Food for your mind

Here are two great podcasts I recommend to anyone interested in listening to some fresh alternatives to the usual chatter on Public Radio.

The first is a gem of a podcast called Entitled Opinions hosted by Robert Harrison, professor of Italian Literature at Stanford and a scholar on Dante. If you are familiar with Fresh Air on NPR and have a tendency toward listening to a host interviewing of bevy of personalities, this is the equivalent of Fresh Air for the literati crowd. His Q&A's with contemporary thinkers, writers and intellectuals range from energetic debates on French Existentialism to Irish Poetry, American Fiction and Historical Theology. He is completely informative, with a full depth of ideas and gravitas on most subjects that he covers. While the topics can somewhat dwell a bit too long on academic lexicon for the most part if you are interested in energetic and thoughtful conversation this is the podcast for you.

The other one, a bit more known and recently profiled on a New York newspaper is the curiously wonderful In Our Time hosted by the legendary British broadcaster Melvyn Bragg. Most programmes feature a round table of experts discussing topics in themes ranging in Science, Arts, History, Religion and Contemporary Issues. Bragg, who is an Oxford man is usually surrounded by fellow Oxford scholars who with their expertise dissect a conversation so throughly that you will learn something new in every podcast, even in topics that perhaps you knew most about. I've been a listener of this pod for about two years and in the spirit of the old cliche, it never gets old.

Here are two podcasts I recommend from each program. Click on the title of the podcasts to access their websites and of course both podcast are available on Itunes.

Entitled Opinions:

Tobias Wolff on American Fiction

A conversation on Human Rights



In Our Time:

The History of History: How the writing of history through the years

Chance and Design: Exploring questions and theories of a grand design in the Universe.


-NUTA