If you don't already know, these graphic audio adaptations turn your favorite book (or comic book, in this case) into a play, complete with music and sound effects. They're a lot of fun in general, but this one is particularly well done. Loved it! Recommended....more
No idea how good this translation is. It's the one that was free if you're an Audible member. So if I had to guess, it's probably not top-notch. But aNo idea how good this translation is. It's the one that was free if you're an Audible member. So if I had to guess, it's probably not top-notch. But all I wanted was a peek at what these were, not an in-depth study guide, as I'm about to hop into the audiobook, Hinduism for Dummies.
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The biggest differentiating factor in these texts versus other religious texts that I've read so far has to do with the amount of meditation you should do and the transcendental "becoming one with the universe" kind of thing. Most of what I listened to seemed to correlate with what I've found in other books. A lot of decent advice (don't let negativity in, for example) and a few oddball pieces of advice that probably made sense to the people back in the day. The bit about having regular poops took me by surprise, not gonna lie. Then again, that's probably the most sage wisdom I've heard doled out in a while....more
Pop culture lectures are usually pretty fun. But to be honest, I struggled a bit with staying interested with this one.
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Shannon Scott takes us onPop culture lectures are usually pretty fun. But to be honest, I struggled a bit with staying interested with this one.
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Shannon Scott takes us on a trip through...well, wolves and werewolves. She has a very feminist slant in several lectures which I thought was both cool in some places and somewhat overreaching in others. And by that, I mean that some of the things she said didn't quite track with what other lecturers who were experts in particular subjects (Norse myths, or historical witchcraft for example) had said in their lectures. Her facts seemed a little more Wikipedia and a little less academia. Which just leads me back to the same old conclusion that no one is an expert in everything, AND you can pretty much cite random facts/histories/legends/events to show them in whatever light you happen to want to see them in. Maybe she has better lectures elsewhere?
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This did make me curious to learn more about real-life wolves & read Guy Endor's The Werewolf of Paris, but other than that...? I don't know. Whatever I was hoping for, this wasn't it.
This was such an interesting look at the reasons why so many people believe in conspiracy theories - not the least of whTHE TRUTH IS OUT THERE.
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This was such an interesting look at the reasons why so many people believe in conspiracy theories - not the least of which is because conspiracies do happen. But what's the psychology behind our obsessions with them? And why are they so hard to disprove? Why is it so much easier for us to believe that there are globally powerful and supernaturally nefarious forces at work behind the scenes, rather than to look at the evidence and follow the money?
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Is it really somehow easier to comprehend Lizard People running pedophile rings on a flat earth, than to look at a who profits from misinformation about the dangers of smoking? Yes. Yes, it is.
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Apparently, our brains like to "know" the answers. That's fair. And it is far easier to believe something that claims to give you a black-and-white answer than it is to wrestle with the idea that you don't know the answer yet...or maybe ever.
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And conspiracy theories give those pat answers. They might be the wrong answer, but you have an answer that you can fall back on when things are seemingly out of control. Which is another thing our brains don't like. The randomness of bad things. We want someone to blame, and the idea that sometimes bad shit just happens isn't going to cut it. When I'm worried about my job, my health, and the state of the world, the idea that multiple factors spreading back decades, including greedy humans, bumbling politicians, and plain old bad luck just doesn't make enough sense. There needs to be some larger mechanism in play. Because I'm important, dammit!
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Big Pharma gave my kid autism! The Bush family engineered 9-11! The CIA killed Kennedy! That's not to say that Big Pharma, the Bush family, or the CIA are on the side of angels, but it also doesn't make any of those statements true.
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One of the things Shremer said that resonated with me was that you can ask people what would it take to convince you that {insert conspiracy theory} was wrong? and that most of the time, the answer is nothing but crickets. There is no way to disprove it because the rationale is a loop. If you show documents, the documents are fake. If you speak to an expert, the expert is in on the conspiracy. If you produce a witness, the witness is lying or has been threatened. There's no way to show enough evidence to shake a belief that isn't rational to start with. I've seen this kind of behavior a lot, and it was interesting to learn some of the psychology behind it. It's still frustrating, but now it's a bit more understandable.
