Ötzi in Podcast

I used to feel that prehistory were not that interesting. Too little data to go on, too few narratives that can be reconstructed. But with a find such as Ötzi the Iceman, human history of 5000 years ago suddenly bursts to life. In the twenty years that have passed since the find, Ötzi has not stopped telling us new stuff about his life in the Copper Age.

I was reminded to Ötzi by an original amateur podcast The History of Europe Podcast (feed) Christopher Linehan tells the history of Europe, as so many other podcasters do, but his starting point is the earliest of histories. Since the first episodes he has worked his way from the Paleolithic to the Chalcolithic period in the 7th issue. And it is there that Ötzi pops up. With his copper age axe and his whole body and garments preserved in the Alpine ice, he allows Linehan to tell a much more specific story in his podcast.

But if you are new to Ötzi, before listening to Linehan's History of Europe, listen first to Stuff You missed in History Class ( feed) where the basics are told of how Ötzi was found in the Alps between Austria and Italy, however they first thought it was the body of a recently disappeared hiker. Only when the forensic experts had extracted the body fully from the ice it began to dawn this might be a much older individual.

Modern technology has allowed so many ways of analyzing the remains, so that each part of it can be the subject of an entire podcast. Ötzi's shoes for example. The shoes are discussed by Linehan's History of Europe as well as the charming, but short episode of Engines of our ingenuity (feed). The shoes are made of multiple materials and considered extremely fit for the iceman's trek through the mountains. The podcast even goes as far as to claim Ötzi's shoes are even better than many shoes modern people wear. Think about that when you barge around on your crocs.

A huge subject is also Ötzi's medical record: his genetic makeup, his diseases, fractures and wounds as well as the contents of his intestines. Learn more at Medical Discovery News (feed) and Life Technologies (BTR) (feed) Ötzi, for example, was found to have Lime's disease, how that is not what has taken him in.

What actually caused his death, has proven to be one of the conundrums about Ötzi. Did he die of the arrow wound that was inflicted upon him shortly be fore his death (with the arrow head still stuck in his back), or did he die of the frost in the ice that preserved him for 53 centuries? What is certain is that he had been in a fight. It also has become clear he had two good meals with meat and vegetables on the day of his death. He was 46 years old, had brown hair and brown eyes - just like your bloghost...

The Meaning of Everything - Big Ideas

An exceptionally witty and entertaining lecture by Simon Winchester can be heard at the TVO podcast Big Ideas. (feed)

Winchester relates the history of the Oxford English Dictionary. How it came into being and how it attempts to be complete and impartial other than Webster's or Samuel Johnson's dictionaries. Or similar dictionaries of other languages.

A history with many maniacs, slips of paper and a huge crowd of anonymous contributors. Sounds familiarly modern?

More Big Ideas:
Meaning Systems,
The Elegance of the Hedgehog,
Age of Unequals,
Dan Dennett: what should replace religion?,
Chris Hedges.

Reith Lectures 2012 - BBC Podcast

Here is a quick heads up to announce that the Reith lectures Podcast has begun publishing the lecture series that was held about a month ago. Speaker is historian Niall Ferguson and the series title is The Rule of Law and Its Enemies. (feed)

This title is rather reminiscent of Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) in which he pointed at Fascism and Communism as the ideologies that held the greatest threat to society. Underlying these ideologies were theories that, in Popper's view, had the kind of tendency towards totalitarianism that brought these ideologies about and what similar dangerous ideologies could emerge.

In 2012 such discourse is not taken to ideologies, as is to be expected. Ferguson takes a look at the institutions and their role in society. But the question is still the same: what helps and what threatens the kind of nation we would like to live in?

Reith Lectures 2011:
Reith Lectures 2011.

Reith Lectures 2010:
Reith Lectures 2010 (2),
Reith Lectures 2010.

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

Football Weekly - Euro 2012 Daily (The Guardian)

Occasionally I listen to The Guardian's podcast Football Weekly, but when major tournaments come around, this podcast changes to a daily one and is permanently on my playlist. So now we have the Euro 2012 Daily and it is a great listen (feed). In fact it is so good, I did not even bother with other podcasts.

James Richardson, is as always the witty host to a panel of guests who comment on the games and make haphazard predictions of the upcoming venues. In 30 minutes you are informed and entertained.

The podcast comes out immediately after every games night and accompanies me the morning after. And since my team has been met with defeat it was not met with much happiness, but the podcast invariably managed to cheer me up.

More:
World Cup Daily.

Moral and Political thought of Gandhi (History 175c) - UCLA

Unfortunately, the audio is incomplete, but Vinay Lal's course at UCLA -History 175c- still gives a compelling series of lectures digging into the biography of Gandhi, his thought and his critics. (feed)

Even if the life of Gandhi and his thought are well-known, there are many surprises when you start digging into it. As a concept, nonviolence is not so difficult to understand, but a theory how this might work in a political theory and in a spiritual philosophy is far from self-explanatory. Vinay Lal's lectures are a good way to get acquainted. Although Lal certainly reveres Gandhi there is ample distance to let you feel you are getting a fair introduction.

In comparison, the old Berkeley courses on nonviolence are much more engaged. These two, PACS 164A&B are among those podcast lectures that are no longer available through Berkeley, not even among the classical courses on iTunesU. The Metta Center for nonviolence however still points at them, including video recordings of those lectures. Should you want to take on these, start with Lal's course.



Lal's course is a great complement to other podcasts about Gandhi. When Joseph Lelyveld published his controversial biography of Gandhi, I reviewed a couple of podcasts that paid attention to this book.

Also among other Indian History courses Lal teaches at UCLA this one stands out. It clearly is the subject that is most closely to Lal's areas of interest. The other courses are History of India and the History of British India.

Agatha Christie - Oxford Biographies

Oxford University Press has a Dictionary of National Biographies which probably is also available in print, but can be accessed on-line at a premium. It contains biographies of some sixty thousand people in British history, from 400 BC to today. For promotion they have a podcast every fortnight Oxford Biographies that delivers spoken biographies in seven to fifteen minutes. (feed)

Each free issue is maintained for a limited amount of time in the feed. Names I have commented on in the past such as Roald Dahl and George Best, can no longer be had, but if you are quick PG Wodehouse can still be had, along with William Morris (of the Morris cars) and Hannah Snell an 18th century female soldier.

The latest issue, Agatha Christie, is also one not to miss out on. In nineteen minutes you will get every thing you need to know. How she was shy as a youngster, still loathed being a celebrity as an elderly woman, still such a prolific and successful writer and made a Dame by the end of her life. What I particularly liked was the attention given to her writing methods and the technique she applied to giving the clues, yet manipulating their ambiguity such that it would confuse the reader towards the wrong conclusion until the truth was revealed and the right solution to the whodunnit would be perfectly correct.

More Oxford Biographies:
George Best
Roald Dahl,
Biography Podcasts,
Oxford Biographies podcast review.