Iran in 2009 - UC podcast review

University Channel Podcast (aka UChannel podcast) had professor Bulliet to commemorate the third decade of the Islamist Republic of Iran. Bulliet is the one who also arranged the controversial visit of Ahmedinijad to Columbia University last year. So, this promised to be a podcast one must listen to.

Professor Richard W. Bulliet turns out to be not the gifted speaker we regularly meet in this series. With faltering sentences, he seems a lecturer lost for words and uncertain of what to say. The only reason I persisted in listening was because of the subject. It is not so easy to hear about Iran and get it from a westerner with an unconventional perspective such as Bulliet's.

The point to take home is this: the stability of Iran is possibly in question and the key moment is likely to become the elections in 2009.

More UChannel:
The denials of yesterday,
Nuts and bolts of empire,
Islam meets Europe,
The rise and demise of Palestine,
Alan Johnston.

Relive the Spanish war of succession - Historyzine

Normally Historyzine is a podcast which publishes a new episode every two to six weeks, but just now, it delivered two issues within three days. The first contains a review of  Marlborough: England's Fragile Genius, Richard Holmes' biography of the first Duke of Marlborough the commander of the allied forces in the Spanish War of Succession, which is the main subject in Historyzine. The second is actually also a review. Host Jim Mowatt traveled this summer to Oudenaarde in Belgium for the reenactment of the battle of Oudenaarde which in 1708 was the key battle in the Spanish War of Succession. Mowatt tells about his experiences over there.

Mowatt has a lot of praise for Holmes' biography. In his opinion, this is not just a thorough work of history, it is also well written like a novel. As a result, Holmes allows the broad public to access Marlborough and with him the history of the Spanish War of Succession. The only thing that escapes Historyzine's host is why Holmes had to label the duke as fragile. There are various vulnarabilities that Marlborough bore with him, but none of them seem to be a major point in the biography. So what about Marlborough, after Mowatt has studied both Holmes and Winston Churchill's major work on the same, I wonder what he has to say about Marlborough, both as a leader as well as a person. The remains implicit and I hope we will get to see a little bit more of this in episodes to come.

Praise also befalls the reenactment in Oudenaarde and the town, for the way it hosted the event. Mowatt has had an utterly good time and his enthusiasm is contagious. The listener would have wanted to be there.




More Historyzine:
The year 1703,
On admirals and more,
18th Century Warfare,
Spanish Succession and History Podcasts.

Straight talk about stem cells - Stanford lecture series review

Christopher Scott is a professor at Stanford and one of the very few in podcasts whom you can hear touch upon stem cell research and talk about both the technical as well as the legal and ethical side. Recently I reviewed his latest lecture series, which Stanford has put on line as an enhanced podcast. (Stem Cells: Policy and Ethics - feed)

Already in that review I wrote there is an earlier enhanced podcast, also by Chris Scott and also about stem cells called Straight Talk About Stem Cells (feed). I promised a review, which I give here, although it will be a short one. Straight Talk About Stem Cells is the predecessor of Stem Cells: Policy and Ethics and suffers from two traits that make it rapidly redundant. On the field of ethics and politics (law), there has not been much news and what little there is is added in the new series. The technical advances go very rapidly though. Here is where the two series are radically different.

For information on the techniques, I'd gladly point at Straight Talk as well, however, I wonder how much is still relevant. If I paid proper attention, which I did as much as my very limited biological skills allow, there was information in the first series that suggested certain lines of research to be with little chance of success, or facing too much of technical difficulties or any of such inhibitions that sort of suggested the conclusion that this was not a realistic prospect, whereas the second series comes after soem major breakthroughs and paints a radically different picture. Hence, if you want to know if for example so-called adult stem cells are a way to go, you may find conclusions differ. If next year there is going to be a third version, who knows what we will get by then.

And the law? And the ethics? Most of the slides are reused, and probably will be again. That alone tells us a whole lot.

