China, secularism, religiosity - SOF

Just as the west, China struggles with its secularism and its traditions, Confucianism, ancestor worship, Taoism, Falun Gong, Tibetan Buddhism and its officially recognized religions. It struggles in a very Chinese way, but much of its secularist stance is learned and adapted from the west. This we learn in a very interesting issue of Speaking of Faith.

Krista Tippett spoke with the Chinese anthropologist Mayfair Yang director of the East Asia Center at the University of California in Santa Barbara. Yang describes the irony that is going on in China. First of all, this traditionalist and highly spiritual society had shut its doors to the west for a long time, but once the doors spun open, around the humiliating defeats in the Opium Wars, it felt it had to rush in an make up. The wind flowing from Europe was one of 19th century rationalist industrial society and Protestant reformation. This was what should be emulated and in short, anything old, ritualistic and religious became suspect, considered superstition. Not only the communists but also the Chinese Nationalists (Kuomintang) were of this secular line. All traditions became repressed.

However, the mind set allowed just as much the 'liberation' of Tibet - that backward traditional, feudal society, as well as the person cult of Mao and the zealous dedication to the Cultural Revolution. As much as the official line repressed the spiritual mind set it tapped into it. Although today, the Chinese try to come clean, suspicion of 'superstition' is still strong. And never mind how much this is typically Chinese, I want to suggest in many ways the Chinese struggle is deeply similar to the western struggle. It serves to look for the same kind of ironies; how we suspect 'superstitions' and at the same time unwittingly tap into them.

In addition to the program there is the Full interview with Mayfair Yang and a Transcript of Speaking of Faith on China's struggle with secularism and religiosity.

More Speaking of Faith:
Three issues of Speaking of Faith,
Preserving Ojibwe,
The story and God,
Fragility and Humanity,
The Sunni-Shia divide and the future of Islam.

UK Elections - recommended podcasts

With the elections coming up in Great Britain on May 6th, there are several ways to go following it in podcast and getting good background information. Always good is The Economist (feed) which does weekly updates. A week is a long time in politics, especially during the election season.



Australia's Rear Vision had a special: UK Elections 2010. As usual with Rear Vision, it puts the current situation in a historical perspective. It goes back to the early 1970's when Labour reign came to an end. Labour failed on economics and the conservatives took over with Thatcher. Labout only could take over after having reformed itself to a centrist party under Blair. In 2010, Labour seems to be losing, but the Conservatives have a hard time to capitalize on that.

I would like to recommend diving deeper into the history of the UK in modernity and take up Berkeley's History 151c - The Peculiar Modernity of Britain (feed). Professor James Vernon is a very captivating lecturer with good British Humour thrown into the academic mix. His grand theme on Britian's peculiar modernity, is that the kingdom developed into a liberalist democracy full of paradoxes. (History 151c syllabus) Tomorrow will be the last lecture 'Thatcher and Blair: the return of liberalism'.

I love the way Vernon typifies the austere character of the socialists (and liberals) and the savoir vivre of the conservatives, which explains why the conservatives appeal to the masses (for being fun) when in fact, we might assume that the socialists have the mass's interest served in their politics. The liberals go back and forth between socialists and conservatives and occasionally have a feeble life on their own. Yet, the just might take on a significant role in 2010 as the Liberal Democrats.

Quick update: There is also a lecture at the LSE podcast about women voters in this election.

More of The Economist:
Avi Shlaim on Israel and Palestine,
A crisis of authority in Iran,
Comfort with Obama,
Democracy in America - podcast review,
Issues of Race.

More Rear Vision:
Two podcast issues on the history of Haiti
History of Yemen,
Freemasons,
China,
A history of the Israeli-Arab conflict.

More History 151c:
The Great War in podcasts,
The Indian Rebellion,
Friday Portion for Anne is a Man.

Giordano Bruno - Tapestry

In 1600 after seven (some say eight) years of trials, Giordano Bruno was convicted by the Roman Inquisition for heresy and burned at the stake. Bruno was a thinker who dabbled in mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and theology. Even if his ideas were not exactly fitting with the Roman Catholic Church's dogma, you wonder why the Inquisition went through the trouble of spending years of trials on an obscure thinker and having him publicly executed in the end.

