Broca's Area

Episode 115 - Crocheting While Playing Bingo in Tibet

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 18:00:07 -0500

A few years ago, 2005 to be exact, Isabelle and I had a podcast called Roca's Area. We went through a couple of format changes etc but we had fun. We packed it in back in 2009. We resurrected the show for the first Canadian National Day of Podcasting (Dec 1, 2010). Well, it is December 1, 2011, so we are back. Now, I would love to get back into doing this show, but that is another matter.

We talked about the economy, war and peace, and the idea that Isabelle will either end up becoming an old woman who plays bingo or a wonk in Tibet....

Episode 114 - December 1, 2010 - We're Back, Sorta...

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 16:17:31 -0500

Episode 113 - April 28, 2009 - Mongolia is Totally Bithin Boi

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:02:42 -0400

Everybody out there welcome Maddie to the show.

Here is episode 113 we discussed Mongolia, a central Asian country Mongolia is probably best known as the home of Genghis Khan. Good times....

Mongolia has a fascinating recent history too. They were a communist client state of the Soviet Union, and they became a much more democratic country after a non violent revolution in 1990.

Mongolian is an interesting language it seems. You can see the script above, it looks like vulcan... Then again, in Mongolia itself they use cyrillic rather than the traditional alphabet. It is also one of the few places where people sometimes go only by a single name, which means Bono or Teller would be happy there..

As far as food goes, they eat a lot of meat and dairy products. It seems that their food is not that spicy or even seasoned. Then again, they have been and many still are, nomads.

Culturally Mongolai is known for a two stringed instrument whose name I forget currently, and throat singing.

It seems they are trying to start a tourism industry, which is pretty cool. We made a little fun of their website, but in all seriousness, their English is much stronger than our Mongolian...

Next time we are off to the Czech Republic.

Episode 112 - February 22, 2009 - The Roof of the World

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 12:39:24 -0500

We invited Madeleine to sit in with us in this episode as we talked about Nepal. Nepal is the birthplace of one of the many Buddhas. This got us into a discussion of the idea of enlightenment and what it might mean. Our conclusion, umm, we don’t know.

Nepal is of course the home of the tallest mountain in the world, and apparently people want to climb it and get naked, these people are idiots (clearly Dave is writing these show notes...)

We spoke a bit about the Nepalese culture, which seems to be a multicultural one. Sort of a melding of Indian and Tibetan traditions, which seems cool. One group the Newari are a multicultural ethnicity, which is odd and quite well, almost Canadian, except for their music videos...

Next time it is off to Mongolia!

Episode 111 - January 18, 2009, Countries Should Not Be Like Children

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:33:40 -0500

Where does that title come from? Well you will have to listen to this episode about Macedonia to find out.

Macedonia, to Dave, is an interesting country, whereas Isabelle finds it boring... A landlocked country, Macedonia is one of those countries that used to be part of Yugoslavia. When they gained independence they of course wanted to call themselves Macedonia. This bothered Greece. They figure Macedonia means Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great, and all of that. Hey Greece, that was like 3000 years ago, get over yourselves.

Dave is pretty sure Greece is acting rather childishly here. The discussion of the naming dispute between Macedonia and Greece led to a discussion of nationalism and people choosing to name themselves what they would like.

Next it is off to Nepal!

Episode 110 - December 8, 2008 - Haka When the walls fell...

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:29:53 -0500

Just as how last year we went to a warm spot (Tahiti) in December, this year we are off to Samoa. Don’t confuse it with American Samoa. This is the former Western Samoa, a country of about 290 000 people. Their culture has a rich history of dancing and music (some of which you will hear during the episode).

We talked a bit about the importance of sport in Samoa, where rugby is king. It is interesting that Samoa (along with New Zealand and Fiji) do a war dance of sorts (the Haka) before rugby matches. There are few things cooler, or more intimidating, than seeing a bunch of huge rugby players dancing in unison.

Samoa has a special relationship with New Zealand, but the past, when NZ ran Samoa, is a bit checkered. Well such is often the way with colonialism, even when the intentions were good. Today people often go to New Zealand from Samoa for school or work and send money home.

