19 Quotes on Writing by Gore Vidal. Some Witty, Some Acerbic, Many Spot On

in Books, Literature, Writing | August 3rd, 2012

Image by David Shankbone, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Next to “cel­e­brat­ed” (or “celebri­ty”) the descrip­tion I’ve most seen applied to the late Gore Vidal is “acer­bic,” or some such synonym—“scathing,” “dis­dain­ful”… I’m sure he would rel­ish the com­pli­ment. One of the most fit­ting adjec­tives, per­haps, is “Wilde-like” (as in Oscar Wilde), deployed by Hilton Als in the New York­er. The adjec­tive fits espe­cial­ly well con­sid­er­ing one of Vidal’s most-tweet­ed quotes from his trea­sury of Wilde-like apho­risms: “Write some­thing, even if it’s just a sui­cide note.” It’s clever and mor­bid and naughty and dev­il-may-care, and almost entire­ly fatu­ous. Unlike sev­er­al writ­ers recent­ly fea­tured here—Mar­garet Atwood, Ray Brad­bury, Hen­ry Miller, George Orwell, et al.—who help­ful­ly com­piled num­bered lists of writ­ing advice, Vidal’s pro­nounce­ments on his craft were rather unsys­tem­at­ic. But, like many of those named above, what Vidal did leave in the form of advice was some­times face­tious, and some­times pro­found. Despite his evi­dent con­tempt for neat lit­tle lists, one writer in the UK has help­ful­ly com­piled one any­way. The “sui­cide note” quote above is num­ber 4:

1. Each writer is born with a reper­to­ry com­pa­ny in his head.
2. Write what you know will always be excel­lent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imag­ine, what you sus­pect!
3. I some­times think it is because they are so bad at express­ing them­selves ver­bal­ly that writ­ers take to pen and paper in the first place.
4. Write some­thing, even if it’s just a sui­cide note.
5. How mar­velous books are, cross­ing worlds and cen­turies, defeat­ing igno­rance and, final­ly, cru­el time itself.
6. South­ern­ers make good nov­el­ists: they have so many sto­ries because they have so much fam­i­ly.
7. You can’t real­ly suc­ceed with a nov­el any­way; they’re too big. It’s like city plan­ning. You can’t plan a per­fect city because there’s too much going on that you can’t take into account. You can, how­ev­er, write a per­fect sen­tence now and then. I have.
8. Today’s pub­lic fig­ures can no longer write their own speech­es or books, and there is some evi­dence that they can’t read them either.
9. I sus­pect that one of the rea­sons we cre­ate fic­tion is to make sex excit­ing.

Writer’s Digest gives us ten addi­tion­al quotes of Gore Vidal on writ­ing (unnum­bered this time):

“You can improve your tal­ent, but your tal­ent is a giv­en, a mys­te­ri­ous con­stant. You must make it the best of its kind.”

“I’ve always said, ‘I have noth­ing to say, only to add.’ And it’s with each addi­tion that the writ­ing gets done. The first draft of any­thing is real­ly just a track.”

“The rea­son my ear­ly books are so bad is because I nev­er had the time or the mon­ey to afford con­stant revi­sions.”

“That famous writer’s block is a myth as far as I’m con­cerned. I think bad writ­ers must have a great dif­fi­cul­ty writ­ing. They don’t want to do it. They have become writ­ers out of rea­sons of ambi­tion. It must be a great strain to them to make marks on a page when they real­ly have noth­ing much to say, and don’t enjoy doing it. I’m not so sure what I have to say but I cer­tain­ly enjoy mak­ing sen­tences.”

“Con­stant work, con­stant writ­ing and con­stant revi­sion. The real writer learns noth­ing from life. He is more like an oys­ter or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in nor­mal­ly the way any per­son takes in expe­ri­ence. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art.”

“I’ll tell you exact­ly what I would do if I were 20 and want­ed to be a good writer. I would study main­te­nance, prefer­ably plumb­ing. … So that I could com­mand my own hours and make a good liv­ing on my own time.”

