After a Tour of Slavoj Žižek’s Pad, You’ll Never See Interior Design in the Same Way

in Life, Philosophy | November 15th, 2012

How to react to celebri­ty aca­d­e­m­ic Slavoj Žižek? You could see him as a wild-eyed vision­ary and grow infat­u­at­ed with his pow­er­ful-sound­ing ideas about pow­er, vio­lence, cin­e­ma, psy­cho­analy­sis, and per­ver­sion. Or you could see him as a Pied Piper for delu­sion­al grad­u­ate stu­dents and grow enraged at his per­pet­u­a­tion of fash­ion­able non­sense. But you’d do best, I would argue, to take him sim­ply as a source of enter­tain­ment. How could you do oth­er­wise, watch­ing the above clip from Astra Tay­lor’s doc­u­men­tary Žižek! (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Open Cul­ture here)? In these three min­utes, the sweat­ing Sub­lime Object of Ide­ol­o­gy author gives us a tour of his pad, spend­ing much time and excite­ment on his kitchen repur­posed as a clos­et: clothes and sheets in the cup­boards, socks in the draw­ers. “I am a nar­cis­sist. I keep every­thing,” he pro­nounces, hav­ing moved onto the shelves and shelves of his own work, from the pam­phlets of his “dis­si­dent days” to his lat­est books in Japan­ese trans­la­tion.

But it’s his poster of Josef Stal­in that real­ly draws your atten­tion — just as Žižek meant it to. If he did­n’t, he would­n’t have hung it in his entry­way, mak­ing it the first sight every guest gets of his home. Here he describes it not as a procla­ma­tion of Stal­in­ism, exact­ly, but as — in line with every­thing else he does — a provo­ca­tion. “This is just for peo­ple who come to be shocked and hope­ful­ly to get out,” he explains. “My big wor­ry is not to be ignored, but to be accept­ed. Of course, it’s not that I’m sim­ply a Stal­in­ist. That would be crazy, taste­less, and so on. But obvi­ous­ly there is some­thing in it that it’s not sim­ply a joke. When I say the only change is that the left appro­pri­ates fas­cism and so on, it’s not a cheap joke. The point is to avoid the trap of stan­dard lib­er­al oppo­si­tions: free­dom ver­sus total­i­tar­i­an order, and so on, to reha­bil­i­tate notions of dis­ci­pline, col­lec­tive order, sub­or­di­na­tion, sac­ri­fice, all that. I don’t think this is inher­ent­ly fas­cist.”

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed con­tent:

Žižek!: 2005 Doc­u­men­tary Reveals the “Aca­d­e­m­ic Rock Star” and “Mon­ster” of a Man

Exam­ined Life Drops Aca­d­e­m­ic Celebri­ties Into the Real World (2008)

Der­ri­da: A 2002 Doc­u­men­tary on the Abstract Philoso­pher and the Every­day Man

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

Noam Chomsky Spells Out the Purpose of Education

in Education | November 8th, 2012

E + duc­ere: “To lead or draw out.” The ety­mo­log­i­cal Latin roots of “edu­ca­tion.” Accord­ing to a for­mer Jesuit pro­fes­sor of mine, the fun­da­men­tal sense of the word is to draw oth­ers out of “dark­ness,” into a “more mag­nan­i­mous view” (he’d say, his arms spread wide). As inspi­ra­tional as this speech was to a sem­i­nar group of bud­ding high­er edu­ca­tors, it failed to spec­i­fy the means by which this might be done, or the rea­son. Lack­ing a Jesuit sense of mis­sion, I had to fig­ure out for myself what the “dark­ness” was, what to lead peo­ple towards, and why. It turned out to be sim­pler than I thought, in some respects, since I con­clud­ed that it was­n’t my job to decide these things, but rather to present points of view, a col­lec­tion of methods—an intel­lec­tu­al toolk­it, so to speak—and an enthu­si­as­tic mod­el. Then get out of the way. That’s all an edu­ca­tor can, and should do, in my hum­ble opin­ion. Any­thing more is not edu­ca­tion, it’s indoc­tri­na­tion. Seemed sim­ple enough to me at first. If only it were so. Few things, in fact, are more con­tentious (Google the term “assault on edu­ca­tion,” for exam­ple).