We have met Bruno in podcast before. The Dutch OVT Podcast had an issue about him and just now CBC's Tapestry spent 50 minutes on him. Just as OVT, there was a lot of attention to begin with for Bruno's statue on the Piazza Di Fiore in Rome - the place of his execution. Bruno was eventually received as a martyr for free speech, free thought and even atheist celebrate this old Dominican. Somehow, ideas may indeed be really powerful, but if I have to guess what did him in, it was not that and maybe not even that he refused to recant. He denied the Inquisitors the right to judge him and that must have been just a little too much.

Tapestry's guest Ingrid Rowland then makes a very interesting remark: Maybe if Bruno had not been a Dominican priest, but rather ordained in the order of Jesus (The Jesuits). They might have been able to control him and protect him. By chance, an example of such a Jesuit jumped from another podcast I listened to: Entitled Opinions, which had Paula Findlen on the show to talk about Athanasius Kircher. Kircher lived half a century later, had ideas about just as wild and exotic as Bruno, but he was a Jesuit and, as it turns out, somehow enjoyed the protection of the order, also against the Vatican.

By the end of the Kircher show, Bruno comes up. Comparisons are made and Findlen even proposes in a very convinced way that Kircher must have read Bruno. You really must listen to these shows. As much as these men are megalomaniac thinkers and part or full heretics, which may seem sincere, but also has an element of unrewarding idiosyncrasy to it, they speak to the imagination and somehow continue to inspire.

(Photo by Joshua Corey used with permission)

More Giordano Bruno:
Het zwijgen opgelegd - OVT.

More Tapestry:
Surviving in the Wilderness,
Survival of the Kindest,
Fear,
Karen Armstrong,
Terry Eagleton.

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

Philology guest lecture - Tolkien Professor

A podcast that has many people excited is The Tolkien Professor (feed). Professor Corey Olsen from Washington College teaches the works by J.R.R. Tolkien in a way, as he claims, would have been approved by Tolkien himself. I know people who do the readings before they listen to the next podcast - that shows how involving these lectures are.

From time to time Olsen invites guest speakers and one of the regular listeners alerted me to one of them: Michael Drout (download). Drout is a philologist just as J.R.R. Tolkien and aside from studying the same subjects, he studied the work of Tolkien from a philology perspective. He starts the lecture by reciting Beowulf, as Tolkien would start his, and kicks off from the text and the words of Beowulf, taking it to Tolkien and to the Lord of the Rings from there.

The point Drout so elegantly and entertainingly makes is that specific words and philological mysteries in texts such as Beowulf force the philologist to make wide stretching assumptions and conjectures. In that process, when he has to leave the realm of science and more and more enters the world of imagination, as a philologist he has to stop. Tolkien would not stop. And so, Drout argues, in order to give the words he struggled with a life, he invented a whole world for them. And he gives a number of examples from both Beowulf and Tolkien's literary work. Even if you are not into following the entire course, at least pick up this bonus lecture.

More Tolkien:
Tolkien Professor.

Podcast with pictures - Europe from its origins

Podcasts that contain visuals present me with a problem. The most of my listening time goes without the possibility to glance at a screen. So, I always try to figure out how much you can do without the visuals a usually I will be glad if I can. This is how I started the series Europe from its origins (feed). The conclusion remains you can follow without the pictures, but personally I cannot resist them.

For this podcast I will sit down and watch. Still, you do not absolutely have to see the pictures (apart from the occasional map), butt hey are just too good to miss out on. Also, my curiosity is roused all the time. Every couple of seconds the slide changes and I just want to know what depiction has been chosen when a certain figure or concept was discussed. Many of the images are reconstructions, or indicators, but still the liven up the experience. At some point, the images also have begun to serve as mental anchors in the story. The same picture for feudal knights, the same picture for Pope Innocent III and so on.