“If a writer has any sense of what jour­nal­ism is all about he does not get into the minds of the char­ac­ters he is writ­ing about. That is some­thing, shall we say, Capote-esque—who thought he had dis­cov­ered a new art form but, as I point­ed out, all he had dis­cov­ered was lying.”

“A book exists on many dif­fer­ent lev­els. Half the work of a book is done by the reader—the more he can bring to it the bet­ter the book will be for him, the bet­ter it will be in its own terms.”

[When asked which genre he enjoys the most, and which genre comes eas­i­est:]
“Are you hap­pi­er eat­ing a pota­to than a bowl of rice? I don’t know. It’s all the same. … Writ­ing is writ­ing. Writ­ing is order in sen­tences and order in sen­tences is always the same in that it is always dif­fer­ent, which is why it is so inter­est­ing to do it. I nev­er get bored with writ­ing sen­tences, and you nev­er mas­ter it and it is always a surprise—you nev­er know what’s going to come next.”

[When asked how he would like to be remem­bered:]
“I sup­pose as the per­son who wrote the best sen­tences in his time.”

 A series of snip­pets of Gore Vidal’s wit from Esquire pro­vides the bit­ing (for its non-sequitur jab at rival Nor­man Mail­er): “For a writer, mem­o­ry is every­thing. But then you have to test it; how good is it, real­ly? Whether it’s wrong or not, I’m beyond car­ing. It is what it is. As Nor­man Mail­er would say, “It’s exis­ten­tial.” He went to his grave with­out know­ing what that word meant.”

Vidal returns to the theme of mem­o­ry in a 1974 inter­view with The Paris Review, in which he admits to plac­ing the ulti­mate faith in his mem­o­ry: “I am not a cam­era… I don’t con­scious­ly watch any­thing and I don’t take notes, though I briefly kept a diary. What I remem­ber I remember—by no means the same thing as remem­ber­ing what you would like to.”

While Vidal is memo­ri­al­ized this week as a celebri­ty and Wilde-like provo­ca­teur, it’s also worth not­ing that he had quite a lot to say about the work of writ­ing itself, some of it wit­ty but use­less, some of it well worth remem­ber­ing.

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.

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk Radio Show Podcast Tackles the History of Video Games

in Physics, Podcasts, Science | July 31st, 2012

Neil deGrasse Tyson has a pod­cast. I repeat, Neil deGrasse Tyson has a pod­cast. If you’re unfa­mil­iar (and you shouldn’t be), Tyson is Astro­physi­cist-in-res­i­dence at New York’s Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um and Direc­tor of its Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um. He’s also the most promi­nent advo­cate for a revi­tal­ized U.S. space pro­gram. Okay, back to the pod­cast. As an avid con­sumer of every sci­ence-based pod­cast out there, I can tell you that the StarTalk Radio Show (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) has quick­ly risen to the top of my list. The very per­son­able Tyson is the big draw, but he has also made the wise deci­sion to include “come­di­an co-hosts, celebri­ties, and oth­er spe­cial guests.” In the episode right below, Tyson and come­di­an Eugene Mir­man (whom you might rec­og­nize as the voice of Gene from Bob’s Burg­ers) mix it up with video game design­er Will Wright and author Jeff Ryan.

Ryan’s Super Mario: How Nin­ten­do Con­quered Amer­i­ca—and the his­to­ry of video games more generally—is the top­ic of the show. Despite the less-than-stel­lar audio qual­i­ty, this is not to be missed. The con­ver­sa­tion is rapid-fire: Mir­man inter­jects hilar­i­ous inani­ties while Wright and Ryan speed through the fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry and Tyson throws knuck­le­ball ques­tions and enthus­es (at 4:30) that the “first real video game,” Space Wars, was about, what else, space. We also get the his­to­ry of the unfor­get­table Pong (at 5:59), the orig­i­nal Star Wars game (at 8:17), and, nat­u­ral­ly, Don­key Kong (at 3:19), designed by the now wild­ly famous (in Japan, at least) Shigeru Miyamo­to–who also invent­ed Mario, and who had nev­er designed a game in his life before Don­key Kong. All this and some clas­sic 8‑bit video game music to boot.