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It actually goes against our own ease to disbelieve something. And that makes it so much harder to be skeptical when your own confirmation bias starts to come into play. In other words, it's easy to believe what you want to believe. That's true for all of us, myself included. If it sounds like something I tend to already agree with, then it's that much easier for me to nod along, and that much harder for me to make myself stop and ask for evidence.
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There's so much interesting stuff in this short lecture, and I would really recommend this to anyone who is interested. Shermer might lean left, but I found him to be pretty unbiased when he discussed that both liberals and conservatives have their own equally silly pet conspiracies they like to marinate in, which I thought was a nice change of pace.
What makes an American monster? Well for starters, they have to be citizens. <--I kid, I kid!
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So Adam Jortner talks about the fictional monsters What makes an American monster? Well for starters, they have to be citizens. <--I kid, I kid!
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So Adam Jortner talks about the fictional monsters in books, movies, and urban legends that Americans created (or made their own version of) and why. Like, how do our monsters correlate to our societal fears?
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To be honest, I'd never thought about it much. Which is where all these neat little lectures come in and open up interesting new ideas to me that serve as a springboard to get me to sniff around and look at the world in a different way. And while I don't know that I necessarily believe monsters always have to have a deeper psychological meaning to us, Jortner made some good points and got me to think a bit deeper. At least for a few minutes.
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This would probably make a long car trip a bit less monstrous. Recommended...more
However, I will say that for those of us who aren't science-y, there is a flood of all the different names that I cVery good explanation of evolution.
However, I will say that for those of us who aren't science-y, there is a flood of all the different names that I could never quite keep straight. Australopithecus afarensis, Australopithecus sediba, Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis, Homo naledi, Homo habilis, etc, etc, etc. So I was kind of doing a what-what-what face and just trying to catch the main gist. And I think I kind of did that. But only because Feuerriegel probably dumbed it down a lot for folks like me.
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The main thing she did was dispel a lot of the myths of evolution that I heard growing up, and helped me get a bit of a grip on what our ancestry may have looked like over the course of millions of years. I'm sure there is a lot more to it than what she covered, but I felt like I learned quite a bit.
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My backstory is that I grew up going to those wonky private church schools that taught the earth was 5,000 years old, dinosaurs were suspect, and Noah and his ark full of animals were historical events. And while it has been decades since I thought anything close to that was true, I just...well, I missed out on an education. So, here I am at almost 50, trying to remedy that. For anyone out there like me who has a lot of catching up to do, I think this lecture is a good place to start.
This was one of those little short Audible Original Great Courses that aren't quite as meaty as a "real" lecture serElementary my dear, reader.
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This was one of those little short Audible Original Great Courses that aren't quite as meaty as a "real" lecture series, but they do cover some quirky topics in a fun way. I'm a huge fan of all things Sherlock, I've read the books, watched most of the movies and tv shows, and gobble up the spin-offs like Enola Holmes & The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes to try to fill the void in my soul the exact size of a deerstalker hat.
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Krasner does a nice job of covering not just Doyle himself, and his inspirations for Sherlock and his stories, but also the different versions of Sherlock that have been portrayed on the big and small screen over the years.
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He also has a different (rather interesting) take on what is usually considered Sherlock's seemingly misogynistic behavior. He looks at women purely as specimens, and in that way doesn't sexualize them at all - unlike Watson, who is forever commenting on their beauty. In the stories, the women aren't offended by his behavior so much as relieved that someone is treating them as something other than an objectified female. And he has a point! I never looked at it that way, but I like that take on the character. He also said that women seem to confound Sherlock in ways that men can't, and looking over the stories (not just Irene Adler's), he's right. I've been reading Holme's stories for most of my life and this gave me a new outlook on them.
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I'm ready for a re-read now. Recommended for fans of John and Sherly....more
First thing? Terrible narration. I think she was trying to enunciate her words, but it knocked the cadence of her speech off and sounded like a bad veFirst thing? Terrible narration. I think she was trying to enunciate her words, but it knocked the cadence of her speech off and sounded like a bad version of cheap AI reading the whole thing. I'm not even 100% convinced that this wasn't AI. I seriously had to speed it up to 1.7x just to help with the awkward pauses between words.
