Podcasts you like

[crazy canuck]

At the end of the Mexican one he seemed to suggest that he'd reach at least Trotski's death.

The Death of Stalin has already been done.

[Savonarola]

I've started to listen to the online lecture series "International Systems in the 20th Century" from Stanford.  The presenter (Dr. James Sheehan) made what I think are a couple interesting points.

At the end of the 19th century the ancient empires (Ottoman, Persian and China) all had their sovereignty curtailed by the Great Powers.  This, at least to a certain extent, explains the sort of government their successor states have and how they behave in world affairs.

One of the challenges to the Concert of Europe was the rise of three new Great Powers (Germany, Japan and The United States.)   All three went through a transformation in the 1860s (Wars of Unification, Meiji Restoration and Civil War, respectively) and all became colonial powers by the 1890s (and, of course, all three would meet up in the 1940s.)

[Syt]

I've started listening to The Ancients. A podcast that interviews historians on random topics of ancient history.

Couple episodes in and enjoying it quite a bit, but I'm only 4 episodes in. Episodes are generally between ca. 30 and 60 minutes.

[crazy canuck]

I've started listening to The Ancients. A podcast that interviews historians on random topics of ancient history.

Couple episodes in and enjoying it quite a bit, but I'm only 4 episodes in. Episodes are generally between ca. 30 and 60 minutes.

It is one of my favourites.

[grumbler]

One of the challenges to the Concert of Europe was the rise of three new Great Powers (Germany, Japan and The United States.)   All three went through a transformation in the 1860s (Wars of Unification, Meiji Restoration and Civil War, respectively) and all became colonial powers by the 1890s (and, of course, all three would meet up in the 1940s.)

The Concert of Europe's problems were not with the US or Japan, they were specifically with Germany.  The Concert of Europe was designed around the idea that no single Great Power could take on another with assurance of success, and so everyone had an interest in settling things diplomatically.   That was true of Prussia, bit not Germany.  when Germany was founded, there was a GP strong enough to be confident of winning a war against any other Great Power.  So the threatened Great Powers, Russia and France, formed a formal alliance.  The Concert was replaced by the interlocking alliance systems and the powers started to look for military solutions to Europe's problems.

[mongers]

A new BBC radio 4 series on the early history of England, fronted by Ian Hislop, starts this evening, available here from 8pm:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000ydlb

This Union: The Ghost Kingdoms of England
Episode 1 of 4
East Anglia - Sutton Who?

With current debate about the stability and durability of the United Kingdom, Ian Hislop felt it was a good time to explore how it was that England, the core of that union, came to be. In this series he tells the story of four great Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, East Anglia, Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex, celebrating their golden ages and trying to understand their journey from groupings of assimilated peoples from across the North Sea to powerful kingdoms, and ultimately a single entity.

In spite of a relatively limited written record, it's a period of history that is being constantly re-written, thanks to the impact of new archeological techniques and the rise of the amateur detectorists. Ian hears from authorities on the early medieval period including Michael Wood, Marc Morris, Janina Ramirez and the British Museums curator of Medieval coinage, Gareth Williams, as well as talking to people with local interests in the Anglo-Saxon story.
He's on the look out for ways in which these regional identities have left a mark beyond the occasional use of their names for utility companies or railway services, and he explores the factors that kept the Kingdoms apart but eventually drew them together; common enemies, a unifying language, the church and the residual aspiration to be as the Romans once were.

In today's programme he begins in Colchester, a Roman stronghold which the arriving Angles and Saxons chose to leave alone. But not far up the coast is the place that revolutionised the study of Anglo-Saxon history when it was excavated just before the 2nd World War - Sutton Hoo. Was this the burial of one of the earliest of the great Kings of the Anglo-Saxon period in East Anglia's golden age.

[Maladict]

A new BBC radio 4 series on the early history of England, fronted by Ian Hislop, starts this evening, available here from 8pm:

Thanks 

[Barrister]

So one podcast I listen to is Jonah Goldberg's The Remnant.  Jonah was for a long time with NRO, is a righty Never-Trump conservative (though he would reject that label, but he has no time for Trump).  If you're into right-of-centre politics it's interesting.



But in the most recent edition he ditches the politics and interviews the guy behind Steak-umm's Twitter account.  Which if you don't use Twitter sounds completely insane, but if you do follow Twitter you'd understand how cool that was.

[Valmy]

Yeah his podcast is very good. It is a refreshing experience to hear not-idiotic right wing takes from time to time.

[Savonarola]

So I finished with "International Systems in the 20th Century" and moved onto "How to Start a Startup" also from Stanford.  It's put on by a venture capitalist firm and (this being Stanford) features a number of alumni-entrepreneurs  as lecturers.  While, as you may expect, there's a lot of balloon juice in this (great companies have great ideas!) it does provide some amusing insights.  Thus far I've learned:

"The Social Media" was entirely fiction.  Not only do startup founders not go from party to party while thinking up billion dollar ideas; Mark Zuckerberg isn't actually a sociopath.  (The latter destroyed my concept of right and wrong )

The person who gave that lecture was one of the co-founders or early employees of Facebook.  The job was so all consuming and his lifestyle was so unhealthy that he threw out his back every six months starting at age 21.

The Air B&B founder used to ask "If you knew you only had a year to live would you take this job?" as an interview question.

The students were mostly from the engineering school.  One lecturer told them that technical students tend to think of business as mildly distasteful; so when they go looking for a partner or early hire in the business area they tend to ignore their gut feel for people since they assume that all business students are distasteful.  This is not actually true, many business students are not actually distasteful (and again my concept of right and wrong was destroyed.   )

[Sheilbh]

Listening to the In Our Time summer repeats and on the one on "the evolution of teeth" which is simultaneously very interesting and the horrifying stuff of nightmares

[Sheilbh]

Very excited at the latest episode of In Our Time on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

[mongers]

Very excited at the latest episode of In Our Time on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Indeed, I just missed it this morning, so I'll record it tonight. 

[mongers]

Shelf, In Our Time tomorrow is about something you may like:

The Song of Roland
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00114m8

[mongers]

Great Lives - JRR Tolkien

Historian Niall Ferguson proposes Tolkien - creator of The Hobbit, Gandalf, Gollum and Sauron - for Great Lives"

Available as a podcast to download after transmission 4.30pm today on Radio 4.

details here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00127zh