StarTalk in gen­er­al has much to rec­om­mend it. Tyson is the “nation’s fore­most expert on space,” and is prob­a­bly instant­ly rec­og­niz­able from his host­ing of NOVA sci­en­ceNow and his best­selling books. He is the pub­lic face of a sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty often in need of good press, and he has the rare abil­i­ty to trans­late abstruse con­cepts to the gen­er­al pub­lic in a humor­ous and approach­able way. Pre­vi­ous guest­s/­co-hosts have includ­ed Janeane Garo­fa­lo (in the “most argu­men­ta­tive Startalk pod­cast ever”) and John Hodg­man (of the Dai­ly Show and the “Mac vs. PC” ads). But above all, c’mon, it’s Neil deGrasse Tyson. The man deserved­ly has his own inter­net meme, inspired by his dra­mat­ic ges­tures in this video dis­cus­sion of Isaac New­ton from Big Think.

Enough said.

Watch the full Big Think inter­view with Tyson here. And don’t for­get to sub­scribe to the StarTalk Radio Show (iTunes — Feed — Web Site).

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.

Who’s Afraid of Ai Weiwei: A Short Documentary

in Art, Current Affairs, Film | July 30th, 2012

The work of dis­si­dent Chi­nese artist Ai Wei­wei is mon­u­men­tal, as is the man’s fear­less and out­spo­ken per­son­al­i­ty. Recent­ly, while stand­ing under the cir­cu­lar dis­play of mas­sive bronze ani­mal heads in Ai’s Cir­cle of Animals/Zodiac Heads at Wash­ing­ton, DC’s Hir­sh­horn Muse­um, I found myself wish­ing I could meet him. The next best thing, I guess, is to see can­did footage of his life and work, which is what you find in Who’s Afraid of Ai Wei­wei, the short doc­u­men­tary (above) from PBS’s Front­line.

Begun in 2008 by 24-year-old film­mak­er Ali­son Klay­man, Who’s Afraid of Ai Wei­wei cap­tures the artist imme­di­ate­ly before his prin­ci­pled and cost­ly stand against the Bei­jing Olympics (which he helped to design) and the oppres­sive police state he claimed it rep­re­sent­ed. Klay­man fol­lowed Ai for two years and shot 200 hours of footage, some of which became the short film above. The rest has been edit­ed and released as a fea­ture-length film called Ai Wei­wei: Nev­er Sor­ry, which has picked up prizes at Sun­dance, the Berlin Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, and the Human Rights Watch Film Fes­ti­val.

Ai is unique among his con­tem­po­raries in the art world for his will­ing­ness to con­front social issues not only through visu­al media but also through media com­men­tary. As Klay­man puts it, “Wei­wei the artist had become as provoca­tive with his key­board, typ­ing out a dai­ly dia­tribe against local cor­rup­tion and gov­ern­ment abus­es” on his blog. Ai claims his polit­i­cal involve­ment is “very per­son­al.” “If you don’t speak out,” he says above, “if you don’t clear your mind, then who are you?” He has writ­ten edi­to­ri­als for Eng­lish-lan­guage pub­li­ca­tions on why he with­drew his sup­port from the Bei­jing Games and what he thought of last Friday’s open­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Lon­don (he liked it). And, of course, he’s become a bit of a star on Twit­ter, using it to relent­less­ly cri­tique China’s deep eco­nom­ic divides and sup­pres­sion of free speech.

But for all his noto­ri­ety as an activist and his well-known inter­net per­sona, Ai’s sculp­ture and pho­tog­ra­phy speaks for itself. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, due to his arrest and impris­on­ment by Chi­nese author­i­ties in 2011, he was unable to attend the open­ing of Cir­cle of Animals/Zodiac Heads in LA, and he is still under con­stant sur­veil­lance and not per­mit­ted to leave the coun­try. But, true to form, none of these set­backs have kept him from speak­ing out, about his pol­i­tics and his art. In the short video below, he dis­cuss­es the sig­nif­i­cance of Zodi­ac Heads, his most recent mon­u­men­tal vision.

