The story of American history, the “American Yawp,” begins with this chapter, Indigenous America, spanning 10,000 years of history. There is nothing quite like it in history, as you will hear when you listen to it.
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NEW! My Interview with Laura Malvoyante, a YouTube Leader in the Digital Minimalism Movement
What a pleasure it was for me to interview Laura Malvoyante about her insights into society’s growing need for digital minimalism in the face of the addictiveness of tech. Technology is a voracious feeder on the limited and priceless commodity of time in our lives. At the same time, sometimes the antidote to this invasion is technology itself, in the form of devices that can force upon ourselves, in their build capacity and form factors, a more limited and rational relationship to the digital plenitude. Laura’s matchless intelligence on this topic, and her own personal journey through digital addiction and the nexus between disability and device, make this one of the most important and timely episodes presented on Audibly Speaking.
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NEW! A Sherlock Holmes Christmas Story: “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”
Move over Charles Dickens! Stand aside, Scrooge! For a nineteenth century English Christmas tale without parallel, you cannot do better than Sherlock Holmes’s conveying of the Christmas message in his discover and commutation of a felony, all to save a soul in the season of forgiveness of this time of year. My narration of this tale is my Christmas present to all of my listeners. And now, happy listening ion the frosty air of crackling fires, ice crystals, and Sherlock Holmes himself.
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NEW! Oh, Those Medicare Advantage TV Commercials (from One Not a Fan of Medicare Advantage)!
This opinion piece on Medicare Advantage concerns the “hard-sell” that private insurance companies make this time of year on behalf of “Medicare Advantage,” the private insurance alternative to Original Medicare. I record this podcast episode to warn seniors to do their homework, and ask the question, why are insurance companies so anxious to sell their Medicare Advantage plans and not the Supplement plans that offer the insurance companies so little of a profit margin? Hmm…maybe the question answers itself. TV commercials give only one side of the story, the private insurance companies’ side. They don’t lie, but they leave out much that seniors need to know before making what could be a very bad choice.
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NEW! Stupid, Idiotic Ideas about Medicare: Facebook Complaints About Medicare and their Ignorance
In our post-truth world, ignorance about Medicare has reached avalanche proportions. The greatest and most secure health care system in the world is now suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in the form of babbling malcontents whose ignorance of Medicare is only matched by their outrage at it. Just go to Facebook or some other social media cesspool and you will see a lot of such heat, but precious little light. Medicare complainers, please heal yourselves and do a little, or preferably a lot, of research. Please!
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NEW! 2024 Repeats the 1963 Calendar: JFK, Oswald and Veterans Day Weekend, From Sunday, November 10 to Tuesday, November 12
Today, Sunday, November 10, 2023, I reflect on the events of Veterans Day Weekend 1963, when JFK and Oswald lived out their last Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, November 10-12, 1963. We review what we know of those fateful days. Next, I talk about the events of Wednesday, November 13 through Friday, November 22, 1963, to be published here on Audibly Speaking before Friday, November 22, 2024.
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NEW! About the Part D Madness in Medicare this Annual Election Period for 2025
In this final episode about my opinions and experience with learning Medicare for retirement, I spread the word that many people are talking about: Medicare Advantage plans and Part D Prescription Drug plans are undergoing big changes, premium hikes and in some cases disappearing acts during this Annual Election Period between October 15 and December 7. If you are on Medicare Advantage OR a Part D prescription drug plan (you can’t be on both) you need to research Medicare.gov to see if you have a plan that will continue to have the same benefits and premiums as in 2024. In most cases, benefits are going down, premiums are going up and some plans are actually shutting down. Watch the Youtube videos by Mathew Claassen on Medicare for expert and accurate advice to follow. This episode is only my opinion and personal experience. It may not be yours.
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Medicare Musings, Part Three: Myths about Medicare Advantage and Part B
In this third part of my series on what I have learned, or thought I have learned, about Medicare I talk about some myths I have discovered about Medicare Advantage and Part B. While Medicare Advantage may be the right choice for some people, I cringe when I watch the commercials during this Annual Election Period and see the slick pitch that insurance companies make to see the cash cow (for them) of MA. Here are the realities that I see from behind just some of the myths about both Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part B.
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NEW! My Experience Learning about Medicare’s Part D Prescription Drug Coverage
What in the world is Part D? My personal experience learning what I appreciated to find out about Medicare Part D coverage is the subject of this this brief podcast episode. Disclaimer: These are my opinions and what my impressions were. This is no substitute or necessarily as accurate as your doing your own research on Medicare. It is just an opinion piece on my reflections of my own experience.
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NEW! My Experience Learning About Medicare
Medicare is confusing– what an understatement. Two years out from retirement I decided to try to understand it, suspecting that it might take me that long. I was not wrong! Now that I am retired and am now on Medicare, I tell this slightly autobiographical tale of what I think I have learned about Medicare in hope that it will either be interesting to or helpful for others, whichever the case may be.
