Bryan Magee’s In-Depth, Uncut TV Conversations With Famous Philosophers (1978–87)

in Philosophy, Television | May 18th, 2012

Bryan Magee comes from a tra­di­tion that pro­duced some of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry’s most impres­sive media per­son­al­i­ties: that of the schol­ar­ship-edu­cat­ed, Oxbridge-refined, intel­lec­tu­al­ly omniv­o­rous, occa­sion­al­ly office-hold­ing, radio- and tele­vi­sion-savvy man of let­ters. Stu­dents and pro­fes­sors of phi­los­o­phy prob­a­bly know him from his large print oeu­vre, which includes vol­umes on Pop­per and Schopen­hauer as well as sev­er­al guides to west­ern phi­los­o­phy and the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Con­fes­sions of a Philoso­pher. He also wrote anoth­er mem­oir called The Tele­vi­sion Inter­view­er, and philo­soph­i­cal­ly inclined lay­men may fond­ly remem­ber him as just that. When Magee played to both these strengths at once, he came up with two philo­soph­i­cal tele­vi­sion shows in the span of a decade: Men of Ideas, which began in 1978, and The Great Philoso­phers, which ran in 1987. Both series brought BBC view­ers in-depth, uncut con­ver­sa­tions with many of the day’s most famous philoso­phers.

You can watch select inter­views of Men of Ideas and The Great Philoso­phers on YouTube, includ­ing:

• Her­bert Mar­cuse on the Frank­furt School
• Bernard Williams on the Spell of Lin­guis­tic Phi­los­o­phy
• Bernard Williams on Descartes
• Miles Burnyeat on Pla­to
• Martha Nuss­baum on Aris­to­tle
• Antho­ny Ken­ny on Medieval Phi­los­o­phy
• Iris Mur­doch on Phi­los­o­phy and Lit­er­a­ture
• Geof­frey Warnock on Kant
• J.P. Stern on Niet­zsche
• Hubert Drey­fus on Husserl and Hei­deg­ger
• Antho­ny Quin­ton on Spin­oza and Leib­niz
• Peter Singer on Hegel and Marx
• Michael Ayers on Locke and Berke­ley
• John Pass­more on Hume
• Sid­ney Mor­genbess­er on the Prag­ma­tists
• A.J. Ayer on log­i­cal Pos­i­tivism
• A.J. Ayer on Frege and Rus­sell
• John Sear­le on the Phi­los­o­phy of Lan­guage
• Antho­ny Quin­ton on Wittgen­stein
• John Sear­le on Wittgen­stein
• Hilary Put­nam on the Phi­los­o­phy of Sci­ence
• Fred­er­ick Copel­ston on Schopen­hauer

At the top of the post, you’ll find Magee talk­ing with A.J. Ayer, a well-known spe­cial­ist in “log­i­cal pos­i­tivism,” about the devel­op­ment of, and chal­lenges to, that philo­soph­i­cal sub-field. Two philoso­phers, relaxed on a couch, some­times smok­ing, enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly engaged in a com­mer­cial-free back-and-forth about the most impor­tant thinkers and thoughts in the field — watch some­thing like that, and you can’t pos­si­bly think of now as a gold­en age of tele­vi­sion.

Note: Oodles of phi­los­o­phy cours­es, many thought by famous philoso­phers, can be found in the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our list of Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

105 Ani­mat­ed Phi­los­o­phy Videos from Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy: A Project Spon­sored by Yale, MIT, Duke & More

