[Swprograms] Podding Along - Issue 225

[John A. Figliozzi <jfiglio1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Most radio listening takes place in the car or while doing other things that allow freedom for the ear, but not the eyes and hands.  Podcasts permit a shift of listening time from a set appointment to virtually any convenient occasion.  I do it while âpower walkingâ (most) every morning in what sometimes seems like a vain attempt to diminish the results of sitting behind a desk for 35 years.  The act of putting one foot in front of the other can be pretty monotonous and by âpodding alongâ while plodding along the mind also gets something useful to do.  So it is with the time spent commuting to work day after day.

Some of the best radio comes from the public networks of the UK, Australia, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand and the U.S.  Apart from the originating programâs web site, most programs are made available through any number of other amalgamation sources such as iTunes and TuneIn. 

Admittedly, these are thoroughly subjective recommendations, but my interests and tolerance for incompatible views are pretty wide-ranging. Hereâs another in a continuing series of small samplings, offered in a 90 minute scope (more of less):

ââ

âA Clockwork Miracleâ
RADIOLAB - WNYC New York Public Radio
As legend goes, in 1562, King Philip II needed a miracle. So he commissioned one from a highly-skilled clockmaker. In this short, a king's deal with God leads to an intricate mechanical creation, and Jad heads to the Smithsonian to investigate.  When the 17-year-old crown prince of Spain, Don Carlos, fell down a set of stairs in 1562, he threw his whole country into a state of uncertainty about the future. Especially his father, King Philip II, who despite being the most powerful man in the world, was helpless in the face of his heir's terrible head wound. When none of the leading remedies of the day--bleeding, blistering, purging, or drilling--helped, the king enlisted the help of a relic...the corpse of a local holy man who had died 100 years earlier. Then, Philip II promised that if God saved his son, he'd repay him with a miracle of his own.  Elizabeth King, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, describes how--according to legend--Philip II held up his end of the bargain with the help of a renowned clockmaker and an intricate invention. Jad and Latif head to the Smithsonian to meet curator Carlene E. Stephens, who shows them the inner workings of a nearly 450-year-old monkbot.  (23â)
https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/radiolab-clockwork-miracle

âAntitrust 1: Standard Oilâ
PLANET MONEY - NPR
For this first episode in the series, we're starting at the very beginning, in the nineteenth century, with the story of John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. We go to Titusville, Pennsylvania, and retrace the steps of muckraking journalist Ida Tarbell as she uncovers the back room deals struck by Rockefeller, then one of the world's richest men. Tarbell's investigative reporting in the early 1900s inspired a court case that helped change the design of the American economy.  (25â)
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/15/695131832/antitrust-1-standard-oil

"Walter Benjamin: Multimedia Prototype?â
THE PHILOSOPHERâS ZONE - ABC RN
In September 1940, one of the greatest and most oddball intellectuals of the early 20thcentury died on the run from the Nazis. Walter Benjamin was a mind out of time, a brilliant misfit who roamed the intellectual landscape as if there were no boundaries, no fences. From philosophy to history, art criticism, urbanism and world events, Walter Benjamin was at once an academic and a journalist and a radio broadcaster; a radical innovator, always in search of an audience. Nobody understood him thenâbut today he seems to make perfect sense, as we now live in a world of change that demands agility and celebrates hybrid minds. His work seems strangely prescient of a cyber world and a chaotic media landscape that had yet to evolve. Was he the seminal multimedia journalist?  (32â)
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/walter-benjamin/10800302

âThe Internet and Your Memoryâ
OCKHAMâS RAZOR - ABC RN
More and more, we rely on the internet for the quick recall of facts, figures, dates and events.  Is that inflating what we think we know?  (10â)
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/the-internet-and-your-memory/10806338

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A monthly (well, mostly monthly) compendium of these newsletters, plus on occasion additional pertinent material, is now published in The CIDX Messenger, the monthly e-newsletter of the Canadian International DX Club (CIDX).  For further information, go to www.cidx.ca

John Figliozzi
Editor, "The Worldwide Listening Guideâ
192 page 8th edition available from Universal Radio [universal-radio.com] and Amazon [amazon.com]
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