The Art of Public Speaking, by John Hale ★★

The Art of Public Speaking is a 12 – 1/2 hour series produced by the Teaching Company, using one of their regular lecturers, an archeologist John Hale. Hale’s style is to call up  noteworthy public speeches throughout history, showing how they were effective as public speeches. Hale selects a specific theme for each lecture, and will use a historical example followed by other historical examples reflective of the same theme to drive his point home. Much of his advice is sound and worth considering when speaking in public. My only gripe with the lecture series is that he tends to use choice speeches as soap boxes. Thus, there was the lectures on speaking in public, plus the under current of socio-philosophical ideology. I suppose Hale didn’t intend that, but it still comes out strong.

Classics of Russian Literature, by Irwin Weill (Teaching Company) ★★★★

I originally started to listen to this series several years ago, and found it to be somewhat boring. I made it through about 4 lectures. Recently, I devoted myself to reading Dostoevsky, and returned to this series. Having read some Russian literature, Weill began to make sense, and I found the series to be considerably more enjoyable. Weill’s attention is definitely directed toward Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. He spends several lectures apiece on 20th century writers, though Solzhenitzen is given only one lecture. Many of the 20th century authors were quite appealing after Weill’s discussion, but the particular book or play was either unavailable on Amazon.com or moderately expensive, and not available for Kindle. This was a touch frustrating. In all, Weill presents an appealing presentation for delving in the Russian Literature, and an excellent summary for the person versed in the Russian author.

How the Earth Works, by Michael Wysession (Teaching Company Series) ★★★

This teaching company series, taught by a Geophysicist, discusses the mechanisms and processes that make the earth the way it is. Wysession is able to interlay the various processes, whether they be geologic, biologic, or astronomic, in discussing what gives us our world. The lecture series can be divided into three parts, with a grading on each part…

I. Plate Tectonics – 5 stars – the longest part of the course, it also is the best part of the course, taught where Wysession is most expert. Details of how the continents were created, how plate tectonic theory was developed, how earthquakes and volcanoes occur, are all discussed in popular lay terms that can be understood by anybody.

II. The Weather – 3 stars – though the weather is an important process in molding the earth, another Teaching Company course on Meteorology has done a far superior job of detailing how weather is formed, and the processes that lead to our climate and living conditions.

III. Biology and “My Soapbox” – 1 star – Wysession adequately discusses the role of biological organisms in helping to form the earth. He does a far worse job of playing biologist. Much of the last lectures of the course are more a soapbox on various subjects such as climate change, humans elsewhere in the universe, and the destiny of man, which would have best been left out of the course. Many of the last lectures have no relation to discussing how the earth works, but rather create a dummy pulpit for Wysession. I do credit Wysession for maintaining a sense of scientific uncertainty about matters such as climate change, and he doesn’t become preachy like Algore.

The course could be improved in many ways. Most importantly, I wish Wysession would have spent a few lectures discussing in depth the mechanisms for studying earth. He could have better discussed the various instrumentation for “sounding” the depths of earth. He could have given us more detailed explanations of land formations that help us understand the world we see, to allow us to engage in the process of being junior geologists. I would have been interested in having a rough feel as to how a geophysicist mathematically models things like earthquakes.

Wysession is an excellent teacher and adequately uses props and visuals to get his point across. This is a series worth watching, though the final lectures would be best deleted or changed as mentioned above to get the discussion back to the intended topic for the course.

War and World History (The Teaching Company Series), by Jonathan Roth ★★★

This series looks at world history from the perspective of how war affected that history. Roth shows possibly by this lecture series that multiple other factors, such as religion, politics, and chance seem to affect the occurrence of war as much as vice versa. Thus, Roth delves at length how economy, culture and nationalism has affected the occurrence of war in the last several hundred years. Though he spent some time speaking of the development of war technology, it was rather minimal considering the topic. Also, I had hoped for more discussion on the style of conducting war, strategies, and how geography affected the nature of war, and the development of war in world history.

