Podcasts on Medieval History

I have reported on so many podcasts in the realm of history that I have deemed it necessary to take my history directory and order it into subdivisions. There will be subdivisions into eras, into regions and into themes, to whatever extent the division is useful, accepting the overlap and holes that remain - just to cut up an unwieldy list of over 130 podcasts into reasonable chunks.

The first subset I created was Ancient History.

Here is the second: Podcasts on Medieval History. Strictly, this should go between 500 and 1500 CE, but, to give you one example, you will find here podcasts about Byzantine history, which start earlier. The idea is to incorporate narratives that, irrespective of their starting point, have their main importance in the pre-1500 age. Again it needs to be pointed out that there are general history podcasts that have offered great content about stuff from the Middle Ages, yet will not be here because they give so much else as well.

12 Byzantine Rulers, (review, site, feed).
Sixteen monologues covering the history of the Byzantine Empire from the 8th century to its fall in 1453 and beyond.

All Things Medieval, (review, site, feed)
Podcast on whatever is related to the late Middle Ages - not just dry history.

Ancient and Medieval Podcast, (review, site, feed).
7 charming episodes with befitting music, travel tips (accounts of relevant excursions the hosts did themselves) and more. I especially liked the issues about Robin Hood (Robyn Hode), Charlemagne and Beowulf.

Church History, (review, site, feed)
Denominational history of the medieval Christian Church

German Cultural History  (review, site, feed)
fascinating musings about Medieval German Culture and its earliest roots.

Geschichtspodcast (Chronico) (review, site, feed)
Promotional podcast of Chronico Magazine (German) with general focus on the era from little before until little after the Middle Ages (German Language podcast)

History 2311, (review, site, feed).
The history of Western Civilization up to 1600, by Gretchen Ann Reilly, also known from the podcast American History before 1870. This is a quality monologue style podcast in 15 minute editions. The entry level is high school / college.

HUM 4104 (Virginia Tech) (review, site, feed)
Professor Matthew Gabriele's podcast that accompanies a lecture series about Medieval Heroes. The podcast gives very brief guidance to the texts about the heroes.

Islamic Medicine (review , site, feed)
The University of Warwick's series by Professor Peter Pormann about the Medieval Medicine as it was received from the Greeks, influenced by other cultures and preserved in the Islam world, before it was received by the West.

Medieval & Renaissance Studies Events (Fall 2008), (Virginia Tech) (review, site, feed)
Virginia Tech's lecture series about the Crusades. As far as I can see only one of the lectures is available on podcast.

Medieval & Renaissance Studies Events (Spring 2008), (Virginia Tech) (review, site, feed).
A podcast series with public lectures held at Virginia Tech on historical subjects.

Medieval Podcast, (review, site, feed).
Podfaded show featuring several issues about England in medieval times and about monasticism.

MMW 3, the medieval heritage (Chamberlain) (review, site, feed)
A history lecture series explaining the middle ages mostly from the perspective of religions.

MMW 3, the medieval heritage (Herbst) (review, site, feed)
A parallel series choosing a more traditional perspective, but exceptionally good no less.

Norman Centuries (review, site, feed)
The comeback of history podcast veteran Lars Brownworth. This series will tell us the history of the Normans.

Podcasts on Medieval Texts, (review, site, feed).
Short introductions to certain specific medieval texts like Beowulf and the Malleus Maleficarum. The same series is on iTunes U, Virginia Tech, under the title HUM 1214 - Spring 2008.

Pope Podcast (review, site, feed)
A one by one, pope by pope history of the papacy.

Skythen-Podcast (review, site, feed)
Very extensive promotional podcast for an exhibition on the Scythians. (German Language)

Tudorcast, (review, site, feed).
The approach host Lara Eakins takes, is to bring out a monthly podcast and relate to the listener various tidbits of the history connected to the specific month we are in. She takes from original sources and brings us to the finest details of the history.

