Podcasts for 2021 -- a running thread:
[For a similar thread on 2020 -- see here: ]
1. If you love cricket or have admired the writings of C. L. R. James -- a wonderful first of a three part series abt his life.
Derek Walcott on CLR James: "sentences of a great prose writer contain light, natural light...the feeling of approaching dusk." cbc.mc.tritondigital.com/CBC_IDEAS_P/me…
2. On the extraordinary & violent rise Chinese intelligence and counterintel capacities under Mao (& Zhou en Lai) to the present when State Security divisions try to hoover up CPU/GPUs for supercomputers on American export control lists.
Fascinating.
chtbl.com/track/65FD73/t…
3. On an understudied poem of Indian literature -Tirukkovaiyar - a 9th-century Tamil poem dedicated to Shiva. Leah Comeau on thinking about a world of devotion in early medieval Tamil which goes onto birth new worlds, cognitive space & material sensations. traffic.megaphone.fm/LIT1560305965.…
4. The CIA is a vast organization with many of the problems that vast organizations face: how to manage employees, recruit talent, reduce attrition, think abt competition, innovate. Great talk with John Brennan, former DCI, who once wanted to be a priest! traffic.libsyn.com/secure/cowenco…
5. What little I have heard of Wagner, I have often enjoyed: erotic, dangerous, like finding oneself in the embrace of a lover you know you should keep away from.
But his genius is soiled by his anti-Semitisim & Hitler's fantasies. How should we hear him?
podtrac.com/pts/redirect.m…
6. 'The U.S. was once a manufacturing leader in semiconductors. That's no longer the case, given rise of contract manufacturing & outsourcing, dominance of Taiwan Semiconductor, & Intel's own design stumbles. But how did it come to this?'
Fascinating!
podtrac.com/pts/redirect.m…
7. In Dec 1999, if we were asked who would be the most influential political figure over next 20 years, unlikely we would have picked a shy & quiet understudy of Yeltsin. On the extraordinary power & money grab that has followed & the return of the KGB! meduza.io/audio/16113995…
8. What is the inner world of blue-collar Chinese workers in mega factories like? What is their understanding of art? Why do some of them write poetry? How does one translate them?
Excellent conversation w/ Eleanor Goodman on translating Chinese poetry.
chtbl.com/track/47257E/r…
9. If you are an American or a friend of America -- this conversation with the former head of Operations at MI6 is as explicit in threat assessment as it is fascinating on how the Chinese CCP went about becoming a technology hegemon from a backwater. sphinx.acast.com/intelligencesq…
10. What is the nature of trauma that amid conscripts of a colonizing force? An illuminating talk with Raphaëlle Branche [what a great interviewer Adam Shatz is!] occasioned by her book, Papa, qu’as-tu fait en Algérie? (Daddy, What Did You Do in Algeria?) sphinx.acast.com/londonreviewpo…
11. I have often struggled to understand how various factions and demographics operate in Burma. A really useful chat with Thant Myint-U sheds light on that along with various open questions including the singular and complex role of Aung San Suu Kyi. sphinx.acast.com/talkingpolitic…
12. Who was Jacques Derrida?
A great conversation with Peter Salmon (who talks admirably fast!) on his wonderful biography of Derrida's works & public persona that has metastasized & fragmented, often disallowing for any meaningful coherence to emerge. traffic.libsyn.com/secure/philoso…
13. On Daya Krishna, who per Daniel Raveh was one of the most interesting philosophers (not just Indian philosophers) of the 2nd half of 20thC. A book that distills DK's last decade & his efforts to read through Indian texts imaginatively and critically. traffic.megaphone.fm/NBN5587148690.…
14. At age 80, veteran China scholar Orville Schell has published his first novel. My Old Home: A Novel of Exile -- a bildungsroman from the Cultural Revolution to Tiananmen in 1989. On the worlds fiction can open & change in modern Chinese history. chrt.fm/track/47257E/p…
15. Adam Phillips, who I read like a student reads his master, writes 'Conscience, in its all too impoverished vocabulary & its all too serious & suffocating drama, needs to be overinterpreted. Underinterpreted it can only... be propaganda'. sphinx.acast.com/londonreviewpo…
16. On Toussaint Louverture’s revolutionary life with Sudhir Hazareesingh -- kind of remarkable how little of this great anticolonial figure is known beyond the immediate Haitian-French-Carribean milieu. A more extraordinary life is harder to imagine. sphinx.acast.com/historyextra/t…]
17. 'There are 2 kinds of animals in the world: animals that bring their mouths to their prey (eg lions) & animals that bring their prey to their mouth (eg salamanders).'
Wonderful talk w paleontologist Neil Shubin on Nature as a lazy baker & much more. media.blubrry.com/thejoyofx/d2r5…
18. I recently read an essay by Edward Said on Joseph Conrad; later about the life of Sir James Brook (Rajah of Sarawak) who was an inspiration for Conrad's 'Lord Jim'. A fine talk b/w Patrick French & Maya Jasanoff on Conrad, imperialism & other conceits.
audioboom.com/posts/7282876.…
19. An illuminating talk on two chapters from 'The Making of the English Working Class' with John Bohstedt -- on the history & logic of riots in early modern England: why were they so frequent? what did it mean for civil liberties & popular radicalism? media.blubrry.com/jacobin/conten…
an aside: E. P. Thompson seems to have been a fun guy too. Capable of salty & sly reappraisals delivered without malice. One line in a letter: “My only affinity to Marx is that I get boils on my neck.” He was a tank commander in North Africa/Italy!
And a poet! People forget that.
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