When do I listen to podcasts?

Keeping this blog involves quite some time and since I have a full time job and a family, people naturally ask how I manage to get so much listening done. The answer is that I squeeze listening to podcast in, into every spare moment I can and there turn out to be quite a lot.

I listen during my commuting, which half an hour back and forth, five days a week. Then, I listen during some menial tasks: a weekly two hour (at least) regular shopping at the supermarket, more time during additional shopping, during cooking, laundry and other car rides. Every fortnight we clean our apartment, which takes us about five hours. In addition, every month there is a day I spend around the house doing repairs, maintenance - what have you. I reckon I put in about 15 hours of listening each week, at the minimum.

On average podcast episodes last around 45 minutes (though some considerably less), which means that I manage to listen to around 20 issues a week. This would give material for up to 20 blog posts, though I hardly ever reach that. I post a little over one post per day. Many posts address more than one podcast episode, and here and there I decide not to write about an episode that I heard, at all.

More about the blog:
About Anne is a Man,
Why don't I give ratings to podcasts?,
What to write about a podcast?,
When do I write in my blog?,
Time to start again.

Sustainable health care - Social Innovations Conversations

Can we have a sustainable health care system? Can we serve the broader population at low cost, offering public health across the board and still operate without a huge deficit? Social Innovations Conversations speaks with Thulasiraj Ravilla who is part of a successful chain of hospitals in India that started with supplying basic medical services to prevent or treat blindness among the poor and grew into a wide system of general hospitals serving the rich and the poor together.

Ravilla relates the tale of learning on the job, applying to circumstances and eventually, by large scale and meticulous resource management how the chain could turn to such a booming success. So much so, the world comes by to learn and among those visitors, interested parties from richer countries no less. It appears the whole world can learn from this example of efficiency.

There is a point of worry Ravilla expresses, that in my humble opinion, is not only going to prove to be a major problem the scene in India as it develops, but elsewhere may be exactly the reason why the model can't easily be copied. He worries, whether he will be able to continue to employ the staff he has, especially the low skill, low pay staff. That seems to me to be the critical issue. The efficiency in India is that no task is done by anybody overqualified, but delegated down the chain as much as possible. India has the low skill, low wages employment market, exactly because of its poverty. But as soon as development starts to kick in, that is where workers become scarce. That is where health care will turn expensive, too expensive to be sociable and sustainable at the same time, I fear. Or at least so, this conversation gives no answer to that thought.



More Social Innovation Conversations:
Waste Management,
Social Innovation Conversations - podcast review.

Missing Link in Devon - history podcast review

The Missing Link Podcast always takes on a particular additional charm when it is on location. Last year's excursion to Berlin was great. This year we are addressed from the lovely countryside of Devonshire in south-west England.

Devon was the place of the health resorts as early back as the eighteenth century. City life was disastrously unhealthy, so getting out to pastoral horizons was a good idea anyway, but the county of Devonshire was supposed to sport the right air and seaside environment that as especially supposed to be healthy. So, Devon developed seaside resorts, before this was even conceived to be anything near a tourist attraction. One went there because one had to on account of convalescence, not entertainment.

Apart from the physical health centers, Devon also developed, very early on, institution for psychological health. These were the Victorian insanity asylums. Host Elizabeth Green Musselman reveals the details of two mental cases in those asylums. Two children. A fascinating podcast once again.

More about The Missing Link on this blog:
Curious and curiouser,
Domestic Science,
Missing Link with monotheists,
Missing Link with Popper,
An evolved controversy.

Die dicke Bertha schoss bis Paris - veertien achttien

Bertha Krupp kon er ook niets aan doen dat haar naam aan de enorme houwitzer werd gegeven. En dik was ze ook niet. Tom Tacken vertelt het verhaal van het legendarische Duitse kanon uit de eerste wereldoorlog

De podcast valt uiteen in twee onderwerpen. Het kanon en de echte Bertha. De artillerie uit Wereldoorlog Een en de lotgevallen van de Krupp familie, verder tot in Wereldoorlog Twee. Het ene verhaal misschien nog wranger dan de andere. Of omgekeerd, dat hangt een beetje van je persoonlijke inschatting af. Maar zoals gebruikelijk bij Tacken, uiterst vaardig verteld.