What is the dif­fer­ence between edu­ca­tion and indoc­tri­na­tion? This debate rages back hun­dreds, thou­sands, of years, and will rage thou­sands more into the future. Every major philoso­pher has had one answer or anoth­er, from Pla­to to Locke, Hegel and Rousseau to Dewey. Con­tin­u­ing in that ven­er­a­ble tra­di­tion, lin­guist, polit­i­cal activist, and aca­d­e­m­ic gen­er­al­ist extra­or­di­naire Noam Chom­sky, one of our most con­sis­tent­ly com­pelling pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als, has a lot to say in the video above and else­where about edu­ca­tion.

First, Chom­sky defines his view of edu­ca­tion in an Enlight­en­ment sense, in which the “high­est goal in life is to inquire and cre­ate. The pur­pose of edu­ca­tion from that point of view is just to help peo­ple to learn on their own. It’s you the learn­er who is going to achieve in the course of edu­ca­tion and it’s real­ly up to you to deter­mine how you’re going to mas­ter and use it.” An essen­tial part of this kind of edu­ca­tion is fos­ter­ing the impulse to chal­lenge author­i­ty, think crit­i­cal­ly, and cre­ate alter­na­tives to well-worn mod­els. This is the ped­a­gogy I end­ed up adopt­ing, and as a col­lege instruc­tor in the human­i­ties, it’s one I rarely have to jus­ti­fy.

Chom­sky defines the oppos­ing con­cept of edu­ca­tion as indoc­tri­na­tion, under which he sub­sumes voca­tion­al train­ing, per­haps the most benign form. Under this mod­el, “Peo­ple have the idea that, from child­hood, young peo­ple have to be placed into a frame­work where they’re going to fol­low orders. This is often quite explic­it.” (One of the entries in the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary defines edu­ca­tion as “the train­ing of an ani­mal,” a sense per­haps not too dis­tinct from what Chom­sky means). For Chom­sky, this mod­el of edu­ca­tion impos­es “a debt which traps stu­dents, young peo­ple, into a life of con­for­mi­ty. That’s the exact oppo­site of what tra­di­tion­al­ly comes out of the Enlight­en­ment.” In the con­test between these two definitions—Athens vs. Spar­ta, one might say—is the ques­tion that plagues edu­ca­tion­al reform­ers at the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary lev­els: “Do you train for pass­ing tests or do you train for cre­ative inquiry?”

Chom­sky goes on to dis­cuss the tech­no­log­i­cal changes in edu­ca­tion occur­ring now, the focus of innu­mer­able dis­cus­sions and debates about not only the pur­pose of edu­ca­tion, but also the prop­er meth­ods (a sub­ject this site is deeply invest­ed in), includ­ing the cur­rent unease over the shift to online over tra­di­tion­al class­room ed or the val­ue of a tra­di­tion­al degree ver­sus a cer­tifi­cate. Chomsky’s view is that tech­nol­o­gy is “basi­cal­ly neu­tral,” like a ham­mer that can build a house or “crush someone’s skull.” The dif­fer­ence is the frame of ref­er­ence under which one uses the tool. Again, mas­sive­ly con­tentious sub­ject, and too much to cov­er here, but I’ll let Chom­sky explain. What­ev­er you think of his pol­i­tics, his eru­di­tion and expe­ri­ence as a researcher and edu­ca­tor make his views on the sub­ject well worth con­sid­er­ing.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Marilyn Monroe Reads Joyce’s Ulysses at the Playground (1955)

in Film, Photography | November 8th, 2012

Dur­ing the 1950s, the pio­neer­ing pho­to­jour­nal­ist Eve Arnold took a series of por­traits of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe. The now icon­ic pho­tos gen­er­al­ly present Mon­roe as a larg­er-than-life celebri­ty and sex sym­bol. Except for one. In 1955, Arnold pho­tographed Mon­roe read­ing a worn copy of James Joyce’s mod­ernist clas­sic, Ulysses. It’s still debat­ed whether this was sim­ply an attempt to recast her image (she often played the “dumb blonde” char­ac­ter in her ’50s films), or whether she actu­al­ly had a pen­sive side. (Her per­son­al library, cat­a­logued at the time of her death, sug­gests the lat­ter.) But, either way, Arnold explained years lat­er how this mem­o­rable pho­to came about:

