Pod Academy

The internet has long been seen as a force of global connection,  But this notion of a global internet has never been entirely accurate. Language barriers, access limitations, censorship and the human impulse to stay within your own social circles contribute to us staying local.  And then there is the larger architecture of the internet.  This podcast looks at at how this architecture, specifically the Domain Name System (DNS) has been used and developed in China to localize control there. In this podcast, Adriene Lilly talks to Séverine Arsène, a researcher at the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China in Hong Kong and Chief Editor of China Perspectives – a journal dedicated to cultural, political and economic trends in China. She is also author of the recent article Internet Domain Names in China: Articulating Local Control with Global Connectivity part of a special feature of China Perspectives 'Shaping the Chinese Internet' The internet has long been seen as a force of global connection, bringi

Autism is a condition that affects about one in a hundred of us.  But few people understand or can recognise it.  This can have serious implications when people with autism encounter the criminal justice system. Recent research by City University and the University of Bath suggests that most people with autism, and about 75% of their parents,  are left very upset after dealings with the police.  April is Autism Awareness Month, and Pod Academy's Lee Millam  went to talk to Dr Laura Crane of City University London, to find out more. Lee Millam:  Autism is a complex condition for which there is no cure.  The main features are problems with social communication and interaction. Laura Crane:   Everyone with autism is very different, but people with autism all show the same key features - impairment in interacting with people socially and repetitive behaviours, interests and activities. These really vary so you could have one persion with autism who is very verbally and intellectually able, whereas others may n

This podcast is the second in our series on new concert music.   New music can be unfamiliar and challenging - this series, written and presented by composer Arthur Keegan-Bole, is designed to present new music in a non-scary way or at least to explain that composers are making logical music - not trying to make weird, 'difficult' music to confound the listener. The sublime music in this podcast, I will Pour Out My Spirit, ‘Effundum Spiritum Meum’, is a newly composed piece by Benedict Todd relating to the lost sounds of a ninth century Iberian liturgy.  It was composed as part of Bristol University's exciting Old Hispanic Office project. Now over to Arthur to introduce this podcast....... Arthur Keegan-Bole:  Hello, you’re listening to I will Pour Out My Spirit, ‘Effundum Spritum Meum’, a podcast about how a newly composed piece of music relates to the lost sounds of a unique liturgy called the Old Hispanic Office which was first sung on the Iberian Peninsula before the 9th Century. Hold on, stay there,

How did we transition from candles to kerosene? or kerosene to electricity? What and when were the conditions ripe for energy transitions of our past? and what lessons do they have for us in the 21st century as we make a transition from high carbon intensity fossil fuels to renewable energy.. In this podcast Chaitanya Kumar from Sussex University talks to Roger Fouquet from the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics. The podcast was first broadcast on The Shift, a great new on-line platform for conversations on energy and climate This is a short version of the transcript Chaitanya Kumar:  What are the key patterns that you've seen emerge from your study of historical energy transitions? Roger Fouquet  Under every single energy transition like biomass to coal, coal to oil or oil to gas etc, is a disaggregation of a number of sectors and services. Services like heating, lighting and every sector like transport, housing etc; each one of those needs to make a transition of its own. The technolo

The films of truly outstanding director Spike Lee take a special niche in American cinema. More than that, they especially enrich so-called Black cinema. Lee’s oeuvre includes a great number of films. To mention just some of them: She’s Gotta Have It (1986), Do the Right Thing (1989), Jungle Fever (1991), Malcolm X (1992), He Got Game (1998), Love & Basketball (2000), Bamboozled (2000), Red Hook Summer (2012), finally, his recently released Chi-Raq (2015). This podcast is presented and produced by Tatiana Prorokova a Doctoral Candidate in American Studies at Philipps-University of Marburg, Germany. Lee’s works have received a lot of acclaim from their audience as well as from film critics due to the issues raised by the director and the way these problems are formulated and presented to us. African American director Spike Lee manages to present to America racial problems the country has wallowed in in the most authentic and explicit way. Houston A. Baker, Jr., comments: “Lee’s first films are low-budget, mi