The maker of this series, Joseph Hogarty, has taken upon himself a huge project, not only because of the multimedia aspect of the podcast (in addition to the numerous images there is video and very fitting music incorporated). The task of telling the history of Europe from its origins (in 3rd century Rome ) until modern times is an enormous task. There have been 16 episodes up until now. Hogarty has improved on all aspects, but with each era he seems to be needing more time and the last episodes run beyond 60 minutes. We have just reached the 13th century and so there is at least 600 years of history ahead of us. An amazing achievement so far and I hope passionately, he will continue likewise.

I have not yet said all that impresses me about this series. As the speaker of five languages, I am especially sensitive to what podcasters do with names, words and sentences that are not in English. Hogarty makes in this respect an outstanding performance, which I find unparalleled in the podcasting world. To my ears he is impeccable in German, French, Spanish and Italian. In addition he is very convincing with Arabic. As to Greek and the Slavic languages, I have a limited power of evaluation, but with his prowess in the other languages, I trust him also beyond - something I never do with any other English speaker.

More Europe from its origins:
A history of Europe.

Baboons teach us about stress - Healthy Living (Stanford)

Thanks to a question at the Podcast Parlor I went to look for the answer to the question 'What do baboons tell us about stress?' Apart from a commercial podcast called MedPod101 (feed) which had a short introduction on the subject, with a promise to more I did not find anything. However, the MedPod101 issue about stress (download) referred to Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky as the source and this made me go search iTunesU.

On iTunesU I found Stanford's series Healthy Living in which Robert Sapolsky himself gives two lectures on stress. One telling why Zebras do not get ulcers and one relating what baboons teach us about stress. Sapolsky studied baboons in the field in Kenya for decades and his research on these primates taught him about stress among the apes many things that can be paralleled to humans. Not only do Baboons live under stress, they actually show stress related health problems that we know so well: high cholesterol, ulcers, heart disease and diabetes.

Here is how it works in a nut shell. Since baboons live in a strict hierarchy, being higher up is better for stress. When however, the hierarchy is threatened, the stress on top is just as bad. So, apart from being on top, it is best for a baboon to also have a good capacity to cope with stress. That is, to recognize stressful situation, react right and have an outlet. Sapolsky describes in detail what this means for baboons, but the bottom-line, that the more sociable ones are better at coping with stress, is easily translated to human society. As I would paraphrase Sapolsky: for your health it is best, first of all, not to be born poor, but beyond the poor line, you'd better be well socialized, have a good relationship, have friends and be around kids.

Check out the Healthy Living feed for many more interesting lectures on various subjects in medicine. (feed)

More Stanford:
Historical Jesus,
Global Geopolitics,
History of the International System,
Hannibal,
Stem Cells - policy and ethics.

Justice with Michael Sandel - Harvard lecture series

Harvard opened its gates on iTunesU and last month I learned about it through Open Culture (a blog you all must follow). Among the supply is Michael Sandel teaching his students about Justice (Justice with Michael Sandel). These sessions are extremely professionally recorded on video and vodcast in 12 issues. In spite of the great video, I would say you will not miss much, if anything at all, if you treat this series as an audio podcast (feed). The point is to hear Sandel and his lively interaction with the students. The few clips and slides can be easily caught without seeing them.

The first lecture video (Moral side of Murder on YouTube) takes the students down the path of consequentialism and utilitarianism. In stead of defining these concepts on morality, Sandel throws carefully tailored cases with moral dilemmas at the students and lets them sort out their evaluations. At this point the aim is to teach them consequentialism and introduce them to utilitarianism and so the cases are designed to let them make decisions about outcomes and the sacrifice of a few for the good of the many. This is continued in the second lecture where finally the opposition is met: categorical ideas of Justice.

I am always surprised how people are willing to take on these cases, especially if they are not based on real occurrences and how they agree to stay within the confines of the question. How can you possibly make decisions about running a trolley into either five workers, or one worker down the road? If you take a bit more time to evaluate these riddles, or if you have done so in the past, it may come as a bit of a disappointment that the students do not challenge Sandel a bit more. In spite of this slight drawback, the advantage is that Sandel remains in total control and has ample to guide even the most inexperienced listener into the tricky world of evaluations of Justice. I will surely take this course on until the end and keep you updated.



