63 podcasts reviewed

UPDATE: we now have 249 podcasts reviewed. (link)

It is the first of the month again and so I post in alphabetical order all podcasts I reviewed linked to the last post and relevant labels:

1. 12 Byzantine Rulers, history podcast
2. Africa (Stanford Travel)
   
3. Arizona, University of: Introduction to Language, language
   
4. BBC History Magazine, BBC history podcast
5. Bike Radar, tour

6. Bioethics podcast, science, law and society
7. Biota Podcast, science
8. Bommel Hoorspel, NL radio
9. British History 101, history podcast
10. CFR Podcast, law and society
11. Dan Carlin's Hardcore History, history podcast
12. David Kalivas' World History, history podcast
13. Exploring Environmental History, science, history podcast
14. Fresh Air (NPR)
    
    
15. From our own Correspondent, BBC
16. Geography of World Cultures (Stanford), history podcast
17. Hannibal (Stanford), history podcast
    
    
18. Haring Podcast, NL radio
19. Historical Jesus (Stanford), history podcast יהדות
20. History 167B, Berkeley history podcast
21. History 4A, Berkeley history podcast
22. History 5, Berkeley history podcast
23. History 7B, Berkeley history podcast
24. History according to Bob, history podcast
25. History Network, history podcast
26. In Our Time, In Our Time BBC (science) history podcast
27. In the Media (WNYC)
    
    
28. Interview Vrijdag, NL radio
29. Irving Poetry podcast
    
    
30. ITV, tour
31. Jung Podcast, psychology
32. KMTT, יהדות
33. Marathon Interview, NL radio
34. Matt's Today In History, history podcast
35. Military History Podcast, history podcast
36. Missing Link, history podcast science
37. National Archives Podcast, history podcast
38. Only in America, history podcast יהדות
39. OVT, history podcast NL radio
40. Oy Mendele!, יהדות
41. Physics for future Presidents (Descriptive Physics), Berkeley science
42. Philosophy 103
43. Prosperity show
44. Radiolab (WNYC), science
45. Rav Dovid's, יהדות
46. Rpgmp3
47. Sex History Podcast, history podcast
48. the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, SGU science
49. Šimek 's Nachts, simek NL radio
50. Sonic Society, creative writing
51. Speaking of Faith, יהדות
52. Shrink Rap Radio, shrinkrapradio psychology
53. Stanford U History, history podcast
54. TdF London, tour
55. The Word Nerds, TWN language
56. University Channel Podcast, science
57. Volkskrant Podcasts, tour
58. What is Judaism?, יהדות
59. Wise Counsel, Wise Counsel psychology
60. the Writing Show, Writing Show language
61. Wynyfryd's meditation room
62. Your Purpose Centered Life
    
    
63. zencast

If you know of interesting podcasts that you think should be reviewed, please let me know through the comments page. Or send me mail...

Thanks in advance,

Anne Frid de Vries (in one word)

AT

Yahoo DOT co DOT uk

What is Judaism; Chanukkah

For the season I dug up an old podcast, which unfortunately has podfaded: What is Judaism. Journalist Larry Josephson speaks with Rabbi Ismar Schorsch about Jewish Holidays. I returned to the podcast about Channukkah. Dr. Ismar Schorsch is Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Larry Josephson is a veteran public radio host and interviewer, whose programs have been heard in New York, and nationwide for over 35 years. As part of a personal search after his Jewish identity, Larry engaged in this program with his teacher Schorsch.

What makes Chanukkah especially interesting today is that the story of Channukah is a story about tradition versus new influences from outside. One can also see in it the struggle between secularism and old school religiousness. As religious feasts go, religion gets the victory. Schorsch explains though, that the way the victory of the Chasmonaim over the Greeks is remembered is in many ways of a Greek style. The old is preserved by means of borrowing some of the new.

