Entitled Opinions, the “Life and Literature” Podcast That Refuses to Dumb Things Down

in Life, Literature, Podcasts | May 31st, 2012

Proust. Mimet­ic desire. The infla­tion­ary uni­verse. 1910, Amer­i­can writ­ers in Paris. The his­to­ry of the book. These top­ics may sound unusu­al enough to pique your inter­est. They may float through your mind once in a while, cap­tur­ing an hour or two of your curios­i­ty. They may peri­od­i­cal­ly send you to the library on read­ing binges. But for KZSU-FM’s Enti­tled Opin­ions, they are meat and drink. Since 2005, pro­fes­sor-broad­cast­er Robert Har­ri­son has explored these top­ics and many more besides in the intel­lec­tu­al­ly expan­sive long-form con­ver­sa­tions he con­ducts on Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s radio sta­tion. Always begin­ning with a mono­logue, Har­ri­son spends the bulk of his broad­casts think­ing aloud about these rich top­ics with philoso­phers like Richard Rorty, nov­el­ists like Orhan Pamuk, many a fel­low aca­d­e­m­ic, lis­ten­ers, and his own broth­er. (Some­times he up and con­ducts the entire show in French.) Each and every one of these he makes avail­able as a pod­cast, on the show’s site and on iTunes.

“These are not like Stan­ford cours­es online,” said Har­ri­son in a Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty News pro­file. “These are pro­grams where intel­lec­tu­als speak to each oth­er at a high lev­el of intel­lec­tu­al exchange—no one is exclud­ed per se, but you do have to have intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty. We refuse to dumb it down.” Hav­ing recent­ly returned from a pro­longed hia­tus, Enti­tled Opin­ions has kept not dumb­ing it down with con­ver­sa­tions on geog­ra­phy, her­maph­ro­ditism, polit­i­cal philoso­pher John Rawls, and Petrar­ch and Petrar­chism. I myself engaged Har­ri­son in a long-form inter­view on my pre­vi­ous pod­cast, The Mar­ket­place of Ideas, in which we dis­cussed the evo­lu­tion of his show; his books on forests, gar­dens, and the dead;  his life as a rock musi­cian (so that explains those episodes on Pink Floyd, The Doors, and Jimi Hen­drix); and get­ting called “the most pre­ten­tious man in the world” over e‑mail. We die-hard Enti­tled Opin­ions fans demand to know these things.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The History of Rome in 179 Podcasts

in History, Podcasts | May 10th, 2012

What with so many open-end­ed inter­net media projects out there, I admire any that come to a close. Peo­ple start plen­ty of things on the net that wind up peter­ing out, but few dis­play the con­vic­tion to work toward a deci­sive end. Then again, this goes for all forms of human endeav­or; even the builders of the Roman Empire must have oper­at­ed on the assump­tion that it might go on for­ev­er. We now know, of course, that it would­n’t, and this knowl­edge pro­vides for­mal and intel­lec­tu­al premis­es for Mike Dun­can’s pod­cast, The His­to­ry of Rome (iTunes — RSS). The Roman Empire end­ed by the year 476. The his­to­ry of the Roman Empire in pod­cast form end­ed last Sun­day, after almost five years, 179 episodes, and 1654 near-uni­ver­sal­ly lauda­to­ry iTunes reviews.

I reviewed The His­to­ry of Rome myself back in 2009, for the Podthoughts col­umn I write for MaximumFun.org. Pod­think­ing has taught me that his­to­ry as a sub­ject suits this ver­bal, episod­ic, straight-into-your-mind type of medi­um almost ide­al­ly. Though Dun­can choos­es to get straight to the point and tell the Roman Empire’s sto­ry in a clear, asceti­cal­ly unadorned man­ner, dif­fer­ent pod­casts deliv­er their slices of his­to­ry with styles and sen­si­bil­i­ties all their own. If you his­tor­i­cal­ly inclined pod­cast-lis­ten­ers have already been keep­ing up with this show, oth­ers await you: Dan Car­lin’s Hard­core His­to­ry, Twelve Byzan­tine Rulers, A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects, and (my own cur­rent lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence of choice) Top­ics in Kore­an His­to­ry, to name but a few. But if you haven’t been, sit down and let Mike Dun­can tell you about a cer­tain Romu­lus and Remus, with whom the his­to­ry of Rome myth­i­cal­ly began.