Their political system is at first blush, a parliamentary democracy like we are used to, except when you look more closely at it you realize that pretty much only village chiefs become MPs.

Next time it is off to Macedonia. See you there!

Episode 109 - November 17, 2008 - What do Obama and Thailand have in common?

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:51:32 -0500

Well of course the answer is, both are the subject of our podcast, indeed, both are the subject of episode 109 of our podcast.

We started out by talking about Barack Obama, the American President-Elect. We, like most Canadians, are very excited about the prospect of our neighbours to the south having a smart, funny and hopeful president, rather than someone that says ‘Nookyoulerr”. We are not unrealistic about what he can do, but we are hopeful that he will do some good, he is pragmatic, not ideological, and that is important.

We then spoke of Thailand. Of course it was known as Siam for a long time, and it was a country that for a time fought off British and French colonialism by playing the Brits and the French off against each other. This strategy worked until WWII when they threw their hat into the ring with the bad guys.

More recently Thailand has had some troubles because their ex PM hosts a cooking show. Seriously.... Anything that mocks the government and the king is taboo, and hosting a cooking show was apparently fit the bill.

Next time it is off to Samoa!

Episode 108 - October 27, 2008, Venezuela sort of

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:03:11 -0400

In our latest trip around the globe we stopped in Venezuela. Like many South American countries it has been the victim of bad government, too much US influence and frankly it shows. Venezuela is an interesting case because their government, run by one Hugo Chavez is (at least in name) trying to fight this stuff. Doubly interesting is the amount of oil they have.

Neither of us are big Chavez fans,(attempting to jail your opposition and shutting down tv stations and newspapers is not that cool) though I guess we see where he is coming from.

Venezuela depends a lot on selling oil. Now the price of oil has dropped a great deal just in the past two weeks, so we figure the global economic crisis will affect Venezuela too. We then got into a discussion of the current economic crisis, be concerned...

Next it is off to Thailand!

Oh, BTW, GO OBAMA!

Episode 107 - October 13, 2008, Sorry I can’t Talk About Portugal, I have to Go To Lunch...

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:46:06 -0400

That clever (?) title comes from the fact that when Isabelle was learning about Portugal from people on Skype they would invariably leave for lunch, and all at the same time. It seems Portugal is a great food culture. Indeed, they have given their name to a type of wine (Port) and they were some of the first Europeans to come to the New World when they travelled to the shores of Newfoundland to look for cod. Of course dried cod is very important in their diet and therefore to their culture.

We talked a little about the history of Portugal, it seems like it has gotten forgotten on the Iberian peninsula what with Spain sitting right beside it, sort of like a Canada - USA relationship maybe.

Portugal’s history is pretty rich too. The Moors, the Brits, the Spaniards, Napoleon and a bunch of fascists all had their hands on the country in the past 1500 years. The cool thing was the military overthrew the fascists back in the 70s and now Portugal is a good ol liberal democracy.

(I apologize for not getting this one up sooner, we hope to get more eps out in a more timely fashion in the future, this is all my fault as I am a weenie, obviously this is Dave typing here).

Portugal is unranked by the IIHF.

Next time it is off to Venezuela, that should be fun, what with Hugo and all.

Episode 106 - September 9, 2008, Let Me Know When The Show Starts

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:25:05 -0400

Welcome to the chaos of Episode 106 (which we kept calling episode 107 for some reason). We had the house full with Madeleine’s friends and we also had one of our most faithful listeners the AmHam, join us over skype. The AmHam visit was not planned, Dave just twittered that we were about to record and the AmHam showed up.

We did talk Turkey a little, of course we mentioned Mahir (pictured above) the famous I Kiss You guy, who was probably the first big time net meme. Isabelle mentioned seeing Paris Hilton of all people judging a beauty contest in Turkey. AmHam even mentioned a friend of his from Turkey. Finally we talked a little bit of James Whittingham, our buddy. Well next time it is off to Portugal.

You are forgiven if you cannot make it through “The Longest Episode Ever That We Never Really Started”.

Episode 105 - August 12, 2008, Finally!