More Michael Sandel:
Michael Sandel - LSE / UChannel,
A new politics of the common good,
The bioethics concern,
Morality in Politics,
Morality and the Market,
Michael Sandel - Philosophy Bites.

Sir Mark Sykes - Veertien Achttien

De laatste aflevering van de onvolprezen podcast Veertien Achttien heeft een onverwacht staartje. Sir Mark Sykes, bekend van het Sykes-Picot verdrag, is in 2008 opeens terug in het nieuws. Een ander verhaal van de Grote Oorlog dan dat van het geheime verdrag tussen de Fransen en de Britten is dat van de Spaanse Griep. Een van de meer dan 50 miljoen slachtoffers van de pandemie is de Britse diplomaat Sykes. Hij blijkt begraven in een met lood geisoleerde kist - zou men daar het virus uit op kunnen graven? Dat was de vraag in 2008.

In 1916 was de vraag wat er na het verscheiden van het Ottomaanse Rijk met het Midden-Oosten moest gebeuren. De Fransen en Britten lieten hun diplomaten Picot en Sykes in een geheim verdrag de boedel verdelen. Daarin werden voor het gemak de Arabieren, de Zionisten, de Italianen en wie er verder nog maar belang hadden, buiten beschouwing gelaten. De vredesverdragen in 1919, hebben een en ander nog wel enigszins proberen bij te stellen, maar veel van de hedendaagse problemen in het Midden-Oosten en in de problematische verhoudingen tussen de Arabische en de Westerse wereld vinden hier hun oorsprong.

Het zij nog maar weer eens gezegd: De grote kracht van Veertien Achttiens biografieën is dat deze verhalen belangrijke historische mijlpalen zoals het Sykes-Picot verdrag in historisch perspectief zetten en een buitengewoon inzicht in de geschiedenis van de Grote Oorlog geven. En in dit specifieke geval, ook verbanden zichtbaar maakt met het heden. Voeg daarbij het uitnemende, narratieve talent van de verteller Tom Tacken en je hebt een van de beste historische podcasts te pakken.

Meer Veertien Achttien:
De Eerste Wereldoorlog in podcast,
Ford en anderen,
Sigmund Freud,
Edith Cavell,
Rudyard Kipling. (speciaal aanbevolen)

Sati - British India UCLA

Sati is the Hindu practice of widow immolation. When the husband dies, the widow is burned with him on the cremation pyre. The practice was made illegal by the British rulers in India in the middle of the nineteenth century. Sati was considered barbaric and oppressive for women and therefore they felt they needed to put a stop to it. So far so good, you could hardly think of any argument against the ruling. Apart maybe from some pragmatic sense that the colonials better not interfere with local customs or some cultural relativism taken to the extreme. Or so it seems.

Without making any claims in favor of Sati, Professor Vinay Lal in his UCLA series History of British India (history 174c) in the lectures of 25 March and on, gives a very critical review of this piece of legislation. Of all the social problems in India they could have taken issue with, they chose exactly this one. Not by chance, as Lal argues, a practice that is so strange to them, there is no English parallel and therefore most easily be condemned, unlike other, and probably more harmful social circumstances and practices.

It is also interesting to see a quite sudden switch in attitude towards Sati, from a reverence to the noble savage, to the puritan outrage about barbarism. If that is not indicative for a kind of hypocrisy then maybe it should be observed that no women were asked what their stance on Sati was - even though they were the alleged victims to be protected. Deeper goes the problem that the English not only did not understand Sati, but also in their search for arguments against it, went to look in the Vedas which, in Lal's view, is a very anachronistic and unfit way to go. And here is by all means a lesson to learn, even if we have to be happy Sati was banned, it is easy to condemn that which you do not understand and in order to maintain the condemnation, understanding will be continuously avoided. It serves to make a very close self-criticism before one criticizes another.