More bioethics:
The Ethics of Stem Cell Research,
Human rights and the body,
Life and bio-engineering - podcast review,
Bioethics without Christ, please,
A useful map into Bio-Ethics,
Stem Cell Research: Science, Ethics, and Prospects,
Stem Cells - Biology and Politics.

Jeanne d'Arc - OVT podcast recensie

BBC's In Our Time had ook een uitzending over Jeanne d'Arc en ook daar kwamen ze er niet goed uit. Klaarblijkelijk is de historie rondom de maagd van Orleans zo gecompliceerd dat je er niet even een half uurtje of drie kwartier radio aan kunt wijden. Zomin als het de BBC lukte, luke het de VPRO.

De feiten komen wel enigszins op een rijtje in OVT's derde deel over beroemde executies. Een meisje van negentien die stemmen hoort, steunt een van de Franse troonpretendenten in de honderdjarige oorlog en helpt hem op de troon. Maar in de volgende consolidatie-oorlog, weten zijn tegenstanders haar te grijpen en zorgen ervoor dat ze op de brandstapel komt. Wat al snel volgt is een rehabilitatieproces en vervolgens duurt het nog tot de negentiende eeuw voordat ze een heilige wordt.

Hoe kan dat nou allemaal? Met enige moeite haalt ook de VPRO het een en ander aan motieven, motivaties en politieke en kerkelijke machinaties boven tafel, maar net als de BBC, blijft ook hier de geschiedenis in raadselen gehuld. Het meest raadselachtig blijft de persoon van Jeanne bovenal. Het is bijna niet haalbaar om een realistisch midden tussen licht gestoorde boerentrien en gezante van God te vinden.

Meer OVT:
Paulus,
Socrates,
Hoeren en Agenten,
Polen,
Stalingrad.

Tacitus - In Our Time review

The widely acclaimed BBC radio program and podcast In Our Time is going to have its summer recess. Until the end of September we will have to make do with what can be cherished in the streams of the on-line archive. There is much to be found there.

What is left as a podcast, is the latest edition, which is about Tacitus. Host Melvyn Bragg writes in his newsletter: "I fear I’ll be accused of being the man who asked three women scholars to talk about the finer, or rather the grosser, details of Roman sexuality. I’m sure you’ll accept that I simply did it in the interests of a fuller description of what Tacitus was meaning! And that’s true (no exclamation mark)." However, this is a very minor detail in the program and the guests storm through it admirably.

What remains is the historian who delivers us the template for Gibbon's Decline and Fall, the first sources about the tribes in Central Europe and the intricacies of being a senator in Rome. Even if Rome is eternally in decline, it never seems to fade and stop standing as a measure for western civilization.

More In Our Time:
John Donne (The Metaphysical Poets),
The Arab Conquests,
BBC's In Our Time (podcast review),
General review of In Our Time,
Library of Nineveh.

Canada and New Zealand - EH podcast review

The Environmental History Podcast has, in its 19th edition, two interviews about two more environments and how they were changed by man: New Zealand and Canada.

Once upon a time, New Zealand was covered by rain forest, but then came the Maori, who began to take down the forests and after them the Europeans (a lot of Scots and Irish among them) who continued with the deforestation. They turned the islands into pastures for especially sheep, acquiring a stronghold in the market for wool and mutton.

Also in Canada the Irish and Scots arrived to find forests to the size Europe had not had until centuries ago. The scale of for example forest fires was something they could hardly grasp. The podcast tells of the great forest fires in the 19th century and how they made headlines back in Britain. As a side note, there is also mention of the eruption of the Tambora in 1815 in Indonesia and its effect on the climate in Canada.

After this, host Jan Oosthoek projects what is ahead for the 20th edition and announces he is going to address the general question what environmental history is. It turns out that this choice of subject is a reaction to this blog, where it was stated that this definition remains somewhat unclear. In passing Oosthoek pays a compliment to Anne is a Man. You can hear it in the closing minutes of the podcast where he says this blog is

one of the sharpest and smartest podcast reviewers on the web.

More Environmental History:
Environmental history,
Climate Change in recent history,
Urban Air Pollution,
Apartheid and Environmental History,
Environmental History and South Africa.