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.

Total Noob to Learning Online? P2PU’s Peer-to-Peer Courses Hold Your Hand

in Education, Online Courses | July 23rd, 2012

Those of us inter­est­ed in explor­ing the myr­i­ad free cours­es avail­able online will appre­ci­ate the work being done at P2PU. It’s per­haps a fun­ny name when you first say it out loud, but P2PU’s approach and orig­i­nal learn­ing con­tent are for real.

You may have guessed what the name stands for: peer to peer uni­ver­si­ty. P2PU’s mod­el is inno­v­a­tive. Their idea is that tak­ing an online course should be more like learn­ing on the job than tak­ing a tra­di­tion­al class. Their approach encour­ages peo­ple to work togeth­er on projects—whether learn­ing com­put­ing pro­gram­ming or some­thing else—and to assess one another’s work with con­struc­tive feed­back.

Users can design their own cours­es with help from P2PU. Course design is bro­ken down into dis­crete steps and course con­tent is vet­ted by peer users and P2PU staff.

Cours­es are hands-on and super var­ied. One course lets users take a hack at design­ing their own big game—the kind that gets adults out in the streets defend­ing a foun­tain or hid­ing trea­sures under bus stop bench­es. Anoth­er cours­es lays out the steps for mak­ing a music video. Fif­teen oth­er peo­ple are already tak­ing the chal­lenge. Two have com­plet­ed it and four men­tors have offered their help.

One of the most pop­u­lar cours­es is about writ­ing for the web. The com­ments sec­tions for each step are live­ly and filled with links to real blogs. Par­tic­i­pants in this course share their writ­ing and opin­ions about what makes for good web writ­ing.

One of the site’s oth­er well-sub­scribed cours­es teach­es par­tic­i­pants how to pro­gram using the Twit­ter API. P2PU breaks the chal­lenge down into nine steps (the first of which is to intro­duce your­self to oth­ers already tak­ing the course). Par­tic­i­pants pro­ceed at their own pace and can reach out for help to oth­er stu­dents, men­tors and P2PU staff along the way.

Not all of the cours­es focus on new tech­nolo­gies. Always use­ful and nev­er out-of-date, this course is a per­fect fit for num­ber noobs.

You can find a list of P2Pu’s new cours­es here. And while you’ve got your think­ing cap on, don’t for­get our big list of 500 Free Online Cours­es.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lance writer. See more of her work at .

Professor Ronald Mallett Wants to Build a Time Machine in this Century … and He’s Not Kidding

in Physics, Video - Science | July 20th, 2012

Time trav­el. Since Ein­stein for­mu­lat­ed his spe­cial the­o­ry of rel­a­tiv­i­ty, we have known that it is the­o­ret­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble, even if pop­u­lar notions of time trav­el have dete­ri­o­rat­ed slight­ly from the august H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine to… well, Hot Tub Time Machine. Which is to say that few people—lay or professional—take the con­cept very seri­ous­ly any­more. But Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut Pro­fes­sor Dr. Ronald Mal­lett still believes, and he has sought to real­ize his dream of mak­ing time trav­el pos­si­ble in this cen­tu­ry by infil­trat­ing the sci­en­tif­ic pro­fes­sion, becom­ing a respect­ed the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist, then brav­ing the ridicule and oppro­bri­um, or at least dis­agree­ment, of his col­leagues to begin work on a time machine.

In the video above, Dr. Mal­lett describes his expe­ri­ence of “risk­ing pro­fes­sion­al sui­cide,” and phys­i­cal pain, to work out his ideas. Since com­ing out, so to speak, as a pro­po­nent of time trav­el, Mal­lett pub­lished a mem­oir in 2006, Time Trav­el­er: A Scientist’s Per­son­al Mis­sion to Make Time Trav­el a Real­i­ty. It’s both a descrip­tion of his fifty years of sci­en­tif­ic work toward his project Space-time Twist­ing by Light (STL) and a mov­ing per­son­al nar­ra­tive of grow­ing up under seg­re­ga­tion, los­ing his father at a young age, and becom­ing one of the first African Amer­i­can the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cists.

