The Science Behind the Bible

in Religion, Science | August 17th, 2007

The lat­est pod­cast put out by The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion (iTunes — Stream — Web Site) does­n’t shy away from hot-but­ton issues. Below, we’ve past­ed the sum­ma­ry that accom­pa­nies the pod­cast on The Chron­i­cle’s web site. Read it and then give the audio some time and thought.

“Uni­ver­si­ty-trained archae­ol­o­gists and his­to­ri­ans are scared to take on the Bible, says Eric H. Cline, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of clas­sics at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. He talks about his new book, From Eden to Exile: Unrav­el­ing Mys­ter­ies of the Bible, in which he argues that Bible stud­ies have become dom­i­nat­ed by ‘junk sci­ence’ (Noah’s ark found in Turkey!) because aca­d­e­mics have yield­ed the field.”

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Your Secret iPod Shame

in Music | August 17th, 2007

We talk a good deal about vir­tu­ous pod­casts here. But this episode of The Bri­an Lehrer Show (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) com­ing out of NYC, focus­es on the down­right embar­rass­ing songs that you have hid­den on your iPod. And they talk about it with Kele­fa San­neh, the pop music crit­ic from The New York Times. If you care to admit to your own songs of shame, you can use the veil of anonymi­ty and list them in the com­ments below. And don’t wor­ry, we won’t hold it against you… Have a good week­end.

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Tracking Wikipedia’s Manipulations

in Web/Tech | August 14th, 2007

wiki2.jpgIn 2006, we learned that staff mem­bers on Capi­tol Hill logged into Wikipedia and gave a par­ti­san air-brush­ing to the biogra­phies of var­i­ous Con­gress­men and Sen­a­tors. Mean­while, in 2005, 15 para­graphs were mys­te­ri­ous­ly delet­ed from a Wikipedia entry on Diebold, the major Amer­i­can vot­ing machine ven­dor that has found itself at the cen­ter of recent elec­tion con­tro­ver­sies. And soon enough, these edits were traced back to a Diebold IP address.

All of this raised the ques­tion: Just how often is Wikipedia the vic­tim of biased edit­ing? And to what extent can cor­po­rate and polit­i­cal entries be trust­ed? Accord­ing to Wired, some of these ques­tions may be soon put to rest. A new web site called Wikipedia Scan­ner pro­vides a “search­able data­base that ties mil­lions of anony­mous Wikipedia edits to orga­ni­za­tions where those edits appar­ent­ly orig­i­nat­ed…” Much more eas­i­ly, users can now get a bead on just how preva­lent these spin jobs are, and, more impor­tant­ly, they can help keep these par­ti­san edits under bet­ter con­trol. Will Wikipedia Scan­ner (and pro­gram like it) help save Web 2.0? Per­haps so.

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Relat­ed con­tent:

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Voices of American Presidents

in History | August 14th, 2007

fdrstamp2.jpgHere’s anoth­er exam­ple of pod­casts that bring the past back to life. Thanks to Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty, you can lis­ten to audio record­ings of twen­ty mod­ern Amer­i­can pres­i­dents (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), start­ing with Grover Cleve­land (1892) and end­ing with GWB. The record­ings most­ly tak­en from inau­gu­ra­tion address­es and State of the Union speech­es include some good his­tor­i­cal finds. Here you get Ted­dy Roo­sevelt blast­ing the elite’s sub­ver­sion of the pop­u­lar will, FDR speak­ing of an endur­ing democ­ra­cy, Har­ry Tru­man call­ing for a last­ing peace after World War II, JFK out­lin­ing the US response to the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis, and Bill Clin­ton tout­ing the longest peace­time eco­nom­ic expan­sion in mod­ern Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

For more archives of pres­i­den­tial speech­es, here are a few oth­er col­lec­tions worth check­ing out:

FDR: A Pres­i­den­cy Revealed (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) Pre­sent­ed by the His­to­ry Chan­nel, this col­lec­tion fea­tures some of FDR’s famous speech­es, includ­ing his Fire Side Chats and his first inau­gur­al address. (“There is noth­ing to fear but fear itself.”)

Pres­i­den­tial Archives Uncov­ered (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) Pro­duced by the Pres­i­den­tial Libraries of the Nation­al Archives, this col­lec­tion presents clips of pres­i­dents’ seri­ous pol­i­cy dis­cus­sions as well as their per­son­al con­ver­sa­tions with fam­i­ly mem­bers. Includes talks by Pres­i­dents Hoover, Roo­sevelt, Tru­man, Eisen­how­er, Kennedy, John­son, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Rea­gan, Bush, and Clin­ton.

Tru­man Library Pod­casts (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) Among these record­ings you will notably find a lengthy talk by David McCul­lough, Tru­man’s Pulitzer Priz­ing Win­ning biog­ra­ph­er.

The Speech­es of John F. Kennedy (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) A new but still small col­lec­tion. Looks poised to grow, how­ev­er.

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The Beatles: Podcasts From Yesterday

in Music | August 12th, 2007

Pod­casts often have a nice way of bring­ing the past back to life. Bea­t­les fans will undoubt­ed­ly appre­ci­ate sev­er­al audio files ded­i­cat­ed to the Fab Four. Let’s start with a par­tic­u­lar­ly good one. Rolling Stone Mag­a­zine, as part of a web fea­ture called Lennon Lives Fore­over, has released a pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) of Jann Wen­ner’s famous 1970 inter­view with John Lennon, which was con­duct­ed short­ly after the band’s bit­ter breakup. Run­ning over 3 hours, it is one of Lennon’s most exten­sive inter­views, and it ranges broad­ly, touch­ing not just on the breakup, but also on art and pol­i­tics, drugs, Yoko, pri­mal ther­a­py and more. Anoth­er notable pod­cast along these lines is The Lost Lennon Tapes (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed by West­wood One in 1988, this pod­cast presents a col­lec­tion of Lennon’s pri­vate tapes — tapes that include ear­ly record­ings of The Bea­t­les, radio inter­views with John, demo tapes, chron­i­cles of the Dou­ble Fan­ta­sy record­ing ses­sions, and pri­vate moments at home.

