Reported podcasts in January 2010 - Anne is a Man

As promised in my new Report a Podcast policy (which will get its own page soon), I will sum up the recommendations that you have channeled to me and that I did not get round to to review within the month.

HNI Podcast (feed)
Science podcast by the Honeywell Nobel Interactive Studio. Recommended to me by RKawabata through Twitter: "Hello, we enjoy your blog and would be thrilled if you could review our HNI science podcast! http://bit.ly/6ffGbK "

Living History (feed)
The podcast for the reenacting community. Recommended by Jim through chat. "Jim: btw have you spotted this podcast http://livinghistorypodcast.com/ ?"

Holloway series in poetry (Berkeley) (feed)
Recommended by Sean in a comment: "Berkeley's Holloway Series in Poetry can often be quite good. I felt a particularly good one was with Michael McClure."

Poetry off the shelf (feed)
Recommended by Gaurav in a comment: "The Poetry Off The Shelf podcast by the Poetry Foundation is fantastic. The PF has a bunch of other good podcasts as well, including a poem-of-the-day and a Great American Poets podcast, but Poetry Off The Shelf has a nice mix of poetry readings accompanied by poet interviews, commentary by the excellent host, Curtis Fox, and really good pointers at other online and offline poetry resources. I just can't recommend it highly enough."

Through the mail came the following recommendations:

The same group of guys that brought you the Metal Rules! Magazine in the 90's, now have a radio show. Metal Rules Radio (feed) interviews musicians/personalities in the metal music community, reviews song submissions from up and coming artists, and has fun discussing a variety of topics every show. New episodes are posted every Sunday.

Seeing as there is a chance this comment will go ahead if you don't get a chance to review the podcast I'm going to say that With Cheese (feed) is the world's most direct source of profound knowledge and insight, at absolutely no cost to the listener they are transported on a journey into the minds of four of today's greatest thinkers, only to be shot out into the world an hour or so later fundamentally changed and at least one stop past their chosen destination.
I hope for the sake of those seeking divine inspiration that you can find the time to review "With Cheese" and see that I may have exaggerated the wisdom, but underplayed the humour.
(also available on the UK itunes but i couldn't find a direct link...so much for wise eh?)
we can also be contacted at withcheese@hotmail.co.uk
Thanks very much
The chaps at with cheese

On the Podcast Parlor I got two recommendations for German podcasts from Frank O.

Küchenradio (feed)
Frank writes: "I like kuechenradio.org (interviews etc.), a spare time project of some radio journalists interviewing people in their kitchen (with varying quality, episodes I can recommend are e.g. 239, 116, 127, 47)."

Chaosradio Express (feed)
Frank writes: "Chaosradio Express is very good technical one, focusing on IT topics (as well as privacy and related political topics; there is also a quite interesting episode on coffee."

And last but not least Ronald sent me a link to a German radio station (Multikulti) that gives podcasts in various languages, among others in Russian.

A History of the World in 100 Objects - BBC

Thanks to a post at Open Culture I was alerted to a new podcast at the BBC: A History of the World in 100 Objects. Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, narrates 100 programmes that retell humanity's history through the objects we have made. (feed)

So far, nine episodes of about 15 minutes have been released, starting off with the Mummy of Hornedjitef which served in the series as the object to explain the interest of viewing history through objects. Right after that MacGregor got on the chronological track and took us from the earliest stone tools to the first art and religious figurines. At the site you can also view pictures of the objects.
The consecutive subjects for now:
Making Us Human (2,000,000-8,000BC) Olduvai Stone Chopping Tool
Making Us Human (2,000,000-8,000BC) Olduvai Handaxe
Making Us Human (2,000,000-8,000BC) Swimming Reindeer
Making Us Human (2,000,000-8,000BC) Clovis Spear Point
After the Ice Age: Food and Sex (8,000-3,000BC) Bird-shaped Pestle
After the Ice Age: Food and Sex (8,000-3,000BC) Ain Sakri Lovers Figurine
After the Ice Age: Food and Sex (8,000-3,000BC) Egyptian Clay Model of Cattle
After the Ice Age: Food and Sex (8,000-3,000BC) Maya Maize God Statue

Once again I am struck by the magnitude of the agricultural revolution. In a more general sense the series shows how humans in shaping objects, they shaped their world and have continuously been changing their condition. Add to that the element of narrative which can be shaped in a thousand ways, and by each way, shape our history and hence our condition as well. In the art of shaping a story, this BBC series does a fantastic job.

More BBC programs:
In Our Time,
A short History of Ireland,
Thinking Allowed,
Analysis,
A story of India.

How about a new look and feel?

I am toying with the idea of changing the look of this blog. The current template has been in use for a year and a half and it wears me out a bit. I am considering changing back to a standard blogger template for some technical reasons. One of them is the issue of maintenance. The current template is not supported and had to be intensively redone in order to serve my needs.

Now that Blogger templates are offering the functionality I want, I would love to shed the skin I knew wouldn't last forever. Here is an idea what the next look might be. If you find the top navigation bar missing, it sits here on the right, but will move to the top. I would love to hear your feedback.

Anne

9 podcasts I enjoyed and cannot all review extensively

Over the past week or two I have accumulated such a long list of podcasts that I have listened to and are candidates for reviewing that I cannot simply spend a post on each of them. Hence, I took nine of them and pack them here together.

