The week of Anne is a Man

At this early point on Monday morning, I am not yet decided on what precisely I am going to write in the coming week. There are however a number of options available.

For one, we have a couple of possibilities to write about classics. I have still an old Philosophy Bites issue about Socrates, I could write about. Last In Our Time paid attention to Aristoteles and there is the Yale course (not a podcast) Introduction to Ancient Greek History.

Going out of the western world, we have MMW 4 that expanded from the Mongols to the Mughals and the Ming dynasty. Veertien Achttien looked at Japan in World War I. And I have a number of UChannel Podcast issues to attend to, among others about India.

Back to the Western Culture, Namaste Stories has an adventure in the classroom, Shrink Rap Radio spoke with Nova Spivack and the Hebrew podcast מה שהיה היה had an issue about Jacques Brel. On TED was a lecture about the good life.

Finally, I want to add a post in the instruction series. In iTunes there is a new feature to define settings per podcast.

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I love to get new podcast recommendations. You can let your preferences  know by commenting on the blog or sending mail to The Man Called Anne at: Anne Frid de Vries (in one word) AT yahoo DOT co DOT uk

Word Nerds on stories and story telling - podcast review

The Word Nerds, David and Howard Shepherd, went to a story telling festival in Jonesborough Tennessee and reported from the scene in their latest podcast, #108 about stories and story telling.

They discussed their own relationship with story-telling, which turns out to be a family issue. So they were brought up with stories they call the Jack Tales and the Grandfather Tales, which have roots in both England as well as the Appalachians. And they have a history of attending the story telling festival in Tennessee. In the podcast, they tell what they have listened to, less about the specific stories and more about the story tellers. A lot of names to follow-up on, if you believe the recommendations of the Word Nerd brothers.

Is podcast a form of story telling as well? Tentatively Dave and Howard ponder the question and if they lean to agree, I might suggest to say no. There are podcasts that are used to tell stories, or that seem to fit in with the old oral traditions of mankind, I feel that the majority of podcasts are still an attempt at radio, which is more of audio newspaper and magazine style. It takes a much more careful definition of story telling, oral tradition, media and another ten years of podcast evolution to bring more light into the question. In the mean time, podcasters will be addressing their audiences, that picked them in traditional as well as innovative ways.

Previous reviews of TWN on this blog:
Debate,
Ambiguity and linguistic tics,
Syntax,
Prosody,
Rhetoric.

Max Planck - Making History podcast review

The amazing quality of Ran Levy in his podcast Making History with Ran Levi (עושים היסטוריה) is that he is capable of combining several crucial elements in his retelling of history. For one, since his topic is always related to science, he has to explain the science. Next, since he wants to tell the story, he has to take in the narrative, with all the historical context, which expands beyond science, most of the time. Third, he always introduces the humane side of the story.

This we have seen in previous stories about Darwin and Newton for example. In his last podcast he turns to the important physicist Max Planck. Here is a story of a careful, conservative who by chance causes revolution in the world of science and what is more, endures hardship and deception in his personal life.

In a stunning performance Ran Levi incorporates within the history of Max Planck, both the necessary explanations of quantum theory as well as the chronology of events replete with the details of Planck's private life. The contrast between in the scientific importance of his work, the relative success in physics and the tragedy of Planck's family life are put to work in one coherent story. A great history podcast, once again.

Ran Levy has begun a project aiming to deliver his podcast not only in Hebrew, but also in English. With proper translation and reading, that project should turn into a great success.

Previously:
Isaac Newton,
Making History with Ran Levy - Hebrew Review

Silver lining in the sky - Harvard IdeaCast review

The latest issue of Harvard's podcast Business IdeaCast, contains an interview with Scott Anthony, author of the Innovation Insights blog. Subject of the talk is, whether there is a silver lining in the current economic crisis. Anthony acknowledges the historically observable effect that many a business emerges or is strengthened during the age of crisis. His most profound explanation ofr this phenomenon is that crisis actually stimulates creative business and causes greater scrutiny to kill off expensive experimenting. In other words, when crisis occurs, companies are forced to apply all their creativity to survive and while doing so, much more effectively weed out the good from the bad ideas.

My hope is that the company where I work is one that will thrive. We make a service that allows our customers to speed up their communications. It has been said this is the efficacy of the way people communicate through Twitter, or Facebook, or SMS and many more of those examples, all combined and applied at the working place.

It certainly seems like something everybody needs. Our first customers are very happy and will certain go on using our service and invest in us. So, I hope not only will my job be maintained, but our stuff will turn out to be among those good things that are revealed through crisis. At least the IdeaCast gave me good hope.

Previously:
Harvard Business IdeaCast review

War of the Worlds (2) - Science podcast review

WNYC's Radiolab dedicated a live broadcast to the War of the Worlds craze of 1938 and similar events. The radio show was, as usual also brought as a podcast. This week, this podcast was repeated in order to commemorate 50 years since Orson Welles' radio feat. This is a reposting of my earlier review.

Orson Welles allegedly didn't like H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds, nevertheless took it upon himself to turn the 19th century story into a radio play. Afterwards he claimed to have wanted to check the power of the new medium of radio and pretended to have wanted to teach the public a lesson in vigilance - not take anything they hear on radio for granted. In that light, the craze, the mass panic, showed the experience as a failure. Nevertheless, a radio maker in Quito, Ecuador, regarded it as a success and tried to emulate it in 1949, with disastrous effects. Riots and people killed and wounded.

Radiolab attempts to explain and shows that such a craze can still happen today, for which The Blair Witch Project movie was taken as an example. I am not sure whether their explanations are so strong, but one observation is brilliant: Welles' experience and approach have resulted in the opposite: news media use the pumped up language of impending disaster in order to draw the attention of the audience. The conclusion for Welles: the media are effective, too damn well.

EDIT 12 January 2012

I noticed the website and feed of Radio Lab have changed:
Radio Lab website - radiolab.org
Radio Lab feed - radiolab.org/feeds/podcast

More Radiolab:
Life and bio-engineering ,
Wright Brothers,
Morality.

Medicalhistory - podcast review

I have to admit I knew the podcast medicalhistory, which is an amateur podcast attempting to give some historical insight in the development of the medical science and profession. It is plagued by poor audio quality and didn't choose a didactic path that managed to bring me in and that is why I haven't written about it thus far.



Medical history is a fascinating and important subject though and we can hear some excellent issues in In Our Time and The Missing Link . So, there definitely is room and need for a good podcast on the subject. If medicalhistory pick up on the learning curve, it may just develop into that. And so, let us talk about the latest installment , which was, all deficiencies taken into account, a very laudable effort.



The aim was to show the transition the medical profession has gone through in the past two centuries and to give the acclaim to Michel Foucault, that is due in this respect. In spite of his faults, Foucault managed to clarify how the medical perspective shifted and consequently changed from a patient to a disease oriented profession. The consequences for the patients being rather to the detriment, even if the effectiveness of treatment was enhanced. In any case, it took the patient out of his home and into the medical ward. Foucault is not a terribly accessible writer and one that is not considered to have sufficiently made his theories sound, and as such presented the podcasters with quite conundrum as to how to convey the message.



The form that was chosen, was a scripted dialog between students. A good idea that has two major advantages for podcast: the variety of voices and the possibility to start at a low level of understanding. The script as it can be heard, certainly achieved to teach me the message, but made me cringe also. The audio was mediocre as usual. The acting was pretty poor and the scripted dialog lacked some dramatic punch.



So, the medical history podcast, is still trying to finds its direction, but it surely should be kept an eye on, by those who are keen on the subject.