Get to Know Socrates, Camus, Kierkegaard & Other Great Philosophers with the BBC’s Intelligent Radio Show, In Our Time

in Philosophy, Podcasts, Radio | November 19th, 2015

When writer, politi­cian, and BBC radio and tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty Melvyn Bragg began his long-run­ning radio pro­gram In Our Time, which brings aca­d­e­mics togeth­er to dis­cuss phi­los­o­phy, his­to­ry, sci­ence, reli­gion, and cul­ture, he didn’t think the show would last very long: “Six months,” he told The Scots­man in 2009, “but I’ll have a go.” Now, sev­en­teen years after the show began in 1998, In Our Time is going strong, with mil­lions of lis­ten­ers from around the world who tune in on the radio, or down­load the In Our Time pod­cast. Though it’s easy to despair when faced with the onslaught of mass media devot­ed to triv­i­al­i­ty and sen­sa­tion­al­ism, Bragg has shown there’s still a siz­able audi­ence that cares about thought­ful engage­ment with mat­ters of import, and in par­tic­u­lar that cares about phi­los­o­phy.

Though the sub­ject takes a beat­ing these days, espe­cial­ly in unfa­vor­able com­par­isons to the hard sci­ences, the con­cerns artic­u­lat­ed by philoso­phers over the cen­turies still inform our views of ethics, lan­guage, pol­i­tics, and human exis­tence writ large. In Our Time’s phi­los­o­phy pro­grams fol­low the same for­mat as the show’s oth­er top­ics—in Bragg’s words, he gets “three absolute­ly top-class aca­d­e­mics to dis­cuss one sub­ject and explore as deeply as time allow[s].” In this case, the “sub­ject,” is often a prop­er name, like Simone Weil, David Hume, Albert Camus, Simone de Beau­voir or Socrates.

The show just as often tack­les philo­soph­i­cal move­ments like Skep­ti­cism, Neo­pla­ton­ism, or The Frank­furt School, that aren’t asso­ci­at­ed with only one thinker; like­wise, Bragg and his guests have devot­ed their dis­cus­sions to long­stand­ing philo­soph­i­cal prob­lems, like the exis­tence of Free Will, and his­tor­i­cal devel­op­ments, like the Con­ti­nen­tal-Ana­lyt­ic Split in West­ern phi­los­o­phy.

Though there is cer­tain­ly no short­age of high qual­i­ty resources for peo­ple who wish to learn more about philosophy—such as the many free cours­es, pod­casts, and lec­tures we’ve fea­tured on this site—few are as imme­di­ate­ly acces­si­ble as In Our Time’s phi­los­o­phy dis­cus­sions. Bragg describes his prepa­ra­tion for each show as “swotting”—or cram­ming. He’s not an expert, but he’s knowl­edge­able enough to ask per­ti­nent ques­tions of his guests, who then go on to edu­cate him, and the lis­ten­ers, for the almost hour-long con­ver­sa­tion. Hear how well the approach works in the In Our Time phi­los­o­phy pro­grams fea­tured here. At the top, Bragg dis­cuss­es the phi­los­o­phy and activism of Bertrand Rus­sell with aca­d­e­m­ic philoso­phers A.C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, and Hilary Greaves. Below that, he talks Kierkegaard with Jonathan Ree, Clare Carlisle, and John Lip­pitt. Just above, hear Bragg dis­cuss Jean-Paul Sartre with Jonathan Rée, Bene­dict O’Dono­hoe, and Christi­na How­ells. Final­ly, below, hear his con­ver­sa­tion on Karl Marx with Antho­ny Grayling, Fran­cis Wheen, and Sted­man Jones.

These four exam­ples are but a small sam­pling of the many com­pelling In Our Time phi­los­o­phy dis­cus­sions. Explore, stream, and down­load dozens more at the BBC Radio 4 site or hear them on Youtube and iTunes here. And if any these con­ver­sa­tions whet your appetite for more, then head over to our expan­sive archive of Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, and Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 197 Pod­casts (With More to Come)

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps Pod­cast, Now at 239 Episodes, Expands into East­ern Phi­los­o­phy

Phi­los­o­phize This!: The Pop­u­lar, Enter­tain­ing Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast from an Uncon­ven­tion­al Teacher

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps Podcast, Now at 370 Episodes, Expands into Eastern Philosophy

in Philosophy, Podcasts | September 25th, 2015

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Per­haps you’ve heard of a phe­nom­e­non called “pod­fade,” where­in a pod­cast — par­tic­u­lar­ly an ambi­tious pod­cast — begins by putting out episodes reg­u­lar­ly, then miss­es one or two, then lets more and more time elapse between each episode, one day ceas­ing to update entire­ly. It pleas­es us to report that The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps, the pod­cast offer­ing just that, on whose progress we’ve kept you post­ed over the past three years, not only shows no signs of pod­fade, but has even broad­ened its man­date to include a greater vari­ety of philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tions than before.

