Category Archives: bbc

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

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This year’s BBC Reith lectures came to a close today with the last of three lectures on Securing Freedom, presented by Eliza Manningham-Buller. The name may mean nothing to you but she was the Director-General of Britain’s Security Service, aka MI5, between October 2002 and April 2007, and she reflects on 9/11, the wars in the Middle East and how the world has changed in the last ten years.

The three lectures are titled, “Terror“, “Security” and “Freedom” and a give a British perspective on the role of the intelligence services and the relationship with the US during a period both countries were under attack. If you are a seasoned spook-watcher, there’s probably not that much new, but I personally found it revealing and reassuring that the British Security Service is more measured and ethically-minded than the media would have us believe.

Baroness Manningham-Buller doesn’t shy away from controversy either, steadfastly refusing to accept torture as an intelligence tool, and suggesting that the US’ use of waterboarding was a “profound mistake”. You’ll have to listen to the podcasts to understand her reasoning.

The lectures are available as podcasts and also as transcripts for those who would prefer to read.

60 Years of BBC’s Reith Lectures as Podcasts

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Sixty years of the BBC’s Reith Lectures archive have been made available as downloadable .mp3s, a fantastic resource for Renaissance geeks and lovers of 20th century history. The Reith Lectures are an annual short series of lectures on issues of the day pitched to the general public and given by respected individuals. They cover a wide range of topics but are touched by the era in which they were recorded. There’s usually four or five lectures in a series.

They’re named after Lord Reith, the first Director General of the BBC and started in 1948, continuing to this day. This year’s lectures on “Securing Freedom” will be given by Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese pro-democracy leader and Baroness Manningham-Buller, Director General of MI5 from 2002 to 2007. Last year’s were on “Scientific Horizons” and were presented by Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society. As you can see, these aren’t irrelevant boring lectures by dull academics.

Until now, if you didn’t catch the lectures when they were broadcast through the RSS feed, you had to use iPlayer to listen to the lectures and the on-line archive has been expanded right back to the start in 1948. Currently, they appear as three tranches, 1948-1975, 1976-2010 and this year’s, 2011.

Hopefully, the downloads aren’t restricted to the UK as there’s some very interesting content that’s worth listening to, some still relevant to today and other material that will help you in understanding previous decades and the impact they’ve had on today.

I think my broadband’s going to take a hammering this month…

Welcome BBC Viewers!

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First I hope you liked my discussion with Nikki on drive this morning for your benefit I have linked to several resources to get you started listening to podcast. First and foremost you do not need a portable media player if you have one, you will be able to experience the power of walk away content and the full impact of podcasting. For those of you that like technology news make sure you check out my personal show where I break the content down so that the common man or woman can understand. The show is available under the podcast link at the top of the page.

Finding podcast in a category you are interested in is easy for the best of independent podcast visit Podcast Alley for a mix of commercial and independent shows visit the Yahoo podcast directory, those of you with iTunes already have a podcast directory at your fingertips through the music store even though the directory is quite unorganized.

If you have portable media players the application I recommend to use, for synchronizing podcast to your device automatically is Juice, this application will work with tunes and Windows Media Player or you can utilize iTunes.

If you want to get started podcasting make sure you order my book on Podcasting. “Podcasting The Do it Yourself Guide”

Update: Nikki referred to me as the PodFather but as I clarified to her I am a podcaster and the title of PodFather belongs to Adam and Dave.

BBC Interview Today

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At 5:40pm GMT or 7:40am (-10 GMT) today I will be on the BBC program Drive for a segment on Podcasting and Mobile media. I look forward to chatting with Nikki Beddi host of Drive. On a side note if you have a DVR, I would love it if someone recorded and forwarded the segment to me. [BBC]