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

The Riddle of the Sands - Forgotten Classics

For the British, one of the shocks of the Great War was that they suddenly were pitted against Germany. The Germans and before them the Prussians had always been seen in a rather friendly light. The French had always been the enemy. When in 1871, after the Franco-Prussian war, Germany came into existence and developed into a great power, some saw the coming confrontation, but largely it had to take until 1914, until the Germans could really be broadly perceived as the real enemies. A 1871 invasion novel - The Battle of Dorking - which envisioned a German invasion of Britain was quickly forgotten.

Yet, by the early twentieth century the tide began to turn and a 1903 novel which describes how two English sailing tourists stumble upon a German invasion fleet not only marked a changing attitude, it even is acclaimed to have alerted the English to what was threatening them. This book, The Riddle of the Sands, featured as the conversation subject in an old issue of BBC's In Our Time (In Our Time on The Riddle of the Sands. Only available in stream). Melvyn Bragg and his guests hardly touch upon the novel and mainly speak of British attitudes towards Germany and vice versa.

If you want to hear the novel being read and find out a bit more, listen to Forgotten Classics. Host Julie gives a magnificent reading of the book (chapters 1-2, 3-5 and the just released 6-7) in which she captures the two main characters Carruthers and Davies each with their peculiarities. I was particularly delighted by the story as I have sailed the Frisian Islands some twenty years ago, as Carruthers and Davies do. That and the thought of the book's historical significance makes it a true delight.

More Forgotten Classics:
The message of Uncle Tom's Cabin,
Cooking with Forgotten Classics,
Forgotten Classics - podcast review.

More In Our Time:
Frankfurt School,
The history of the Royal Society,
The weekly treat,
New season of In Our Time,
St. Thomas Aquinas.

Anne is a Man on SFFaudio podcast

One of the most exciting things that from time to time happens to me (and I hope to you as well) is that I bump into someone who also listens to podcasts. On such an occasion I immediately find myself engaged in great conversation, in great enthusiasm and invariably come away from the encounter with fresh ideas and new podcasts to explore. You'd want to record such encounters, wouldn't you?

The closest approximation was staged at the podcast SFFaudio (feed), which is a weekly show on which Jesse Willis and Scott Danielson speak with various guests about great audio on the web. Their usual subject is narration audio in general and SciFi and Fantasy stories in particular. Yet, both their blog and their podcast has a wider range than this and also touches upon all sorts of podcasts and audiobooks. On their last show they decided to invite me and talk with me about Anne is a Man, the blog and related subjects, mostly podcasts and podcasts reviewing. (SFFaudio #053 - with Anne is a Man)

We had a couple of lapses in the Skype connection, but other than that this was a very pleasant conversation. Fun to do and when I listen back, as far as I can say, fun to listen to. And we just scratched the surface. I hope we get to do this some more. On this one hour show you can hear us discuss Dan Carlin's Hardcore History, The Memory Palace, podcasting versus radio, podcasting in other countries and languages and much more.

More Jesse Willis:
Five Free Favorites

Historical Jesus (2) - Philip Harland

Here is a quick heads up about the latest section in the podcast series Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (feed). After I had written about its kick off last month, two new episodes have come out. These are still preliminary. Host Philip Harland takes his time in pointing out what is problematic about the few sources we have. Hopefully, by the next chapter we will get some real reconstruction done.

On a side note: there was a weird comment on the previous post accusing me (or Harland - that is not clear) of:

"Historical Jesus"?!?
Just using this contra-historical oxymoron [...] exposes your Christian-blinkered agenda--dependent upon 4th-century, gentile, Hellenist sources.

The writer then goes on to claim the true identity of Jesus (Ribi Yehoshua) who comes out as an unblemished Jew, including a link to the website of the followers of the Ribi. This gentleman obviously has more agenda than Harland and I have together, but do browse his argument.

More on Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean:
Historical Jesus (1) - Philip Harland,
New Testament, history and literature,
Da Vinci Code,
Early Christianity podcasts.

Indus Seal - World History in Objects

Didn't I just ask for more podcasts on the Indus Valley Civilization? (History of India - the search goes on; towards the end of the post) Here was yet another one. In the series A History of the World in 100 Objects (BBC) in the subsection about the first cities and states (4000-2000 BCE) there was an item from the Indus Valley: Indus Seal.