For those who haven’t heard the show, The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps comes from Peter Adam­son, phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Lud­wig Max­i­m­il­ians Uni­ver­si­ty Munich and King’s Col­lege Lon­don, and “looks at the ideas, lives and his­tor­i­cal con­text of the major philoso­phers as well as the less­er-known fig­ures of the tra­di­tion.”

The main show has put out 379 episodes so far, begin­ning with the pre-Socrat­ics (specif­i­cal­ly Thales) and most recent­ly exam­in­ing Fran­cis­can pover­ty, and now a new branch has grown, start­ing from Adam­son and col­lab­o­ra­tor Jonar­don Ganer­i’s intro­duc­tion to Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy. (Hear the first episode of the Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy series below.)

Episodes of this new series on the Indi­an tra­di­tion, Adam­son writes, “will appear in alter­nat­ing weeks with episodes on Euro­pean phi­los­o­phy.” He also men­tions a “fur­ther ambi­tion to cov­er the oth­er philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tions of Asia (espe­cial­ly Chi­nese) and also African phi­los­o­phy and the phi­los­o­phy of the African dias­po­ra, but of course India will take a while so you’ll have to be patient if you are wait­ing for me to get to that!”

You can sub­scribe to The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps’ Indi­an phi­los­o­phy series on its very own pod­cast RSS feed, or on iTunes here. Philo­soph­i­cal­ly-mind­ed binge-lis­ten­ers beware; you could lose a lot of time to these two shows. “I’ve been doing my laun­dry to it for months and I’m only up to Mai­monides,” says one com­menter on a Metafil­ter thread about the new series. “I am total­ly not ready for this Patañ­jali.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

200+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

A His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 81 Video Lec­tures: A Free Course That Explores Phi­los­o­phy from Ancient Greece to Mod­ern Times

Death: A Free Phi­los­o­phy Course from Yale

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Notebook on Cities and Culture’s Yearlong Podcast Exploration of Seattle Is Kickstarting Now

in Podcasts, Travel | April 8th, 2015

 

Just about as long as I’ve writ­ten here at Open Cul­ture, I’ve also host­ed and pro­duced Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture, a world-trav­el­ing pod­cast ded­i­cat­ed to in-depth con­ver­sa­tions with inter­est­ing peo­ple about the work they do and the world cities they do it in. Over five sea­sons so far, I’ve record­ed each and every inter­view “on loca­tion,” from Los Ange­les to Kyoto to Lon­don to Port­land to Mex­i­co City to Copen­hagen to Van­cou­ver to Seoul. Next comes the show’s sixth and most in-depth sea­son yet: A Year in Seat­tle.

Think of that name, and you think of the city of rain, of grunge, of Microsoft and Ama­zon, of the Space Nee­dle, of Frasi­er Crane, of Bud­dy Bradley, of Archie McPhee, of sleep­less­ness, of Star­bucks. But hav­ing spent my own ado­les­cence hang­ing out there, I know Seat­tle as even more than that, and it’s only grown more inter­est­ing since I’ve grown up. Now to explore the Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture way, through a year of in-depth con­ver­sa­tions with Seattle’s nov­el­ists, jour­nal­ists, com­ic artists, film­mak­ers, broad­cast­ers, explor­ers, gourmets, aca­d­e­mics, archi­tects, plan­ners, cul­tur­al cre­ators, inter­na­tion­al­ists, observers of the urban scene, and more.

ncc-season-six-logo-med

As with every sea­son, I’m rais­ing the bud­get for Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture’s Year in Seat­tle on Kick­starter. If feel so inclined, you can have a look at its Kick­starter page and find out how you can help make it a hap­pen, receive post­cards from Seat­tle, or even get your project or mes­sage men­tioned at the top of every show.