Letters and Science 140D (feed), The history and practice of human rights (Berkeley) - I have started this course with great interest. Not only does it give a much broader view on human rights that I have been used to (I remind you I studied and taught law at some point in my life), but it is also a very pleasant renewed encounter with Thomas Laqueur as a lecturer. For a more extensive review I kindly refer you to my colleague DIY Scholar.

Science and the City (NYAS) about the Silk Road - this short science podcast takes us to an exhibit about the Silk Road and its history. In 18 minutes you will not get more than a tip of the iceberg. The subject that struck me most was the description of one of the cities on the central cross roads (the east-west and the north-south connections) Turfan.

Exploring Environmental History - Jan Oosthoek interviewed Vimbai Kwashirai, Lecturer in African History at Durham University, about the debates and processes of woodland exploitation in Zimbabwe during the colonial period (1890-1980).

In Our Time (BBC) - Delved into the Glencoe Massacre in 1692. A sample of war time atrocities.

The Memory Palace - Once again Nate DiMeo knows to capture history, insight and human drama in five minutes of historic narrative.

LSE Podcast - Professor Mark Mazower lectures and answers questions about Europe after the European Age. After it has ruled the world for a couple of centuries, is the old continent on its way to become a backwater again? Or is it reinventing itself and will it continue to play its part on the world stage? History and geopolitics as you can find it frequently at the London School of Econonmics, take for example the last lecture I reviewed about China, the future hegemon.

Podularity - George Miller interviews Stephen Asma on his book On Monsters. This is not about monsters, it is about human fears.

Veertien Achttien - The outstanding Dutch podcast about The Great War, which talked about Henri Barbusse that French writer, who condemned the war in his famous Le Feu and the Italian writer Gabriele D'Annunzio who is portrayed as an early version of Mussolini.

Making History with Ran Levi (עושים היסטוריה! עם רן לוי) - The most entertaining way I have ever been told the history of the internet. Podcast in Hebrew.

Three New Books In History - NBIH

A podcast that I do not miss an episode from is New Books in History (which I have been abbreviating as NBIH, but I saw the maker uses NBH). Each week there is an hour long interview with the author of a new book, in history of course. The host and interviewer, historian Marshall Poe, invariably has read the book and then conducts an interview that is very well tailored to book, subject as well as author. Every week this allows you to get a good insight in some subject of history.

Here are the three latest issues, each of which are definitely worth a listen:

Julian E. Zelizer, “Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security From WWII to the War on Terrorism” - In this interview Marshall Poe prompts Zelizer to take us through all of the recent wars the US was involved in, from Korea to Iraq and let him explain how the internal politics of the US influenced the decision of the President and his government to enter the war. Much to Poe's surprise, without exception, the President got into the war he wanted to get into. There was always some weighing of the power balance between Republicans and Democrats that, if not forced his hand, strongly influenced the move. It reminded me of Henry Kissinger's line about Israeli politics: Israel has no foreign policy, there is only internal policy. Apparently he did not have to look for to get that idea.

Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson, “Natural Experiments of History” - Although the book was edited not by Jared Diamond alone, the guest on the show is Jared Diamond only. Although there is ample talk of what is meant with Natural Experiments and some examples are discussed, the most interesting part of the interview dwells on another subject. Diamond and Poe get to discuss and criticize the current state of affairs in academia as far as the discipline of history is concerned. History is completely compartmentalized. Historians delve solely into one niche subject and stick to one research method - reading primary sources. According to Diamond this is unfortunate and he argues how history could be enriched with broadening subjects, getting historians out of their small fields and have them apply methods of social sciences together with reliance on primary sources.

Alan E. Steinweis, “Kristallnacht 1938″ - While NBIH comes out weekly on the beat, somehow it delivered two episodes this week with a mere two or three day difference. And so we could enjoy a most informative interview with Allan Steinweis about the Kristallnacht. We learn how fine and gradual the distinction were from an organized to a spontaneous pogrom. And this is all set in a historical perspective of the deteriorating position of the Jews since 1933, of a Nazi regime that was all set for this deterioration, but was also aware of its international position and had ample reason to keep the simmering pogroms in check and in the perspective of an incident two days earlier in Paris. At the German embassy a Polish Jew shot a German diplomat and although the whole affair was clearly the doings of an individual, it fitted so neatly with the widely adopted idea of a Jewish conspiracy that it could bring the simmering pogrom to burst.

More NBIH:
The fourth part of the world,
How the Soviet system imploded,
Vietnam War perspectives,
1989 - Padraic Kenney,
The Ossie twilight.

Magnificent Devil - Norman Centuries

While I am listening to UCSD's series about the Byzantine Empire and reading Lars Brownworth's book Lost to the West which can out of his previous podcast series 12 Byzantine Rulers, Lars is continuing his new series Norman Centuries.

Lars has a knack for telling stories. Granted, the Normans are giving him plenty juicy stuff to report about, with their upstart leaders and audacious politicking in Medieval France, but his soothing calm voice and gentle use of language make it an ironic treat. A fine example of such irony is to be found in the fourth episode Magnificent Devil, about Robert I, Duke of Normandy. Robert brazen and risky strive for power earned him the nickname Magnificent Devil, yet his success allow him to safely settle to power and even acquire dignity.

I am looking forward to the next episode, which will be about William the Conqueror, Robert's son. At the current speed at which the episodes come out, it will take a couple of weeks and I will have time to finish Lars's book. As to the book; I have not yet compared the chapters with the text of the Byzantine podcast, but I intend to do that and report to you how close the two products are.

More Norman Centuries:
Richard the Fearless,
Norman Centuries - Lars is back!.