This weekend on Anne is a Man (or afterwards)

Dear Readers,

This weekend I am planning to make the following posts:

• An announcement of That Podcast show relating what podcasts they reviewed on their 51st podcast
  
• A review of the Hebrew podcast מה שהיה היה, which is a recording of Radio Har HaTsofim, the radio station of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem
  
• A review of the new podcast Science & the City, a podcast of the New York academy of science. Among others there was an episode dedicated to Philip Zimbardo's research on how people experience time and how this affects their decision making and well-being in life.
  
• A review of the last episode of Historyzine, which turned out to be an especially good one.
  

Other reviews that are to be expected are among others about Veertien Achttien, the Dutch podcast about World War I. On a side note, the maker of Veertien Achttien, Tom Tacken, told me he had misspelled the last name of one of the soldiers in the Great War. When discussing Otto Weddigen, he thought the name was Weddingen. This has been corrected, also by me in my review of this cast.

I have also found yet another blog that points to mine: Gwyn's Blog, the personal blog of a Welshman named Gwyn Hughes. Gwyn is a Man, so to say!

Happy weekend to all of you,

Anne

Pieces of history - קטעים בהיסטוריה

קטעים בהיסטוריה is a small Israeli amateur history podcast. There are no more than four episodes out, two of which I have listened to. They are entertaining, informative and lightened up with sound and music effects.

The first episode I listened to was about the Lewis and Clark expedition. This was the better of the two episodes. The host of the show, Yuval Malchi, spent his 50 minutes well on retelling the story. The expedition is also a singular event which bears retelling in one show. The punctuation with musical intersections also adds some cliffhangers and thus add to the entertainment.

A bit less effective was the next installment which took on all of the crusades for one show. This of course spans too much time and reduces what is to be told in 50 minutes to too many facts that are barely related. If Yuval succeeds well, it is only because he has a great narrative talent and again uses the musical interjections as cliffhangers, here and there with a humorous touch even. (I think some of the music was not podsafe, but that is just an aside) He also has the habit of stopping his last sentence before the music in an upturn tone, as if mid-sentence.

The audio-levels bear some improvement, but all in all this is a very pleasant history podcast that deserves to be continued.

Picture: Wikimedia Commons

The History of 2050 - UChannel podcast review

UChannel podcast served a lecture and Q&A session with futurist Richard Watson at the RSA. For the podcast listener there was a lot to be expected, yet also a lot to be missed. Expectations were high because of the subject:  the history of the next 50 years. The RSA public was similarly affected and arrived in great numbers.

The lecture disappointed me. Fun though it is, to be informed about current trends and to let someone project them onto each other - even if the charts were not made visible for the iPod audience. (It would do to serve these as enhanced podcasts. Also in vodcast the element of charts and maps goes lost. We do not need to see the speaker, we just need the occasional glimpse at the slide. If one looks for a comparison, one needs only to look at Stanford.) However, getting the hotchpotch of trends only resulted in some sexy one-liners, but hardly in some coherent image that could serve as a history, let alone anything close to a narrative.

The real value, for me, was, that Watson taught me to look at trends, not only as far as new and upcoming developments, but also to look at things that are disappearing. As a new medium user, I can only agree TV and Radio are to disappear, but to my dismay, Watson also included blogging - let's hope not. Anyway, some food for thought, but a much ado about very little.

More UChannel:
The Arab-Israeli Conflict,
Civilization and the Hills,
New World Order,
The Invisible Hand,
The Second World.

Making History - Hebrew podcast review

Ran Levy of עושים היסטוריה replied to my previous review about his podcast with a delicate hint about my Hebrew. He suggested to write my reviews about Hebrew shows in English, because the audience masters English anyway. I took this as a discouragement to write in Hebrew. Too bad, I could do with the exercise, but maybe he is right that here is not the place.

Since the last review Ran has made a new episode of Making History and continued on a sidetrack of the previous subject. Previously, when dealing with simultaneous discoveries in science, he already mentioned how Leibniz and Newton discovered differential equations. In the latest episode this comes back because ran has decided to deal with Newton altogether. The differential equations are a side in a much larger tale of a poor boy who by chance got the opportunity to learn and become the genius he became.