And as a spe­cial pre­view, I’ve just post­ed an inter­view with com­ic artist Peter Bagge, cre­ator of the leg­endary alt-com­ic series Hate, author of the graph­ic nov­els Apoc­a­lypse Nerd, Oth­er Lives, Reset, Woman Rebel: The Mar­garet Sanger Sto­ry, and just about as Seat­tle a fig­ure as they come. There are 51 more where that came from — but only if we can suc­cess­ful­ly Kick­start the sea­son by this Sat­ur­day morn­ing at 10:00, Pacif­ic time.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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An Animated Marc Maron Recalls Interviewing a Shirtless Iggy Pop in LA Garage

in Music, Podcasts | March 17th, 2015

Marc Maron’s WTF pod­cast now clocks in at 585 episodes. Cer­tain­ly one I remem­ber — and so does Maron too — is Episode 400, which fea­tured the god­fa­ther of punk, Iggy Pop. Above, an ani­mat­ed Marc Maron recalls the many musi­cians he’s inter­viewed in his Los Ange­les garage. And espe­cial­ly the sum­mer day when Pop paid a vis­it, tore off his shirt, and gave his own nip­ple a lit­tle twist. Good times in LA.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Prof. Iggy Pop Deliv­ers the BBC’s 2014 John Peel Lec­ture on “Free Music in a Cap­i­tal­ist Soci­ety”

Hear a Great Radio Doc­u­men­tary on William S. Bur­roughs Nar­rat­ed by Iggy Pop

Iggy Pop Con­ducts a Tour of New York’s Low­er East Side, Cir­ca 1993

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Learn The History of Philosophy in 247 Podcasts (With More to Come)

in Philosophy, Podcasts | November 12th, 2014

history of philos without gaps

Yes­ter­day we took a look at, or rather a lis­ten to, the “pod­cast­ing renais­sance,” high­light­ing a few of the new wave of shows and rec­om­mend­ing some of the pre-exist­ing ones you may have missed. Many Open Cul­ture read­ers will remem­ber our addic­tion to phi­los­o­phy pod­casts — The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, Phi­los­o­phy Bites, and Phi­los­o­phize This!, to name but three of our favorites — and some may won­der if The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps (iTunes – RSS Feed – Web Site), which we fea­tured back in 2011 and again in 2012, sur­vived the dark ages into which pod­cast­ing had appar­ent­ly fall­en. Could its host Peter Adam­son, pro­fes­sor at Lud­wig Max­i­m­il­ian Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich and King’s Col­lege Lon­don, have suc­cumbed to the dread­ed pod­fade some­where between Plot­nius on the soul and Chris­t­ian asceti­cism?

Wor­ry not, stu­dents of thought, for Adam­son has con­tin­ued these past few years, still reg­u­lar­ly and gap­less­ly, to pro­vide “the ideas and lives of the major philoso­phers as well as the less­er-known fig­ures of the tra­di­tion.” Just this past week­end, he put up a twen­ty-minute episode on the Car­olin­gian Renais­sance. If you haven’t kept up with the show since we last post­ed about it, you’ve got a great deal of intel­lec­tu­al­ly rich catch­ing up to do. You will find more than 100 new pod­casts, fea­tur­ing short talks on Latin Pla­ton­ism, Aris­totelian phi­los­o­phy’s “Bagh­dad school,” phi­los­o­phy’s reign in Spain, Illu­mi­na­tion­ism, and women schol­ars and Islam. If you’ve want­ed to learn the entire his­to­ry phi­los­o­phy in the most con­ve­nient pos­si­ble man­ner, now’s the time to jump aboard. If you planned on wait­ing until Adam­son gets to, say, Der­ri­da, I fear you’ll have a bit of a daunt­ing back­log on your hands — not to men­tion your ears and brain.

Note: This arti­cle was first pub­lished in Novem­ber, 2014. As of Feb­ru­ary, 2016, there are 247 episodes in this series. The title of the post has been updat­ed to reflect that.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life: A Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

Phi­los­o­phize This!: The Pop­u­lar, Enter­tain­ing Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast from an Uncon­ven­tion­al Teacher