Spike Lee has acquired the film rights to his mem­oir (though the project seems to be stalled), and Mal­lett has told his sto­ry on This Amer­i­can Life, CNN, and in speak­ing tours around the coun­try. Whether Mallett’s enthu­si­asm will trans­late into real­i­ty remains to be seen, but his pas­sion for Einstein’s pre­dic­tions is infec­tious and illu­mi­nat­ing.

The video comes from a new series from THNKR called EPIPHANY, a “dai­ly series invit­ing impas­sioned thought lead­ers across all dis­ci­plines to reveal the inno­v­a­tive, the improb­a­ble, and the unex­pect­ed of their worlds.” Each week is devot­ed to a new “thought leader.” Vis­it the EPIPHANY chan­nel to view the rest of Dr. Mallett’s “rev­e­la­tions.”

Anoth­er online source for infor­ma­tion, the Cas­siopeia Project, claims to “make sci­ence sim­ple.” In the video below, learn the basics of time trav­el and spe­cial rel­a­tiv­i­ty.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Tom Davis, Original Saturday Night Live Writer, “De-animates” at 59

in Comedy, Life | July 20th, 2012

Back in 1975, Tom Davis and Al Franken, two Min­neso­ta-born come­di­ans, joined the writ­ing staff of Sat­ur­day Night Live, a new late-night com­e­dy show. Togeth­er, Franken & Davis sketched out some unfor­get­table SNL char­ac­ters — The Cone­heads played by Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin and Laraine New­man. Nick The Lounge Singer, a char­ac­ter inhab­it­ed won­der­ful­ly by Bill Mur­ray. Julia Child brought to life by Aykroyd again. 37 years lat­er, Sat­ur­day Night Live is still going strong.

The Franken & Davis com­e­dy team broke up in 1990. Time passed. And, in 2009, their lives went in very dif­fer­ent direc­tions. Al Franken was elect­ed to the U.S. Sen­ate. Tom Davis was diag­nosed with throat and neck can­cer — the dis­ease that final­ly took his life yes­ter­day. In recent months, Davis wrote open­ly about his jour­ney with can­cer. In a blog post called The Dark Side of Death, he joked about indulging in med­ical mar­i­jua­na (“These days I get my mar­i­jua­na through air­port secu­ri­ty by hid­ing it in the mor­phine”) and the day he’d “de-ani­mate.” But he also talked mov­ing­ly about the per­spec­tive the dis­ease gave him, writ­ing:

I wake up in the morn­ing, delight­ed to be wak­ing up, read, write, feed the birds, watch sports on TV, accept­ing the fact that in the fore­see­able future I will be a dead per­son. I want to remind you that dead peo­ple are peo­ple too. There are good dead peo­ple and bad dead peo­ple. Some of my best friends are dead peo­ple. Dead peo­ple have fought in every war. We’re all going to try it some­time. For­tu­nate­ly for me, I have always enjoyed mys­tery and soli­tude.

Many peo­ple in my sit­u­a­tion say, “It’s been my worst and best year.” If that sounds like a cliché, you don’t have can­cer. On the plus side, I am grate­ful to have gained real, not just intel­lec­tu­al empa­thy. I was pre­pared to go through life with­out hav­ing suf­fered, and I was doing a good job of it. Now I know what it’s like to starve. And to accept “that over which I have no con­trol,” I had to turn inward. Peo­ple from all over my life are recon­nect­ing with me, and I’ve tried to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for my deeds, good and bad. As my friend Tim­o­thy Leary said in his book, Death by Design, “Even if you’ve been a com­plete slob your whole life, if you can end the last act with panache, that’s what they’ll remem­ber.”

I think I’ve final­ly grown up.