44 Essen­tial Movies for the Stu­dent of Phi­los­o­phy

Brussels Express: The Perils of Cycling in Europe’s Most Congested City

in Film, Life | May 17th, 2012

The Bel­gians take their cycling seri­ous­ly. After all, it’s the birth­place of Eddy Mer­ckx, the five time cham­pi­on of the Tour de France. And it’s a coun­try that plays host to some of the great short races in the sport: La Flèche Wal­lonne, E3 Harel­beke, Gent–Wevelgem, and Liège–Bastogne–Liège. If you’re famil­iar with these races, you know they’re not for the faint of heart, see­ing that they some­times take rid­ers across long sec­tions of dan­ger­ous cob­ble­stones. (Get a feel for that here.) But when you watch this new doc­u­men­tary, Brus­sels Express, you start to won­der whether the real risks are not being tak­en by bike mes­sen­gers in Brus­sels, one of the most con­gest­ed cities in Europe. As David Byrne recent­ly showed us, some mod­ern cities (New York, Copen­hagen, Mod­e­na) try to make cyclists feel at home. Not so in Brus­sels. Direct­ed and shot by Sander Van­den­broucke, Brus­sels Express offers a com­men­tary on some­thing larg­er than cycling itself. It’s real­ly a tale about moder­ni­ty, the auto­mo­bile, the choic­es we make in our con­tem­po­rary, mech­a­nized lives, and their social costs. The film runs 20 min­utes, and it appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, part of our col­lec­tion of 635 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

The Physics of the Bike

A Young Frank Zap­pa Plays the Bicy­cle on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Ken Burns on the Art of Storytelling: “It’s Lying Twenty-Four Times a Second”

in Film, History | May 17th, 2012

If you’ve nev­er watched a doc­u­men­tary by Ken Burns, maybe you just haven’t had the time. Ten hours for The Civ­il War, eigh­teen and a half for Base­ball, near­ly nine­teen for Jazz; such blocks can be dif­fi­cult to carve out, even when you’re carv­ing them out for the mas­ter audio­vi­su­al sto­ry­teller of Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Burns takes on such icon­ic sub­jects, and in so doing attracts so much acclaim — includ­ing the inim­itable form of recog­ni­tion that is a spoof on The Simp­sons — that he seems like some­one whose work you should know well, even if you’ve only glimpsed it or heard it ref­er­enced. Luck­i­ly, film­mak­ers Tom Mason and Sarah Klein have put togeth­er a doc­u­men­tary of their own, one on Ken Burns, that you can watch no mat­ter how packed your sched­ule. In a mere five min­utes, Ken Burns: On Sto­ry con­veys just enough of impor­tance about Burns’ per­son­al­i­ty, work­ing prin­ci­ples, and world­view that it may leave you feel­ing like you have no choice but to dive into his fil­mog­ra­phy imme­di­ate­ly.

Of course, this all depends on how you feel about sto­ry­telling. In explain­ing his own view on film­mak­ing, Burns rolls out that old quote from Jean Luc-Godard, “Cin­e­ma is truth at twen­ty-four frames a sec­ond.” But he has his own response to the famous procla­ma­tion: “Maybe. It’s lying twen­ty-four times a sec­ond, too. All the time. All sto­ry is manip­u­la­tion.” With as much vehe­mence as Godard has aired his griev­ances about how the forces of sto­ry, plot, and nar­ra­tive hope­less­ly and per­verse­ly dis­tort artis­tic truth, Burns declares his accep­tance and even admi­ra­tion of that ele­ment of sto­ry­telling. To him, craft­ing a prop­er sto­ry requires manip­u­la­tion, but he does­n’t con­sid­er all manip­u­la­tive tech­niques equal. “Is there accept­able manip­u­la­tion? You bet,” he declares. “Peo­ple say, ‘Oh boy, I was so moved to tears by your film.’ That’s a good thing? I manip­u­lat­ed that!” And even if you feel you have no stake in mat­ters of sto­ry, truth, and manip­u­la­tion, keep watch­ing; Mason and Klein even­tu­al­ly get Burns talk­ing about some­thing that would fas­ci­nate any­one: his desire to “wake the dead.”

(See also the Atlantic’s inter­view with Mason and Klein about the mak­ing of Ken Burns: On Sto­ry.)