This is one of the best Teaching Company series that I’ve heard in a long time. Prof. Baum was quite compelling in his presentation, and maintained a competent discussion mixed with a large volume of personal experience to be not only informative but also enjoyable to listen to. I personally appreciate Baum’s teaching style, though he does demand full attention, since he typically does NOT repeat what he’s said. I especially appreciated how Dr. Baum maintained neutral political stances in his discussions–he did not use his lecture stand as a bully pulpit to push down his personal ideology. Yet, few professors in my recent memory (from the Teaching Company) has sparked such interest in the topic at hand. A day did not go by when I was seeking further information from the internet, and even better, from close friends who grew up in mainland China and could not only confirm but expand on the professor’s statements. Prof. Baum offers several introductory lectures to provide a background history of the West’s involvement with China in the 1800′s, leading to the rise of anti-western sentiment and the emergence of Mao Zedong. Baum follows through the life of Mao to his death, with China emerging from its backwater status to be a leading economic and social force in the world. These lectures are a beautiful complement to another excellent Teaching Company series “From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese History”. Regardless of one’s view of China, it remains a people that are rising on the world scene, and there is no better way to mentally fit China into the grand scheme of things than through this set of lectures.

It is hard to dislike anything that Greenberg does, and this Teaching Company series is no exception. Many of us waited for years for Greenberg to produce this set of lectures, as I’m sure it did not come easy to him. Throughout the lecture set, you sense a very strong love-hate relationship with Wagner and Greenberg. This feeling is reflected in the cynicism found throughout each and every lecture, though usually presented quite humorously, like suggesting, when the sword was named Notung, that perhaps Wagner even had a name for his pillow. In his animosity against the person of Wagner, Greenberg has forgotten his comments on the operas of other composers. Almost every opera has a silly if not ridiculous plot. Almost every opera is inconsistent with real life. No opera is believable. One could crack insults at Verdi for writing an opera where a larger-than-life character becomes fatally obsessed over a lost handkerchief, or a Puccini opera where ladies die of consumption at precise moments and heroes magically appear at the right moment to save tragedy, or Mozart operas where heads of state are made to look like bumbling idiots, Queens of the night appear out of no-where, etc., etc. Greenberg seems to love the music of Wagner, but writhes in agony at the consummate anti-semitism of the composer. Greenberg certainly is correct when he spends lengthy hours describing Wagner as inconsistent, arrogant, self-adoring, egotistical, impetuous, racist, mean-spirited, and any other possible negative epithet. All of these are correct, and would Wagner be alive today, he would be regarded as a despicable Arschloch. Greenberg is quite informative in showing how the thinking of Schöpenauer and virile anti-semitism is reflected in all of the music of Wagner, and this was most informative.

Greenberg does a marvelous job of following the chronological history of Wagner. Of interest is his almost certain Jewish father, which Wagner probably was aware of in forming many opera characters with lost identity. Greenberg probably added too much comment regarding Wagner’s desire for German unification. Most German intellectuals were desirous of unification, just as France had accomplished earlier, and Italy was in the process of accomplishing. It is wrong to presume that what was right for France, England, the United States and Italy was wrong for Germany, and perhaps the world wars came partially as a result of this prejudiced exceptionalism of the rest of the world to German unification. Wagner reflected a German ethos rather than a personal arrogance in desiring to see a unified country.

Greenberg is correct when he repeats often that one cannot separate the man from his music. He is incorrect in not stating that perhaps the greatest insult to Wagner the man is for his music to performed by Jewish conductors (such as Levine) with absolute disregard for the “deeper” meaning in his writings. Such disregard is not only possible but necessary, so that even in an unforgivably flawed person like Wagner, there remains genius to be appreciated. I await the day when a Jewish conductor with an all-Jewish orchestra from Israel performs Parsifal at Bayreuth in a comic fashion.

Many of my recent Teaching Company reviews have been less than favorable, but this series is an exception. Covering in this series is a discussion of the rise of the concept of empires, first noted historically by Sargon in Mesopotamia. Dise proceeds to then discuss the Ur kingdom, the Kassites, Hatti (the Hittites), Egypt, Minoan and Mycenaean empires, Israel, Assyria, neo-Babylon, Persia, and finally Carthage. Throughout, Dise remains informative as well as interesting. His discussions do not err as many in extrapolations of data, but instead gives a good review of our current knowledge of the various empires above. My most serious complaint is his treatment of Israel and use of the Biblical data. It is so often the case that while trying to maintain an air of objectivism and critical review of the sources of ancient literature, one fails to appreciate the differences in stylistic writing that would clue one into the credibility of the literature in question. Such is the case with the Biblical script, which should not come under doubt simply because it is also considered a religious genre. Other than that, it is nice to see that moderns did not invent the concept of empire, which existed from earliest written history. It is not a question of whether or not empires will exist, but rather, who will lead and control those empires. All empires have had the tendency to be expansionistic. Some empires desired expansion for economic reasons (Carthage), many for defense of borders, and some simply for the joy of lording over others. Power seems to remain throughout history a stronger driving force than wealth or any other characteristic in motivating empire. This series does a masterful job of helping one explore the concept of empire, and understanding those driving factors throughout mankind that drives for empire.