When Davis said that “some of my best friends are dead peo­ple,” he was prob­a­bly think­ing of Tim­o­thy Leary and Jer­ry Gar­cia too. Here, you can watch Davis and the Grate­ful Dead front­man cook a meal togeth­er, and above we bring you Franken & Davis con­duct­ing a Grate­ful Dead triv­ia con­test in 1980. Thanks to Tom for the mem­o­ries and laughs.

via NYTimes

22-Year-Old P.O.W. Kurt Vonnegut Writes Home from World War II: “I’ll Be Damned If It Was Worth It”

in Literature | July 9th, 2012

If you read Open Cul­ture, smart mon­ey says you’ll also enjoy Let­ters of Note, a site we occa­sion­al­ly ref­er­ence. They col­lect, post, and pro­vide con­text for “fas­ci­nat­ing let­ters, post­cards, telegrams, fax­es, and mem­os” to and from all man­ners of lumi­nar­ies through­out the his­to­ry of art, pol­i­tics, music, sci­ence, media, and, er, let­ters. Dig into the archives and you’ll find a mis­sive home from Kurt Von­negut, a notable let­ter-writer if ever there was one. Ded­i­cat­ed Von­negut read­ers will rec­og­nize the tone of the nov­el­ist, although here, at the age of 22, he had yet to become one. A Pri­vate in the Sec­ond World War, he was tak­en pris­on­er on Decem­ber 19, 1944, dur­ing the Bat­tle of the Bulge. Hav­ing then done time in an under­ground sec­tion of a Dres­den work camp known, yes, as “Slaugh­ter­house Five,” he sur­vived the sub­se­quent bomb­ing of the city and wound up in a repa­tri­a­tion camp by May 1945. There, he wrote what fol­lows:

The Evolution of the Moon: 4.5 Billions Years in 2.6 Minutes (and More Culture From Around the Web)

in Astronomy, Video - Science | July 6th, 2012

Here it is. A short his­to­ry of the Moon. 4.5 bil­lion years cov­ered in a slick 2.6 min­utes, all thanks to NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter. The video, mov­ing from the Moon’s hot cre­ation to its pock­marked present, can be down­loaded via NASA’s web site.

Now More Cul­ture from Around the Web (all pre­vi­ous­ly aired on our Twit­ter Stream):

BBC’s Col­lec­tion of Famous Authors Read­ing From Their Works

Five Key TED Talks, Accord­ing to The New York­er

“Oh my ass burns like fire! ” Mozart Writes a Let­ter to His Cousin, 1777

Sylvia Plath’s Draw­ings (Pre­sent­ed at London’s May­or Gallery)

Van Gogh’s ‘Star­ry Night’ Recre­at­ed in 7,000 Domi­noes

Drunk Texts from Famous Authors, Cour­tesy of The Paris Review

An Abridged His­to­ry of Video Games in Under Three Min­utes

Matt Taib­bi Looks Back at Hunter S. Thomp­son’s “Fear and Loathing on the Cam­paign Trail” 

How William Faulkn­er Tack­led Race — and Freed the South From Itself

Colum McCann Reads His Sto­ry “Transat­lantic.” Added to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books

Anne Frank’s Diary Was Almost Nev­er Pub­lished. Francine Prose Tells the Sto­ry

Dar­win & Design (MIT). Added to our List of 500 Free Cours­es (under Lit­er­a­ture)

Famed Har­vard Biol­o­gist E.O. Wil­son Gives Advice to Young Sci­en­tists at TEDMed

Author Rohin­ton Mis­try Offers Words of Wis­dom to Grad­u­at­ing Class at Ryer­son Uni­ver­si­ty

Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty, the Clas­sic Film by Bil­ly Wilder on YouTube