Next up is some­thing for George Har­ri­son fans. This pod­cast, called George Har­ri­son Liv­ing in a Mate­r­i­al World (iTunes — Web Site) takes a look back at George Harrison’s 3rd solo album. And, among oth­er things, it includes inter­views with artists who played on the album. Liv­ing in a Mate­r­i­al World, which went to #1 on the charts in 1973 and was dig­i­tal­ly remas­tered last year, rep­re­sents, at least for some, Har­rison’s most artis­ti­cal­ly pure solo work.

Last­ly, we con­clude with a cou­ple of pod­casts that look at The Bea­t­les as the col­lec­tive Bea­t­les. Here, we give you Beat­legs Pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), a show that always fea­tures rare inter­views or behind the scenes clips, fol­lowed by a rare out­take or live per­for­mance that few have heard before. And then there is Bea­t­les Minute (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), a pod­cast com­ing out of Philadel­phia that gives you short, dai­ly tid­bits about the band.

Bonus: you can get a few alter­na­tive takes on songs from the Help! and Abbey Road-era here. (The site pro­vides songs in mp3 for­mat.)

As a final note, all of these pod­casts are housed in our devel­op­ing Music Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. If you are not sure what a pod­cast is, check out our Pod­cast Primer. And final­ly, if you want more cul­tur­al media along these lines, be sure to Sub­scribe to Our Feed.

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Weekly Wrap — August 12

in Uncategorized | August 12th, 2007

A quick recap of what we served up this past week:

Down­load 75 Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es as Pod­casts. Click here.

Learn to Use Pod­casts. Read our Primer.

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What Books Made a Difference? Last Call

in Uncategorized | August 10th, 2007

Over the past week, we’ve been sound­ing out our read­ers on what books have made a dif­fer­ence in their lives. We have about 35 replies so far (and prob­a­bly 75–100 list­ed books), and we’ll keep col­lect­ing replies until tomor­row (Sat­ur­day). Feel free to make your book choic­es known. The basic guide­lines for par­tic­i­pat­ing can be found here. We’ll post a hope­ful­ly use­ful sum­ma­ry of your book picks next week. And, as men­tioned, we’ll give a $50 gift cer­tifi­cate from Amazon.com to one ran­dom­ly select­ed con­trib­u­tor. Thanks for tak­ing part and have a good week­end.

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Down­load 75+ free cours­es as pod­casts from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, or check out our Uni­ver­si­ty Video Col­lec­tion.

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The Rich Get Busy and the Poor Get Poorer

in Books, Business, History | August 8th, 2007

Gre­go­ry Clarke, an eco­nom­ic his­to­ri­an at UC Davis, offers an unusu­al take on the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion in his upcom­ing book, A Farewell to Alms. Most schol­ars argue that the chang­ing insti­tu­tions of industrialization–factories, cor­po­ra­tions, cities–worked togeth­er to drag us humans into the mod­ern world. Clarke turns that idea on its head.

As the New York Times put it in a recent review, Clarke “believes that the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion — the surge in eco­nom­ic growth that occurred first in Eng­land around 1800 — occurred because of a change in the nature of the human pop­u­la­tion. The change was one in which peo­ple grad­u­al­ly devel­oped the strange new behav­iors required to make a mod­ern econ­o­my work. The mid­dle-class val­ues of non­vi­o­lence, lit­er­a­cy, long work­ing hours and a will­ing­ness to save emerged only recent­ly in human his­to­ry.”

The most fas­ci­nat­ing part of the argu­ment is that, accord­ing to Clarke, these val­ues spread in part because the upper class­es were more suc­cess­ful at breed­ing and mak­ing sure their off­spring sur­vived to adult­hood. By exam­in­ing his­tor­i­cal wills and prop­er­ty exchange, Clarke deter­mined that “[t]he mod­ern pop­u­la­tion of the Eng­lish is large­ly descend­ed from the eco­nom­ic upper class­es of the Mid­dle Ages.” Gen­er­a­tions of ille­git­i­mate off­spring, prof­li­gate par­ents and non-inher­it­ing prog­e­ny sal­lied forth and mar­ried into the low­er class­es, bring­ing their cap­i­tal­ist ways with them.

If this the­o­ry holds up, it might shed some light on the rise of the Eng­lish nov­el. The great Vic­to­ri­an nov­el-writ­ers have traced uncan­ni­ly sim­i­lar process­es of social inter­min­gling and dis­per­sion, and it’s a tru­ism that almost every sto­ry piv­ots around an inher­i­tance. We might visu­al­ize the process as hun­dreds of char­ac­ters cir­cling a few well-guard­ed piles of mon­ey. Most of them end up set­tling for less, and most of the dra­ma and ten­sion in the plot arcs stem from these com­pro­mis­es. And, of course, the nov­els trace the spread of just the bour­geois virtues Clarke is research­ing.

Clarke’s work rais­es a dis­turb­ing larg­er ques­tion: is this a form of Dar­win­ian selec­tion at work? Is cap­i­tal­ism hav­ing an evo­lu­tion­ary impact on human progress? Or is that a ridicu­lous propo­si­tion? To see for your­self, you can check out the first cou­ple of chap­ters for free on Clarke’s web­site, here.

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