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:59:03 -0400

As most of our listeners know, Isabelle travelled to Algeria in 2005, indeed, she travelled there by herself, to meet a family she met on the internet. Now that is courage, at least I think so (this is obviously Dave typing).

This episode is one I have been looking forward to for a long time, while I may kid Isabelle about her love of Algeria, I do love talking about something with an expert, and she is that.

We spoke of the differences between Algeria and Canada, and Algeria and Morocco. One of the surprising (to me) differences was the food. Listen to find out more about that. Both cultures do like to eat communally and frown upon separate plates. Suffice it to say, the sour milk in Algeria is not as good as the sour milk in Morocco...

Like much of the Arab world, they have a sort of love hate relationship with the West. They equated Canadians with Americans, and Americans with the present administration. That said, I think many of us do the latter....

Algeria suffered a rather nasty civil war in the early to mid 90s and there is an active Al Qaeda group there that recently attacked a police station.

They have their economic and social problems, but Isabelle still loves them, and really, who can blame her? A country that welcomes you with open arms, and allows you to stay in private homes is pretty cool.

Algeria is unranked by the IIHF...

Next, it is off to Turkey!

Hope the sound is better..

Episode 104 - July 25, 2008, Jon is Our Achilles Heel...

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 10:47:53 -0400

Good day, and welcome to our regularly scheduled podcst about Greece.

This one was like the Italy one really, were to begin, where to stop. Well we began of course with the ancients, and Isabelle began by talking about Greek tragedy. Well those Greeks were certainly tragic, I mean really tragic. People say TV is sensationalist, check out some old plays if you want real sensationalism, then Jon woke up....

Isabelle talked some about Herodotus, a Greek historian, generally regarded as the father of modern history, well the study of it anyway, the Jon woke up. Then we talked about the importance of Greek philosophy, then Jon woke up....

Eventually Dave talked a bit about the conflict between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus, and a bit about Greek food. Then Maddie called on the phone...

In the end we had to pull the plug, though we did enjoy this one a lot.

I hope the volume levels are a bit better this time. Thanks to Rachel and AmHam for twittering us throughout the recording.

Greece is ranked 46th by the International Ice Hockey Federation. Then Jon woke up...

Next time it is off to Algeria! Then Jon woke up.

Episode 102 - June 28, 2008, Holiday in Cambodia

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:08:45 -0400

Well we are back after an eventful few weeks, but more on that later. Today we were off to Cambodia, the land of the Khmer people (and a few Vietnamese, a few Chinese and a few ‘others’ as they say.

One cannot talk about Cambodia without talking about the murderous, genocidal regime of Pol Pot. Dave read a book back in high school called ‘Sideshow’ by New York Times writer William Shawcross. This book talked about the reasons behind the rise of the Khmer Rouge, and gives a theory as to why they came to power. If you want to know the theory you could always buy the book, or listen. ...

As usual, Isabelle was interested in more happy stuff. She has a knack for that. To quote her, “while I was playing in the fields of Cap-Rouge and being a free and happy child, horrors were taking place on the other side of the planet. I don't know why anyone needs to believe that there is a devil, a fallen angel, a Lucifer when ordinary people are quite capable of imagining worst fates for others than ever one imaginary Diablo, or Shiva, could do...I decided to celebrate the beauty of Cambodia and to call it a celebration of life because now life has returned.” She talked about Cambodian dancing, which is a descendant of Indian dancing it seems.

We saw happy people on youtube making cheesy videos, so really maybe they are getting back to normal and not that different from us.

After a little break we talked a bit about Podcasters Across Borders 2008 (PAB2008) a conference that Dave attneded and gave a presentation at. Dave had a pretty good time seeing old friends etc.

Finally we talked about Dave’s Dad who died on June 2, 2008. Dave learned a lot from RB, and he was always there for us. We miss him, but, he will never be forgotten. RB would be interested to know that Cambodia is unranked by the International Ice Hockey Federation...

Next time, it is off to Greece!