Science Fiction can often help us understand realpolitik in the real world. Is Tyrian Lannister a realist or a liberal? What would Mr. Spock have to say about rational choice theory? And what did Stanley Kubrick read to create Dr. Strangelove? Stephen Dyson is the author of Otherworldly Politics: The International Relations of Star Trek, Game of Thrones, and Battlestar Galactica(Johns Hopkins University Press 2015) and associate professor of political science at the University of Connecticut. In this interview with Heath Brown (originally made for the New Books Network) he takes on these questions with an enjoyable exploration for how the classic theories of International Relations have been played on our television and movie screens. Heath Brown: Even those of us who don’t study International Relations know about the classic divide between ‘realists’ and ‘liberals’.  You look to the fictional world of Game of Thrones to explain this.  So, who are the realists and who are the liberals in the world of Wester

‘Lock them up and throw away the key!’ is something that is often heard.  But does locking someone up for committing a crime really work to punish an individual? What about having them come back into society a changed person, asks presenter and producer Lee Millam in this podcast. Prisons, why do we send people there?  Does it work?  Should it work?  This was the subject of a recent lecture at Gresham College in the City of London.  It is one lecture from a series on Law and Lawyers at Gresham College, presented by Professor Sir Geoffrey Nice QC.  He explains why we lock up criminals….. Geoffrey Nice:  …..for a range of reasons, many of them not fully articulated.  You could look back and say thata there are some coherent lines of justification – deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation (those are the standard ones).  But does it really explain our attitude towards imprisonment.  I rather doubt it. Not only are people complex, but our reactions to people are complex too.  Take those who, on some objective c

This is a podcast about music.  A podcast about Nocturne.  A podcast of a Nocturne inspired by the BBC's nightly Shipping Forecast.  Produced and presented by composer, Arthur Keegan-Bole A K-B:  Oh dear, I crashed the pips. In the world of radio, crashing the pips - that is, talking over the six sine tone beeps that mark the hour on BBC radio - is a serious faux pas. So, please, let me start again. Hello you are listening to Nocturne, a podcast about music, its relationship with the night. My name is Arthur Keegan-Bole and I’m a composer. The music you’re hearing is a piece I finished at the start of this year. It is called Nocturne and Nocturne is what this podcast is about. In it you will hear about the music’s materials and meaning, especially the role of radio extracts in the sound-world of the music which includes the BBC pips and, everyone’s favourite sedative, the Shipping Forecast. The piece was written and premiered in America so we will also discover how a non-U.K. audience without knowledge of t

Translational medicine is collaborative science that translates work in the laboratory into practical medical treatments - it is sometimes termed 'bench to bedside medicine'. Because it often includes trials on animals it can be controversial.  So can animal testing be justified? Scarlett MccGwire put on her wellies and met up with Francis Henson to find out. Dr Frances Henson:  I'm Frances Henson, Research Fellow in the Division of Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery, Department of Surgery, Addensbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, and I am also Senior Lecturer in Equine Surgery, Department of Veterinary Medicine, Cambridge Veterinary School. What I do is work in the lab with basic scientists to generate treatments for various orthopedic diseases.  I am interested in lame animals and lame people and we use a large animal model - a sheep - to try our experiments before we take them on to use them either to treat human patients or veterinary, animal, patients. Our current research is looking at a novel bio-material.

“Originality doesn't mean creation from nothingness.....it can also mean reusing something in a very creative and innovative way... if we took the standards of how people create that are implicit in a lot of copyright law cases, that basically say 'you can't copy', most of what we consider to be great classical works couldn't have been created...” In this episode, Adriene Lilly talks to Olufunmilayo Arewa, Professor of Law at University of California Urwin about her work on musical borrowing and copyright law in the United States. Olufunmilayo, who goes by Funmi, is a law professor at University of California Irvine. Her work on music and law includes: From J.C. Bach to Hip Hop: Musical Borrowing and Cultural Context about the diverse range of borrowing and inspiration in music across history and genre; Copyright on Catfish Row: Musical Borrowing, Porgy & Bess and Unfair Use  focusing on the influences on George Gershwin's work, and his estate's tight hold on it's copyright. She is currently writing a book a

