I’ve been listening to a lot of collegiate and graduate courses on podcast. In particular, I’ve been perusing the Berkley Podcasts, and they’re all pretty good for what they are. From that list, I particularly recommend History 7B: US History from Civil War to the Present by Jennifer Burns, which really does a nice job of clarifying the narrative of the contemporary United States. Before I heard that podcast, I didn’t realize how disconnected my thinking was: I was treating our current social-political situation as though it was some kind of independently existing bubble, when what we’re dealing with now really has deep causal roots. It also made me realize just how undereducated I am about my own country’s history, even though I thought I had it pretty much down. I highly suggest it.
Also, even if you’re not Christian (and especially if you are), check out the Apologetics and Outreach Podcast by Jerram Barrs of Covenant Theological Seminary (the seminary for the conservative-evangelical Presbyterian Church in America). The first dozen episodes in particular should not be missed, since they are a fascinating and insightful analysis of contemporary American and European culture, and they’re accessible to both a non-Christian and a Christian audience. I’ve found the insights from those episodes have really clarified a lot of contemporary issues for me, like why we have increasing interpersonal isolationism and why real discussion in the public sphere has broken down. From there, it flows into a discussion of biblical mission based in the book of Acts, and that has really has blown my little mind: I’ve found a lot to think about in ideas like the church’s historic reluctance to evangelize (starting immediately after Pentecost) and Paul’s references to non-Jewish prophets and non-Jewish worship before the Areopagus.
As an aside, this line from the Bible deeply amuses me, and I’m not entirely sure why:
Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean.” (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.) [Acts 20:19-21]
(For those of you who read this far, I give you LOLPresident and LOLHamas!)
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