This Teaching Company series was a set of 24 half-hour lectures on the science of meteorology. Fovell covers most introductory aspects of meteorology, including the basics of how weather occurs, clouds form, atmospheric circulation, global weather events, hurricanes and tornados, etc. Fovell ends with two lectures explaining in quite simple terms how models are being developed to try to forecast the weather, focusing especially on predicting the path of hurricanes. Fovell’s teaching style is very dry. He does not have the enthusiastic bounce of Filippenko, another Teaching Company lecturer. Fovell’s explanations as to how various weather events occur, such as the development of tornados, just did not seem entirely plausible. This is probably the state of the science of meteorology rather than Fovell explaining poorly. Fovell made abundantly clear how poorly forecasters are at predicting weather events. He used the example of the path of the hurricane Rita, which various models gave a 100 mile spread as to where the hurricane would hit land one day before the event. Such wide spreads limit the usefulness of predicting, since most models showed Rita going straight to Houston, and it went instead to the Texas/Louisiana border, quite a significant way away. This is a series worth watching to learn the basics of what the weatherman needs to know. It is not a series to get you excited about Meteorology.

This was a hard series to rate, in that, while holding my interest, I fell asleep at the end of about all 24 of the lectures. Schumacher was not boring, so I couldn’t fault him. He also generated enough interest on my part to pull out some light reading books by Richard Feynman on Physics, and enquire about more substantial quantum mechanics textbooks. He brought back memories of Physical Chemistry which I took for one year in college, in which we used the essentials of quantum mechanics quite heavily for our calculations, but of which the third term was spent doing simple solutions of the Schrödinger equation for the hydrogen atom. It seemed a little strange trying to teach quantum mechanics without mathematics. So, it ended up being more a “Quantum Mechanics for Psychology Majors” class, something which nobody could really take seriously. Dr. Schumacher covered the history of quantum mechanics, some of the basic ideas, and discussion of how quantum mechanics differs from how we see and experience the macroscopic world. I found the discussion of his work in quantum informatics to be most interesting. Should he edit this course for a new edition, I would like to see him a) include more mathematics, even if it is not totally understood, b) speak more about the history of quantum mechanics, especially in the most recent several decades, and c) include more discussion of sub-atomic work, such as quarks, muons, etc. and discuss how they tie into the quantum mechanics discussion, and d) discuss more fully how relativity and quantum mechanics conflicts and interacts in understanding the universe.

This is a series of 12 one half hour lectures on black holes. Betsy and I had watched Filippenko’s Astronomy series previously and thoroughly enjoyed it. This short series was no exception. One cannot help but notice the enthusiasm that Filippenko has with the study of Astronomy. This series was a set of lectures as much on physics as on astronomy. The first few episodes detail the original idea of a black hole by a German physicist Schwartzschild made while he was on the eastern front during WWI, and follows it with the original descriptions of black holes and evidence for their existence. Since they are black holes, they cannot be directly seen, but only inferred. Filippenko keeps the amount of physics equations to a minimum, yet later discussions on competing descriptions of black holes by the theory of relativity vs. quantum mechanics, the evaporation of black holes as described by Stephen Hawking, the possibility of mini-black holes, gravitational waves, and worm hole theory, all left one wondering as to the veracity of these claims. Since the Hadron collider at CERN and new space probes are intended to answer some of the questions of the nature of black holes, we have much to anticipate in the news as physics and astronomy works hand in hand to discover some of the “darker” secrets of the universe. Filippenko must have given us every possible joke about black holes ever written, and even demonstrated how he dressed up as a black hole every Halloween. Between his humor and compelling teaching style, this was a wonderful series to watch.

This series by the Teaching Company is about archeology, and the discoveries of archeology in various parts of the world, including Africa (esp. Northern Africa/Cameroon and the great Zimbabwe), Egypt (though formally a part of Africa), the mid-east, India, China, and Central/South America (Mayan and Incan civilizations). Scott first spends six lectures detailing his philosophy for doing archeology. During this time, you get a delightful flavor of his biases, and intentions for doing archeology. Dr. McEachern spends most of his time working in Northern Cameroon, digging up ancient garbage.