We worked on a beach on Long Island. She was vis­it­ing Nor­man Ros­ten the poet.… I asked her what she was read­ing when I went to pick her up (I was try­ing to get an idea of how she spent her time). She said she kept Ulysses in her car and had been read­ing it for a long time. She said she loved the sound of it and would read it aloud to her­self to try to make sense of it — but she found it hard going. She couldn’t read it con­sec­u­tive­ly. When we stopped at a local play­ground to pho­to­graph she got out the book and start­ed to read while I loaded the film. So, of course, I pho­tographed her. It was always a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort of pho­tog­ra­ph­er and sub­ject where she was con­cerned — but almost more her input.

You can find more images of Mar­i­lyn read­ing Joyce over at The Retro­naut. Of course, you can down­load your own copy of Ulysses from our Free Ebooks col­lec­tion. But we’d rec­om­mend spend­ing time with this fine­ly-read audio ver­sion, which oth­er­wise appears in our list of Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 430 Books in Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read?

Stephen Fry Explains His Love for James Joyce’s Ulysses

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Carnegie Mellon Takes Online Courses to Another Level with Its Open Learning Initiative

in Education, Online Courses | November 7th, 2012

Open online cours­es—mas­sive or otherwise—are rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing high­er edu­ca­tion by mak­ing learn­ing more and more acces­si­ble.

Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty has tak­en online cours­es to anoth­er lev­el, offer­ing vir­tu­al class­room envi­ron­ments based on deep research into how adults learn.

The cours­es are free. Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive cur­rent­ly offers 15 cours­es through a plat­form that pro­vides tar­get­ed progress feed­back to stu­dents.

The pro­gram doesn’t offer course cred­it or cer­tifi­cates but the cours­es are sophis­ti­cat­ed. CMU spent any­where from $500,000 to $1 mil­lion for each course to write the soft­ware, which includes a course builder pro­gram for instruc­tors and a sys­tem of feed­back loops that send stu­dent learn­ing data to the instruc­tor, the stu­dent and the course design team.

More than 10,000 stu­dents enrolled in OLI cours­es last year. So far CMU pro­motes OLI cours­es as sup­ple­men­tary to tra­di­tion­al class­room instruc­tion. But the cours­es are cer­tain­ly rich enough to be enjoyed by any­one. They’re most­ly in the sci­ences but include a few lan­guage and social sci­ence class­es too.

The list of cur­rent­ly-avail­able cours­es appears below. We also have them list­ed in our com­plete list of Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties (many of which hap­pen to offer cer­tifi­cates too):

• Amer­i­can Eng­lish Speech
• Anato­my and Phys­i­ol­o­gy
• Argu­ment Dia­gram­ming
• Bio­chem­istry
• Ele­men­tary French 1
• Ele­men­tary French 2
• Engi­neer­ing Sta­t­ics
• Intro­duc­tion to Biol­o­gy
• Intro­duc­tion to Chem­istry
• Intro­duc­tion to Psy­chol­o­gy
• Log­ic and Proofs
• Media Pro­gram­ming
• Mod­ern Biol­o­gy
• Prob­a­bil­i­ty and Sta­tis­tics
• Sta­tis­ti­cal Rea­son­ing

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work on thenifty.blogspot.com and .

Watch Nosferatu, the Seminal Vampire Film, Free Online (1922)

in Film | October 26th, 2012

What, you haven’t seen Nos­fer­atu yet? But you’re in luck: not only do you still have a few days left to fit this sem­i­nal clas­sic of vam­pir­ic cin­e­ma into your Hal­loween view­ing rota­tion, but when the 31st comes, you can watch it free online yet again. An inspi­ra­tion for count­less vam­pire films that would fol­low over the next nine­ty years, F.W. Mur­nau’s 1922 silent fea­ture adapts Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la, but just loose­ly enough so that it could put its own stamp on the myth and not actu­al­ly have to pay for rights to the nov­el. Jonathan and Mina Hark­er? Now Thomas and Ellen Hut­ter. Jonathan’s boss Ren­field? Now a fel­low named Knock. Count Drac­u­la, to whose vast and crum­bling estate Ren­field sends the hap­less Jonathan? Now Count Orlok — and unfor­get­tably so. We can post no more rel­e­vant endorse­ment of Nos­fer­atu’s endur­ing val­ue than to say that it remains scary, or at least eerie, to this day. I defy any sophis­ti­cat­ed mod­ern view­er to spend All Hal­lows’ eve with this pic­ture and not come away feel­ing faint­ly unset­tled.