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Jump Into the “Podcasting Renaissance” with These Intelligent Shows (and Tell Us Your Favorites)

in Podcasts | November 11th, 2014

Serial-2

You may have heard that pod­cast­ing has a renais­sance going on. As a pod­cast­er since the begin­ning stages of the medi­um — and one slight­ly sur­prised to find that the medi­um has now reached ten years of age — I can only wel­come the news, though I nev­er knew pod­cast­ing had gone into a dark age. New York Mag­a­zine’s Kevin Roose tells the sto­ry of the appear­ance of Apple’s iPod, fol­lowed by a flow­er­ing of “pod­casts about pol­i­tics, sports, lit­er­a­ture, com­e­dy,” “pod­casts that sound­ed like NPR, and ones that sound­ed like Rush Lim­baugh,” some that “lacked pol­ish,” but most pos­sessed of “a kind of ener­gy to them that suit­ed their audi­ences well.” But then, “some­time around 2009 or 2010, the pod­cast scene seemed to with­er. The stal­warts (This Amer­i­can Life, Radi­o­lab) stayed around at the top of the iTunes charts, but there was­n’t much else hap­pen­ing. Down­load num­bers fell. Inter­est waned.” But ah, in this year of our Pod 2014, things have changed: “Today, a very dif­fer­ent prob­lem exists: There are too many great pod­casts to keep up with.”

Roose, and hun­dreds upon hun­dreds of oth­er peo­ple on the inter­net, rec­om­mends first and fore­most Ser­i­al (iTunes — RSS — Sound­cloud), “the true-crime dra­ma host­ed by This Amer­i­can Life pro­duc­er Sarah Koenig,” a show some­times cred­it­ed with reviv­ing pod­cast­ing itself. The New York­er’s Sarah Lar­son calls it “the pod­cast we’ve been wait­ing for” in a piece giv­ing a look into the rea­sons behind its suc­cess. Roos also gives spe­cial men­tion to anoth­er new show involv­ing a name you might rec­og­nize from the This Amer­i­can Life orbit: Alex Blum­berg’s Start­Up (iTunes — RSS), a run­ning doc­u­ment of the cre­ator’s attempt to launch a pod­cast­ing busi­ness, the kind of ven­ture that sounds less quixot­ic all the time. And Roose also names a per­son­al favorite of mine, the well-known pod­cast about archi­tec­ture and design — but Real­ly, About Life Itself — 99% Invis­i­ble (iTunes — RSS).

If you feel like get­ting into this pod­cast renais­sance, or if you’ve spent years as a pod­cast lis­ten­er and just need some new mate­r­i­al in your rota­tion, you could do much worse than start­ing with the three shows above. To add to that list, I can sug­gest no pod­cast more suit­ed to the inter­ests of Open Cul­ture read­ers than In Our Time (iTunes — RSS), the long-run­ning BBC Radio 4 pro­gram about the his­to­ry of ideas where­in vet­er­an broad­cast­er Melvyn Bragg inter­views groups of Oxbridge experts on sub­jects like nuclear fusion, the Hait­ian rev­o­lu­tion, Rud­yard Kipling, the Bat­tle of Talas, and the female pharaoh Hat­shep­sut — just in the past month. Per­son­al­ly, I so enjoy In Our Time that I went to inter­view Melvyn Bragg on my own pod­cast Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture ear­li­er this year.

Inter­views and com­e­dy have proven two of the most durable forms of con­tent in pod­cast­ing, and any­one who has­n’t dipped into come­di­an Marc Maron’s in-depth and intro­spec­tive inter­view show WTF (iTunes — RSS) — not that many haven’t at this point — has missed out on a ster­ling exam­ple of the kind of lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences pod­cast­ing, and only pod­cast­ing, has made pos­si­ble. (You might con­sid­er also lis­ten­ing to my inter­view with Maron on The Los Ange­les Review of Books pod­cast.) And while not nec­es­sar­i­ly com­e­dy, I can’t imag­ine Open Cul­ture read­ers not get­ting a laugh, and all oth­er kinds of intel­lec­tu­al stim­u­la­tion besides, out of the pod­cast­ing of Ben­ja­men Walk­er. Walk­er, for­mer­ly the host of Too Much Infor­ma­tion on the beloved inde­pen­dent radio sta­tion WFMU, recent­ly launched a new show called Ben­ja­men Walk­er’s The­o­ry of Every­thing (iTunes — Sound­cloud), a show of per­son­al sto­ries that explores all things to which those sto­ries con­nect.