Episode 103 - July 13, 2008, Agawa

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:18:34 -0400

No this one is not about Greece. We just came back from a little camping trip to Agawa Bay in Lake Superior Provincial Park. Oh, we also bought a new Zoom H2 recorder, so well, as the geeks we are, or, well, as the geek Dave is, it was brought along. Around 11 pm one night we broke out the recorder and did a little podcasting.

We talked about a few interesting things, well we thought they were interesting, like a recent clip from the Transpondency podcast, that well sort of umm, well, demanded a comment.

Lake Superior Park is really amazing, though even at the camping areas there are bears around, and there is real nature. This is not KOA camping baby. The campground itself was super nice, and it seemed like it was only people that wanted to have fun just hanging out in the wild. Our site was surrounded by pine trees

We all (Maddie joined in with us on this one) talked about our camping memories, including Isabelle being left at a gas stattion when she was a kid. Oh, and Dave has a cool hat.

We’ll be back next time with Greece, unless we go camping again before we record the Greece episode...

Episode 101 - May 24, 2008, She's Baaack

Sat, 24 May 2008 08:36:28 -0400

Well Isabelle is back from Morocco, with photos and stories and memories and sand in her clothing. This episode consists of two parts. In part one, Isabelle called Dave on Skype and Dr. smart guy forgot to record her audio, so they had to start over, and oh yeah, her audio was not working, so she was responding to typed questions from Dave. Nonetheless, it was pretty cool. After a little Moroccan music you will hear standard Dave and Isabelle stuff, except that Isabelle has been to this country!

We talked about Isabelle’s trip to the desert (see above...) her time in the country, and the stuff she liked (which was most of it) and the stuff she didn’t (which involved putting boiling hot eggs on someone’s neck, you will have to listen to get the whole story there...)

I think (this is Dave typing here) that Isabelle is pretty brave to travel to a country all by herself, just thought I would throw that in. It is also cool to hear someone you know say “I flew in to Casablanca and then connected to Marrakech.”

Next time it is time for a holiday in Cambodia!

Enjoy.

Episode 100 - April 14, 2008, Ein Hundert!

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:50:27 -0400

Well, we usually take you somewhere, anywhere, that will be fun for you and interesting for us. Instead of a country this time we are visiting Second Life. Yes, SL, the place where people dress up their avatars in virtual spandex and fly from place to place looking for well, we are not sure what.

Dave has played with Second Life as he interviewed Cory Ondrehka of Linden Lab on thunderbird six. The Future Play conference always has a presence from Linden as well, so Dave has met people from Linden.

Of the two of us, Dave is the gamer, and Dave does not really think much of SL. Indeed, he cannot even figure out why anyone would want to play with it. That said, SL has some real world applications, such as education, and on another t6 interview John Nordlinger of Microsoft talked about how SL can be used with autistic kids, which is pretty close to both of our hearts.

There is a dark side to this though. That dark side is that people seem to sometimes fall into SL way too hard and end up meeting people and having affairs with them, as this video shows.

This lead us into a discussion of marriage, Dave is actually rather traditional in his views on this topic, Isabelle, not as much.

We want to thank all of our listeners over the years, Mark, Bob, James, Mark, Andy, Meg, Rob, Rachel, Katherine, the Dude, Matt, Andre, and of course AmHam, who sent us an audio comment.

Next time it is off to Morocco! Literally, Isabelle is going to Morocco! We hope to skype from there and do an episode. Dave, alas, will be at home.

Episode 99 - March 12, 2008

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:53:05 -0400

We have the greatest pleasure to introduce our friend Andy who joined David and I to discuss the art of Taekwondo. The Taekwondo tenets of courtesy, integrity, self-control, perseverance and indomitable spirit could possibly be all that one needs in order to live a balanced life. But doesn’t all sports teach you these same attributes? Maybe so, maybe no...Do you agree or disagree? Then, we talked about the Korean war, technology and sports. Hey, remember that guy who died after playing Starcraft for 2 days straight? Thanks Andy for coming and thanks to everyone who commented on our French episode. Our next episode will be our 100th and for that episode, we have planned something very much unexpected. Stay tuned for number 100. Coming soon to earphones near you. And while you wait, check out these few youtube finds on South Korea...and this one too on tae kwon do... We await your comments ^^...

