By Brent Sinclair, Western Communications
Read. Watch. Listen. introduces you the personal side of our faculty, staff and alumni. Participants are asked to answer three simple questions about their reading, viewing and listening habits – what one book or newspaper/magazine article is grabbing your attention; what one movie or television show has caught your eye; and what album/song, podcast or radio show are you lending an ear to.
Biology professor Brent Sinclair freezes bugs, teaches Comparative Physiology and chairs the Bio graduate programme.
Today, he takes his turn on Read. Watch. Listen.
Read.
St Kilda: A Peoples’ History by Roger Hutchinson. I had the privilege of visiting St. Kilda, a remote island archipelago off the west coast of Scotland’s Western Isles. This book draws on modern and old sources to explore the history of the island (which has been populated for thousands of years), and dispels many of the myths about the history and way of life – including the standard fare told to us on our trip – while painting a picture of a resilient community in the transition from feudal ownership to self-determination (and ultimately dissolution).
Watch.
True facts, irreverent YouTube mocu-mentaries about the habits of weird and wonderful animals. Love it!
Listen.
Intrigue: The Ratline, a BBC podcast about a senior Austrian Nazi Otto von Wächter, who escaped punishment after the Second World War. There is a fascinating juxtaposition between the narrator/journalist, whose family were murdered in Poland as a consequence of Wächter’s orders, and Wächter’s son, who seeks some measure of redemption for his father.
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If you have a suggestion for someone you would like to see in Read. Watch. Listen., or would like to participate yourself, drop a line to inside.western@uwo.ca.