True, one com­plaint about pod­cast­ing in its ear­ly years held that the shows pod­cast­ers made went too per­son­al — the old charge of “two or three guys sit­ting in base­ment talk­ing about noth­ing” — but now that this decade-old medi­um has found more mature forms, the per­son­al has become its art and its craft. I nev­er hes­i­tate to pro­mote XO (iTunes — RSS), a show by Kei­th McNal­ly, a pod­cast auteur whom I believe has done more to mas­ter the cre­ative per­son­al-sto­ry pod­cast than almost any­body, and he began doing it ear­li­er. (As with Bragg, I went to his home­town of Toron­to to inter­view him too.) But enough about my favorite pod­casts; which ones do you tire­less­ly cham­pi­on? Make your rec­om­men­da­tions, and we’ll round them up in a post soon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pod­cast His­to­ry of Our World Will Take You From Cre­ation Myths to (Even­tu­al­ly) the Present Day

Shakespeare’s Rest­less World: A Por­trait of the Bard’s Era in 20 Pod­casts

Phi­los­o­phize This!: The Pop­u­lar, Enter­tain­ing Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast from an Uncon­ven­tion­al Teacher

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Stephen Colbert Explains How The Colbert Report Is Made in a New Podcast

in Comedy, Creativity, Podcasts, Television | October 20th, 2014

Stephen_Colbert_Work

“I do the show in char­ac­ter, he’s an idiot, he’s will­ful­ly igno­rant of what you know and care about, please hon­est­ly dis­abuse me of my igno­rance and we’ll have a great time.” 

This secret speaks to the heart of come­di­an and fake-pun­dit Stephen Colbert’s wild­ly pop­u­lar Col­bert Report. But how exact­ly does he man­age to pull this rab­bit from his hat, night after night gru­el­ing night?

The nuts and bolts of Colbert’s work­ing day make for a fas­ci­nat­ing inau­gur­al episode of Work­ing, a new Slate pod­cast host­ed by David Plotz. It shares a title with radio per­son­al­i­ty Studs Terkel’s famous non-fic­tion­al exam­i­na­tion, but Plotz’s project is more process ori­ent­ed. Soup-to-nuts-and-bolts, if you will.

Col­bert is hap­py to oblige with a Lit­tle Red Hen-like corn metaphor in which alco­hol, not bread, is the ulti­mate goal.

His morn­ing begins with a deep rum­mage through the headlines—Google News, Red­dit, Slate, The Drudge Report, Fox News, Buz­zfeed, The Huff­in­g­ton Post… imag­ine if this stack was made of paper. When does he have the time to google ex-girl­friends?

When­ev­er pat­terns and trends emerge, Col­bert and his hard work­ing team fer­ret out ways to impose his char­ac­ter onto them. Occa­sion­al­ly some lucky non-sto­ry will find itself ele­vat­ed to Queen for a Day, if it speaks to some­thing Col­bert-the-char­ac­ter would care about pas­sion­ate­ly. The pro­posed ban on horse car­riages in Cen­tral Park, the Col­orado VA’s mar­i­jua­na stance, and the self-declared les­bian trou­ple are three that have borne fruit of late.

From pitch meet­ing through read-aloud and rewrites, the school hours por­tion of Colbert’s day resem­bles that of oth­er dead­line-dri­ven shows. He’s quick to acknowl­edge the con­tri­bu­tions of a ded­i­cat­ed and like-mind­ed staff, includ­ing exec­u­tive pro­duc­er Tom Pur­cell and head writer Opus—as in Bloom Coun­ty—Moreschi.

As show­time approach­es, Col­bert swaps his jeans for a Brooks Broth­ers suit, and leaves the homey, dog-friend­ly town­house where the bulk of the writ­ing takes place for the stu­dio next door.

There are last minute rewrites, a guest to greet, a Bic pen to be nib­bled…

Ide­al­ly, he’ll get at least 10 min­utes of head­space to become the mon­ster of his own mak­ing, lib­er­al America’s favorite will­ful­ly igno­rant idiot. (Most of lib­er­al Amer­i­ca, any­way. My late-moth­er-in-law refused to believe it was an act, but it is.)

A bit of schtick with the make­up artist serves as a lit­mus test for audi­ence respon­sive­ness.

When the cam­eras roll, Col­bert sticks close to his prompter, fur­ther proof that the char­ac­ter is a con­struct. Any impro­vi­sa­tion­al impuls­es are unleashed dur­ing one-on-one inter­ac­tions with the guest. With some 10,000 hours of com­e­dy under his belt, his instincts tend toward the unerr­ing.

At days end, he thanks the audi­ence, the guest and every­one back­stage except for one guy who gets a mere wave. The show is then edit­ed at a zip squeal pace, and will hope­ful­ly fall into the “yay!” cat­e­go­ry. (The oth­er choic­es are “sol­id” or “wrench to the head.”)

Col­bert will only watch the show if there was a prob­lem.

And then? The day begins again.