Lea Dasberg - Het Marathon Interview

Zojuist verscheen in de nieuwe feed van VPRO's Het Marathoninterview een zeer memorabel gesprek dat Harmke Pijpers Galen in 1989 had met Lea Dasberg. Mijn recensie uit September 2007 daarover gaat als volgt:

Er is een boek van Lea Dasberg, dat ik niet gelezen heb, maar dat me aanspreekt alleen al om de titel: Grootbrengen door kleinhouden. Daar wordt het Nederlands maternalisme zo goed gevangen dat ik me door haar meteen begrepen voel. En dan hebben we ook nog iets gemeen: Nederland achter ons gelaten hebben en onze eindbestemming in Israel gevonden. Genoeg om op voorhand al te genieten van het marathoninterview uit 1989.

Interviewster Harmke Pijpers laat Dasberg lang vertellen over haar kindertijd. Daarna, langs een heel natuurlijke overgang komt ze te spreken over haar pedagogische principes. Daar zitten prachtige gedachtengangen tussen. Zoals bijvoorbeeld: het is te riskant om een toekomst te bouwen op de zelfontplooing. In haar optiek moeten kinderen gestimuleerd worden. Desnoods ook moeten ze hard aangepakt worden - Dasberg gelooft niet in zielig doen. Mensen moeten maar leren dat sommige tegenslagen er in het leven bijhoren. Pech hoeft niet weg, voor haar. Geen recht op een pechvrij bestaan.

Dat had ze zelf ook niet. En zo legt ze zich neer bij de afstand die haar invaliditeit noodzakelijkerwijs tot mannen schept. Maar ze geeft ook aan geboft te hebben, met datgene wat elk kind nodig heeft, maar niet altijd krijgt: ouders die je lief vinden. Die je mooi vinden en die hun verwachtingen en hoop over je koesteren. De mens moet met het basisgevoel opgroeien dat het kostbaar is. Waarna het ook nog over Israel gaat. Voor mij is dat niet minder fascinerend, maar ik kan me voorstellen dat dat gedeelte, juist doordat het zo gedateerd is, de gemiddelde luisteraar wat minder raakt. Het Israel van 1989 is niet meer het Israel van 2007, al kan je versteld staan over hoeveel er nog wel hetzelfde gebleven is.

Meer Het Marathon Interview:
Rudi Kross,
Ina Muller van Ast,
Jan Wolkers,
Henk Hofland (o.a.),
Diepenhorst en andere politici.

King Lear - Entitled Opinions

If I did not write about each and every issue of the eminent podcast Entitled Opinions it is more likely that the show went over my head and I did not feel qualified to write something about it than that I could not recommend it. This podcast is one of the most exciting, yet challenging offerings around. Each and every subject is taken on with the utmost intellectual seriousness and taken to as deep as host Robert Harrison and his guest can take it.

Similarly, the last show about Shakespeare's King Lear with guest Steven Orgel, is diving straight into the deepest water. From the quality of Shakespeare as a writer in general, using quotes from Wittgenstein, Orgel and Harrison take on the play King Lear as the specific work to discuss. On must know the play and in this respect I was helped by the fact that in the past I have heard two other podcasts about King Lear, one was a 2008 program of BBC's In Our Time, which spent much time on the history (both context and reception) of the play and the underlying folk tale. Next to that I picked out the lectures pertaining to King Lear from a Shakespeare series at Berkeley. In the Berkeley course more talk is spent on the content of the play.

Harrison and Orgel's discussion take the middle ground between these approaches. They do not dig too much in the historical context of the play, though they do refer to it, as well as to the history of its reception. Neither do they go through the play and deliver the tale and the drama - they rather take it for granted one is familiar to that. They go straight for the sheer jewels: the complex characters, their complex relations and the meaning of the tragic ending, with Cordelia's death and Lear's slide into total lunacy. With these three podcasts one can make some real study of King Lear.

More King Lear:
King Lear in Podcast.

More Entitled Opinions:
Albert Camus,
Unabomber world views,
Byzantine Culture,
Jimi Hendrix,
Nietzsche.

A Story of India - BBC television series

Michael Wood's TV documentary The Story of India was suggested as an alternative to the History of India by Vinay Lal at UCLA. Its six parts can be seen on Google video (see links below). I must say that after the fourth episode, which introduced to me the importance of Tamil Nadu, the series went a bit down-hill. One cannot compare video to podcast. The visuals are fantastic, but they are accompanied by a slim narrative. And so I remain with my conclusion: we need more History of India in podcast.



part 1: Beginnings
part 2: The Power of Ideas
part 3: Spice routes and silk roads
part 4: Ages of gold
part 5: The meeting of two oceans
part 6: Freedom

More Story of India:
Trade - A Story of India (3),
The power of ideas - A Story of India (2),
The earliest history - A Story of India (1).