Episode 98 - February 12, 2008 - Vive Le Podcast!

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:05:22 -0500

Meet the revolutionaries, the leftists, the rightists and the absolutists. David and I discuss past and present French politics, including the new contrat social proposed by Nicolas Sarkozy which Quebec’s Jean-Claude Corbeil wishes to emulate with a contrat moral. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau proposed the original one.) We argue over civil liberties and accomodement raisonnable and la Charte des droits et libertes. We realise that while France and England are now far away countries which do not have much influence in our everyday affairs, we still hold some attachment with these countries. And finally Isabelle ends with a rant about things that bug her about people’s reactions to her French identity. Laissez-nous vos commentaires...Merci...Next, South Korea!

Episode 97, January 27, 2008 - Italy and the Cosmic Rot?

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 21:49:52 -0500

From Rome to Naples and from Classical times to the “Cosmic Rot,” Italy has always been a shaper and driver of the Western World. Our discussion led us to fascism, the Vatican, the Garbage strike in Naples, a philosophical-like debate over “civilizations,” the ability of the Italian people to adapt, and a short discussion about the designs of Daniele Lago. All that from our home, complete with our son Jonathan’s very talkative state and Leap Pad. This discussion will no sure continue onto our next podcast: FRANCE... Finalement!

Episode 96, December 30, 2007 - Paradise at Christmas

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 16:28:44 -0500

This time we are off to Tahiti, an island, well the most important island probably, in French Polynesia.

French Polynesia is a self governing territory of France. Indeed, there is talk of a referendum to allow independence from France. This will probably eventually happen. Historically the islands were annexed to France without France even knowing about it, which says something about global communications in the early 1800s. We have a (somewhat distant) connection to Tahiti, as Capt James Cook explored the island, and he also explored the region where Corner Brook NL is today. We lived in CB, so there you are...

We talked quite a bit about Paul Gauguin, who famously moved to Tahiti. We were looking forward to discussing his work in Tahiti, then, well, we saw the book (his journals) that Isabelle ordered. He married a 13 year old child while there, then if that was not bad enough, he turned around and left her. This lead us to a discussion of moral relativism, and well, a discussion of how disgusting we thought Guaguin was as a human. What do you think?

We recorded this one just after Christmas, so we would like to pass on holiday (whatever holiday you celebrate) greetings to all of our listeners.

Don’t forget to visit Bring Da King to bring James Whittingham to PAB 2008.

Next time it is off to Italy!

Episode 95, December 7, 2007 - My Pair o’ Guays Beat Your Guay...

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 06:15:43 -0500

We tried a little experiment in our recent Praguay recording session, we just set the mics up and recorded live, with special guest star Madeleine (and a little Jon for good measure).

Paraguay has a somewhat tragic history, the Chaco War, the War of the Triple Alliance, the brutal military dictatorship of General Stroessner and the general unstable (though improving) situation. today. Stroessner, BTW, was a bad guy. He gave safe haven to Nazi War criminals, and led a long dark time in Paraguay’s history. That said, the country has probably the highest number of Indigenous people (as compared to Europeans) of any country in the Americas.

As this is a recently democratic country there are issues, the press is not overly free, this is bound to get better, you have to remember that democracy is a relatively new phenomenon in modern South America.

Oddly enough, (at least to us) there is a decent sized Mennonite community in Paraguay. There is a small Jewish community, but really for the most part Paraguay is a Catholic country.

Paraguay is unranked by the IIHF. Next time, it is off to Tahiti!

Episode 94, November 23, 2007 - I Was Not Whistling....

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 16:59:11 -0500

Another in our fine series of road episodes.. In this one, Dave had just returned from Toronto. While he was there he went to the Futureplay conference (where he was the official blogger) and attended the Toronto Podcast Meetup.

The conference was pretty cool, and there were people there from all over the world, including a video game design team from Sweden that made a game for the DS where you serve drinks to bar patrons (seems they know Dave well....) This was probably the first year where someone mentioned that there might be a darker side to games. That said, the conference focussed on the positive.

