Historicast - podcast review

Here is a very charming history podcast. It is of the short monologue style, but it inserts audio fragments and by that makes optimal use of the podcast medium. Historicast. (feed)

With particular appreciation I listened to the episode about the Hindenburg disaster. The added value of the audio fragment is that it is authentic, in addition to it being very famous and dramatic. Here we see an amateur podcaster showing the way for podcasts to go, where mostly professionals still haven't gone. In my opinion, this is a podcast that is here to stay.

Oxford Biographies - podcast review

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is a website containing biographies of some fifty to sixty thousand people in British history, from 400 BC to today. In order to draw attention to its varied contents, the website has a podcast, Oxford Biographies, that delivers spoken biographies in seven to fifteen minutes. The apparent schedule is to put out one each fortnight.

This is a charming podcast to browse from. It is really of the pick and choose kind. Look your character up in the list and listen. If you really are into biographies, this could be a charming entry and have you look up unexpected figures.

It seems to me, so far, the podcast tries to deliver talks on lesser known people. We won't see the likes of Henry VIII or Winston Churchill, the way they have started. But who knows, this might change.

Fact or Fiction - podcast review

Fact or Fiction is a promotional podcast of HowStuffWorks.com. It is a rather new production and that probably explains why it doesn't show up on the HowStuffWorks.com website, but the podcast can be found in iTunes.

Under the motto History stuff for the history buff the cast delivers short episodes of less than five minutes in which there is a scripted dialog between expert Candice and counterpart Joshua, who comes up with the question. The question involves invariably some tidbit of popular historical assumption, to which Candice must reply whether it is fact or fiction. The subject corresponds with an article on the main website. Was there a curse on the tomb of Tut ankh Amon? Were the American colonists drugged during the Salem witchcraft trial? And so on.

This podcast is short, anecdotal and entertaining - very light stuff, for the very light buff.

History Compass - podcast review

In this short series, I'll start with the promotional podcasts. Here is the first.

History Compass Blog is a promotional podcast for an on line journal, History Compass. Writers are telling in short about what article they have written. It is an incentive to buy subscription, or pay a one time fee to read the article. I find the price for the full content rather high, although I have little to compare it with.

The articles seem very interesting and the podcast is long enough to get a real impression. I can imagine to pick up, may be not all episodes, but at least those that are of interest to me.

Buying a subscription or an article is something I can imagine one would do if one is professionally engaging in research.

Anne the man's quick screening of new history podcasts

This weekend I am undertaking a quick screening of new history podcasts taken from the iTunes history listing. I will try to have them all reviewed by Sunday.

Fact or Fiction - promotional podcast from the history section at HowStuffWorks.com

History Compass - promotional podcast by History Compass, an on-line history magazine where the previews are free, but the full articles have to be paid for.

Historicast - history told with the help of audio fragments

German Cultural History - German culture through the ages, as told by a student of history

Oxford Biographies - promotional podcast from the Oxford biographies website. Short bios from relatively unknown people in history

The Pope podcast - the history of the popes as told by a born again Roman Catholic; taking one pope at a time (so there are still some 250 podcasts to go)

Backstory - Radio program digging up the history behind issues that reach headlines in contemporary news

Ancient history - alternative theories - a podcast engaging in unconventional conjectures about the faraway past.

One that, unfortunately, I am not going to be able to review is The antique history of Iran. It looked so accessible in iTunes' list and description and the titles of the episodes promised a real thorough run through Persian history. Until this point all was in English, but the audio is all in the Persian language. If anybody of my blog followers understand the language and listened to the podcast, let me know and I will happily invite you to write a guest post.

Subscribe in a reader

Paste the link 
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Anne_Is_A_Man 

 into the RSS reader of your preference.

You can let your preferences (I'd love get new podcast recommendations) know by commenting on the blog or sending mail to The Man Called Anne at: Anne Frid de Vries (in one word) AT yahoo DOT co DOT uk

Life on the Scales - Philosophy Bites podcast review

Philosophy Bites is a podcast that delivers concise weekly conversations on a philosophical topic. All this happens in a balance act between the levels of academic philosophy and the target of wrapping up the academic discourse in ten, fifteen minutes and have a product that is accessible to a relatively wide public. Generally the podcast succeeds in doing that and it makes it a treasure trove from which you can pick the subject that appeals to you and get boosted with insight, perspectives and level of your starting point.

I am very interested in controversies that pit our intuitions and rationality, our various values and principles against each other in real dilemmas. One such hot potato is the discussion around stem cell research and more general discussions on bio-technology and ethics. All this is about life and drags us into the position we have to weigh lives or consider how this can be done (if it can be done at all and if it is ethical to even engage in such questions). Hence, the last issue of Philosophy Bites drew my immediate attention: John Broome on weighing lives. (John Broome is a philosophy professor at Oxford, and wrote a book with on weighing lives.)

Broome handles the uncertainties involved in the issue with decision theory. And this allows for rationalizing and while not always people take their decisions this way. During the podcast I could forget my qualms about raising the question at all - intuitively I have a feeling the question of the weight of life is vicious to begin with. The examples are of practical nature, both individually as well as on the level of policy. Broome also adds to the decision theory; he introduces fairness and goodness. He also understand the horror I feel around this question, but by emphasizing that decisions must be made and any old tool that helps should be appreciated. It remains a balancing act with contradicting principles after all - also with what Broome contributes.

More Philosophy Bites:
David Hume,
Several issues of Philosophy Bites,
Free rider problem,
Humanism,
Is war innate?