This week's podcast review was originally published in The Tribune's Weekend section on June 12: http://www.tribune242.com/photos/galleries/2015/jun/12/06122015-weekend/
How important is a box?
How important is a box?
The answer is that it is more important
than you think – especially when that box is large enough to be a
shipping container.
That question and others to do with the
development of infrastructure are pondered in a recent episode of
Backstory, a history podcast that aims to bring a historical
perspective to modern events.
Shipping containers knocked the cost of
sending items from one place to another down from dollars to pennies,
and the modern container we see stacked in port today is the outcome
of years of negotiation so that merchants know for certain that their
goods can get from A to a very distant B.
Infrastructure is plainly shown by the
expert podcasters – who cram a lot of information into a very
clearly explained hour – to be an important aspect not just of
modern life but of the development of the American nation.
Lighthouses are a key element of that, one of the first federal
infrastructure components, and the historic influence of
infrastructure is pointed out by the fact that there are only few
early developments that run north-south, venturing across more
troubled political lines in the US in the days of the Confederacy. In
areas where slavery continued, roads, railroads, power lines,
communication lines and more that might have headed north were not
built, the podcasters contend.
For a podcast that begins with
recollections of blackouts, Backstory is an illuminating hour –
bringing us in the end to that modern reflection, looking at oil
pipelines so controversial today, and how even the first one was
similarly contentious, but this time from the perspective of oil
baron Rockefeller, who tried to buy up land in the path of the
pipeline that would take his business away.
Website: www.backstoryradio.org
Laika, the Russian dog that became the first animal to complete an orbit of the Earth
Dogs in space are the focus of our next
history podcast – Footnoting History. When space exploration got
under way, there was a very notable split in the approaches of the US
and Russia. While the US leaned towards using various species of
monkeys for their early flights, Russia plumped for dogs. Part of
this was because dogs were previously used by Russia for various
experiments – the most famous example being Pavlov's experiments
with training dogs to expect food at the ring of a bell, conditioning
them to the point that they would salivate at the ring of a bell even
when food wasn't present. But more than that, dogs were chosen
because their emotional reaction was more similar to a human reaction
than the more panicky monkeys.
The podcast takes us through some of
the unusual side effects of this project – the increase in pet
ownership through the USSR partly driven perhaps by pride in these
animals representing the nation, and the ability in a secretive world
to anthropomorphise the animals and be able to talk about them as
representatives of the nation and not having to talk about the
scientists leading the project.
The most famous dog of all was Laika –
who was actually called a variety of names such as Kudryavka or
Limonchik and became the first animal to complete an orbit of the
Earth, earning the nickname Muttnik in the Western press.
There are heart-rending details for
animal lovers of the treatment and outcome for many of these animals.
Laika herself died from heat exhaustion only hours after the launch.
Her death prompted a debate on the morality of using animals in
testing and many years later, scientists expressed regret about their
usage. This is an intriguing podcast on a chapter of space history
many of us have heard of but perhaps have not examined in detail.
Website:
http://www.footnotinghistory.com/
Sticking with Russia, we delve quickly
into the bite-size insights provided by 15-Minute History. Their
latest podcast looks at the foundations of amateur photography in the
Soviet Union. In the times of Stalin and Lenin, photography went
through a turbulent passage – being encouraged initially, then
discouraged, then encouraged again. Host Christopher Rose prompts
expert guest Jessica Werneke in the right ways, making this a snappy
discussion that lifts the curtain on a world as it wrestled with the
artistic and documentary possibilities of photography, and the
tensions between the amateur, professional and political fields.
Website: http://15minutehistory.org/
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