This Sceptred Isle Radio Show: Review

This is the same situation as my review of Introduction to the Old Testament by Christine Hayes, which I posted a few days ago.  Meaning, this is inspired by my project of making videos out of all my old review posts, but I never actually properly reviewed This Sceptred Isle on this blog.  I listened to it several times through in the years 2008-2015.  (I had it on regular rotation during my last couple years in Japan, my year in Australia, and my 4 years in Cambodia.) And I talked about it tangentially in several posts (most notably here and here), but never properly reviewed it, because back in those days I hadn't yet started regularly reviewing the various audio series I listened to.  But looking back, it seems like this is an omission.  After all, I've gotten most of my knowledge of British history from this series.  It feels like I should talk about it somewhere.  
Plus, in my blog reviews, I talked about this series in conjunction with my review of Monarchy by David Starkey, but for the purposes of Youtube reviews, I wanted to separate them out into two different videos.  So I decided to film a review of This Sceptred Isle.
I wanted to re-listen to This Sceptred Isle before making this video review, but I can't find it. (I don't know where my electronic copy is.  It's on one of my old USB sticks somewhere, but I can't find it at the moment.)  I tried to find a copy online, but I can't.
I'm surprised this show is not more accessible, to be honest.  I know it's online somewhere on paid services, and I'm sure it's on pirate servers somewhere.  But I'm surprised there aren't free versions on Youtube.  After all, this is a BBC radio show that's 25 years old now (W).  Is BBC still safeguarding the copyright on Youtube? Apparently they are.
So, I just turned on the video camera and spoke from memory about what I remembered about the radio show.  Not my best review, but oh well.

If I Were A Radio Producer....

I just finished working my way through the BBC Radio series: This Sceptred Isle (W). Again.

I've worked my way through this series several times now actually, and thoroughly enjoy it each time.
If you include everything, it's about 50 hours. But the nice thing about radio programs and Audio Books is that you never really miss the time

I've always been a slow reader, but I'm a big fan of audio books because I can put them on the in the background at my apartment when I'm doing my laundry, cooking, eating dinner, cleaning, getting dressed, getting ready for bed, et cetera.

At times I disagree slightly with some of the politics of the show. For example at the end of the last episode, there's a little polemic about how the the lesson of English history is that Britain works best when it has a strong central figure to lead it. This rubs my anarchist sensibilities the wrong way.

But this didn't stop me from appreciating what masterful storytelling the series used. Taking the listener all the way from Julius Caesar's invasion of Britain in 55 BC to Tony Blair in 1999 in just 45 hours, the show gives just the right amount of details to keep things interesting, but at the same times keeps a strong narrative arch that avoids getting bogged down in the details.

It makes me wish NPR would do a similar project on American history. A comprehensive overview of American history lasting about 50 hours or so. (Or longer. I wouldn't mind longer actually). And taking us all the way through American history from the colonial days up to the present.

And so, if I were a Radio Producer, this is the project I would commission.

Actually--at the risk of sounding like a huge geek, this is what I would absolutely love: a year by year chronicle of American history.  Each year would get a one hour radio program dedicated to it.  Possibly two 1 hour radio programs for each year.  And then just systematically work your way through the entire history of America, from the earliest colonial settlements to the present day.
 The style would be the same as "This Sceptred Isle" where you would have a narrator's voice telling the story (instead of a panel discussion or various experts brought it.)  It would take a lot of work and energy to do the research and then to write it into a smooth flowing narrative, but you could start slow.  Maybe just one new program a month?  One new program every 6 months?  However long they needed to produce a quality series.
It would take forever to work all the way through American history on a year by year basis, but who cares?  Public radio isn't going anywhere soon (hopefully).  Take the long route and gradually accumulate a huge archive of radio programs that chronicle every year of American history.  Then you could sell collections of the archived programs on CD.   (If it takes several decades to work your way through all that history, you could start selling archived collections before the show as a whole is complete).  History geeks like me could buy them and listen to them at our leisure at home.  We would love it.

Just my humble idea to make the world a more interesting place.

Link of the Day
In Hiroshima's Shadow

This Sceptred Isle Radio Show: Review

A Brief Summary of the Conservative Arguments Against NPR

(Partly inspired by this latest Cal Thomas editorial (link here), but applicable to a wide range of Conservative whining around the issue the past few weeks.)

1). NPR has a well-known liberal bias. Tax payers shouldn't have to pay for NPR because it has a liberal bias. We should cut public funding, and if liberals like NPR so much, why not just let them make up the difference out of their own pocket?