The podcast contains, in addition to Schorsch recounting of the story of Chanukkah, also a discussion about the way it is celebrated today and about its meaning, both in the diaspora as well as in Israel. In addition Schorsch reveals his own personal meanig in Channukah with a very moving personal story. 58 minutes of great radio. Chag Sameach!

BBC History Magazine (Dec 2007)

In advance of publishing the December issue of BBC History Magazine, the podcast reveals a couple of the subjects that will be in it:

How to capture a castle
From blowing them up to simply asking politely, Julian Humphrys presents 10 methods for seizing a stronghold. The podcast features an interview with Julian Humphrys. It turns out that asking for surrender was in many ways more effective than destroying the bastions.

How the Allies beat Japan
Max Hastings talks to Rob Attar about the dramatic, bloody end of the Second World War and its enduring legacy in Asia. The podcast also features an interview with Rob Attar. There is a lot of emphasis on the Australian side of the war.

Next in the podcast (and in the magazine?): We follow Jim Leary into the earliest history of Britain. Neolithic remains in Silbury Hill.

When Judah recognized Tamar

Once the Torah begins telling about Jacob's sons, the bulk of the stories is about the sibling rivalry towards Joseph. Joseph gets the striped garment. Joseph has the megalomaniac dreams. Eventually the brothers have had enough of it and decide to take it out on him. They throw him in a pit and then sell him into slavery.

Before we continue onwards to Egypt with Joseph a story about Judah is interjected. KMTT's podcast about Parshat Vayeshev delves into the question what this story does here. Judah meets Tamar, gets her pregnant, wants to kill her, but then she makes him turn around and recognize her. Eventually she gives birth to Paretz the forefather of King David. Only them we will return to Joseph and follow his adventures as a slave in Egypt.

To make a long explanation short, the moment Judah recognizes Tamar is a major turn around for Judah. Before he was as rough as his brothers and this we can see in his treatment of Joseph, but as Tamar manages to get him into recognizing her, he says: You are more righteous than me. As of this moment we can see him develop as the leader, the king among his people. I always supposed why Judah turned into the most important brother and not Joseph - surely there is much more to be said about that.

Searching podcasts

What you'd really need on the quest for podcasts would be a search engine, such as the known search engines on the web, that can take your keyword and look for it inside audio and video. MIT is developing such an engine and calls it the Lecture Browser.

The Lecture Browser is a web interface to video recordings of lectures and seminars that have been indexed using automatic speech recognition technology. You can search for topics, much like a regular web search engine.

Follow the link to the Lecture Browser and you can experience this search adapted onto the lectures of MIT. I suppose from here it will not take too long and in your search engine, in addition to text search and image search, you will have audio search.

As a side note on image search: for now, the search is with keywords in the text that accompany the pictures, but technology is also being developed to recognize text inside the picture (either captions or captured text) and include that in the search.

Geography of World Cultures by Martin W. Lewis

Stanford's Geography of World Cultures by Martin W. Lewis is not my first enhanced podcast. In the summer of 2006 I followed a World Cup podcast by The Guardian, which was enhanced, but this hardly made a lasting impression on me. It did make clear, though, what enhancement in a podcast entails. The podcast is chopped up in subsections. In your iPod you can navigate from section to section with the next and previous click. And each section carries a different picture, displayed on the screen. With the football show, this was a mere illustration, but in GWC, these are the maps that go along with the lecture.

As a consequence, the screen on my iPod nano is way too small to be of much help, but the sound level is too low for iPod anyway. Enhanced podcasts are not mp3 files and as a consequence, I could not enhance the sound with MP3Gain, on acount of an unsupported format. In front of my PC, the podcast can be enjoyed, for better sound and for larger visuals. The result is enchanting.

GWC engages into a search for the boundaries in the world. Pondering language, religion and political divides and concluding, in advance, these categorizations hardly run along each other and promising for some splendid in depth lectures. And wonderful maps. Not just for map addicts such as myself, but for everybody a great podcast right from the start.