Rather than the picture of the genius, Ran paints us Newton as the sociopath. In all stages of his life, Isaac Newton, in Ran's biography is unstoppable in his career and not willing to share the fame with others. Among his victims are not just Leibniz, but also Robert Hook. Newton took Hook's findings in optics and elaborate upon them without reference to Hook as if the findings were his, Newton's that is. It seems a leading thought in Ran's podcast: without sweeping away what stands as well accepted in history (Newton was a genius with the most important effect on science), but Ran feels the need to make some marks on the side and put all this in perspective.

Previously:
Making History with Ran Levy

This week on Anne is a Man (and afterwards)

There are a couple of podcast reviews in the making. In addition there are some podcasts I have listened to that in one way or another will enter some reviews soon. I would like to list some of those and together with that give you some insight in my listening schedule for this week.

Some of the podcasts that are to be reviewed in the coming days are:

Making History with Ran Levy.
Ran enters with the question who was the most influential scientist of all time and while you may have expected an expose about Einstein, you are getting one about Newton. Newton, the eccentric, the egomaniac, the ruthless self serving politician and Newton the rags to fame genius. In addition I'll explain why I review this Hebrew podcast in English.

More Hebrew podcasts to be reviewed soon are: קטעים בהיסוריה and מה שהיה היה.

I have listened to In Our Time's chapter about Godel's Incompleteness Theorems and I am about to take on Vitalism. Even though I feared the Godel issue a bit, on account of the mathematics, I was pleased to be able to follow, yet I still have to work some more on what I have to say about it. I might make a combined review of the last programs.

In the making is also another review of the Celtic Myth Podshow. A two-part series about the fate of Fintan, Erin's great story-teller has started. I'll have to decide whether I'll wait for the second part with the review.

Furthermore, I have listened to issues of Philosophy Bites, Philosopher's Zone and UChannel podcast that need reviewing.

In the series of university lectures, I am not sure I will give more reviews, but to give you an idea what I am following completely, here is the list:
Berkeley's History 5 (A survey of Europe from the Renaissance to the present), Philosophy 6 (Man, God, and Society in Western Literature), Philosophy 7 (Existentialism in Literature and Film).
UCSD's MMW4 (World History from 1200 to 1750) and Poli 113A (East Asian Thought).

Some more podcasts I am about to listen to are:
Veertien Achttien
Science & the City

Before the weekend I will update you again on what to expect on Anne is a Man.

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Volkis Stimme - German podcast review

I had not heard this kind of comedy on podcast yet, though there must be plenty around. The mock news bulletin is a comedy routine that sort of begs to be done. The German podcast Volkis Stimme therefore draws recollections of all the others who I have heard do that before. Have I Got News For You, Eretz Nehederet and Hans Dorrestijn are my handful memories that burst through. I am sure everybody will have their own reminiscing to do. (feed)

Host Volker Klärchen takes twelve news items of the week, including at least some politics, sports and one weather item and fills a six minute podcast with mock news. Volker handles this podcast very true to the art. It takes familiarity with the German actuality landscape to follow the majority of the items, but by all means each and every gag is bound to make you smile at least. The leaders in the program are of the regular TV news style and the inserted audio fragments are snippets Volker managed to clip from true sources, but also some that he makes by himself, revealing him to be a rather promising voice artist.

The result is a light podcast that gives you the weekly laugh at the news you just needed. Don't let your impression be ruined by Volker's last name. This is not Klärchen erzählt ein Märchen which is the rhyme I keep making in my head. This show is truly befitting the stand-up comedy of Have I Got News For You and Eretz Nehederet. And as far as Hans Dorrestijn is concerned; I was wondering whether Volker might understand Dutch and has heard Dorrestijn. In one of the sports items he uses the exact same joke I have heard Dorrestijn make over twenty years ago. When reporting on an athlete having broken a record, he adds: "the record was not seriously hurt." Coincidence, I suppose.