More Vinay Lal's History of India:
History of British India,
History of India - the search goes on,
8 podcasts I listened to,
History of India or Europe?
History of India.

Disappearing cultures - Wade Davis

Anthropologist Wade Davis can be heard on two podcasts with similar, but complementary, lectures on the same subject. While we enter the era of a globalized world and have global problems such as climate change and receding bio-diversity, we tend to think this only hits the eco-sphere, but there is also the ethno-sphere, as Davis calls it, and therein we observe a similar and connected problem: the impending disappearance of languages and cultures. Just as with disappearing species we must ask the complicated question whether it is bad if languages and cultures disappear.

On his talk at TVO's Big Ideas, Davis gives more examples of exotic fading cultures, yet in his speech at SALT (Seminars About Longterm Thinking aka The Long Now podcast) he arrives at the general thought and the bottom-line of his view on the issue. Both lectures are extracted from a series that was broadcast as the Massey Lectures at CBC and as podcast available until December 4th, 2009. It resulted in a book: The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World. This is also the title of Wade Davis's lecture at Big Ideas as well as Wade Davis's lecture at The Long Now.

Davis repeatedly says at SALT: Our world is a model of reality. And when he speaks of those small communities and tribes whose languages and cultures are disappearing: Those people are not failed attempts at being us, they are a unique answer to the fundamental question what does it mean to be human and alive. It is important not to take them as savages or as people living in the past, but as real, full fledged human beings who chose to live this way and find here a good life. And when their way of life disappears, a real and sincere version of humanness disappears. It will first of all leave our world poorer, less diverse, but ultimately, possibly, less resilient, less vital.

It is hard to wrap your mind around this issue. And it is hard not to get carried away with the noble savage romantics when you hear the sample stories. I would give you this challenge: listen without judgment. And then wonder about our history. Countless cultures have gone lost. We must have been diversifying, unifying and living and dying forever. If we cannot forcibly preserve what is already moribund, what can we do to keep variation going?

I find it an immensely demanding mind set. And I have experienced this struggle also when listening to other anthropology podcasts. When Tara Carter spoke of the Bambuti people in the Congo, who are hunter gatherers today and seem to love their life and surely seem to have a good life. When James Scott explained why civilizations can't climb hills, which showed how people live in the hills and mountains by choice (and not in the allegedly civilized plains and cities) and how throughout history there has been a migration in both directions. This seems to say that there is no such thing as a progress in human history but rather a varied menu of human conditions existing simultaneously and serving as an object of existential choice for man.

Allowing to appreciate the diversity and allocating value to cultures that are radically different requires a mental distance from one's own culture. In order to see the values of that which is utterly outlandish one must leave for a moment the most fundamental values of one's own culture, which is paramount to thinking without thinking, or being without identity, since we are fully defined within our own cultures. And yet, somehow, sometimes we manage to do this.

More Big Ideas:
Waiting for Godot,
Religion as culture - Camille Paglia,
Christopher Hitchens on the Ten Commandments,
The empire,
Lawrence Freedman - Big Ideas.

More The Long Now:
The Long Now podcast,
Ran Levi about The Long Now.

Podcasts in Spanish?

After having asked you about podcasts in Russian and podcasts in Swedish, I turn to Spanish. Do you know of podcasts in Spanish to recommend?

My reader Jacky wrote to me about the following four:

The first one La Rosa De los Vientos (compass rose) is a three hours radio program broadcast, and podcast from Spain (feed). They talk about history, archeology, astronomy, science, secret services and much more.

In fact, one of the segments of the program Pasajes de la Historia (journeys of history) is a podcast by itself (feed).

Ciencia y Genios (science and genius) is a podcast about the great brains of our history. Their lives and investigations are told in first person (feed).

El Bloguipodio (feed): La Bloguera and Dabloguiman from Washington DC talk about news, politics and more. (It needs to be pointed out that these two are very entertaining, but speak with a microphone on the table in a room which does not have the best of acoustics)