After peer­ing through this win­dow onto Colbert’s world, we’re stoked for future episodes of Work­ing, when guests as var­ied as a rock musi­cian, a hos­pice nurse, and porn star Jes­si­ca Drake walk Plotz through a typ­i­cal day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Col­bert & Louis CK Recite The Get­tys­burg Address, With Some Help from Jer­ry Sein­feld

Stephen Col­bert Tries to Make Sense of MOOCs with the Head of edX

A Seri­ous Stephen Col­bert Gives Advice on Love & Life to Teenage Girls

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the cre­ator of The Mermaid’s Legs, a trau­ma-filled Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen reboot pre­mier­ing this week in NYC. See it! And fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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The Modern-Day Philosophers Podcast: Where Comedians Like Carl Reiner & Artie Lange Discuss Schopenhauer & Maimonides

in Comedy, Philosophy, Podcasts | July 30th, 2014

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps, Phi­los­o­phy Bites, Phi­los­o­phize This!: we’ve fea­tured quite a few enter­tain­ing and edu­ca­tion­al fruits of the still-new dis­ci­pline of pod­cast­ing’s incli­na­tion toward the very old dis­ci­pline of phi­los­o­phy. But the pod­cast has proven an even bet­ter fit for come­di­ans than it has for philoso­phers. Even if you’ve nev­er down­loaded an episode in your life, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly heard about the medi­um-legit­imiz­ing suc­cess­es of intel­li­gent, con­ver­sa­tion­al, high­ly opin­ion­at­ed, or oth­er­wise uncon­ven­tion­al fun­ny­men like Ricky Ger­vais with The Ricky Ger­vais Show, Adam Car­ol­la with his also-epony­mous pod­cast, and Marc Maron with WTF. Yet nobody dared to explic­it­ly cross pod­cast­ing’s comedic and philo­soph­i­cal strengths until last year, when Dan­ny Lobell launched Mod­ern Day Philoso­phers (web site — itunes — sound­cloud).

Lobell, him­self a pio­neer in not just philo­soph­i­cal com­e­dy pod­cast­ing but com­e­dy pod­cast­ing, and indeed pod­cast­ing itself, began his com­ic-inter­view­ing show Com­i­cal Radio a decade ago. “As pod­cast­ing grew in pop­u­lar­i­ty,” he writes, “many celebri­ty come­di­ans start­ed doing sim­i­lar shows to the one I was doing. [ … ] Before I knew it, what I had once felt was a unique and impor­tant under­tak­ing now no longer seemed like it served a pur­pose in the uni­verse for me.” This dark night of the soul saw him move from New York to Los Ange­les, this cra­dle of so many pod­casts comedic and oth­er­wise, where he turned his atten­tion back toward the sub­jects he neglect­ed in school. He paid spe­cial atten­tion to phi­los­o­phy, but strug­gled to under­stand the mate­r­i­al. “I real­ized that my friends, stand up come­di­ans, would make great study part­ners. I’ve often heard us referred to as the philoso­phers of our day which I fig­ured sound­ed like a good enough excuse to approach them.”

And so Lobell has pro­duced 40 episodes and count­ing fea­tur­ing philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sions con­duct­ed with some of today’s sharpest comics, many of them star pod­cast­ers in their own right. One recent con­ver­sa­tion finds Lobell in con­ver­sa­tion about John Cage — a philo­soph­i­cal fig­ure too often dis­missed as pri­mar­i­ly an artist — with the cere­bral, chance-ori­ent­ed, and some­what askew Reg­gie Watts (top). (The pair­ing makes espe­cial­ly good sense, since Cage influ­enced Bri­an Eno, and Watts has pub­licly dis­cussed Eno’s influ­ence on his own act.) A few months ago, Lobell talked the sui­cide-mind­ed Arthur Schopen­hauer with the once-sui­cide-mind­ed Artie Lange (mid­dle). And he even brings in elder states­men of com­e­dy to talk about mat­ters eter­nal, such as Carl Rein­er on reli­gion, prayer and mem­o­ry as reflect­ed upon by Mai­monides (above). Each episode con­tains a healthy con­sid­er­a­tion of not just the work of the philoso­pher in ques­tion, but that of the come­di­an as well. Per­son­al­ly, I can’t wait to hear what Yakov Smirnoff has to say about his fel­low Russ­ian artist-philoso­pher of note, Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky.

H/T Mark Lin­sen­may­er, a founder of Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life: A Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

Phi­los­o­phize This!: The Pop­u­lar, Enter­tain­ing Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast from an Uncon­ven­tion­al Teacher

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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