Brocas Area Podcasts

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Canadian couple Dave and Isabelle share their random musings and thoughts (is that redundant?) on a variety of topics from family issues, to current events movies and technology Primary Format : Blogs Language : Unknown Also Listed as: City : Sault Ste. Marie State/Province : ON Country : Canada Region : NA User Tags: User Votes: RSS Feed Website People found this Podcast Searching for: View this Podcast on a Google Map. Podcast iTunes Link Text Only listing of Brocas Area Podcasts Methings.com listings of Brocas Area Podcasts If you like this podcast, you might also like:

Episode 114 - December 1, 2010 - We're Back, Sorta... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 111 - January 18, 2009, Countries Should Not Be Like Children 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, tha ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 110 - December 8, 2008 - Haka When the walls fell... 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) befo ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 109 - November 17, 2008 - What do Obama and Thailand have in common? 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 pragma ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 108 - October 27, 2008, Venezuela sort of 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 ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 107 - October 13, 2008, Sorry I can’t Talk About Portugal, I have to Go To Lunch... 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 cult ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 106 - September 9, 2008, Let Me Know When The Show Starts 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 mention ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 105 - August 12, 2008, Finally! 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 ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 104 - July 25, 2008, Jon is Our Achilles Heel... 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 t ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 103 - July 13, 2008, Agawa 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, d ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 102 - June 28, 2008, Holiday in Cambodia 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 regimeof 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 ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 99 - March 12, 2008 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 ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 98 - February 12, 2008 - Vive Le Podcast! 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 no ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 97, January 27, 2008 - Italy and the Cosmic Rot? 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 cont ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 96, December 30, 2007 - Paradise at Christmas 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 Ja ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 95, December 7, 2007 - My Pair o’ Guays Beat Your Guay... 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 P ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 94, November 23, 2007 - I Was Not Whistling.... 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 ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 93, October 30, 2007 - Not Too Much ABBA Not Too Little 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 so ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 92, October 14, 2007 - Walk Like a You Know the Rest 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 se ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 91, September 25, 2007 - On The Road Again 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 ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 89, August 29, 2007 - Bahrain the Future Home of Michael Jackson? So back to the warm weather, to the Mid East, to Bahrain. Bahrain is a series of islands in the Persian Gulf. It seems to be a pretty cool place as far as tolerance goes. They allow most of the stuff most mid east countries don�t. You know, like freedom of expression, women�s rights, voting and liquor, all that fun stuff. Saudi tourists show up on weekends, not surprisingly. Now it is not a paradise, as much as it looks sorta like it, there is a real problem there with people coming t ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bring Da King Promo 2 If you are a podcaster, and want to Bring Da King, then feel free to use our new Promo. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 88, August 15, 2007 - Are the Chinese Troops Occupying Tibet Using Feng Shui? China is often in the news, and why not, it is the world�s most populous country, and the host of the upcoming summer Olympics. Isabelle focussed on two aspects of China, the first being the terracotta warriors that were unearthed in China some time ago. It turned out that a German�artist� had recently dressed up as one of these statues and inserted himself into the exhibit. Is such a thing art or is it a prank? (The artists guy, not the warriors...) Let us know what you think. We t ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 87, July 27, 2007 - I Wonder If Borat Can Play Hockey? You know, the only thing most of us in the West know about Kazakhstan comes from a fictional character. It turns out that Kazakhstani culture is not really at all like that portrayed in the film Borat. Kazakhstan was the last of the former Soviet Republics to declare independence. The people are about oh half ethnic Kazakhs and half Russians. Indeed, the Russians still launch their spacecraft from Kazakhstan. The Kazakh culture is one that centers around the horse. They are a form ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bring Da King Promo Podcasters, feel free to use this promo in your shows, let's bring James to PAB 2008. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 86, July 10, 2007 - On The Road On Canada Day, July 1, Isabelle and Madeleine set off for Montreal. Maddie flew off that evening to go to Newfoundland to visit her old friend Emily. Isabelle then began her Quebec Tour. We have a series of reports from Isabelle over Skype from Quebec City and St. Flavie. We also have a report from Maddie in Corner Brook, NL Oh and Dave took the iRiver on a trip to the Corner Store. Isabelle took the opportunity to visit her Dad in St. Flavie. Denis, her father, is really ill, and ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 85, June 30, 2007 - Sleeping Beside an Elephant Well, it is right across the river from us, indeed you can see the States from Dave�s office and from our backyard. We drive through the States when we go to London, so, it was inevitable, we are going to do our biggest trading partner (and we are theirs BTW) our closest ally, and probably the country that is the most like ours, the United States of America. This was a hard one to do, maybe because it is so like Canada, maybe because Canadians are generally more or less anti American. Th ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Episode 84, June 16, 2007 - The Land of the Rising Hello Kitty The much anticipated yet somewhat delayed Japan episode. We start off with an excerpt from Scarborough Dude�s podcast. The Dude had a recent run of about five shows in Japan, and, as usual he was entertaining and insightful. We then discussed the many differences between Japanese and Canadian culture. Their game shows are incomprehensible, at least to us, except of course for Iron Chef! We love Iron Chef. Japanamation, or Anime, is something that again, is just so odd to us. Isabel ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website