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Second thing? This sounded like a lecture from someone who isn't actually a fan of comic books. When she bypassed talking about flops like The Eternals and WW2 or the incredible amount of superhero fatigue that has set in, instead focusing on how awesome it all has been? I knew this wasn't a serious lecture. There wasn't any passion behind what she was saying. Just a lot of glossy facts that anyone who actually reads comics would probably already know.
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I have to say, a lot of these "Audible Original Great Courses" have been less than meaty, but this is by far the worst of the bunch. Swerve to avoid....more
I cried over the Mother's Day thing. God, it's been more than 30 years and I still miss my mom.
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I kind of figured I knew a lot of the hidden histI cried over the Mother's Day thing. God, it's been more than 30 years and I still miss my mom.
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I kind of figured I knew a lot of the hidden histories, but it turns out I didn't know as much as I thought. That's...not all that surprising. I tend to think I know more than I really do on any given day. But even with my track record of ignorance, I was still surprised by how much I learned. And I came out of this thing with a whole new appreciation of holidays and the history behind them.
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Ok, so Hannah Harvey starts with Christmas and works her way around the year to all the big (mostly) American holidays. Or I guess I should say that she gives us the background on why we celebrate the holidays the way we do in America. And can I just say it was nice to hear a Southern accent from one of these professors? Which means there is a southern flare to quite a few of her stories, and she leans very heavily into her own Southern heritage in these lectures. I mean, I wasn't upset by the story of her husband shooting groundhogs on their farm. But her storytelling style may not be for everyone. Happy Groundhog Day! <--I birthed a child on this glorious holiday, btw
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Harvey does a deeper dive than I thought she would with such a short lecture and really opened up a whole new world of backstory that I had never heard of before. Did you know that Christmas was initially banned in the US? Holidays that weren't specifically mentioned in the Bible were considered sacrilegious. Man, our Puritans were even weirder than I thought. Like, there were Puritans, and then there were the Puritans that hopped on a boat and landed in New England. The UK should really thank its lucky stars that they had cruise ships willing to offload those wacky bastards on an unsuspecting continent.
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Fun lecture! Though, I could have lived without her "performances" of all the stories she told. That sort of thing kind of gives me the ick for whatever reason. Your personal milage will vary. Recommended....more
I listened to it last week and don't remember one thing of real interest that I either wasn't aware of beforehand or wasn't impressThis is simply ok.
I listened to it last week and don't remember one thing of real interest that I either wasn't aware of beforehand or wasn't impressed enough with to retain. Another less-than from Audible Plus in what I'm assuming is their attempt to pad out their "Great Value" Great Courses library.
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However, there is something to be said for these bite-sized lectures as far as being used for long car rides or palate cleansers in between other books. From what I can remember, she went over all of the horror tropes and reasons why a lot of us like horror. There were also spoilers for some books and movies, so be careful if that sort of thing bothers you. I wasn't bothered by any of it, but I'm kind of an outlier when it comes to that.
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I think this would be fun for someone who maybe doesn't watch/read/listen to anything from the horror genre, but for anyone familiar with it probably won't get much new info out of it. Not bad, just meh....more
Unbelievably, I've never read any kind of biography on Agatha Christie. So all of this (or most of it) was new to me. And it made me want to read more aUnbelievably, I've never read any kind of biography on Agatha Christie. So all of this (or most of it) was new to me. And it made me want to read more about her life. So good job, Maureen!
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I've read almost everything Christie has ever written, but I'm still missing the romance books she wrote under her pen name and her autobiography. I know. How can I even call myself a fan?! I'm working on remedying that now, and am especially looking forward to reading Unfinished Portrait, as it is apparently loosely based on her and her second husband's love story.
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Seems to be a great jumping-off point for anyone who is interested in reading about Christie, but I don't know how it stacks up for those who have already done a deep dive into her life.