The podcaster meetup included Sage, Katherine, Scarborough Dude, Jay Moonah from Uncle Seth, John Meadows and Mark Blevis (among others). The meetup was a blast, and a great time was had by Dave and the crazy left wing nuts in the Canadian podcasting community....

Next tim eit is off to Paraguay, honestly. Oh, Canada is still ranked number 2 by the IIHF, but we do have the Hockey Hall of Fame which Dave walked by each time he went from his hotel to the conference, so really, we are better than Sweden...

Episode 93, October 30, 2007 - Not Too Much ABBA Not Too Little

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:34:57 -0400

Ahh Sweden, home of social democracy, a King that is modest, meatballs and ABBA.

Yes, we could not help talk about ABBA. Now, really ABBA were and is huge. Dave is not a fan, Dave likes the Hives. Isabelle, well she likes ABBA, and that is fine, if you like that sort of thing.

They have, in Sweden, a couple of interesting philosophies. One is basically “shut up and don’t bother anybody” (jantelagen) and the other is ‘you don’t need to overdo it” (Lagom). The second one sounds better to us than the first, but hell, we are not Swedes....

Sweden is very liberal with social policy, and the sort of classic example of a mixed economy. In many ways it is quite Canadian. They are usually pretty quiet but seem to do the right thing (see Raoul Wallenberg for example).

Well next it is off to Paraguay (sorry Scarborough Dude...).

Sweden, sadly, is ranked one ahead of Canada by the IIHF, at number 1. That is until the upcoming world championships this spring in Halifax and Quebec CIty...

Episode 92, October 14, 2007 - Walk Like a You Know the Rest

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:59:41 -0400

Ahh Egypt, a mysterious land, the Nile, the Pyramids, the Sphinx, Pharaohs and of course Belly Dancing and really lame actors.

Egypt is one of those Muslim countries in the Mid East that may give us in the West a little hope, as they no longer officially want to destroy Israel and they are relatively prosperous.

Of course the biggest export culturally from Egypt, besides the King Tut exhibit, is probably Belly Dancing. Now some of these people are really good at it, others have a more sensual style, and still others are really horrible...

As with most TV and movies from non Western countries Egyptian TV seems to have a style all of its own, a style that is downright horrible... This clip of the actor Adel Emam is the one we talked about, check out how the guy kicks the girl in the butt. Unreal. Plus, what fine acting.

Egypt is unranked by the IIHF.

Next time it is off to Sweden, who are ranked by the IIHF.

Episode 91, September 25, 2007 - On The Road Again

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 19:23:16 -0400

I was a traveller again these past few days. Iza la voyageuse ! This episode is a phone conversation between Dave and myself describing my stay in “Ottawa-The-Respectable” to meet Mark Blevis and Andrea Ross of the Just One More Book podcast (- and many, many other podcasts) at the Wild Oat Cafe. I felt like royalty spending time with Lord Blevis and Lady Andrea and their two beautiful and talented daughters. Their 6 yr old and 9 year old both speak French and English and each play the violin and the flute. Plus, they are incredibly smart and vivacious. This show is about my two days in Ottawa. The days were filled with various spheres in my life intercepting one another: history, art, podcasting, food, books, family, friends, life with a big L.

Mark and Andrea made me feel part of the family by including me in their lives. I read stories with the girls and helped with French homework. What a delight it was to get to be a part of the everyday organized chaos that represents family life. I also enjoyed the company of Mark and Bob as I was a guest on the Canadian Podcast Buffet and I discussed podcasting at the Ottawa Meetup at the Arrow and Loon bistro with a bunch of rowdy people. Some of the podcasters, I had already seen at the Podcasters Across Borders Conference but for the most part, I did not know anybody. (You have to hear this guys’ story about the band Kiss... I still have cramps from laughing so much. What was that guys’ name? Was it Andy?)

I apologize for all the mistakes I made with names in this episode: I am making sins of inexactitude. You will forgive me, as I was on my way to my Dad’s funeral and my head was in another dimension. Thanks again Mark and Andrea! Merci de tout mon coeur. Et bonjour aux deux petites etoiles qui vous accompagnent.