Reith Lectures 2010 (2)

Here is a quick heads up. The second lecture in the Reith Lecture series came out. Download it before the BBC takes it off line.

Martin Rees speaks of the challenges to science in the modern era. This lecture is aptly titled: Surviving the century.

Astronomer Royal Martin Rees explores the challenges facing science in the 21st century. Can we survive this century or will we destroy ourselves through bio-error or bio-terror? Professor Rees looks at the problems and explores some of the solutions science can provide.

Previously about the Reith Lectures 2010:
Reith Lectures 2010.

About the Reith Lectures in 2009:
A new politics of the common good,
The bioethics concern,
Morality in Politics,
Morality and the Market.

The usual suspects

Another weekend has passed. I am too busy to write extensive reviews, but here is a list of podcast whose newest episodes I listened to:

History 1c (UCLA)
New Books In History
Veertien Achttien
Volkis Stimme
Norman Centuries
In Our Time (BBC)
A History Of the World in a 100 objects (BBC)
Russian Rulers Podcast
Binge Thinking History

History of Jerusalem - UCLA

UCLA offers a course Jerusalem: The Holy City: A History of Jerusalem from Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel which initially had an audio feed, but that was discarded which left us with just the video feed.

There is a lot wrong with this way the course is offered. The sound of the video is poor, the camera is static so there is not much of a gain in seeing the lecturer (Professor Robert Cargill) and also the view on the screen with his slides is rather poor. What one might gain in seeing a bit of the slides is traded for the general drawbacks of vodcast: the files are big, the download takes a lot of time (and often fails), the material takes a lot of space and many players do not support the format.

Still, all you needed to know about the Middle-East in a 3000 year span nut shell is offered in this course. It shows how Jerusalem takes on huge meaning for everyone involved in spite of its poor military and economic weight. More than anything this course shows how politics and the course of history can be dominated by our constructions of holiness alone.

Kai Bird - Radio Open Source

Radio Open Source had a most fascinating conversation with Kai Bird, which I highly recommend. (feed) Before you go and listen it would be useful to know (what is left implicit on the show) that he is the son of a US foreign service employee and as a result of that spent most of his youth abroad. Among places such as Cairo and Beirut, he grew up in East Jerusalem and as such he experienced the Arab-Israeli conflict from nearby. He has written a book about it: Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978.

What I like especially in this show is that the Arab Israeli conflict was discussed with criticism, but without the righteousness that is so common when the subject comes up. I was especially pleased by that as I feel that this sense of righteousness, whether it lives on either side of the conflict or within the rest of the world has a devastating effect on the conflict. It somehow feeds the extremists on both sides, it compels more propaganda war and media attention that is also drawn to the outspoken.

The lesson Bird wants to teach with his book is that Jews and Arabs can and should be able to peacefully live together in one land. Among others, he gets his inspiration from an old zionist from the nationalist, revisionist flank: Hillel Kook. This came as a surprise to me as Kook stems from the same roots as the less peaceful political stream in current Israel.

More Open Source:
Amartya Sen on India,
Mustafa Barghouti,
Jackson Lears,
Two communities in one region,
We want Obama.

399 podcasts reviewed on Anne is a Man

Here is just a quick post to point you to the updated podcast list. We now have 399 podcasts reviewed. There are over 1600 posts on the blog.

This month I switched to the new design (how do you like it), which is tremendously flexible - I will be able to play with background pictures and color schemes without messing anything up and I may be doing that just for the fun of it. Be prepared to not always find this light blue atmosphere.

For example it might turn orange if my craze for the Dutch national football team gets the better of me, during the coming World Cup. For readers of Dutch, you might want to read at my World Cup blog at Gezond WK. For the not so versatile in Dutch, there are quite a number of embedded videos with footballing scenes, which you might like.

New podcasts in May 2010 - Anne is a Man

In the past month, I have reviewed eight podcasts for the first time, four history podcasts, two philosophy podcasts and two podcasts about football (soccer).

Center for Jewish Studies Podcast (Duke) (review, site, feed)
The audio that sits in the feed reflects the sessions of a conference that was held at the center on the subject of Archaeology, Politics and the Media.

Ancient Rome Refocused (review, site, feed)
An excellent new history podcast. It is not just about Roman history, which is grippingly narrated, but it is also about contemporary parallels.

Romanticism (Open University) (review, site, feed)
Six useful audio essays delineating critical aspects of nineteenth century Romanticism.

Russian Rulers History Podcast (review, site, feed)
The history of Russia, told by means of going through its rulers successively.

Heidegger (review, site, feed)
Lecture series on Heidegger by J. Drabinski.

Reith Lectures 2010 (BBC) (review, site, feed)
Lecture series by Martin Reese about challenges to science in the modern world.

World Cup Buzz (review, site, feed)
Football podcast, dedicated to this summer's World Cup.

Total Footbal Soccer Show (review, site, feed)
Soccer show that among others relates to World Cup 2010.


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