Kierkegaard on In Our Time

In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg, from BBC Radio 4, is consistently smart, in depth and so briskly paced that I'm often too tired to listen to it because I just can't keep up. Melvyn Bragg tends to choose historical or scientific topics, everything from the Great Fire of London to Ediacara Biota, and his invited academics take turns chiming in with their angle of expertise over about forty-five minutes. These programs are done live so there's some variation week to week in the quality but there are plenty of gems in the archive.
Here's a few clips from one of my favorite episodes, on the philosopher Kierkegaard. You can listen to the full episode here.

Advice regarding Parental Advice

The New Yorker Out Loud podcast offers a spirited interview with writer Jill Lepore on the history of parenthood as we know it today, and the role of the parenting advice industry - magazines, books and media.

She brings up the influence of a fewer number of children in middle and upper class families, and how this affects the roles of parents and children.

Recently, Thinking Aloud from the BBC took on two voices in the field of modernity and family sizes, trying to pin down the reasons why people have fewer children and why that's a characteristic of modern societies.


Thinking Aloud is available on their website, or subscribe to new episodes in itunes (previous episodes not available).

The New Yorker podcast is available in itunes, or listen below.

The New Yorker Out Loud - Interview with Jill Lepore

Two Programs on Sunnis and Shiites

A recent In Our Time episode describing Shia Sunni split in Islam featured one of my favorite regular experts on that program, Amira Bennison. The episode heads into the minutia of the events leading to the split, at a loss to the larger thematic points, and offers little about the groups today.

I thought I'd pair this with the terrific series by Mike Shuster on NPR from 2007 on the same topic. That one is a five part series and is a good deal more comprehensible than the In Our Time program.

In Our Time is available on itunes and on their website.