More cours­es on the Ancient world, includ­ing the his­to­ry of Rome, can be found in the His­to­ry sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 1150 Free Online Cours­es.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Decline and Fall of the Roman (and Amer­i­can?) Empire: A Free Audio­book

Rome Reborn – An Amaz­ing Dig­i­tal Mod­el of Ancient Rome

How Many U.S. Marines Could Bring Down the Roman Empire?

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Philosophy Bites: Podcasting Ideas From Plato to Singularity Since 2007

in Philosophy, Podcasts | April 12th, 2012

I’ve spent four years writ­ing Podthoughts, a pod­cast review col­umn, for Maximumfun.org. At one pod­cast a week, this means I’ve lis­tened to and writ­ten up well over 200 dif­fer­ent pod­casts. At this point, each and every one that does­n’t con­sist of two guys vol­ley­ing shape­less com­plaints about their least favorite bands, movies, tele­vi­sion shows, and sports teams comes as a drop of water in the desert. Yes, I exag­ger­ate, but the vast cre­ative ter­ri­to­ry offered by a form of media as fresh and open as pod­cast­ing nev­er­the­less remains most­ly unex­plored. None of the blame, how­ev­er, falls upon Open Uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­er Nigel War­bur­ton and BBC pro­duc­er David Edmonds, whose pod­cast Phi­los­o­phy Bites (iTunes — Lib­syn — Web) pushed the medi­um for­ward very ear­ly in its life­time. Alas, my pre­de­ces­sor in Pod­think­ing beat me to review­ing Phi­los­o­phy Bites, but I lat­er inter­viewed Edmonds on my own show about what it takes to craft a pod­cast with so many top philoso­phers talk­ing about so many philo­soph­i­cal top­ics in such short spans of time, so we’ll call it even.

The Phi­los­o­phy Bites canon now forms a wider-rang­ing, more acces­si­ble phi­los­o­phy cur­ricu­lum than you’ll find in any uni­ver­si­ty — and notably, in these try­ing eco­nom­ic times, an infi­nite­ly cheap­er one. You can pick from a vari­ety of pos­si­ble points of entry, includ­ing clear expla­na­tions of well-known con­cepts like Pla­to’s Cave and free will; philo­soph­i­cal per­spec­tives on such issues of the day as the sin­gu­lar­i­ty and genet­ic enhance­ment in sports; dis­cus­sions of Adam Smith, David Hume, and phi­los­o­phy’s oth­er lumi­nar­ies of old; and con­ver­sa­tions with mod­ern-day philo­soph­i­cal lumi­nar­ies like Alain de Bot­ton and A.C. Grayling. When you’d like to move on to longer-form round­table dis­cus­sions of famous works of phi­los­o­phy, start down­load­ing The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, a pod­cast I did get the chance to Pod­think about. For the ear­bud-equipped and philo­soph­i­cal­ly inclined, these are fruit­ful times indeed.

Note: Phi­los­o­phy Bites recent­ly pub­lished a book based on its pod­cast. And it starts by try­ing to answer the ques­tion. What is Phi­los­o­phy? Brain­Pick­ings has more on their answers.

Relat­ed con­tent:

55 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy… With­out Any Gaps

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Jean-Paul Sartre Breaks Down the Bad Faith of Intellectuals

in Philosophy, Podcasts | December 12th, 2011

How many of the great philoso­phers have you actu­al­ly heard speak? This clip comes from the 1976 doc­u­men­tary Sartre by Him­self, which fea­tures dis­cus­sions with Jean-Paul Sartre and his near-equal­ly famous part­ner Simone de Beau­voir, among oth­ers. The film was released with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles in 1979, a year before Sartre died.

