Improv Everywhere - The Ice Podcast

I am not overly fond of podcasts that have a crew that is freely engaging in small talk among each other. It can be thrilling, but it is mostly boring and eavesdropping upon other people's conversations is not exactly my cup of tea. And so, I was not sure how to tackle a review of the reported podcast The Ice Podcast. (feed)

But then, the host of the podcast Chris Crookall was kind enough to point out to me that his podcast had also the occasional interview. He especially recommended the conversation with Matt Adams from Improv Everywhere. And rightfully so. In a very natural and accessible way we get to know the project of Improv Everywhere in which Matt Adams is part and about which he attempts to make documentaries (see Matt's web page). The idea is that we are all stuck in our routine perceptions of the world and the people of Improv Everywhere operate in the everyday world (mostly in New York city) and create scenes that force the bystanders to look at their surroundings freshly again. One of the discussed examples is a scene in which the agents of Improv Everywhere start singing in the food court - see video.

The Great War - WW1 in podcasts

About a week ago I already wrote a Dutch post about the First World War in podcasts and that is because one of the very best podcasts about The Great War is in Dutch (Veertien Achttien), more about this by the end of this post. If you wish to make a study of WW1 through podcast alone, you have many formidable other podcasts to choose from as well.

There are two big stories about WW1. One is the geopolitical, diplomatic one, which goes back until the 1870's and arguably shows the effect of WW1 until at least the Cold War, if not until today (look at the Middle East for example). This perspective that can be stretched over a near century and a half is fantastically covered by Stanford's James Sheehan in the lecture series The History of the International System (feed). Part of this story is the question how the war came about and who is to blame, which is an issue every modern history series will deal with (History 5, MMW 5, European Civilization 1648 to 1945, History 1c) but is especially well done by Margaret Anderson in an old version of Berkeley's Renaissance to Today. Also interesting is the interview in New Books in History with Norman Stone.

Another big story of WW1 is that of Trench Warfare, or a little bit more broadly, how the war went and how it culminated in the wretched peace of Versailles. Many good podcasts give ample attention here. (New Books in History, History 151c, France since 1871, The Armistice Podcast)

The special quality of Veertien Achttien ('14 - '18) lies in this that it takes on both these themes and more by the method it applies. Veertien Achttien brings every week a short biography of one of the people involved in the war. Through this you get some chronology of the war, and frequently one stretching from earlier to way beyond, highlighting aspects that go beyond the to big narratives referred to above. Especially in this podcast you can find the effect of WW1 on everyday life, on the peripheries of the war, on culture, on science and as such, mare than any other podcast it convincingly shows how deep and fundamental the war altered our world.

While Veertien Achttien is expected to run until 2012 in Dutch, there are some rumors it may be translated into English at some point in time. We can only hope that this challenge will indeed be met.

De onschuld van Lucia de B.- Simek 's Nachts in 2006

In de Volkskrant stond bij het artikel over de vrijspraak van Lucia de B. een foto van haar dochter Fabienne. In 2006 was Fabienne te gast bij Simek 's Nachts - toen stond ze nog alleen in haar overtuiging van haar moeders onschuld. Hoewel de site van Simek alleen nog maar via het internet archief te zien is, staan sommige van zijn interviews nog on-line, al zijn die bestanden haast niet te vinden. Abonneer je op een van de volgende feeds en Fabienne zit er tussen: Huffduffer feed of
Anne is a Man, googlereader feed.

Op de site van Simek stond destijds: "Fabienne (1981) is de dochter van Lucia de B.. Haar moeder werd veroordeeld tot levenslange gevangenisstraf vanwege een groot aantal moorden die ze als verpleegster zou hebben gepleegd. Fabienne is overtuigd van de onschuld van haar moeder. Hoe gaat ze om met haar machteloosheid? Of kan ze nog iets doen? Martin Simek vraagt het zich af in Simek 's nachts."

In de uitzending blijkt Fabienne een jonge vrouw die maar moeilijk los komt en openlijk aangeeft dat ze Simek niet helemaal vertrouwt. Van de vijftig minuten die ze hebben, lopen de eerste vijfendertig tamelijk stroef. Fabienne geeft wat ontwijkende antwoorden; je moet de werkelijke antwoorden erbij raden. Maar dan, wanneer je denkt dat het niet meer gaat lukken, komt het interview los en in het laatste kwartier krijg je iets meer te zien. En als je na het luisteren naar de foto van het ANP (zie onder) kijkt, dan herken je haar toch.

University lecture podcasts - collected by Princeton

We frequently look at podcast lecture series of University courses, but in addition to that, Universities have a lot of one off guest lectures with specialized speakers and quite often record them as well. At the University of Princeton, many of these lecture from all around the academic world are bundled in the UChannel Podcast, which has both an audio feed and a video feed. Personally, I think most of the time the audio is enough. The art of effectively registering a lecture on video and producing the visuals with shots of the lecturer and the audience is not fully mastered or invested in.

One such lecture was Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature. Architect Douglas Farr spoke at at Case Western Reserve University about the problems with sustainable architecture these days. A nut shell example is the following: a new school building is produced and it does everything right with regards to sustainable architecture. The materials are the best, the design takes care of proper use of energy and water. The waste problem has been addressed and on and on. Indeed, the building is awarded the highest measure of sustainability that can be given. However, the building is erected outside the city and whereas kids would previously walk to school, in the new situation, an enormous parking lot is made for all those cars that bring the kids. Farr takes on the challenge and proposes methods for not only building sustainable buildings, but for making those plans part of a wider planning, making entire cities sustainable. When you choose to listen to the audio (as I did), be prepared to miss out on the shots Farr shows. I am not sure how well they are shown in the video, though.