Part of it has to do with sheer age: while some visu­al effects haven’t held up — get a load of Orlok escap­ing his cof­fin in the ship’s car­go hold, employ­ing a tech­nique trust­ed by every nine-year-old with a video cam­era — the deeply worn look and feel seems, at moments, to mark the film as com­ing from a dis­tant past when aris­to­crat­ic blood-suck­ing liv­ing corpses may as well have exist­ed.

This same process has, over four decades, imbued with a pati­na of men­ace every hor­ror film made in the sev­en­ties. Fans of the 1979 Wern­er Her­zog-Klaus Kin­s­ki col­lab­o­ra­tion Nos­fer­atu the Vampyre, a com­pan­ion piece obvi­ous­ly worth view­ing in any case, can attest to this. You might also con­sid­er incor­po­rat­ing in your Hal­loween night view­ing E. Elias Mer­hige’s Shad­ow of the Vam­pire, a satire of the 1920s film indus­try’s col­li­sion of eccen­tric old-world crafts­man­ship and sav­age com­mer­cial buf­foon­ery which imag­ines Orlok as hav­ing been played by a geni­une vam­pire. As for Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la’s rights-hav­ing 1992 adap­ta­tion Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la… well, its chief point of inter­est is still Gary Old­man’s hair­style.

You can always find Nos­fer­atu on our list of Great Silent Films, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis: Uncut & Restored

Where Hor­ror Film Began: The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

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

Watch Historic Footage of Joseph Kittinger’s 102,800 Jump from Space (1960)

in History, Random | October 25th, 2012

When I first heard that 43-year old Aus­tri­an dare­dev­il and for­mer mil­i­tary para­chutist Felix Baum­gart­ner would be jump­ing 128,000 feet from space, my imme­di­ate reac­tion was, “What? Why?!” Because why would any­one do that? And I assumed it was all some macho stunt to pro­mote Red Bull, his cor­po­rate spon­sor, which isn’t entire­ly unfound­ed. But I also had no sense of the his­toric con­text, the sci­en­tif­ic impli­ca­tions, and until I read the details, the tru­ly death-defy­ing mag­ni­tude of it all. As I watched the jump and then learned more, my won­der and admi­ra­tion grew, par­tic­u­lar­ly in read­ing Baumgartner’s own accounts of his sev­en years of prepa­ra­tion for the feat.

Baum­gart­ner best­ed Chuck Yea­ger on the same day in his­to­ry that Yea­ger broke the sound bar­ri­er (he says Yeager’s going to be “pissed”). He also broke the record set by Joseph Kit­tinger, an Air Force pilot who leapt from 102,800 feet (19.5 miles) above earth in 1960. You can watch a short doc­u­men­tary of Kittinger’s famous jump above. The tech­nol­o­gy of 1960 didn’t allow for the crys­tal-clear images Baum­gart­ner cap­tured with his two suit cam­eras, but it’s still an impres­sive lit­tle film, made more so by Kittinger’s voice over describ­ing the sen­sa­tions he expe­ri­enced dur­ing free fall. Below is a clas­sic 1960 news­reel film of the jump, with a dra­mat­ic announc­er and tri­umphal, mar­tial music.

