems so little time that has passed actually.

Lough adds to history philosophy and makes things worse. Time could stop, could run backwards and could, altogether, be a figment of our imagination. From a point of view of common sense, you'd assume we live in a continuous flow of time and space, but this podcast essay makes the foundations shiver, without attacking common sense for a moment. I absolutely love this project by Elizabeth Green Musselman. A great and innovative (history) (science) podcast, everybody should know about.

More Missing Link:
On Time and on Counting - The Missing Link,
Strength in Numbers,
Constant Companions,
From Berlin,
History of Science.

Byzantine conclusion

Lars Brownworth has completed his podcast series 12 Byzantine Rulers. The high school history teacher, so we are told, is moving on to other enterprises. It doesn't look like it, he is going to do another history podcast. I recommend everybody to go listen to the whole series, including the concluding episode that describes what legacy Byzantium left and hopes to show how Europe and with it Western Civilization is indebted to the Byzantine Empire for holding off the spread of Islam, of the Turks and delivering the classics in time for the Renaissance.

In the mean time I'd like to also spend some words about this podcast as such. When in June 2005 the first episode came out, the podcast landscape was different from today and especially history podcasts were still very rare. Consequently Lars Brownworth filled a considerable gap and that probably explains his success, which is that his podcast considered a top 50 podcast. I am not sure whether today, even a person with the great diction and careful reading Brownworth delivers, can make a success out of a monologue style history podcast that delivers an episode less than monthly. There are too many more frequent, more sexy, more academic and more professional sources out there.

When the pioneer goes and can no longer be emulated, it is a bit like Constantinople finally falling to the siege of the Turks. The Roman empire finally belongs to history, but its legacy has been maintained. The New World can freely take up the torch and hold it high. The Byzantine podcast has opened up the world of podcasting for history buffs and now that he is finished (I'd not say podfaded, but that is actually so, with its conclusion albeit fresh), we can see there is a thriving world of history podcasts, rich in subjects, styles, lengths and depths and it is ever expanding.

More:
The Byzantine Empire on Podcast,
Byzantine Podcast,
The Making of Europe in 1453,
Holy Sepulchre,
The Nicene Creed.