You are not given a historical perspective in this study. Compared to an excellent Teaching Company series on the origins of civilization by Kenneth Harl, this series leaves you swimming a bit. You are told considerable amounts about what kinds of food are thought to have been eaten by ancient civilizations, and perhaps what sort of structures for housing they may have built for themselves, but that is it. The remainder of what we are left with is pure guesswork. Much of this guesswork presupposes that ancient civilizations might have been similar to the various cultures and civilizations you see today. Unfortunately, that gives you no information at all, except the obvious, that is, that mankind has remained similar over the course of its short history. I really don’t find it fascinating to imagine that people ate similar foods in ancient times as today, and that famines might have happened. Scott lacks better stories to tell, and though he is careful not to extrapolate to wildly, extrapolate he still does, and refuses to remain silent where the evidence is only foggy or unclear. He seems to suggest social structures based on remnant housing and graveyard goods, yet this could be utterly deceiving. In the end, I’ve learned very little about what we are to think about ancient civilizations, other than that they had analogous social systems and political constructs as we have today. It was very challenging actually making it through 48 1/2 hour lectures in order to glean this truth. This course has also persuaded me to stay far away from archeology.

Is there any benefit that I see for archeology? Yes. When we have purported historical narratives from the past, archeology might help substantiate the legitimacy of these stories. This is particularly true of the fall of Troy, the stories of Greece, historical narratives from China, etc. Most importantly, archeology could assist is further substantiating the veracity of Scripture. Yet, McEachern dares not tread on such a subject, even when it would have been entirely admissible. As an example, he is overwhelmingly astonished at how early urbanization occurred in civilization, yet Genesis suggests specialization (and thus urbanization) from very early times. He is amazed at the amount of trade occurring in ancient times, yet much Scripture speaks of international trade and commerce from quite early on. It is chronological arrogance that overwhelms some of the thinking of Scott that does not allow him to constructively best put together the data at hand.

I could not recommend this series to anybody, except for those who are deeply interested in archeology and the various schools of thought. Scott is not difficult to listen to, but his content would have a hard time grasping most people’s interest.

I ordered this set from the Teaching Company, hoping to receive a non-biased, educated assessment of the life, thinking, and times of Albert Einstein. The series started as a modestly historical narrative of the early Einstein, and included discussion of his thinking in physics, but also in philosophy and politics. Einstein apparently felt modestly prejudiced against, owing to the fact that he was a Jew, surviving in a primarily non-Jewish culture. His success in physics came with shaky fits, having problems with the higher institutes of learning in Switzerland, but eventually ending in the pinnacle of his career while in Berlin, before moving to America in 1933 at the time of the rise of Hitler. Howard is willing to admit that the social life of Einstein left much to be desired, mistreating several wives, and essentially abandoning his children. Howard excuses Einstein, noting that he was a great socialist and humanitarian, thus making up for his otherwise despicable lifestyle. Though a number of the early lectures discusses the innovations of physics by Einstein, you are also left with the notion that Einstein burned out early, vacillating frequently when theories didn’t fit his personal philosophy. His greatest despair was his development of the science of quantum mechanics, only to later disown it as it didn’t fit his personal world view. He is like Napoleon-a brilliant youth followed by a not so brilliant middle and older age. By the 10th lecture, this series became quite worrisome, in that the lectures became a dummy pulpit for Howard to expound his own socialist belief system. Howard fails miserably to discuss the various ramifications of Einstein’s political and philosophic stances, arguing both the pro’s and con’s of the various social solutions Einstein offers. Thus, Howard betrays his own calling as an academician, forfeiting his claim as an intellectual, in order to push a social agenda that Einstein supposedly espoused. By the end of the lecture series, you are left wondering how accurate Howard remained to the true thinking of Einstein. You are left with multiple holes. I would have loved more discussion of Einstein at Princeton, yet you hear nothing save for his involvement with socialist issues, anti-war issues, and government interactions during the second world war. Oddly, Howard barely takes Einstein to task for his horrid inconsistency for advocating the development of the atom bomb, only since he presumed it would be used against the German state that mistreated him. Howard unnecessarily idolizes Einstein to the point of losing an objective focus for discussion of the man, making the entire series very wearisome to listen to. I simply could not recommend this series to anybody for a serious discussion of the thought and life of Albert E.

