More podcast reviews in the making

Within 12 hours: Philosophy Bites (Humanism)

Within 24 hours: Historyzine 006 with among others a comment about Anne is a Man:

a site simply jammed full of history podcast reviews

In the coming days:
- Simek interviews Lucie Stepanova
- Philosophy Bites (Free Riders)
- The Writing Show (getting Published with Mark Leslie)

This month: A new podcast directory to be added, Geography Podcasts.

New podcasts on trial:
Historypod
Chronicles Radio Dispatches
Distillations
The Biography Podcast
Africa Past and Present

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Van patriotten tot landverraders - OVT

Volgens de aankondiging zou aflevering 14 van OVT in het spoor van In Europa gaan over 1939 met de dubbeltitel Duitsland - Erfzonden. Wat daar op de radio (en de podcast) van overblijft zijn alleen de erfzonden. Er wordt gesproken met Chris van der Heijden en Helmert Woudenberg over foute ouders en daarmee gaat het over Nederland, niet Duitsland en behalve over 1939 ook over de afrekening na 1945. Erfzonden, is het enige steekwoord dat overblijft.

Chris van der Heijden is een historicus en probeert een beetje binnen het kader van het programma te blijven. Helmert Woudenberg doet dat ook, maar brengt ook zijn persoonlijke ervaringen mee. Daarvoor is de tijd te kort, maar gelukkig kon ik het allemaal goed plaatsen omdat ik hem al in een twee uur durend interview met Martin Simek had gehoord. (MP3 eerste uur, MP3 tweede uur)

Presentatoren Jos Palm en Matthijs Deen halen een scherpe tegenstelling naar boven, al raakt die een beetje ondergesneeuwd: De landverraders van 1946 beschouwen zichzelf in 1939 als goede Nederlanders, als oprechte patriotten. Er wordt een fragment van NSB voorman Woudenberg (grootvader van Helmert) afgespeeld. Het is een toespraak uit 1941, waarbij hij voorman wordt van de algemene vakbond en zich laat voorstaan op zijn patriottisme. De draai die hij aan Nederlanderschap geeft is een mengeling van ideologie en pragmatisme. De bezetting heet een nieuwe orde en impliciet wordt die orde verwelkomd als goed voor het land. Dit is nog maar het begin van nadenken over fout zijn in de oorlog.

Eerdere besprekingen van OVT in dit blog:
1925 - Mussolini,
1929 - Goldene Zwanziger,
1933 - Fellow Travelers.
1936 - Spanje,
1938 - Hitler en Holocaust.

Reformation - History 5

The 5th and 6th lecture of History 5 pay attention to the Reformation. For anybody who is interested in this subject, these two lectures can be followed separate from the whole of the series.

One of the major questions to be presented is why the Reformation succeeded, or in other words, why what starts out as a theological dispute and a set of criticism on the policies of the Church of Rome, turns into a schism. What could have meant a change inside the church or could have been shoved aside as heresy, develops into a full blown revolution. Previous critics of the Church like Jan Hus and Girolamo Savonarola had been easily dealt with (executed) and those are only the named ones.

Professor Anderson shows how the situation with Marten Luther was significantly different. How geo-politics took his dispute with Rome and turned it into a movement and made not only a Church but also a different political map in Europe. From my own history lessons I remember how the newly risen printing press added to the spread of Luther's ideas, but Anderson gives a new angle to that phenomenon: the whole discourse was economically interesting for printers. Have a heated discussion and people from both camps want to have their pamphlets printed. Great insights in European and World history.

More History 5:
Europe and 1492,
The making of Europe in 1453,
From the Renaissance Until Today,
Agricultural revolution first,
The genitals of Christ: Anne asks and then Anderson replies.

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.