In this clip, Sartre crit­i­cizes mod­ern intel­lec­tu­als as “spe­cial­ist work­ers in prac­ti­cal knowl­edge,” who apply “uni­ver­sal notions and prac­tices” to par­tic­u­lar pur­pos­es deter­mined by a polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment. This can cause a con­flict of con­science: Sartre gives the exam­ple of sci­en­tists work­ing on the atom­ic bomb, but also pro­fes­sors whose efforts sole­ly ben­e­fit a small group of pros­per­ous stu­dents. Sartre thinks intel­lec­tu­als use this kind of con­flict to feel bet­ter about themselves–they may sign peti­tions, side with the work­ing class, etc.–while still not seri­ous­ly ques­tion­ing them­selves. Intel­lec­tu­als rage against the machine but are still play­ing their assigned role in it. “[They are] very pleased to have an unhap­py con­science, because that is what allows [them] to denounce.”

This is an exam­ple of his famous notion of “bad faith,” where we dis­as­so­ci­ate our­selves from our actions, or more com­mon­ly where we claim to have more lim­it­ed choic­es than we actu­al­ly do. Bad faith is pos­si­ble because of the nature of the self, accord­ing to Sartre: there is no pre­de­ter­mined “human nature” or “true you,” but instead you are some­thing built over time, by your own freely cho­sen actions, too often using the roles and char­ac­ter­is­tics oth­ers assign to you.

Ear­ly in his career, he con­struct­ed a the­o­ry of con­scious­ness and the self that makes this plau­si­ble. The work in which he did this, “The Tran­scen­dence of the Ego,” is the sub­ject of the most recent episode of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast, pro­filed in this ear­li­er Open Cul­ture post. The pod­cast has since tak­en off: it’s cur­rent­ly fea­tured on the main pod­cast page in the iTunes store and has bro­ken the top 40 in “top audio pod­casts,” reach­ing #1 in the phi­los­o­phy cat­e­go­ry.

Vis­it the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life web page, get the episodes on iTunes, and sub­scribe to the PEL blog feed.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er hosts The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life and fronts a band called New Peo­ple.

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The Partially Examined Life: A Philosophy Podcast

in Philosophy, Podcasts | September 8th, 2010

A year-and-a-half ago, an old friend found me on Face­book and offered me a writ­ing job and par­tic­i­pa­tion in a pod­cast. I took him up on both.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er and I had been grad­u­ate stu­dents in phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas in Austin, but we both left before get­ting the PhD to try our hands at some­thing more prac­ti­cal. Mark sug­gest­ed we make that expe­ri­ence the theme of an ongo­ing philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion: we loved phi­los­o­phy but pre­ferred it as an avo­ca­tion. There was some­thing about the pro­fes­sion­al­iza­tion of phi­los­o­phy that seemed to go against the spir­it of it. We pre­ferred the “par­tial­ly exam­ined life” to the exam­ined life.

And so we decid­ed to cre­ate a phi­los­o­phy pod­cast with dis­cus­sions that were informed but not over­ly aca­d­e­m­ic, less like a class­room lec­ture and more like a con­ver­sa­tion over drinks after class, and uni­fied by the ques­tion of what makes phi­los­o­phy worth­while. We found anoth­er like­mind­ed for­mer col­league from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, Seth Paskin, and began record­ing and pub­lish­ing our dis­cus­sions as The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life. (Find the pod­cast on iTunes here.)