Kit­tinger and Baum­gart­ner first met in 2008, and the elder test pilot sup­port­ed and helped plan the Red Bull Stratos project that would break his record. He also served as Baum­gart­ner’s mis­sion con­trol, guid­ing him from his tiny space cap­sule to the ground. The jump was appar­ent­ly sup­posed to take place two years ear­li­er, on the 50th anniver­sary of Kittinger’s, but was delayed. Below, you can watch Kit­tinger dis­cuss the project and his own career in a 2010 inter­view with Red Bull.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Philosophy Made Fun: Read the Free Preview Edition of the Action Philosophers! Comic

in Art, Books, Philosophy | October 13th, 2012

“Imag­ine Pla­to as a wrestling super­star of ancient Greece, Niet­zsche as the orig­i­nal uber­men­sch, and Bohid­har­ma as the grand mas­ter of kung fu. These are not just great thinkers they also make great comics. Action Philoso­phers! details the lives and thoughts of his­to­ry’s A‑list brain trust in hip and humor­ous com­ic book fash­ion. ”

That’s how the Action Philoso­phers! com­ic book was pitched when its cre­ators, Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey, pub­lished it in 2009. The com­ic book is still in print, and you can read the fun pre­view edi­tion online. It starts, of course, with the Pre-Socrat­ics — Thales, Anax­i­man­der, Par­menides, and the gang. Enjoy.

Bonus — Read more Action Philoso­phers! online:

• Rene Descartes
• John Stu­art Mill
• Carl Jung

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

55 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Ancient Greek Pun­ish­ments: The Retro Video Game

Learn New Languages (From Arabic to Yiddish) with 150+ Free Podcasts

in Language Lessons, Podcasts | October 12th, 2012

I spend a great deal of time vis­it­ing unfa­mil­iar cities, spend­ing days walk­ing, cycling, or rid­ing trains and bus­es through them. Some­times the peo­ple of these cities speak lan­guages I know; some­times they speak lan­guages I don’t. Either way, dur­ing all these hours in motion, my per­son­al sound­track comes from an iPod loaded with lan­guage-learn­ing pod­casts. If you’d like to engage in this delight­ful­ly men­tal­ly stim­u­lat­ing prac­tice your­self — and I high­ly rec­om­mend it — you can get start­ed by brows­ing Open Cul­ture’s col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons avail­able online. The list cov­ers no few­er than 40 tongues, and many of the lessons come in pod­cast form. Should you find your­self in need of shows offer­ing Bul­gar­i­an sur­vival phras­es, instruc­tion in Swedish expres­sions and cul­ture, or Pol­ish in one minute a day, here is the list you want. From my efforts in study­ing Span­ish, Kore­an, and Japan­ese, I can per­son­al­ly (and strong­ly) rec­om­mend sev­er­al of its offer­ings.

Cof­fee Break Span­ish and the more advanced Show Time Span­ish, both pro­duced by the Radio Lin­gua net­work (out of Scot­land, of all places) start you off from an absolute zero of pre­sumed knowl­edge and pro­ceeds to get you up to “cruis­ing alti­tude,” which I call the point in lan­guage acqui­si­tion at which you become able to learn from real, untrans­lat­ed speech. You might then con­sid­er down­load­ing a show like Notes in Span­ish, and espe­cial­ly the con­ver­sa­tion­al­ly focused Notes in Span­ish Gold. For Japan­ese, few lan­guage pod­casts cater to a wider vari­ety of pro­fi­cien­cy lev­els at once than does JapanesePod101, which I sup­ple­ment with Japan­ese nation­al broad­cast­er NHK’s lessons (which also come taught in quite a few lan­guages besides Eng­lish.) And for Kore­an, the lan­guage that first cul­ti­vat­ed in me this whole intel­lec­tu­al­ly and social­ly thrilling learn­ing addic­tion, you can do no bet­ter than Hyun­woo Sun’s Talk to Me in Kore­an, quite pos­si­bly the most thor­ough, fre­quent, slick, and enter­tain­ing lan­guage-instruc­tion pod­cast of any kind. Lis­ten­ing to these shows has con­vinced me that every moment spent not acquir­ing a new lan­guage is a moment wast­ed. But even if you don’t believe any­thing that extreme, it’s still a lot of fun. And doing it through these free pod­casts, you cer­tain­ly can’t argue with the price.

