Podcast listening for Beginners (3)

In the first post in this series, I gave the shortest way to listening to a podcast: clicking on it in the web and playing it in your browser or media player.
In the second, I explained how you can download and store podcast files.

Now we proceed and come to the same thing, but all in one environment, with the added capacity of finding new podcasts. Moreover, and more essential, here we also meet the indispensable subscription to podcasts: in iTunes. iTunes is a free application that allows you to find, store and play podcasts, as well as subscribe to them.

The installer can be downloaded here. Click the blue button, proceed according to the instructions. The installer file will be downloaded to your computer. Store wherever you want and after the install you can delete the file if you wish.

After the download you will have iTunesSetUp.exe on your computer. Double-click the file and proceed through the installation according to the instructions it prompts. (My advice is to go with the default settings the installer proposes. Apart from iTunes, it will also install QuickTime, which you will need on occasion.)



Once installed, iTunes will be the application that plays your MP3 files. Double-click any such file, iTunes will fire up and play. Every file that has been played once, will be stored in iTunes' local library and you can easily find this in the Music folder.

There is also a podcast folder and here is where you will become a true podcast listener. In this folder you will store and play your podcasts, from here you can find nearly any podcast and from here you can also copy them to an iPod or other player. Have you heard some criticism on iTunes here and there? That may well be, it may even have been me, but those issues hurt advanced users and they have advanced solutions. For the beginner and the moderately experienced podcast listener, iTunes is the ideal starting point.

Using iTunes to get podcasts will be the subject for the next article.

Previously:
Downloading audio files from the web
Listening on line

In Memoriam: J.A.A. van Doorn

Vanochtend las ik in zowel NRC als de Volkskrant dat de socioloog en columnist J.A.A. van Doorn is overleden. Ik behoor tot de generatie die uit zijn basisboek sociologie heeft geleerd en die zijn commentaren in de krant las. In podcasts heb ik hem tweemaal gehoord - twee interviews bij de VPRO. Ter nagedachtenis bij deze een van de twee opnieuw gepost. De tweede zal ik morgen nogmaals uitbrengen.

Marathon interview J. A. A. van Doorn

Arend jan Heerma van Voss zoekt naar woorden. Er is een zekere passie in de interviewer. Ik heb het gevoel dat hij niet alleen ongelofelijk veel respect voor de geinterviewde Van Doorn heeft. Hij is ook geinspireerd, maar nog op zoek om zijn gedachten te ordenen. Van Doorn wacht het geduldig af.

Zo gaat het interview. Heerma van Voss zoekt en Van Doorn blijft geduldig. En zo zoeken we onze weg. Door de vaderlandse politiek, door het Duitse Socialisme (opnieuw) en de ontwikkeling van de sociologie. Wat mij betreft mag het nog wel langer dan drie uur duren. Wat ben ik blij dat deze radio ook als podcast uitgebracht wordt.

Meer marathon interviews:
Ruud Lubbers,
Jan Leijten,
Bertus Hendriks,
Gerrit Wagner,
Rijk de Gooyer.

Morgen:
Interview Vrijdag met J.A.A. van Doorn.

Helen of Troy

Can you make a biography of a fictitious figure? TPN's The Biography Show tentatively thinks so. On account of listener requests, and the principle of having not just male, but also female biographies, Helen of Troy became the subject of show #3.

Hosts Cameron Reilly and David Markham go through great lengths to justify this choice. One of the major points being that the Greek and Roman literature about Troy have made such enormous impact in culture, so that one can say they are part of history. They are also effective in getting the story clear and make some entertaining commentary. That made it a very successful show as opposed to the previous one.

The second show was on Hammurabi. Historically a very interesting figure, but somehow, apparently, not fit for a 50 minute podcast. It was too much of Markham summing up what were the events and the meanings of Hammurabi, his reign and his law code. And now that we are comparing. The first show, about Alexander the Great rocked like this one about Helen of Troy. Hence, we are looking forward to the next issue which has been published yesterday: Sargon of Akkad.

More TPN:
Alexander the Great - Biography Show,
TPN Napoleon 1O1.

