Listening ideas for 29 April 2011

On Being
Children of Both Identities
Mohammad Darawshe is Arab with an Israeli passport -- a Muslim Palestinian citizen of the Jewish state. Like 20 percent of Israel's population, he is, as he puts it, a child of both identities. He brings an unexpected way of seeing inside the Middle Eastern present and future.
(review, feed)

IdeaCast
The Food Crisis, Market Failures, and World 3.0
Pankaj Ghemawat, IESE Business School professor and author of "World 3.0: Global Prosperity and How to Achieve It."
(review, feed)

Hebrew Podcasts
Hershele
Hershele is an iconic figure of Jewish humor. In our dialog today, Ilana asks Eli to write a summary of a business meeting. It's late and Eli is reluctant because he thinks that it's a waste of time to summarize what was said when everyone attended the meeting. Ilana tells him the story of Hershele and hopes that he'll understand the moral of the story.
(review, feed)

Listening ideas for 28 April 2011

Africa Past & Present
Zulu Intellectual History
Hlonipha Mokoena (Anthropology, Columbia U.) on her new book: Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual (2011). Explains the rise of a black intelligentsia in 19th- and early 20th-century South Africa through the remarkable life of Fuze, the first Zulu-speaker to publish a book in the language: Abantu Abamnyama Lapa Bavela Ngakona / The Black People and Whence They Came.
(review, feed)

Thinking Allowed
Craft & Community and Hunting
Does making things really make us happy? How does craft contribute to bringing people together? David Gauntlett and Richard Sennett join Laurie to discuss
(review, feed)

In Our Time
Cogito Ergo Sum
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most famous statements in philosophy: "Cogito ergo sum" or "I think therefore I am". With Susan James, John Cottingham and Stephen Mulhall.
(review, feed)

Stone Pages Archaeo News
Archaeo News Podcast 190
In collaboration with British Archaeological Jobs Resource. With a.o. 'Gay caveman' is not gay and is not a caveman
(review, feed)

Mahabharata Podcast
Cutting the Muster
Episode 55 - As if intending to seal his fate, Duryodhana warms up the Pandavas by sending over an odious gambler Uluka as a messenger to goad them into fighting. Then Bhisma kindly gives us an inventory of the fighters who will take place in the coming battle.
(review, feed)

Center for Near Eastern Studies
Humanitarian Action in the Middle East and North Africa Under Scrutiny: Criminalizing Humanitarian Engagement
A lecture by Naz Modirzadeh, Harvard University
(review, feed)

The Economist
Threats to the Syrian regime
David Lesch, a professor of Middle East history, offers a deeper look at Syria's president as the country teeters on revolution
(review, feed)



Het Marathoninterview
Job Cohen, politicus
Voordat hij als politicus actief werd had Cohen al een staat van dienst die een Marathoninterview rechtvaardigde. Aan de vooravond van zijn burgemeesterschap van Amsterdam nodigde A.J. Heerma van Voss daarom Job Cohen uit voor een goed langdurig gesprek op 29 december 2000.
(review, feed)

Ian Morris at SALT Seminars (The Long Now)

We have encountered Ian Morris before on this blog when I reviewed his appearance on Radio Open Source. Also his lecture at SALT Seminars (aka The Long Now Podcast) comes forth from his book Why the West Rules for Now.You will get the same point again, how geography shapes history in general and how in particular the West profited from the circumstance it was closer to the Americas than China. Morris is a great speaker, so even if you are not immediately drawn to this subject, you are bound to enjoy this audio (feed). You can also see the lecture in video, which comes at a premium, but in my opinion not much is gained by the visuals.

What you can learn from this lecture by Ian Morris is not just how the West pulled ahead of the rest of the world and what the set of circumstances were to trigger this and how this in his opinion worked. His view is a general theory of history and therefore the approach, with such a prominent role of geography, can explain much more than just the rise (and impending fall) of the west. For example, as you can learn from the Q&A session at the end, it also explains how the peoples of the steppe rose to become dominant and what next development neutralized their relative advantage.

Mind, this theory is not just about geography. People's scientific, technological and cultural achievements are also crucial, yet Morris claims that every human advance is rapidly copied all over the world, neutralizing the social advantages and setting the balance back to a geographically determined stacking of the cards. However, the new technologies do cause certain geographic criteria to become more or alternatively less important. As to the main point, not until ocean travel becomes technically available, the distance to the Americas is not a relevant factor to set the west apart from the east.