Add this to the few other references we have in podcast (see below) and the information is about as scarce and far apart as the data in the Indus Valley Civ itself. Nevertheless I am immensely fascinated by the Indus Valley and it appears I am not the only one. I guess any mystery civilization is mesmerizing, whether it is probably fictional like Atlantis, or whether it disappeared and its traces were discovered only now as with the Indus Valley Civ. Besides, when you know so little, all the more your imagination can add.

And here, I find, everybody who is fascinated appears to project into IVC what occupies him most. How factual is the assumption the IVC collapsed of climate change; or is that rather projection? How factual is the assumption that IVC was very rational and egalitarian? And when we make assumptions where the IVC people went, apart from factual, this may be very political. Does India have roots in IVC? Does Hinduism? Or do the Dravidians of South-India? Eventually all these projections tend to become political.

The IVC cities appear to have been vast and sophisticated. Their system of measures quite universal and accurate. The area they covered vast and this means probably a lot is still to be found. Among others, the script is in need of deciphering. We know the script from captions and seals, which offer little to go on. And although the script has been found as far as Mesopotamia, there is no Rosetta Stone, that is, no bilingual artifact. And so we are still left to conjecture and thus to our dreams, projections and wishful thinking.

More Indus Valley Civ:
The Story of India BBC,
History of India UCLA,
Podularity,
Engines of our Ingenuity,
David Kalivas World History.

More A World History in 100 Objects (in short: AHOW):
First AHOW Review.

Three New Books In History

A podcast that I do not miss an episode from is New Books in History (which I have been abbreviating as NBIH, but I saw the maker uses NBH). Each week there is an hour long interview with the author of a new book, in history of course. The host and interviewer, historian Marshall Poe, invariably has read the book and then conducts an interview that is very well tailored to book, subject as well as author. Every week this allows you to get a good insight in some subject of history.

Here are the three latest issues, each of which are definitely worth a listen:

Julian E. Zelizer, “Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security From WWII to the War on Terrorism” - In this interview Marshall Poe prompts Zelizer to take us through all of the recent wars the US was involved in, from Korea to Iraq and let him explain how the internal politics of the US influenced the decision of the President and his government to enter the war. Much to Poe's surprise, without exception, the President got into the war he wanted to get into. There was always some weighing of the power balance between Republicans and Democrats that, if not forced his hand, strongly influenced the move. It reminded me of Henry Kissinger's line about Israeli politics: Israel has no foreign policy, there is only internal policy. Apparently he did not have to look for to get that idea.

Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson, “Natural Experiments of History” - Although the book was edited not by Jared Diamond alone, the guest on the show is Jared Diamond only. Although there is ample talk of what is meant with Natural Experiments and some examples are discussed, the most interesting part of the interview dwells on another subject. Diamond and Poe get to discuss and criticize the current state of affairs in academia as far as the discipline of history is concerned. History is completely compartmentalized. Historians delve solely into one niche subject and stick to one research method - reading primary sources. According to Diamond this is unfortunate and he argues how history could be enriched with broadening subjects, getting historians out of their small fields and have them apply methods of social sciences together with reliance on primary sources.

Alan E. Steinweis, “Kristallnacht 1938″ - While NBIH comes out weekly on the beat, somehow it delivered two episodes this week with a mere two or three day difference. And so we could enjoy a most informative interview with Allan Steinweis about the Kristallnacht. We learn how fine and gradual the distinction were from an organized to a spontaneous pogrom. And this is all set in a historical perspective of the deteriorating position of the Jews since 1933, of a Nazi regime that was all set for this deterioration, but was also aware of its international position and had ample reason to keep the simmering pogroms in check and in the perspective of an incident two days earlier in Paris. At the German embassy a Polish Jew shot a German diplomat and although the whole affair was clearly the doings of an individual, it fitted so neatly with the widely adopted idea of a Jewish conspiracy that it could bring the simmering pogrom to burst.

More NBIH:
The fourth part of the world,
How the Soviet system imploded,
Vietnam War perspectives,
1989 - Padraic Kenney,
The Ossie twilight.