The Complete History of the World (and Human Creativity) in 100 Objects

in History, Podcasts | June 21st, 2012

While we’re catch­ing up with his­tor­i­cal pod­casts, note that BBC Radio 4’s The His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects (iTunes – RSS Feed – Web Site) has wrapped up and cov­ered all 100 objects. And not, mind you, just any old objects: these objects come straight from the col­lec­tion of the British Muse­um, and thus almost cer­tain­ly reveal the sto­ry of mankind more effec­tive­ly than most. For that has con­sti­tut­ed the pro­gram’s project since its incep­tion: to tell, for just under fif­teen min­utes at a stretch, one chap­ter of human his­to­ry as the trained eye can read it in an object like an ear­ly writ­ing tablet, a Chi­nese bronze bell, or an Egypt­ian clay mod­el of cat­tle. Don’t let the seem­ing plain­ness of these arti­facts fool you; the show approach­es them with all the most advanced audio pro­duc­tion tech­niques. And after you’ve lis­tened, you’ll real­ize that, looked at from a suit­ably his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive, there’s not a plain object in this bunch.

Since A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects has fin­ished its jour­ney to the present day, the new lis­ten­er has no oblig­a­tion to begin in the ancient world and work their way for­ward. You might well pre­fer to begin at the end, as it were, and draw insights from one of our every­day objects like a cred­it card (albeit, in this broad­cast, one that con­forms to Shar­i’a law), or a slight­ly futur­is­tic object now enter­ing our every­day lives like a solar-pow­ered lamp. From there, you can delve deep­er and deep­er into our cul­ture and tech­nol­o­gy’s past: the nifty lamp gives way to the cred­it card which gives way to a David Hock­ney paint­ing, which gives way to the HMS Bea­gle’s chronome­ter to the mechan­i­cal galleon and a Kore­an roof tile until you’re back at the Mum­my of Horned­jitef. If you get back that far and still find your­self long­ing for more from host Neil Mac­Gre­gor, be aware that he’s got a new, 20-part his­tor­i­cal series going called Shake­speare’s Rest­less World. The range of source mate­r­i­al may have nar­rowed, but the depth remains.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

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

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

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

in Philosophy, Podcasts | June 19th, 2012

Last August, we fea­tured Peter Adam­son’s pod­cast The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps (iTunes – RSS Feed – Web Site), a chrono­log­i­cal­ly unin­ter­rupt­ed “look at the ideas and lives of the major philoso­phers (even­tu­al­ly cov­er­ing in detail such giants as Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Aquinas, Descartes, and Kant) as well as the less­er-known fig­ures of the tra­di­tion.” Con­tin­u­ing at the rate of one episode a week, Adam­son and his guest philo­soph­i­cal experts have since cov­ered names like Lucretius, Seneca, and Plutarch. They’ve most recent­ly reached Alexan­der of Aphro­disias, an espe­cial­ly astute ancient com­men­ta­tor on Aris­to­tle and oppo­nent of Sto­ic atti­tudes toward fate; Quin­til­ian, Lucian, Themistius, and the inter­play between rhetoric and phi­los­o­phy in the Roman Empire; and the emer­gence of astron­o­my, ush­ered in by Ptole­my dur­ing a time when observers still had much to say about astrol­o­gy.

Don’t miss the episodes where Adam­son brings in spe­cial­ists on the par­tic­u­lar philoso­pher, philo­soph­i­cal sub­field, or quirk in philo­soph­i­cal his­to­ry to which his pod­cast­ing jour­ney brings him. Since our last post on the show, we’ve heard Richard Sorab­ji talk about time and eter­ni­ty in Aris­to­tle, James War­ren on Epi­cure­anism, and Raphael Wolf on Cicero, to name but a few. Such is Adamson’s atten­tion to detail — and ded­i­ca­tion to the Zeno’s Para­dox-rem­i­nis­cent cause of pure con­ti­nu­ity — that, after putting out 85 episodes, he remains in the ancient world. Imag­ine the boun­ty of dis­cus­sion when he reach­es, say, the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, let alone the twen­ti­eth. To pre­pare your­self for that, you’d bet­ter start lis­ten­ing now; a show express­ly cre­at­ed with­out gaps must, it seems only nat­ur­al, be expe­ri­enced with­out them.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life: A Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

55 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

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