[Swprograms] Podding Along - Issue 283

[John 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 “power walking” (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 “podding along” while plodding along the mind also gets something useful to do.  So it is with the time spent commuting to work day after day.

Podcasting has expanded almost exponentially so very quickly that it can justly be considered a medium all its own.  Therefore, the attempt here has to be to highlight only a small portion of it, just one corner where excellence reigns.

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 program’s 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. Here’s another in a continuing series of small samplings, offered in a 90 minute scope (more or less):

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“The Bomb That Didn’t Explode" 
HIDDEN BRAIN - NPR 
Demographers once used the image of a pyramid to describe what populations look like in most countries of the world. There were a lot of babies and children, a sizable number of working age people, and, at the top of the pyramid, a very small number of older people. In the 1960s, books and studies warned that this dynamic was a problem. The global population was increasing too much, too fast, and with no end in sight.  "We actually thought that the maximum world population was going to hit about 24 billion by the end of the century," says Sarah Harper, a professor of gerontology at the University of Oxford. The fear was that if people didn't control population growth, war and disease would.  The reality, though, has turned out to be far different from those 1960s predictions. Women around the world are having fewer and fewer children, and more and more people are living into their seventies, eighties, and nineties. These demographic patterns have flipped the pyramid upside down. Today, the world has relatively few children, a shrinking working-age population, and many older people. The good news is that we are living longer. But experts say we need to do more to prepare for a world where there are more old than young. (37”)
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/09/813801640/the-bomb-that-didnt-explode-why-our-fears-about-population-growth-didn-t-come-tr

“How China turned the tide with coronavirus" 
THE INQUIRY - BBC World Service
There are now significantly more new cases of coronavirus outside China than inside. On the first day of this week there were only 44 new cases in the whole country. Just a few weeks ago that figure was in the thousands.  While the authorities have been criticised for their initial slow response to the outbreak, allowing it to spread quickly, since January they have taken unprecedented action to clamp down on the spread of the virus. Whole cities have been put into quarantine and travel restrictions have been imposed on millions of people. New hospitals have been built with lightning speed and huge amounts of money has been spent on testing kits and other technology to fight Covid-19.
China has been accused of infringing civil liberties in its fight against Coronavirus but it has also been praised for the extreme public health measures it has taken. So what did the Chinese actually do and can it be replicated elsewhere? (25”)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csythh

“Why did the USA fail in its initial coronavirus response?" 
THE INQUIRY - BBC World Service
‘It’s a failing, let's admit it’ says top health official, Dr Anthony Fauci. He’s talking about the fact that it took a month for a working coronavirus test to be rolled out around the country, while other countries were testing thousands of people. How was this allowed to happen? In this edition of The Inquiry, we explore the ways in which the US lost valuable time in dealing with the coronavirus and how their health system could make things more difficult still. (25”)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csythj

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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 Guide”
NEW! 184 page 9th EDITION available NOW from Universal Radio [universal-radio.com], Amazon [amazon.com], Ham Radio Outlet [hamradio.com]

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