May 12 was the one year anniver­sary of our first episode. Dur­ing that time we’ve cov­ered top­ics rang­ing from Plato’s con­cep­tion of the exam­ined life to Nietzsche’s immoral­ism, God and faith, to the phi­los­o­phy of mind. Frankly I’m always amazed that there are peo­ple who want to lis­ten to three guys talk about these things, but we seem to have a chem­istry that works. One review—for bet­ter or for worse—pegs Mark as “the Jack Black-like musi­cian,” Seth as the “sad one with calm voice who usu­al­ly guides the rud­der of the con­ver­sa­tion back into the top­ic,” and me as “avun­cu­lar and wry.” We’ve also received a lot of great reviews on iTunes, and a thrilling com­pli­ment from philoso­pher Arthur C. Dan­to, who was gra­cious enough to lis­ten to our dis­cus­sion of two of his essays in The Philo­soph­i­cal Dis­en­fran­chise­ment of Art. We’ve been grat­i­fied to see our lis­ten­er­ship rise, but most impor­tant­ly we’re hap­py that the pod­cast has kept us con­nect­ed to phi­los­o­phy and allowed us to pur­sue it—partially—in a way that seems more com­pat­i­ble with the spir­it of the dis­ci­pline.

This post comes to us via Wes Alwan, an occa­sion­al con­trib­u­tor to Open Cul­ture.

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Reader Podcast Picks

in Podcasts | October 22nd, 2009

Ear­li­er this week, one of our read­ers, Scott Dumont, offered up some excel­lent thoughts on a few pod­casts that we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly over­looked. Since he put things so well, I fig­ured why not pass along his thoughts direct­ly to you. Here they go, and thanks Scott …

I’d like to make three sug­ges­tions for addi­tions to your library. Two polit­i­cal pod­casts and one his­tor­i­cal one. For the polit­i­cal ones, you’re lack­ing in the more inde­pen­dent depart­ment; you’ve got Democ­ra­cy Now, which is good enough but I’d sug­gest adding Com­mon Sense with Dan Car­lin (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) and My His­to­ry Can Beat Up Your Pol­i­tics (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Com­mon Sense with Dan Car­lin is a true inde­pen­dent news show, putting the cur­rent pol­i­tics in per­spec­tive and ana­lyz­ing the dis­con­nect between what is pro­pa­gan­da and what is truth. His descrip­tion is:

Com­mon Sense with Dan Car­lin is a blend of audio com­men­tary and news analy­sis by one of the lead­ing thinkers among today’s polit­i­cal­ly inde­pen­dent crowd. Author, reporter and talk show host Dan Car­lin takes a look at the issues in the news through the prism of his tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can “for­ward-think­ing prag­ma­tism” while push­ing a fis­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, social­ly lib­er­al approach to solv­ing prob­lems. Whether he’s rail­ing against the “Fat Police”, explain­ing the exis­tence of “The Chick­en Lit­tle Gene” or con­tin­u­al­ly bring­ing up his­tor­i­cal events no one has ever heard of, Car­lin man­ages to be enter­tain­ing and infor­ma­tive in a unique­ly non-par­ti­san way. His style has been com­pared to Sein­feld’s George Costan­za on steroids. Whether that’s true or not, he does often talk real­ly fast. You’ll have to keep up.

If I had to rec­om­mend a few from the ones cur­rent­ly in his feed, I’d say take a lis­ten to the fol­low­ing shows before you decide: “137- A Vote For None”, “143- The Black Dog”, “146- The Con­ti­nu­ity Of Errors”“154- A Con­flict of Inter­est”, “157- Read It and Weep”, “161- Shhh!”. I know it’s a lot, feel free to pick any of those, but those are prob­a­bly var­ied enough for you to get a taste of what he means.