Dit is een van de weinige Nederlandstalige geschiedenis podcasts, maar het is er een die zich qua niveau op internationaal niveau kan handhaven. Invloeden van Bob Packett en Dan Carlin zijn merkbaar, maar Tom Tacken werkt dit zeer goed op een eigen manier uit.

Ook van Tom Tacken:
Veertien Achttien - recensie,
Sterke Geschiedenis.

Disaster Capitalism - Naomi Klein on Big Ideas

Naomi Klein spoke on Big Ideas (TVO) in January and I was alerted by a reader to this speech. Klein builds a flaming argument against Capitalism for her Canadian audience, pointing to the neighbor south as where it all happens first and the images are at the ugliest. She also wrote a book about this: The Shock Doctrine; the rise of disaster capitalism.

Look at the Katrina disaster. It just so happened she was in the disaster area and had to be taken to a hospital and in stead of finding herself in an over-crowded, messy public place, she woke up in a crisp and empty private clinic. This shows her point: capitalism divides the world in the haves and the have-nots. And the have-nots have no access to normal services. This is not just true during disaster, this is true all the time.

I'd like to add, this has always been true throughout history, capitalist societies or not. Being richer means being healthier, safer, more certain regarding the future and so on. Richer people can more easily get out of harms way and if they didn't manage to do so, they have the means to recover faster and more completely.

The point is: Disaster Capitalism has no problem with that. The ideology of the US is that you should invest in the proper means to protect yourself and if you didn't then that is your problem - it is not a public issue. And it goes further: disaster, is not a problem, it is a business opportunity. It allows for new commercial possibilities. Klein shows how this regime is closely intertwined with fear. We are ready to buy away our fears, but receive an ugly society in the bargain. She cries out to stop. She begs her audience not to let this happen in Canada.

The lecture is very invigorating, but the thought remains: although this is important, how much of this is accusing what has always been so in the history of mankind.

Previously on Big Ideas:
The bad news about good work,
History.

Sound shifts and umlauts - German Cultural History

The (Medieval) German Cultural History Podcast (related blog, feed) is not an easy listen. Tom, the host, allows himself to get carried away from the script and talk about a tangent that catches his mind. It is never irrelevant, but you have to be able to bear with him. It is frequently about linguistic aspects of Germanic languages. Apparently, for getting German Culture in sight, you have to grasp the basic recognizable elements of the language.

So, in the latest edition (German Medieval Cultural History VII: Merovingians, Carolingians and what makes German distinct) the impression you get is that you are going to get some insight in Frankish history and their leader dynasties, first the Merovingian Kings and then, after Charles Martell, the Carolingians. But we stumble into the technicalities of identifying the German linguistic roots. What almost stays as an aside, but surely must surprise many listeners: the Franks were a Germanic tribe. They gave their name to modern day France, which speaks French, which is not a Germanic language. That is because the Franks turned Roman Catholics, and thus got their cultural influence so heavily from Latin, they latinized.

Other Germanics, if they were Christians, were not Roman Catholics, but Arians, a forgotten style of Christianity, but important enough for the Nicene Creed to be kicked off side. In previous editions, Tom has shed some light on this, for which I am very grateful. Before he got off on linguistics. As this time when he tries to explain about umlauts and sound shifts. I am getting the impression Tom is a linguist, an academic of German Language, I guess. Maybe he should dedicate one issue about systematically dealing with the language, so that his history is not interrupted in such a rambling fashion.

Recently, when I wrote somebody what I liked about this podcast, I summed it up like this. He does everything wrong, but he tells what I want to know and that is why I think he is great.



Previously:
Why Iceland,
German Cultural History - Podcast Review.