As the Paris global climate negotiations get under way, we in Britain face the prospect of increased flooding. . What can we do about it? Gresham College in the City of London was founded in 1597 and over 400 years has provided a range of free lectures on different subjects to those who live and work in London. One recent lecture was The next big flood, Britain underwater.  Pod Academy's Lee Millam went to talk to Professor Carolyn Roberts about the facts, figures and ideas in her lecture, which was part of Gresham College's Britain in Troubled Waters series. ............... The UK has a series of problems associated with flooding.  One of them is to do with the physical things that are creating the flooding - intense rainfall, high windspeeds in oceans, sea levels, storminess and so on.  Another significant element is how we manage it, what we do about managing both the water and the damage the water creates when it gets into inappropriate places like people's living rooms. The third element is to do with

Craig Barfoot talks to Julian Assange. Wikileaks came to prominence in 2010 with the release of 251,287 top-secret State Department cables, which revealed to the world what the US government really thinks about national leaders, friendly dictators, and supposed allies. It brought to the surface the dark truths of crimes committed in our name: human rights violations, covert operations, and cover-ups. This bookpod is an interview with WikiLeaks cofounder Julian Assange, who has written the introduction for the book, The Wikileaks Files, The World According to US Empire (Verso, 2015).  The podcast, produced and presented by Craig Barfoot, first appeared on the Ideas Books website. The WikiLeaks Files presents expert analysis on the most important cables and outlines their historical importance. In a series of chapters dedicated to the various regions of the world, the book explores the machinations of the United States as it imposes its agenda on other nations: a new form of imperialism founded on v

  The number of couples seeking fertility treatment is rising every year.  But donor assisted conception poses huge ethical and human rights issues.  Up until 10 years ago, sperm donors and women who donated eggs had a right to remain anonymous.  Then the law was changed in 2005 giving donor conceived people the right to information about their donors.  Most people agree that this was a milestone to be celebrated, but does it go far enough? This podcast explores the issues.  it is drawn from an event organised by the Progress Educational Trust  and is introduced by the Chair of the event, Charles Lister, Chair of the National Gamete Donation Trust, and former Head of Policy at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. He quoted a speech by the Public Health Minister, Melanie Johnson made in 20014, 'Clinics decide to provide treatment using donors; patients make a decision to receive treatment using donors; donors decide to donate. Donor-conceived children, however, do not decide to be born – is it t

First published in 1983, Lise Vogel's seminal work, Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Towards a Unitary Theory, was seized on by a generation of feminists who called themselves Marxist feminists, but were finding the fragmentation of socialism and feminism difficult to navigate.  Now republished, it was launched (or, rather, re-launched) at the Historical Materialism Conference in London in late 2014.  Pod Academy was at the launch, and recorded the platform speakers:     Lise Vogel,   Professor (retired) of Sociology at Rider University and the author of numerous books and articles. Before becoming a sociologist, she had an earlier career in art history. Dr. Tithi Battacharya. associate professor at Purdue Liberal Arts University in the US, Kate Davison, of Melbourne University Dr  Sue Ferguson, Associate Professor of Digital Media and Journalism at the Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, who co-wrote, with David McNally, the introduction to the new edition of the book.   This bookpod has been

In this podcast, Tatiana Prorokova considers gender ambiguity in Vietnam War films. The Vietnam War takes a specific place in U.S. military history. Having influenced generations of Americans, the conflict unsurprisingly found a wide reflection in American cinema. The most famous, as well as the most significant ones were the films created in the 1970s-80s, including Michael Cimino’s Deer Hunter, (1978), Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986), Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987), and Brian De Palma’s Casualties of War (1989). In these films, the directors aptly touch upon the questions of the army, war, and morality, which are generally the key themes of war films. Yet, they also unveil the issue of gender representation, discussing the problem of masculinity. The issue of gender, precisely the problem of masculine power and female vulnerability, is one of the leading themes in these films. Interestingly, such issues as class, race, and nationality apparently disap