My His­to­ry Can Beat Up Your Pol­i­tics is exact­ly what it sounds like; it puts cur­rent polit­i­cal events in a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive and ana­lyzes the his­to­ry to allow us to under­stand our pol­i­tics. For a good sam­pling, just take a look at this most recent stuff. He’s not schiz­o­phrenic like Dan Car­lin and his show is fair­ly for­mu­la­ic, but that’s not to say it’s not infor­ma­tive. (more…)

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The Future of Content Delivery

in Amazon Kindle, Audio Books, Books, Podcasts | August 18th, 2009

sigler2This pod­cast (get it here) presents the thoughts of Scott Sigler–media maven, NY Times Best­selling Author of INFECTED and CONTAGIOUS (both avail­able free as pod­casts), podi­o­book dynamo, and social net­work­ing mastermind–on none oth­er than “how will peo­ple read books in the near future?”

In this repod­cast of his keynote speech at this year’s Balti­con con­fer­ence, Scott talks about how he built a HUGE online fan base for his fic­tion, land­ed a major pub­lish­ing deal with Crown Books, reached NY Times best­seller sta­tus, and why he insists that giv­ing his fic­tion away for free is the best mar­ket­ing around.

He presents his thoughts on Big Pub­lish­ing, small pub­lish­ing, smart-phones vs. the Kin­dle, and per­haps most impor­tant­ly, lays out the meth­ods by which he pre-sold 1,500 copies of his new, self-pub­lished nov­el THE ROOKIE this April via his own web­site, scottsigler.com. That’s right: For­get print-on-demand and its high­er cost-per-book. Scott breaks down how he pre-sold enough books to pay for an entire print run before THE ROOKIE ever went to press! It’s a mod­el so far ahead of every­one else that we’ve got to take notes!

If you’re a writer or aspir­ing author, you need to lis­ten to this. And don’t let the intro scare you off.

To down­load this file and lis­ten to it on your own time, on your iPod or sim­i­lar device, sim­ple right click this link: DOWNLOAD and choose “Save Link as…” on a Mac, or “Save File” on a PC.

Or lis­ten to it right here:

Seth Har­wood, the author of JACK WAKES UP, will be teach­ing an online course (The Grip­ping Read) with Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies. And he’ll also be teach­ing an Author Boot­camp with Scott Sigler on Stan­ford’s cam­pus on Novem­ber 7 and 14. Each course only has a few slots still open.

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Podcast Lectures: Better Than the Real Deal?

in Podcasts | March 26th, 2009

Here’s an inter­est­ing fac­toid report­ed by The New Sci­en­tist… A study com­ing out of The State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York “mea­sured the per­for­mance of 64 stu­dents, half of whom watched a lec­ture via pod­cast and the oth­er half who attend­ed the live lec­ture. Stu­dents who used the pod­cast aver­aged a 71 out of 100 on the fol­low-up test where­as those who actu­al­ly went to the lec­ture aver­aged a 62.”  What explains the dif­fer­ence? Accord­ing to the head researcher, Dani McK­in­ney, it comes down to this: “If the [stu­dents] lis­tened to the pod­cast just one time, they did­n’t do any bet­ter than the peo­ple who came to the lec­ture. How­ev­er, the peo­ple who treat­ed it like a live lec­ture, and took notes or replayed cer­tain sec­tions… they did sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter.” Or, to put things a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly, “It’s no dif­fer­ent than when stu­dents used to tape record lec­tures.… If some­thing was pre­sent­ed too fast for them to take down, they could replay that sec­tion and com­plete their notes.” The bot­tom line: stu­dents who use the right tools to absorb class­room lec­tures end up doing bet­ter. But how much bet­ter? In this case, the stu­dents using pod­casts got a C on the fol­low-up test. The stu­dents who did­n’t got a D. I guess that says some­thing for the pod­cast lec­ture, but don’t bank on them alone.

Thanks to @Cinetuyoymio for the lead here. Always feel free to send us tips at ma**@******re.com, or @openculture on Twit­ter. The more tips you send, the bet­ter Open Cul­ture becomes for all.

You can access the afore­men­tioned study for a fee here: iTunes Uni­ver­si­ty and the class­room: Can pod­casts replace Pro­fes­sors? 

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