Many of the lectures previously come out in the podcast feed of the specific institute. Among them is The London School of Economics (LSE podcast), from which I download very frequently. Two recent lectures were Secularisms in crisis with John Bowen who brought a lot of examples from France to show how the modern secular state is struggling with the rise of religiousness and the visibility of religious signs in public places. And A Broken Middle East: a wasted decade of war on terror with Fawaz A Gerges who shows how the war on terror has disrupted especially Afghanistan and Iraq and brought about more lawlessness, social, political and economic insecurity than there was before. These two lectures have not yet appeared in the UChannel feed, but I am sure they soon will.


More UChannel Podcast:
Ceasefire,
Capitalism and Confusion - Amartya Sen,
Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and the Middle East,
Taming Religion - Ian Buruma trilogy,
Averting the disasters of climate change.

More LSE:
The China Hegemony,
The myth of work,
Pasts and futures of Christianity,
Global capitalism - the Gray view,
Israeli at the London School of Economics.

Two podcasts on the brain - Saeed Ahmed guest post

I am very happy and proud to present you yet another guest post by Saeed Ahmed. Saeed is a psychiatrist, a Pakistani by origin who lives and works in the US, where he has also received his professional training. He is a very thorough podcast listener, taking on themes and building wide playlists around them. Or he takes on podcast university courses and carefully goes through the whole series.

Two interesting podcasts

I have listening to podcasts that explore relationships of "world" to "brain" and "brain" to "world". One way the world clearly influences the brain directly (not just behavior) is by actually changing the structure of the brain.

This is elucidated by Ginger Campbell in episode 10 of her long-standing Brain Science Podcast. (feed)

What is interesting is that many parts of the brain can change function quite dramatically, given the proper stimulus.

Dr. Campbell generally has a fairly mainstream view of mind/brain interactions (i.e. materialistic), and she doesn't go deeply into philosophical issues. The strength of this podcast is exploring the scientific aspects and medical applications. There are a number of other interesting topics she covers in various episodes, and I hope to have some time to listen to these.

Another good podcast is The Philosopher's Zone, from ABC radio national in Australia. A currently available episode has an interview with psychologist Nicholas Humphrey, who differentiates between "sensation" (what the outer sensory organs do) and "perception" (the processing of the sensory information in the central nervous system). It is of course possible to have sensation without perception. What is more surprising is that it is possible to have perception without sensation, e.g. in a phenomenon known as "blind sight," where patients who have non-functioning primary visual cortices can still perceive (accurately describe) certain types of visual phenomenon.

The material Campbell and Humphrey cover is interesting, and both cover certain philosophical issues related to the mind/body and free will/determinism problems, but I find this aspect of the discussion in each case somewhat off the point.

It may tempting to conclude from the phenomena of environmentally stimulated neuroplasticity that it is somehow countering "genetic" determinism, but it is important to recognize that is not the deep determinism that philosophers think about, the type that leads to a "causally-closed system."

Furthermore, demonstrating certain examples of perception without sensation (most often in the context of pathological states) does not really address the hard problem in mind/body philosophy.

However, I have to think about how these two things inform the "synthetic apriori" notion of Kant, and perhaps through that we may be able to make some progress.

More Saeed Ahmed:
John Searle, Philosophy of Mind,
Politics 114B.

More Philosopher's Zone:
Isaiah Berlin,
Philosopher's Zone,
Mary Shelley and Frankenstein.

John Searle, Philosophy of Mind - UC Berkeley

I am very happy and proud to present you yet another guest post by Saeed Ahmed. Saeed is a psychiatrist, a Pakistani by origin, who lives and works in the US, where he has also received his professional training. He is a very thorough podcast listener, taking on themes and building wide playlists around them. Or he takes on podcast university courses and carefully goes through the whole series. Here he writes his findings about a course at Berkeley about the Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy 132, 001, delivered by Professor John R. Searle. (feed)

When I first went here a few weeks ago, they had posted that most of the lectures wouldn't be available, but it looks like that has changed, so I have started listening.

Unlike Philosophy 138, 001 - Philosophy of Society (Searle's previous course - feed), which I think is a relatively recent interest of Searle's (or so it seems), the Philosophy of Mind is something he has thought about for decades and is one the world authorities on the subject.

I can't report much yet beyond lecture 1, which I think in itself is worth listening because it provides a very nice synopsis of the Cartesian influence and a summary of big problems in the field. Four of the problems: 1) How can one know one's own mind exists, 2) how can one know other mind's exist, 3) how can one know other objects exist and 4) free will.

Here Searle is at his best, in command of the material, lecturing without any aids (notes, powerpoint slides, etc), and taking interesting digressions from time to time.

I don't know which course to recommend more, this one or the one from last quarter (Philosophy of Society), however I think at least one of these should be sampled by anyone who has the remotest interest in philosophy, and I would say this is nearly mandatory for anyone interested in philosophy of mind, consciousness, or free will.

More Saeed Ahmed:
Politics 114B - UCLA political science course.

More Berkeley:
The Indian Rebellion 1857,
Human Evolution and Prehistory,
Dacher Keltner on Happiness and Health,
Modern Western History in podcasts,
Wars, Empires, Nations 1648-1914.