ABC Radio National, Australia’s public radio broadcaster will be airing (but sadly not podcasting) a story from the paperbook Year’s Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy Volume 2 collection (2006). It airs at 08:30 in the SUNDAY STORY slot.
Watch
By Stephen Dedman; Read by Matthew O’Sullivan
1 Broadcast – [ABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: ABC Radio National
Broadcast: February 1st 2009
A modern retelling of King Lear with a supernatural twist.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Science Fiction is great but my iPod is mostly tuned to Science Fact. I only have 4gb and real estate is slim. Jesse’s chuckles have turned to belly laughs when he “catches” me in the act of listening to “MY” podcasts. “Put it on your BLOG” has been his standard retort when I comment enthusiastically about whatever has caught my fancy. He changed his tune recently and now it’s “POST IT ON SFFAUDIO” so beware… here they come.
My favorite weekly PODCAST is ABC Radio National‘s All In The Mind with host Natasha Mitchell. Natasha is brilliant. She came to journalism by default… with a first class honours degree in engineering and midway to completion of a PhD in materials engineering. She has been the producer of All In The Mind since 2002, and all shows are available on the ABC website for download.
Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University as well as the head of eRationality research group at MIT. He has conducted research into the human decision making processes. In this podcast Dan describes experiments which include masturbation, freebies, expectations, placebos and price.
My favorite of Natasha’s comments for this interview was when Dan described some of his experiments, Natasha expressed her amazement at how he managed to get these approved by ethics committees. He responds: “You know I have a lot of experience with them and slowly they trust me more and more. I think that’s one of the benefits.” (Are the ethics committees irrational?)
There is no doubt, after listening to Dan Ariely, that humans are irrational. Can one become more rational when one is aware of one’s irrationality?
Have a listen |MP3|.
Posted by Elaine Willis
The Book Show has posted the complete interview with Ursula K. le Guin (Lavinia) |MP3|
You can subscribe to the podcast at this feed: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/bsw.xml
Posted by Charles Tan
ABC Radio National has some of the best podcast radio shows. It rivals the Canadian Podcasting Corporation’s own terrific podcasts in many respects. One show I get to talk about here every once in a while is The Philosopher’s Zone. The latest show to makes me say: “Hey, check it out.” is…
|MP3| It’s alive! Frankenstein, science and philosophy in the Romantic period
The show talks about a new collection of essays about Mary Shelly’s novel and the science of her era.
I took a Women’s Studies course that talked a lot about the feminist interpretations of the novel. The arguments made, made a lot of sense, and still do. But, this show delivers other arguments.
Subscribe to the podcast feed:
http://abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/pze.xml
Posted by Jesse Willis
The Book Show has a recording of Terry Pratchett (Nation) at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. |MP3|
You can subscribe to the podcast at this feed: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/bsw.xml
Posted by Charles Tan
Back when websites were websites (in the late 1990s), somebody in Australia started collecting oddnesses. Taking its name from a term in a 1993 article in Wired magazine, Undesirable Propagation Unit is a collection of assorted weirdness – probably there’s some other stuff of interest on the site too (for somebody) but for our purposes there is an old ABC Radio National interview with Arthur C. Clarke. Curiously the program is mostly about the film of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Stanley Kubrick. Check it out:
Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3|
Posted by Jesse Willis