And...
2). Aha!! Liberals are contributing to NPR. And worse yet, NPR is accepting money from liberal donors. That just proves it has a liberal bias. Therefore we should cut its budget.

And return to point number one. And round and round the circular logic goes.

I actually enjoy NPR. More because I think they do quality programing than because of any ideological slant.

Of course you should always have your eyes wide open, and know about the ideological constraints of any media you listen to. Chomsky has some very interesting stories about his own experience with NPR (link here).
[And I know I link to a lot of Chomsky stuff, but this clip is seriously worth the 5 minutes it takes to watch, especially if you listen to a lot of NPR.]

As a nominal anarchist, I should have problems with state funded media. And indeed I do have some misgivings. Government funded radio is necessarily going to reflect a certain point of view that would be different from, say radio controlled by the workers.
I think this is a reason to be skeptical of it. I don't think this is a reason for doing away with it completely, because I tend to believe the world is a richer place for having more opinions available.

From an anarchist perspective there is of course a legitimate question about whether citizens should be forced to fund government radio, and in theory this is a reasonable objection to NPR. But in practice, the commercial networks have been doing such a poor job of keeping us informed that I shudder to think how the political dialogue would suffer if we were only left with cable news and talk radio. So until we reach the anarchist utopia of citizen controlled radio, I'd just assume prop NPR up as a counterweight to the corporate controlled media.

Also, call me crazy, but I don't think NPR is all that liberal. Of course if you go through their archives with a fine enough tooth comb you can prove any point you want to (as Cal Thomas does in his column), but even then his examples are pretty weak. If these are the best examples of liberal bias he can come up with over several years, then that's saying something in and of itself.

But the intended result of this is entirely predictable. After being beat-up so much for having a "liberal bias", the head executives at NPR are going to be very careful in the future about including any information or view points that Republicans might possible disagree with. At best NPR will become totally toothless and afraind of covering any contraversial issue, and at worst they will start to shift to the right. And this I believe is the true objective of the Republican campaign against NPR.

Link of the Day
Chomsky: is Iran a threat?

My Listening Picks on the Internet

It's summer time now, and I'm going to the Internet Cafe's a bit more often than I usually do (and probably more than I should--the cost adds up a bit).

The frequency with which this blog is updated perhaps belies the fact that I don't have regular internet access. As mentioned in a previous post, I usually write up entries on a word processor, once a week go to an internet cafe and transfer them to my blog, and put in all the links. Then, throughout the following week, I only sneak on the internet at work long enough to hit the post button on the blog.

But when I am in an internet cafe, I always try and get the most out of my money by listening to internet radio while I surf.

I used to listen to Air America Radio, until I decided I couldn't stand it anymore.

I appreciate what these guys are doing, and more power to them, keep on fighting the good fight, and so on.

But if their goal was to create a liberal alternative to conservative radio, I think they've accomplished it too well. It's just one long bitch fest about the republicans. I don't even learn anything interesting; all I hear is ranting and raving and complaining, and if the hosts aren't bad enough, the callers are equally as vacuous.

So, I began to explore other listening options on the internet. The NPR website is absolutely brilliant. Not only do I feel that I am actually learning stuff as opposed to just listening to someone bitch, but they have all their stories organized, and I can click on anything that interests me.

And then I discovered that they have all their previous shows archived on their website, and it's searchable. How cool is that? So whatever I'm interested in at the moment I can find a show on the topic and listen to it. In the past month I've listened to shows on Emma Goldman, "The Office", The Black Panthers, Pete Seeger, John Brown, Noam Chomsky, etc. All really good quality shows as well. I'd love to link to all of them, but I guess there's no point. If you're interested, you can pull them up yourself. Otherwise you can just search NPR for whatever you happen to be interested in today.

That being said, I couldn't resist linking to this clip on Jefferson Airplane.

I first stumbled upon Jefferson Airplane when I found a greatest hits tape going through my dad's music collection. I quickly became addicted to their music, and ended up buying all their CDs.

Then when I took my CD collection to college with me, my large amount of Jefferson Airplane CDs made me a target of ridicule. Either people have never heard of Jefferson Airplane, and wondered why I had all these CDs of an old obscure band. Or, they associated Jefferson Airplane with the worst of hippy pretension and excess, and questioned my musical taste. The NPR clip I linked to above made me remember why I used to like the band so much.

One final recommendation on Internet listening: Noam Chomsky's audio archives are stored here on Z-Net. If you're surfing the net and want something to listen to while doing it, I can't recommend this highly enough. Chomsky completely changed the way I look at the world.