More SALT (Long Now):
Quick podcast reviews,
Disappearing cultures - Wade Davis,
Ran Levi about The Long Now,
The Long Now Podcast.

Listening ideas for 27 April 2011

Binge Thinking History
The Putney Debates
The 1647 Putney Debates saw the development of many of the key democratic ideas we take for granted today. As Thomas Raisborough put it. The poorest he that is in England has a life to live, as the greatest he: and therefore truly, Sir, I think it is clear, that every man that has a life to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not bound in a strict sense to the government that he has not had a voice to put himself under All of this was of course against the backdrop of the English Civil War which in many ways makes if even more remarkable.
(review, feed)

Rear Vision
Somali pirates
Piracy has always existed but through most of the 20th century it posed no real threat to maritime trade. That all changed with the growth of piracy off the coast of Somalia.
(review, feed)

Mahabharata Podcast
The March on Kurukshetra
Episode 54 - Krishna returns from his mission to Hastinpur with war on his mind. Yuddistira, having spent the last 12-14 years undergoing massive hardship to prevent this war, is reluctant to accept this truth. He begs for more information, trying to find any way out of this situation. So Krishna obliges by giving us the details of a few more speeches made in the Kuru court, but none of it helps. War is truly inevitable.
(review, feed)

Philosophy Bites
Paul Russell on David Hume's Treatise
The standard reading of David Hume's Treatise is that it reveals him as a sceptic and also as an advocate of a science of man. These two aspects seem to be in tension. The sceptical Hume seems opposed to the more positive contribution he makes about human nature. In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast Paul Russell suggests a way of solving this riddle. Philosophy Bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.
(review, feed)

UC Press Podcast
Changing Planet, Changing Health- UC Press Podcast
Chris Gondek talks with Paul R. Epstein and Dan Ferber about the public health issues around climate change.
(review, feed)

Oxford Biographies
George Orwell, political writer and essayist
English author and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense, revolutionary opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language and a belief in democratic socialism.
(review, feed)

More Gandhi - Lelyveld at KQED

Mohandas Gandhi's biography by Joseph Lelyveld Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India has stirred much controversy. Lelyveld has appeared on many podcasts before to discuss and often defend his book. I reviewed some of those here at Joseph Lelyveld about Mahatma Gandhi and saw that this post drew in many, many readers.

Some of this controversy was unexpected to Lelyveld and he keeps on saying that the descriptions of Gandhi that are ascribed to the book are in fact not there. Much of these accusations, he claims, come from people who have not read the book. Notably in India, where the book has even faced banning, it has not even been published yet. Much can be learned from the podcasts. Among them an appearance at KQED's forum (feed), which appeared after I wrote the previous review.



Not only is Lelyveld a great speaker. As usual, Michael Krasny is a great interviewer.

More KQED's Forum:
Our Haggadah - Cokie and Steve Roberts,
All things shining,
The Iranian Elections,
Irvin Yalom,
Susan Jacoby.

Albert Camus - The Partially Examined Life

The best ideas for new podcasts to try, usually come from readers of the blog (keep them coming!) and so it went this time as well: a reader recommended I tried the philosophy podcast The Partially Examined Life. This podcast has very long (up to two hours) episodes in which a panel of philosophy students discuss an important philosopher or work of philosophy. They try to abide by two important rules that should make the podcast accessible for you and me: not to assume the listener has any prior knowledge or understanding of the matter; no name-dropping. (feed)

With already 36 episodes in the feed, there is a huge amount of content to choose from and by now I have listened to about three full issues, but I decided to kick off with me early life favorite: Albert Camus. The panel discussed the essay bundle that is usually known as The Myth of Sisyphus or as An Absurd Reasoning in which Camus explains his ideas about life being absurd and giving his reasoning against suicide. This was especially interesting to me, as I was never able to read this work until the end and not for lack of trying. Camus' novels have always been extremely accessible to me, but his essays, also other than The Myth of Sisyphus have not.

The guys on the podcast confirm my difficulty with the text - also they dread the way Camus drags on without getting to the point. The podcast allowed me to get more of a grip on how he did get to the point. The point being: Life is absurd, do not accept it, but do not commit suicide, because that is letting absurdity get the better of you. It shows his logical steps, it shows the philosophers he was influenced by and eventually also where his weak points lie. You have to bare the length of the podcast and the lack of structure in the discussion, but still this is a great entry into philosophy.

More Albert Camus:
Entitled Opinions,
In Our Time.