Here’s our col­lec­tion once again: Learn 40 Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & More

Relat­ed Con­tent:

375 Free eBooks: Down­load to Kin­dle, iPad/iPhone & Nook

450 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

530 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

500 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

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

Samuel Beckett Directs His Absurdist Play Waiting for Godot (1985)

in Literature, Theatre | October 10th, 2012

Samuel Beck­et­t’s absur­dist play, Wait­ing for Godot, pre­miered in Paris in 1953, at the Théâtre de Baby­lone, under the direc­tion of French actor, Roger Blin. Many oth­er direc­tors staged the play in the years to come, each time inter­pret­ing it in their own way. All the while, Beck­ett com­plained that the play was being sub­ject­ed to “end­less mis­un­der­stand­ing.” How­ev­er, when an actor, Peter Woodthrope, once asked him to explain what Godot is all about, Beck­ett answered quixot­i­cal­ly: “It’s all sym­bio­sis, Peter; it’s sym­bio­sis.” Thanks for the clar­i­fi­ca­tion, Sam.

Beck­ett nev­er gave a clear expla­na­tion. But per­haps he offered up some­thing bet­ter. In 1985, Beck­ett direct­ed three of his plays — Wait­ing for Godot, Krap­p’s Last Tape and Endgame — as part of a pro­duc­tion called “Beck­ett Directs Beck­ett.” The plays per­formed by the San Quentin Play­ers toured Europe and Asia with much fan­fare, and with Beck­ett exert­ing direc­to­r­i­al con­trol. And do keep this in mind. Beck­ett paces things slow­ly. So you won’t hear your first sound until the 2:00 mark.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

The History of Byzantium Podcast Picks Up Where The History of Rome Left Off

in History, Podcasts | October 4th, 2012

In May we post­ed about Mike Dun­can’s The His­to­ry of Rome pod­cast, which, upon reach­ing episode 179, had con­clud­ed the tale of the Roman Empire’s hey­day. Over its five-year run, Dun­can’s show amassed a large, enthu­si­as­tic audi­ence, most of whom have no doubt con­tin­ued their explo­ration of Roman his­to­ry else­where. It has even inspired some to launch his­to­ry pod­casts of their own, one of which presents itself as The His­to­ry of Rome’s direct suc­ces­sor in sub­ject, style, and tone. The His­to­ry of Byzan­tium (RSS — iTunes), which debuted in May, aims to recount the sto­ry of Roman Empire of Late Antiq­ui­ty and the Mid­dle Ages, now bet­ter known as the Byzan­tine Empire, from the years 476 through 1453. Though per­haps less often dis­cussed by the aver­age his­to­ry buff, the Byzan­tine Empire nonethe­less offers a wealth of his­tor­i­cal inter­est, espe­cial­ly, it seems, to pod­cast­ers; you may already have heard Lars Brown­worth’s show 12 Byzan­tine Rulers, which even­tu­al­ly land­ed him a book deal. And many more Byzan­tine sto­ries remain to tell.

Pier­son, by day a tele­vi­son crit­ic, explic­it­ly describes his project as both an unof­fi­cial sequel and an homage to The His­to­ry of Rome. “I liked the sim­pli­fi­ca­tion and expla­na­tion of the Roman sto­ry,” he writes in his intro­duc­to­ry post. “I liked the half an hour length. I liked Mike’s sense of humour and tim­ing. I liked his neu­tral tone which nev­er felt like it was pro­vid­ing an over­bear­ing opin­ion on the nar­ra­tive. When Mike announced he would be stop­ping with the fall of the West in 476 I con­sid­ered whether I could pos­si­bly take on the task of con­tin­u­ing the sto­ry. [ … ] Ini­tial­ly at least I hope to emu­late Mike’s style. I want to keep the rough struc­ture and neu­tral tone estab­lished on The His­to­ry of Rome because I think so high­ly of it. I hope you won’t see it as sim­ply an imi­ta­tion and doubt­less over time my own style will emerge.” This seems as hon­est an account as any of the way cre­ators work off of their inspi­ra­tions, and His­to­ry of Rome fans will no doubt lis­ten with inter­est to The His­to­ry of Byzan­tium for both the devel­op­ments in the tale and in Pier­son­’s way of telling it.

You can sub­scribe to The His­to­ry of Byzan­tium via RSS or iTunes.

And, all of you his­to­ry buffs, remem­ber that you can find free cours­es in the His­to­ry sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

The Dig­i­tal Tip­ping Point: The Wild Ride from Pod­cast to Book Deal

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

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