On a side note: Corrigan goes out of her way not to spoil the plots of any of Christie's books when she talks about the impact of certain ones. It's hard to talk about why so many people were upset over The Murder of Roger Akroyd while not spoiling why they were upset. That level of attention lets you know what a huge fan of Christie's work Corrigan is and adds that little extra something to the lecture.
A lot of people assume that witch hunting was this major THING throughout the Middle Ages. Yes and no. If this is the first time you've listened to anytA lot of people assume that witch hunting was this major THING throughout the Middle Ages. Yes and no. If this is the first time you've listened to anything on the subject, I think it would be a great introduction to what actually went down. If not, then you'll probably not learn anything new here.
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Yes, the average person did think witches were real. No, there wasn't some major push across the globe to burn witches. It was more localized, there were different reactions to the charges, and the outcomes of the trials were varied. Also, it wasn't as targeted against just women as popular media would have you believe. Plus, a lot of the targets who were women, weren't the young sexy things. The evidence seems to point more to old, cranky, possibly contentious women that nobody liked to start with. So think about that nasty old fart who is always calling the cops when you have a party or your dog digs out from under your fence. Her. The idea of having her hauled up on witchcraft charges doesn't evoke the same amount of sympathy, does it? Not that I'm advocating for killing off our annoying neighbors or anything...
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Of course, anyone who was killed or imprisoned for the "crime of witchcraft" does actually evoke our modern-day sympathies. Because obviously, they weren't witches. Some of the people were unlikeable, some were oddballs, some were political rivals, and some were just other. I think the main thing to take away from this lecture is that fear and paranoia coupled with a mob mentality can lead to some regrettable results. A recent example is the Satanic Panic of the 80s, which had disastrous ramifications for people accused of defiling children in the name of the Devil, and influenced an entire generation of parents who were genuinely terrified that their children would end up molested or eaten by Satanists.
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If you're looking for something on the practice of witchcraft, this ain't it. But it is a good bite-sized lecture on the history of witchcraft. Recommended....more
This is a bit niche, but if you're intrigued by early Gnostic writings this might interest you. And yeah, a lot of people think Gnostic is too broad a This is a bit niche, but if you're intrigued by early Gnostic writings this might interest you. And yeah, a lot of people think Gnostic is too broad a term, but I agree with Ehrman that it covers the same kind of ground as Christian. All Gnostics were/are not the same, but if you stand a Mormon and a Catholic side-by-side you would see a ton of doctrinal differences, and yet everyone is comfortable saying they can both snuggle together under the Christian blanket.
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Ok, so this was a somewhat recent find. It knocked around for a few decades while the owner tried to sell it, disintegrated rapidly while being poorly stored, and finally found a home with a buyer who was able to preserve what was left and find out its true worth.
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No, of course it wasn't written by Judas Iscariot or anyone who knew him. This isn't some Di Vinci Code thing. It's a Gospel written for a specific sect of Christians in antiquity that leaned toward the Gnostic teachings. In this story, Judas is the only disciple who had a "spark of the divine" and was able to understand what Jesus was trying to tell them about his true nature and what that meant for the afterlife. It also explains that his betrayal was sanctioned by Jesus as a way to escape his mortal body and transcend the physical form that was tethering him to this earth.
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The book tracks Ehrman's journey from his first contact with National Geographic when he learned they wanted him and several other experts in various fields to try and authenticate this find, to the interesting story told in this new (to us) Gospel. Scholars were aware this Gospel had once existed due to its mention in other ancient writings, but they had no idea what it actually said because it was only mentioned by the (now) orthodox church leaders who wanted to discredit it. And it's never good practice to 100% believe what someone's enemy says about them.
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So yeah. This had some interesting bits to it. Again, I think the target audience for this is small, but I enjoyed it. Recommended for Gnostic lovers everywhere....more
As is typically true with most of these lectures, I ended up learning about random things that I had never bothered to evenPlay on, youngsters.
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As is typically true with most of these lectures, I ended up learning about random things that I had never bothered to even question before. Like, why do we have teenagers? Before the 20th century, you were either a child or an adult. This whole idea of this separate chunk of development is relatively new. I had never stopped to think about that before. I guess I was too busy either being a teenager or maybe wrangling teenagers to question the validity of their existence.