Anne is a Man! Over the weekend

Friday:
Biography Show - Helen of Troy
Podcast listening for beginners (3) - getting iTunes

Saturday and Sunday (some of the following):
American History - The Scopes Trial
Speaking of Faith - Karen Armstrong
LSE / UChannel - Nuts and Bolts of Empire
Hardcore History - Alcohol and Drugs inflicted history
History of the International System - The State, a problem

New Podcasts on trial:
UC San Diego: Religious and Legal foundations of American culture/history
Berkeley: American environmental and cultural history

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Islam and Europe - LSE podcast review

The London School of Economics (LSE) records its public lectures and events and publishes them as a podcast. Partly this podcast coincides with the acclaimed UChannel podcast - Princeton's conglomerate of this kind of recordings from various such institutions. However, not all LSE podcasts make it to UChannel. For example the one titled: A Counter-narrative: Islam and the first Europe. I must have missed that on UChannel, or maybe it was not accepted there. The audio quality is not up to standard, it must be said and that could be the reason. The content is not to be spurned though.

Speaker is Professor David Levering Lewis, who recently published the book God's Crucible; Islam and the Making of Europe (IHT review), and in his lecture he proposes to look at early European history in a way reverse to the ordinary. The ordinary is as it is taught widely and I remember vividly from my school days: Europe was threatened by the Muslims and managed to stop them at Poitiers in 732 (sometimes called the Battle of Tours). Such was in common thought the rescue of Europe and the basis for its successes afterwards.

Levering suggests that there was no Europe at the time. It was a backward area, rift with tribal warfare and by virtue of the feat at Poitiers remained to be so. He characterizes the sphere as:

an economically retarded, balkanized, and fratricidal Europe, which, by defining itself in opposition to Islam in al-Andalus, made virtues out of hereditary aristocracy, persecutory religious intolerance, cultural particularism, and perpetual war.

He argues that had the Andalusians conquered Europe, the renewed connection with the classics would have come centuries earlier, religious tolerance would have prevented the endless and bloody wars of the reformation and basically Europe could have flourished more and earlier than it did. He also points out that according to Muslim sources it was hardly European superiority that defeated the Muslims at Poitiers but rather the inner disunity among them. Of course history would be utterly different, but he has a point that one can hardly claim Poitiers to be solely a happy occasion that brought none but good.

Relevant posts:
Making of the Modern World - UCSD,
Islam meets Europe,
The Franks,
Thinking Outside the European Box,
The making of Europe in 1453.

Ruud Lubbers - Marathon Interview

In de podcast serie van VPRO's marathon interviews, kijk je in twee tijdperken. Enerzijds is er de recente serie (2006, 2007, 2008) die beschikbaar is en anderszijds zijn er archieven uit eind jaren tachtig, begin jaren negentig die geleidelijk ontsloten worden. Het interview dat Chris Kijne had met Ruud Lubbers was van eind 2007, maar het weerzien met Lubbers betekende voor mij toch vooral een herverkenning met de tijd van de kabinetten Lubbers - 1982 tot 1994.

Het weerzien (overdrachtelijk dan) met Lubbers was niet speciaal prettig. Kon ik hem vroeger niet zo waarderen, dat werd na drie uur interview op podcast niet anders, al stond ik er wel voor open. Er is iets in de rhetoriek van Lubbers dat hem onaantastbaar maakt. Ik heb wel vaker geschreven dat interviews met politici bij voorbaat tot mislukking gedoemd zijn omdat ze zich in een web van woorden spinnen om er zo voordelig mogelijk uit te komen. Al zou drie uur toch een hoop tijd moeten zijn. En Chris Kijne is niet de eerste de beste interviewer.

Er zou nog een reden kunnen zijn. Lubbers is nu 68. Ondanks de deconfiture bij de VN, zou je toch zeggen dat zijn politieke leven als een gesloten boek kan worden beschouwd en hij wat opener kan zijn in omzien - er zijn geen verkiezingen meer te winnen of te verliezen. Maar de Lubberstaal blijft fier overeind. Zelfs over de affaire bij de VN wordt gesproken en je kan er geen vat op krijgen. Goed, formeel staat hij in zijn recht, en misschien is er inderdaad niets gebeurd, maar er komt geen mens door. En is het ongemakkelijke kuchen omdat hij al drie uur aan het praten is, of zijn het freudiaanse afleidingen omdat er werkelijk een gevoelige snaar wordt geraakt? Kijne laat het liggen. Het blijft een goed interview, maar Lubbers blijft eveneens onaantastbaar, onaanraakbaar en daardoor steriel.

Meer Marathon Interviews:
Jan Leijten,
Bertus Hendriks,
Gerrit Wagner,
Rijk de Gooyer,
Hans Galjaard.