BBC's In Our Time (podcast review)

One of my all time favorite podcasts is BBC's In Our Time. I apologize to readers who hope to see my review during the week the podcast is out. I usually listen then, but not always see what to write and schedule in time. The drawback is that after a week, the podcast is replaced by the next one and the former can only be listened to in stream (see archive).

Here is a short overview of the last four issues, since the last review I wrote:

The Black Death; the plague reduced the European populace, but what other traces did it leave behind. More on not just the economic effect of the epidemic.

Heads or Tails; an issue for the mathematically inclined. Statistics are a rather new chapter in mathematics and though it grew out of gambling, its seriousness today makes it indispensable.

Trofim Lysenko; Science under Stalin. How a totalitarian regime makes and breaks scientists.

The riddle of the sands; relations between the English and the Germans pre-1914, both politically as well as culturally.

More In Our Time:
General review of In Our Time,
Library of Nineveh,
The Brain: A History,
Yeats, Enclosures and Materialism,
King Lear.

Nirvana and the Brain

Some time ago I reported about the podcast My Three Shrinks. This podcast is linked with a blog named Shrink Rap, so that it gets easily mixed up with Shrink Rap Radio, the psychology podcast by David van Nuys. For a psychiatry podcast and a psychology podcast to exist with such entangled names and range of subjects, they were bound to meet one day and so they did. Van Nuys took the initiative and invited the three psychiatrist onto Shrink Rap Radio show #156. Dinah, Roy and Clink Shrink took their friendly banter with them and the result was likewise.

Another fine issue of Shrink Rap Radio I heard recently was "Nirvana and the Brain", a fascinating interview with brain scientist Dr. Jill Taylor. What makes Taylor and especially interesting guest to speak on the brain, is that she suffered a stroke, which knocked out part of her brain, forcing her into a recovery track that took nearly a decade. Yet, the stroke did not just cause suffering. Taylor relates also the bliss it brought. Van Nuys tracked her through a video on TED that I link up below.



More Shrink Rap Radio
Psychoanalysis - Shrink Rap radio review,
Conscious Living,
The Happiness Hypothesis,
Sign language for babies,
Doll Work and what with the brain,

More My Three Shrinks:
Conversion Therapies,
My Three Shrinks Podcast.

More TED
Karen Armstrong,
Ben Dunlap. (highly recommended)

The blitz on London - BTHP review

The Binge Thinking History Podcast suffered a long spell of podblock - writer's block for podcasters. The podcast is intent on bringing an episode a month, but couldn't deliver for two months. Host Tony Cocks managed to overcome his creative blockade and two days ago delivered the next installment.

This is supposed to be the penultimate episode about the Battle of Britain. We were served a last chapter of facts and figures and are expected to analyze and draw conclusions in the next edition. The battle has been coined by Churchill (audio fragment on the show) as the war in which a narrow victory was won and never 'so many owed so much to so few', but the question has been raised and is warranted by all means, how decisive and pivotal the bravery of the air men have been. And how close did they come to defeat?

Cocks's execution this episode is superb. The introductory overview of the battle so far, helps to pick up, where we left off and as usual his great voice and captivating story telling is making for a good listen. His use of sound effects and audio fragments is better than ever and gives for a real radio feel.

Previously about BTHP:
Battle of Britain,
The American Constitution's British roots.

Whittaker Chambers - lecture podcast review

History 7b, the Berkeley lecture series about American History after the Civil War, has its highs and lows. Professor Jennifer Burns lectures with an accompanying Power Point presentation and to the dynamic of the lecture this can be detrimental. There are more lecture podcasts that suffer from this, most notably the National Archives Podcast, where the talk turns into an unstructured droning, punctuated by the visuals unavailable to the podcast listener.

Burns' series has this occasional lapse, but is, contrary to those moments, at times very strong, especially when a large part of the lecture is dedicated to spelling out a case in point to describe the period at hand. An example of such was the lecture about the twenties, illustrated by the Scopes Trial and this is the case again, when Burns wants to paint the picture of the atmosphere and dynamics of the early fifties in the US with its communist scare.

