[Swprograms] Podding Along - Issue 331

[John Figliozzi <jfiglio1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Most radio listening takes place in the car or while doing other things that allow freedom for the ear, but not the eyes and hands.  Podcasts permit a shift of listening time from a set appointment to virtually any convenient occasion.  I do it while “power walking” (most) every morning in what sometimes seems like a vain attempt to diminish the results of sitting behind a desk for 35 years.  The act of putting one foot in front of the other can be pretty monotonous and by “podding along” while plodding along the mind also gets something useful to do.  So it is with the time spent gardening, washing dishes, preparing meals and many other day to day activities.

Podcasting has grown to the point that it can justly be considered a medium all its own.  Therefore, the attempt here has to be to highlight only a small portion of it, just one corner where excellence reigns.

Some of the best radio comes from the public networks of the UK, Australia, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand and the U.S.  Apart from the originating program’s web site, most programs are made available through any number of other amalgamation sources such as iTunes and TuneIn. 

Admittedly, these are thoroughly subjective recommendations, but my interests and tolerance for incompatible views are pretty wide-ranging. Here’s another in a continuing series of small samplings, offered in a 90 minute scope (more or less):

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“Trust in a time of pandemic”
THINKING ALLOWED - BBC Radio 4
Trust in a time of pandemic. Laurie Taylor explores the role of social capital and trust in combatting Covid-19. He's joined by Michael Calnan, Professor of Medical Sociology at the University of Kent and Tannistha Samanta, Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Gandhinagar. (28”)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000k3g8

“Covid 19: Mapping changing sentiment in tweets”
DIGITAL PLANET - BBC World Service
- Using machine learning, researchers analysed 30 million English language tweets from across the world to track the changing global sentiment as the Covid-19 pandemic spread. Lead author of the study, professor May Lwin at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore explains how machine learning found that sentiments of fear in the early months of the pandemic are now outnumbered by anger and hope.
- Researcher Aretha Mare, from The Next Einstein Forum in Rwanda says the pandemic has put a renewed focus on home grown African initiatives involving Artificial intelligence. Already some novel approaches to testing and tracing have been developed. These could have global impact. 
- The pandemic has made weather forecasting less accurate. Aircraft help forecasters gather changes in data such as temperature, humidity and pressure during the course of a flight. Environmental researcher, Ying Chen explains how fewer commercial flights during the pandemic have affected the amount of data gathered by forecasters.  (42”)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csz986

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A monthly (well, mostly monthly) compendium of these newsletters, plus on occasion additional pertinent material, is now published in The CIDX Messenger, the monthly e-newsletter of the Canadian International DX Club (CIDX).  For further information, go to www.cidx.ca

John Figliozzi
Editor, "The Worldwide Listening Guide”
NEW! 184 page 9th EDITION available NOW from Universal Radio [universal-radio.com], Amazon [amazon.com], Ham Radio Outlet [hamradio.com]
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