'A spindly shit coppice, with ghosts of plastic bags rustling in its branches.' This week's podcast, by artist Robin Bale, is an evocation of a windswept rubbish dump under the M11 motorway.  It starts with the sounds of moving through undergrowth, traffic in the background. A twig snaps. Abstract and slow percussion fades in....... A burnt boot…crushed cans…ashes…binbag, spilling its guts…burnt plastic…soles detached…from shoes…ashes…roof tiles…single rubber glove…over the mounded and overgrown rubble…sparks of new, blue off-licence bags leap out against the leaves…the green and the brown…and the traffic on the road beyond flickers between the trees. [sound of traffic and birdsong fades. Percussion continues then fades] I wish to talk about spaces. It could be that as soon as the first building was built and the city was founded, that there came into being a margin or corner - the angle of two walls, the space just down there, just past where the bins are. Only existing in relation to that building, only

Podcast produced and presented by Alex Burd In December 2011 a Tunisian vegetable vendor set himself alight in protest at the economic policies of his country. The death of Mohamed Bouazizi would light the touch paper in Tunis and the surrounding Arab world which would see dictators toppled, wars break out and millions of people displaced in what would become known as the Arab Spring. Many seasons have come and gone since then and Tunisia has gone on to hold its first free elections since the country’s independence in 1956. However the wider region remains in a state of severe unrest. Professor Richard Falk of Princeton University in the United States is an expert in the Middle East and has reported on the Israel-Palestine conflict for the United Nations. His new book – Chaos and Counterrevolution: The Arab Spring  (Zed Books 2015) argues that the initial optimism of 2011 has been replaced by oppressive government or brutal civil war. He spoke to me from his home in Istanbul via Skype about the major topics

Most of the study of economics deals with commodity markets, where the price of a good connects sellers and buyers. But what about other kinds of “goods,” like a kidney or a surrogacy arrangement.  This is the territory of matching markets, where “sellers” and “buyers” must choose each other, and where in most parts of the world, no money changes hands.  So what is a matching market?  And how does it work? In this bookpod, Craig Barfoot talks to Nobel Laureate Alvin Roth, Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and 2016 president elect for  of the American Economics Association about his book on matching markets,  Who Gets What and Why.  Professor Roth has made significant contributions to the fields of game theory, market design and experimental economics, and is known for his emphasis on applying economic theory to solutions for "real-world" problems. This bookpod was first aired on Ideas Books where you will find a feast of fascinating podcast interviews by Craig Barfoot.   

Podcast produced by Lee Millam Slang.  In this podcast Tony Thorne, former Head of the Language Centre, now Visiting Consultant, at King’s College, London and author of the Bloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, looks at what slang is, how it's used, where it comes from and what words are being used as part of our everyday language. Slang should be easy to define, but in fact no one has ever come up with a satisfactory definition.  Slang is one of the most informal varieties of language, it is usually new, controversial, exotic, often naughty and deviant (or pretends to be). Probably all languages have had slang, but it was not recorded until the 18th century.  It was marginal and taboo, the language of criminals, beggars and tramps. It is a language that keep the outsiders out (parents, police etc) and using it makes you an insider, part of an exclusive elite.  It is often developed in closed communities (prisons, public schools), and by private groups (taxi drivers, soldiers, sailors, criminals)

Did you know that jellyfish can sink boats, compromise fisheries by destroying captive breeding pens, and enter industrial sites that use seawater intake for cooling – including desalination plants, nuclear plants and nuclear aircraft carriers. Yes, they have all fallen victim to jellyfish. A poorly understood member of “the other 99%” as the invertebrates are known, jellyfish are simple creatures, floating, stinging, eating, and breeding en masse, in immense 'blooms', that can be 1,000km in length. Blooms occur worldwide and to some it seems they are becoming more prevalent, or perhaps they are now being monitored more closely. So....how big, how bad and why? Take a listen to this podcast to find out. Michael Schubert talks with Lisa Gershwin. This is our first podcast from Sound Minds a brand new podcast platform set up by three academic broadcasters from Australia, who met during a digital content diploma programme and were teamed up serendipitously for a project, which has now turned into a podcast