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Anyway. According to this (and my meager efforts to poke about the interwebs after I finished the book), with the rise of the Industrial Revolution, children who had previously been potentially working on a farm (safe) were now working in factories (not as safe). This caused a moral pushback that ended up making education compulsory. So now you have a group that was previously employed and on their way to adulthood, being seen as something more than just children but less than adults. Or at least, that's the extremely skinny gist.
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What does this have to do with toys? Well, instead of just marketing toys to young children modeling purely adult behavior, like baby dolls, you have toys that model their next step - the glorious freedom of being a cool teenager and the never-gonna-marry-Ken Barbie dolls. That's kind of neat, right?
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From the World Wars and the Great Depression to the invention of Plasticine, a lot of different things have made their mark on the modern toy industry. But the moral of this story is that kids love to play. And kids of all ages love to collect and reminisce about their favorite childhood toys. I still have my two favorite stuffed animals from back in the day, and my mother-in-law recently surprised us with a ton of Hub's old toys. We now have an old-school slinky, Smokey Bear, and a G.I. Joe with the weird hair hanging out in the office. On an unrelated side note, we also got Charlie's Angels & OJ Simpson posters. And an uncanny amount of horse posters. So, now our children refer to their father as a horse girl. Cruel? Yes. Funny? Also, yes.
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Ok, so while this (once again) isn't a meaty lecture, it's short and silly and fun. If you're looking for something to listen to on a car ride, this is about 3 hours worth of a good time. Recommended....more
Why are serial killer stories more popular than ever, even though serial killings are in decline? I thiA look at pop culture and serial killers.
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Why are serial killer stories more popular than ever, even though serial killings are in decline? I think it's probably because it's easier to focus your fears on some nebulous one-off killer than it is to face the fact that if you are the victim of a violent crime, it will more than likely be perpetrated by someone you know intimately. So if someone kills my husband...? Yeah, it will probably have been me. But let's look away from that real quick!
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So this isn't some kind of a survival guide, it's a look at what makes serial killers so (dare I say) glamorous to the general public. Sure, we're horrified and terrified, but we are also seemingly drawn to them and their stories. We gobble up every gory detail of the crimes and spend far too much time pouring over their backstories in the hope of discovering what makes them tick. And apparently, we've always been that way. We're gross.
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So while the lecture does talk about famous serial killers (without being too gory), what it really does is unpack society's fascination with them. I liked it. Recommended...more
Fun Wodehouse tale about the pitfalls of producing a play. Cyril Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps (of the Drones Club fame) inherits a nice nest egg from his uFun Wodehouse tale about the pitfalls of producing a play. Cyril Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps (of the Drones Club fame) inherits a nice nest egg from his uncle and gets immediately hoodwinked into investing in a new theater production starring his boozy actor friend, Mervyn Potter.
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The story was a lot better than I initially thought it would be, especially since I know relatively little about the theater - except that it's an iffy market for investment. But apparently, that was more than what poor Barmy knew.
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Of course, it wouldn't be a Wodehouse story if there wasn't a bit of romance and a full cast of wacky characters. It's clever, humorous, entertaining, and one of the better (imho) stand-alone stories that I've read of his. Recommended for fans of P.G. Wodehouse....more
A bit of a misleading name, in my opinion. But still a good lecture.
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The Greatest Controversies of Early Christian History sounds like you're goiA bit of a misleading name, in my opinion. But still a good lecture.
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The Greatest Controversies of Early Christian History sounds like you're going to hear something about what early church leaders were duking it out over when it came to doctrine, right? Or maybe that was just me. What you actually get is just an interesting look at some (mostly) modern-day questions people ask about early Christianity and its main characters, then Ehrman's answer of what's historically provable, what's not, and why. Almost everything here is something that he's already covered in other books or lectures, but I found this one to be such a nice, concise list of those things that I'll probably end up buying this at some point.
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This isn't a faith-based look at scripture, but it's not an attack on faith, either. It's pretty standard. Faith is faith because you have to suspend a bit of disbelief. And faith and fact are two entirely different things. I wouldn't recommend trying to fit them both in the same lunchbox....more
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