Two items of interest from Ralph Luker

Ralph Luker passed on two links to me last week that I've been meaning to blog about.

The first is Talking History, "a thirty-minute weekly radio program produced by the Organization of American Historians that separates fact from fiction and myth from reality through interviews with nationally recognized historians and writers." There's a great archive of previous programs. I'm still a bit depressed about the lack of history programming in the U.S. relative to Britain, but every little bit helps. This is a great opportunity for a comparative study, if anyone's up to the task. Or has someone already looked at this?

Second, "Dan Brown" had this to say over at the National Review. As far as I can tell, it's a parody of Brown's books by Alexander Rose. It only really makes sense if you've read Dan Brown (and The Da Vinci Code in particular), but it's pretty funny. Rose nails at least six examples of Brownian absurdity in this bit:

But who was the femme fatale (fatal woman) accompanying him? She looked familiar, like a beautiful Jacques Saunière, world renowned curator of the Louvre (the Louvre), the world renowned art museum in Paris. "Ah, 'alo, 'alo, monsieur (Mister), my name is Sophie Neveu," she said in flawless English, "I studied at the Royal Holloway." There is a sadness about her, as if she were about to find out her grandfather had been shot by a psychotic albino assassin working for Opus Dei — hey, it happens — but on the outside she smiles enigmatically, like Amon L'Isa.

Yeah, it's that bad.