Poddie Part 1

So, how cool are podcasts?

Back in the day, and in the place (OK, stand up and take your dues, Australia in the late 70s early 80s, you know what it was like) there infrequently came a simply breathtakingly good piece of audio broadcasting. When it happened, as rarely as it did, it was always far more revealing than This Day Tonight or whatever ephemeral piece of alleged news was on the television. Between the punctuation of static and less informed minds demanding a change to the commercial channels, the ABC would, every now and again, dish out the goods. But, however, it was a hit and mostly miss affair.

Now we can podcast the hell out of the internet and get anything we like. I'll talk about some of the ones I like in the forthcoming weeks, I'm sure, but to get the ball rolling I'd like to mention open source universities. I've just listened to a series of lectures from Yale Open University by Professor David Blight on the American Civil War. 27 lectures by a leading figure in the field, all available for nix nada nothing straight into your phone or pod. How cool is that?

Great for long car drives, lying in bed, pounding the pavement. And every one contains something inspirational in this most seminal of conflicts.

I LOVE the idea of open courses. You don't get the qualifications but you get the knowledge. Great for people with access to the internet but no access to formal education. I'm not saying you should be operated on by a doctor who studied in such a fashion, but if you personally want to hear a bunch of facts delivered by an expert in his or her field, this is the sort of cyberspatial corner you should be hanging out on.

There are hundreds of them, all loaded with intellectual carbs. This is one chance you should take to get as fat you can...