Patrick Allitt is a worthy lecturer of this series, having been born in Darby, England, and having grown up in England until college years brought him to the USA. He is able to offer personal vignettes from his family history regarding recent events in the last days of the Empire. The British Empire once held land in every part of the globe, from multiple holdings in Africa, all of India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, Egypt and the middle East, Ireland, Australia, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, multiple Caribbean Islands, and multiple islands elsewhere in the world. Indeed, when The Empire was the largest, it was also the most unstable and weakest, which was immediately following the 1st world war, both the 1st and 2nd world wars being pyrrhic victories to England. Allitt spares no punches at elaborating the multiple abuses of the empire that the Brits exercised, including deception and brutality with the Irish, the multiple exercises of brute force in India and unjust reign in that country, the absolutely embarrassing and horrid inconsistencies with their treatment of the Chinese in the Opium wars, and the wretched and unjust treatment of the Boers in South Africa, provoking war not for the sake of justice or virtue, but solely for wealth. We would not elaborate the horrid treatment of the Zulu kings of Africa, and plays of force in achieving domination of the peoples of those countries. We would also not mention Britain’s aggressiveness at assuring that no other country in the world would exercise the right of ability to also conquer lands and develop colonies, taking greedily colonies from the Dutch and Germans, and assuring weakness with the French and Spanish in their overseas holdings. Allitt spends much time discussing the racism that prevailed in a fairly extreme form, sometimes as extreme as Hitler, in developing the concept of the superior race of the Anglo-saxon, which prevented them from interacting justly with the Indian, the Negroes of Africa, or the  Aborigines of Australia/Maori of New Zealand. Though Great Britain is often thought of being virtuous in bringing Western law and Christianity to all parts of the world, they most often brutally oppressed missionary activity, and rarely lived by the laws which they purported to be holding in high esteem. In summary, the British have exercised an extreme form of arrogance, racism, and domination of “might makes right” that is an embarrassment for the West. Much of this is seen in the recently reviewed series of “The Jewel in the Crown”.

In terms of Allitt’s teaching style, he is very easy to listen to, sometimes lapses into irrelevancies (such as his 35th lecture on British literature), and does repeat considerable amounts of his lecture series on Victorian Britain. Even still, this series is thought provoking, especially in consideration of American attempts to repeat the worst of Great Britain’s mistakes. Ron Paul is right in his foreign policy as a corrective to British mistakes, though most Americans seem to arrogantly accept that we must maintain a police presence throughout the world. Someday (probably soon), we will be seeing a lecture series on the rise and fall of the United States of America, if we don’t wake up to our pompous policies in the world at large.

This is a Teaching Company lecture series, including a total of 36 1/2 hr lectures on the history of conservatism in the United States and Great Britain. Patrick Allitt is a professor at Emory University, though he came from England, but studied at UC Berkeley. He covers the tradition of conservatism from the mid-1700′s until the present day, providing a fairly even-handed summary of the nature and character of conservatism during that time period in the two respective countries. It is particularly interesting how problematic it is to define somebody as a conservative vs. a liberal, in that radical conservatives and radical liberals often live in the same camp, and neither a conservative nor a liberal can be clearly defined, with a multiplicity of camps between the two of them, as well as gradations. Certainly, conservatives tend toward adherence to the past traditions, which at one time was the royalists who adhered to the King. At one time, Adam Smith style economists were the liberals-they are now the conservatives. It was helpful to see that controversy raged throughout America’s history, so that certain belief systems that we hold were at one time fixed in the American ethos, such as constitutionalism, definitely never were, and the issue of the constitution of the US has always been controversial. One might define conservatives as tending toward elitism, or the upper class, and liberalism toward the common man, yet in practice, both liberals and conservatives love elitism if you are the “ruling class”, and hate elitism if your are the “common class”. By this, we see that liberals have an extreme arrogance about conservatives being “stupid”, as witnessed by their recent treatment of Sarah Palin, and their orientation toward the academic setting, and desire for secret meetings in government, contesting that the common man does not understand the intricacies of government. They are inclined to regulation and paternalism, since the “ruling class” knows better than anybody what is good for you. Contrary, the conservatives tend to argue for Republicanism rather than Democracy as the form of government of the US, which in actuality is another form of elitism, the elected official knowing better than the public at large what is good for you. All in all, the lecture series has generated a number of thoughts and questions regarding ones’ personal stance, as well as realization of the diverse nature of conservatism.

You are left guessing what leaning the professor  tends toward; is he a liberal or a conservative? One of his first statements is that he will try to remain unbiased and not disclose his personal leanings. That is an immediate clue that he has liberal leanings. His remarks about a number of conservatives  sometimes discloses an absence of understanding of conservatism, such as his comments regarding the fundamental thesis and work of Francis Schaeffer. Yet, at times, he tends to labor in argument for the strengths of the conservative tradition. My guess is the Professor Allitt is a moderate though somewhat right leaning. I could recommend this series to  liberals and conservatives and moderates and libertarians, as they would all enjoy this series and find it thought provoking.