The story she uses as a case in point is that of Whittaker Chambers. Chambers renounced communism in the thirties, testified to having run a spy network, but was left forgotten until the renewed red scare in the fifties. The case came back and his testimony marked the downfall of Alger Hiss and the rise of Richard Nixon. Burns is very effective to make the tormented and uneasy character of Chambers come to life and manages to plug this into the drama with Hiss and Nixon. Very entertaining and very instructive.

More American History:
Scopes Trial,
American History before 1870,
The American Constitution's British roots - BTHP,
US History - from Civil War to Present.

Guantanamo Bay - Global Geopolitics podcast review

Now that the US Supreme Court has decided that the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay have the right to challenge their detention in federal court, our attention is, for a moment at least, back on this piece of Cuba. It always bothered me: how can the US have a naval base on Cuba - they are enemies, or at least not the best of friends. From a quick look at Wikipedia I learn, the base has been there, ever since 1903 or so. How did that work during the Cuban Missile Crisis?

I always pictured Guantanamo as something in Cuba's periphery. An island off the coast - even if it is called a bay. But in the Global Geopolitics podcast (feed) Professor Martin Lewis shows a map of Guantanamo Bay. The bay is on the main land of Cuba. And the US base, doesn't even surround the entire bay; it is on the entrance to the bay. A deeper section of the bay is Cuban, Bahia de Guantánamo. The case gets more and more peculiar.



The map of the bay is only a tiny section of the lecture, which deals with the geopolitical situation in entire Latin America.

More Global Geopolitics:
Africa,
Descriptive and prescriptive mapping,
Global Geopolitics - Martin Lewis.

More Martin Lewis:
A listener's guide to Geography of World Cultures,
Geography of World Cultures by Martin W. Lewis.

Vrolijk voortmopperen

In het marathon interview dat Djoeke Veninga op oudejaarsavond opnam, maakt de geinterviewde Maarten van Rossem een fascinerende relativerende opmerking over zijn eigen ironische inslag. Het zoeken naar de ironische toon, kan ook inhouden dat je probeert je er met een grapje van af te maken. Dat is ook een manier van niet tot de kern doordringen. Impliciet zit daarin verborgen dat de ironie naar voren halen ook een manier kan zijn om juist wel te verdiepen. Maar je kan het dus overdrijven.

Vlak na het nieuwe jaar werd het gesprek uitgezonden en nog veel langer duurde het voor het als podcast beschikbaar werd. De marathon interviews van de VPRO vormen prachtig materiaal, maar de feed wordt op onregelmatige tijden gevuld. Het is een kwestie van regelmatig kijken of er al weer wat nieuws is. Het interview met Van Rossem maakt deel uit van de serie van 2008.

Ik had toevallig niet zo lang geleden een opname (CD, geen podcast) van een paar hoorcolleges van Van Rossem gehoord. Hij gaf les over Amerika en maakte daar een opmerking die een voorbeeld is van wat hij bedoelt; hoe je je er met een grap af kan maken. Hij gebruikte de Scopes rechtszaak, waarin een biologieleraar wordt aangeklaagd omdat hij evolutie leert, om de religiositeit van de Amerikanen te typeren en ook een beetje belachelijk te maken. Maar wie zich verdiept in de Scopes zaak, ontdekt dat het gewraakte leerboek ook een onversneden eugenetica propageerde. Dus Amerikanen zijn niet alleen maar dom als ze zich daar over opwinden.

In veel opzichten is het interview een uitbouw van de hoorcolleges. Van Rossem is vooral op dreef als historicus. Minder genegen is hij om over zichzelf en zijn persoonlijk leven te spreken. Al komt het wel aan de orde en daar blijkt dat hij uit een familie komt die dezelfde soort van praters zijn als hij. Die houden van vrolijk voortmopperen. Zo is het hoorcollege ook en zo gaat het interview eveneens. Heel onderhoudend, zolang de ironie geen vlucht wordt.

Meer Marathon Interviews:
Louis Th. Lehmann,
Marita Mathijsen,
Ruud Lubbers,
Jan Leijten,
Bertus Hendriks.