Podcast: DNA Genealogy

From Britain's National Archives comes an hour long lecture of particular interest to family historians.

Chris Pomeroy, of the Pomeroy DNA Project, reviews the history of DNA testing and explains how it can be used by family historians, as well as discussing the experiences of leading family history projects that are using DNA testing to link and verify their family trees.

Download the 42 Mb mp3 audio file

Podcast: The Suspect Society

Relevant to the current sociological trends in New Zealand is the first of a three part series from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The Surveillance Society. The New Authoritarianism. The Age of Paranoid Politics. These terms, and many others, have been used to describe how the political ground has been shifting under us, particularly since 9/11. Terrorism and national security have become obsessive anxieties. Fear and suspicion have become the order of the day. We are living in what The Best of Ideas producer Mary O’Connell calls “the suspect society.”

Right click to Download The Suspect Society - Part One
[mp3 file: runs 52:07]

Please note: podcasts are archived for 4 weeks only.

Podcast: Captain Cook and Georg Forster in the Antarctic

A 55 minute audio documentary from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

It´s not well known that the first major scientific expedition to the Antarctic was led by James Cook during his 1773 voyage to New Zealand.

It´s even less well known that the voyage was recorded by a young German writer and natural historian who sailed with Cook.

Georg Forster´s A Voyage Round the World was one of the most famous and influential travel narratives of its time: a scientific adventure story which ranges from the terrors of the Antarctic ice to cannibalism amongst the Māori in New Zealand, which is graphically recounted in this documentary.

In this podcast hear readings from Forster´s book, Cook´s journals and The German Traitor, a novel based on Forster´s life.

Original audio source

Podcast: Godley Head Heritage

A 26 minute interview with Peter Wilkins, Curator of the Godley Head Heritage Trust. He talks about coastal defense in New Zealand from the Victorian period right through to World War II.

While our idea of who New Zealand’s enemies were changed over time, we find out that the idea of foreign invasion was a very real thing. During the Second World War U-boats found their way into New Zealand’s waters. The liner Niagara was sunk and there's also the mystery of the ten mines that were laid along Lyttelton Harbour, never to be found.

We also hear about the women who served on Godley Head, freeing up the men who were urgently required in North Africa.

Download the 24.5 Mb mp3 audio file

Podcast: A Decent Burial

Hindsight is the only feature program on Australian radio devoted exclusively to social history. Hindsight offers new perspectives on and insights into the past, through stories that may be well known, or may have been ignored, or erased from the public record.

Contrasting the cultures of Sydney and Melbourne, this discussion is relevant to the Canterbury experience, which like New South Wales was a Church of England dominated settlement. The ongoing similarities are even more pertinent where there is diversion from the original subject.

The 55 minute program examines changing attitudes to the dead and their burial, from the ad hoc early days of the penal colony in Sydney through to the late nineteenth century and the creation of the very grand Rookwood Necropolis.

Throughout the colony's early history there was an ongoing tussle between church and state for control of bodies of the dead, exacerbated by the struggle between church and church as Protestants and Catholics accused each other of impiety; while underlying all this was always the thorny question, 'What do we do with the bodies of the poor?'

Download the 25 Mb mp3 audio file

Podcast: Escape to New Zealand

In the nineteenth century the Utopian dream attracted immigrants willing to turn their backs on the tragedy of their own failing culture in return for a new start.

In the twenty-first century environmental refugees seek a home somewhere on the planet where the predicted global changes can, perhaps, be weathered.

A 23 minute documentary from the archives of the BBC World Service.

Download 10.5 MB mp3 File