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NEW! The JFK “Single Bullet Theory” Explained in Under Three Minutes
Listen to this audio version of my Youtube video explaining the “Single Bullet Theory” of the JFK assassination, and WHY IT IS TRUE. Many conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination discredit themselves by disputing this thrice-confirmed theory first revealed by the Warren Commission in 1964.
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NEW! Rick Reiman Narrates Chapter 6, “The New Nation,” from “The American Yawp,” a Free OER American History Textbook
In many ways, I regard this as my best recording of a chapter from “The American Yawp” yet. I have deleted nothing from the text edited by its editors, Joseph Locke and Ben Wright. I have added passages of my own where I think additions were needed to clarify what the original authors were trying to say. I have also added passages that connect the era of “The New Nation” with the trials and tensions America is experiencing today. For example I connect the majesty of America’s example in displaying the peaceful transition of power in the “revolution of 1800” which saw the Democratic-Republican Party receive power in 1800 from the Federalist Party without violence, and the more than 200 years of like examples to follow, with the disgrace of January 6, 2021, when President Donald Trump despoiled this legacy and broke that legacy so important not only to the United States but the whole world. These allusions between past and present are mine, and they are also true.
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NEW! Rick Reiman Narrates the Sherlock Holmes Short Story, “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire”
Late in his authorial career, in the 1920s to be precise, Arthur Conan Doyle, who was then deeply immersed in beliefs of mysticism and seances, had occasion to pair his rational detective, Sherlock Holmes, with a case about vampires. Did Doyle change the hyper-rational Holmes to suit the author’s new beliefs? Listen and find out!
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NEW! Rick Reiman Narrates Chapter 13, “The Sectional Crisis,” from the Open Source History Textbook, “The American Yawp”
In the course that covers the first half of American History, the chapter on the Sectional Crisis of the Union, also sometimes called “The Impending Crisis,” leading to the American Civil War, is the penultimate such chapter. Next to the magisterial, Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the crisis written by the great historian David Potter, that one audio narrated by Eric Martin, this chapter from the Open Educational Source textbook, “The American Yawp,” narrated by me, Dr. Rick Reiman, surveys the crisis well in capturing succinctly its fateful highlights. Listen, learn and enjoy. An historian myself I have added a few sentences of my own to improve, I firmly believe, on the chapter’s effort to make the Sectional Crisis more understandable.
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The Ultimate Chapter in “The American Yawp:” “The Civil War,” Narrated by Rick Reiman
No ordeal in American history changed America so much or so enduringly as the American Civil War. Listen as well as read of the odyssey and what it was all about, or just listen with this audio offering.
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One of the Great Essays in American History: Crevecoeur’s “What, Then, is this New Man, the American?
Hector St. John de Crevecouer, a French immigrant to American wrote this classic essay, “What, Then, is this New Man, the American?” in 1782, as American Independence from Britain loomed. Was he correct in his descriptions of Americans then? Do his descriptions accurately describe Americans today? How was he wrong then, if he was, and how do his descriptions fail to characterize Americans today, if indeed they do?
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NEW! My Narration of Chapter 3, “British North America,” from the Open Source Textbook, “The American Yawp”
Join me, Dr. Rick Reiman, for my reading of the chapter on British North America, Chapter 3 to be precise, from The American Yawp, the celebrated Open Source textbook on the history of the United States and the lands that would become the American Nation.
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Audio Narration of Chapter Two, “Colliding Cultures,” From “The American Yawp,” Narrated by Dr. Rick Reiman
Here is my audio narration of “Colliding Cultures,” a history of European and English colonization of early colonial America, a clash of cultures indeed. This is from the Open Source textbook, “The American Yawp,” free to anyone interested, as we all should be, in American history.
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NEW! “Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of The Naval Treaty:” An Audio Narration by Rick Reiman
In this epic short story, Arthur Conan Doyle exceeds himself. “The Naval Treaty” is the longest of all of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes short stories. It contains allusions to his other stories and many humorous asides as well as quite larger-than-life characters, some almost Dickensian in their strangeness. Holmes has to sift his clues and there are almost too many for him to select the relevant from the superfluous. “Almost,” but not too many–not for Sherlock Holmes.
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NEW! An Audio Narration of “World War II,” Chapter 24 from the Free Cultural Resource, “The American Yawp” Textbook
World War II was a change agent in history like no other. It can best be understood in pieces, barely grasped as a whole. In this audio narration of Chapter 24 of The American Yawp, a U.S. History Textbook available as a free, modifiable educational resource, I narrate the American history piece. The chapter sets it within the context of all other pieces. I am that rare narrator who is also an historian. I have taken the opportunity to make a few important corrections to the text, where I have perceived errors, and have added to it where I see important omissions. I, too, offer the text free to my listeners, in the spirit of educating my fellow citizens and improving their lives. If you enjoy this recording, please let me know by emailing me a sentence or two to this effect at rreiman33@gmail.com. I can track clicks and downloads but this is my only way of determining if anyone is actually listening. Happy listening to all.
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