Medieval Heroes in short - HUM 4104 Virginia Tech

Professor Matthew Gabriele from Virginia Tech is using podcast as a supplement to his lectures. This is different from many other university podcasts, where the podcast is the lecture. Gabriele offers help with the reading on the podcast. Consequently, the non-student listener, such as us, is a bit shut out, but still some value can be had.

Take the course about heroes (HUM 4104 - see Virginia Tech history podcast page). Each podcast prepares for the reading about another hero or two. Beowulf, Boniface, Lancelot - aren't those the characters you had always wanted to know more about. Gabriele is giving that and more heroes, but only a bit. From there you will have to take the reading yourself or find your way to Virginia.

Still, what I like about this podcast series is that the issues are short. Each one under five minutes, so that you can drop them anywhere on your playlist. You can squeeze in a listen any time and you will get a tiny pearl handed to you.


More Virginia Tech:
Thinking outside the European box,
Medieval Texts.

Peopletalk - history and culture podcast

I have briefly reviewed Peopletalk before. The podcast still has an audiobook section where history texts are being read to the listener. However, by now (I do not recall it was there then) the feed also offers episodes in which someone is being interviewed.

I took up listening to the interview with Michael Anthony of the British History 101 podcast (which I have also reviewed a long, long time ago). Anthony gets to explain how he became interested in British history. His high school days in Indiana, saw no significant attention to British History in history class. It was through a literature class and an enthusiastic teacher and the ensuing depiction of historical backgrounds with the read works that he was exposed to the subject and came to love it. In addition came a few visits to England. By now he is a history student and has many inroads into history. Still he is most attracted to British History and finds it particularly relevant for the US.

The episode is more of a conversation than an interview as the interviewer actively participates with his views. There is more to discover here. I want to thank the reader of this blog who attracted my attention to Peopletalk again. (feed)

The west since 1600 - History 2312

My favorite returning podcast lecture series is Berkeley's History 5, which, for some reason, has not been podcast this last semester. It is always possible to take one of previous semesters; you even have a rich choice between professors (Hesse, Anderson, Laqueur) However, you can also go to other sources for receiving the history of western civilization after the middle ages.

One such example is the course history 2312 from Temple College in Texas. Host Gretchen Ann Reilly speaks to us directly in fifteen minute segments and in over 30 lectures she matches the breadth of history 5, but is more modest and accessible for beginners than the Berkeley material. If you ever needed a basic entry course into modern history, this is where you should go. Now is also a good time as the course runs at this moment and the feed is up and running - which it is not for most of the year.

Another option is a course at UCLA, which gives history since 1715. This course has just started and I will review it in due time.

More Gretchen Ann Reilly:
Gretchen Reilly history podcasts,
American History before 1870.

Aristotle's ethics - Philosophy Bites

A brilliant podcast is Philosophy Bites. Nigel Warburton and David Edmonds manage to reduce philosophy to little bites of audio of around fifteen minutes and maintain a very reasonable intellectual level. Basically this is a podcast that you should have tried and that you should stay subscribed to and take your pick from the wide variety of subjects.

An excellent place to start is the latest issue about Aristotle's Ethics. Guest Terence Irwin takes us from the person Aristotle to the two periods he was intensively received in western thinking (the Renaissance and the nineteenth century) to the nature of Aristotle's ethics and how his thoughts are still relevant, applicable and giving food for discussion and critique today.

To give but an example: liberal political theory takes man as an individual and places in the state the obligation to respect the rights and freedoms of the individual. With Aristotle, this approach is criticized with the point that Aristotle already makes, that man is part of a community. He lives by and through the social fabric and is therefore a social and political being. The interests of state and individual then coincide and that gives rise to a whole other political theory. For example Hegel and Marx used Aristotle thus to criticize liberal theory.

Irwin is favorable to Aristotle's ethics, but voices also, by the end, a couple of points at which he'd like to improve or adapt Aristotle's ethics. Amazing how much can be dealt with in 17 minutes and 28 seconds.

More Philosophy Bites
Sartre,
Idealism,
Alternative Hedonism,
Non-realism of God,
Virtue.

BBC history magazine

Jim Mowatt of the history podcast Historyzine aproached me with a request to review the podcast of the BBC History Magazine. He was surprised to find I had not reviewed it before. The fact is however, I have, although it is a long time ago (2007). I couldn't keep up with the podcast, although that does not necessarily mean it is a bad podcast.

BBC History Magazine is a monthly that can be purchased in the UK and can be ordered all over the world. The podcast is a promotional effort to go along with each edition. Twice a month the podcast comes out and highlights several articles from the current magazine. Usually the author of the article is interviewed about the subject. Two subjects are covered in the episode of around half an hour. Enough to get a really nice expose of the subject at hand.

I can imagine why Jim keeps up with the podcast and I am sure you will find the occasional treasure along with the regularly interesting stuff. So, why then did I drop out of this podcast? One reason is that I do not particularly like jumping around history from subject to subject era to era perspective to perspective. With podcasts that do this, I like to pick and choose my items and leave the rest. Contrary to most other podcasts, BBC History Magazine delivers no information about the content with the podcast, not in the info and not in the description label. That is the second and effective reason. When I quickly have to decide which podcast to download, a nondescript title like BBC History Magazine April 2009 part 1 with no added description will make pass this one by.

I feel however I can recommend what I assume Jim does, pick up each issue and be treated with an endless stream of history varieties presented by a professional team interviewing the true specialists.

More BBC History Magazine:
December 2007,
November 2007.

More Historyzine:
The lines of Brabant,
Historyzine at its best,
The battle of Blenheim,
Reliving the War of Spanish Succession,
The year 1703.

Middle East challenges - UChannel Podcast

There is an infinite stream of podcasts paying attention to the Arab-Israeli conflict and plenty of good ons at that. (see my label Israel) Lecture series such as those that are compiled in the UChannel Podcast give you nearly every week a couple to choose from.

What is exceptionally good at these is that the experts are invited to speak and one is receiving a much better frame of reference than by merely reading the newspapers. One such expert is David Makovsky from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who lectured about Middle East Challenges to the Obama Administration. I can recommend this lecture for getting some insight in the political intricacies between Israel and the Palestinians.

I was surprised, for example, once again, to be presented with a representation of affairs in which Fatah and Egypt have been wanting Israel to be hard on Hamas in Gaza. Makovsky makes this case just as Asher Susser and Jacob Dayan on UCLA's Israel Studies podcast. I have made very skeptical remarks about this when I reviewed Dayan's lecture, but surely the political point is true: both Fatah and Mubarak's regime in Egypt are threatened by Hamas and are each incapable of doing much and therefore it is welcome to them if Israel does the dirty work.

More UChannel Podcast:
Good climate for everyone (global warming),
Robots and War,
Sudan and the fallacy of nationhood,
Against intervention,
Lakhdar Brahimi on Afghanistan and Iraq.