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

Studs Terkel Reads Poem ‘Blessed be the Nation’

in Literature, Poetry | May 16th, 2012

Studs Terkel would have turned 100 years old today. A leg­endary broad­cast­er and the author of ground-break­ing oral his­to­ries of the Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence in the 20th century–including his Pulitzer Prize-win­ning exam­i­na­tion of World War II, The Good War–Terkel was a beloved cul­tur­al fig­ure in his native Chica­go up until his death in Octo­ber, 2008. The head­line of his New York Times obit­u­ary called him “Lis­ten­er to Amer­i­cans.” It was an apt phrase. “The thing I’m able to do, I guess, is break down walls,” Terkel once said. “If they think you’re lis­ten­ing, they’ll talk. It’s more of a con­ver­sa­tion than an inter­view.” With Studs, they talked.

To cel­e­brate his 100th birth­day we bring you a lit­tle clip from the “Eight Forty-Eight” show on Chica­go pub­lic radio sta­tion WBEZ, with a lis­ten­er call­ing in from his car to play a read­ing by Terkel of a poem writ­ten by Pete Seeger and Jim Mus­sel­man called “Blessed be the Nation.” It’s from the 1998 trib­ute album Where Have All the Flow­ers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger. The brief clip reveals some­thing of Terkel’s val­ues, and of the esteem in which he is still held in the Windy City and beyond.

A Child’s Introduction to Jazz by Cannonball Adderley (with Louis Armstrong & Thelonious Monk)

in K-12, Music | May 16th, 2012

In 1961, Julian “Can­non­ball” Adder­ley, the jazz sax­o­phon­ist best known for his work on Miles Davis’ epic album Kind of Blue, nar­rat­ed a chil­dren’s intro­duc­tion to jazz music. Part of a larg­er series of edu­ca­tion­al albums for chil­dren, this 12-inch LP offered an “easy-going, con­ver­sa­tion­al dis­cus­sion of the high­lights of the jazz sto­ry,” high­light­ing the “major styles and great per­form­ers” that began in New Orleans and spread beyond. Includ­ed on the album are some leg­endary jazz fig­ures — Louis Arm­strong, Fats Waller, Jel­ly Roll Mor­ton, Duke Elling­ton, Cole­man Hawkins, Sid­ney Bechet, Thelo­nious Monk, and, of course, Can­non­ball him­self. The album, A Child’s Intro­duc­tion to Jazz, has long been out of cir­cu­la­tion. But you can catch it on YouTube, or above.

Thanks to James for telling us about this album on our Face­book page. Feel free to mes­sage us good ideas for posts at Face­book or cc: us on Twit­ter (cc: @openculture). And then there’s always old-fash­ioned email.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Thelo­nious Monk, Bill Evans and More on the Clas­sic Jazz 625 Show

1959: The Year that Changed Jazz

The Uni­ver­sal Mind of Bill Evans: Advice on Learn­ing to Play Jazz & The Cre­ative Process

Stephen Fry, Language Enthusiast, Defends The “Unnecessary” Art Of Swearing

in English Language | May 16th, 2012

Among his count­less occu­pa­tions, Stephen Fry acts, writes scripts, per­forms com­e­dy, writes books, broad­casts on the radio, writes plays, presents tele­vi­sion pro­grams, and writes poet­ry. Words, it seems, have served him well, or, rather, he’s made indus­tri­ous use of them. Any­one involved with such a wide range of the ver­bal arts must give quite a bit of thought to how lan­guage works, but Fry has act­ed direct­ly on this inter­est. His and Hugh Lau­rie’s com­e­dy show A Bit of Fry and Lau­rie fea­tured lin­guis­ti­cal­ly themed sketch­es; more recent­ly, his pod­cast Stephen Fry’s Pod­grams offered com­men­taries on lan­guage. He even went so far as to host Fry’s Plan­et Word, a five-part BBC tele­vi­sion series on lan­guage, “how we learn it, write it and some­times lose it, and why it defines us.”

Giv­en Fry’s posi­tion as a bas­tion of mod­ern British wit who cares deeply about the words we speak and write, you might assume he uses only the high­est, most refined kind of Eng­lish. Not so, it seems; Fry can get down into the ver­bal gut­ter with the best of them, and the inter­view clip above con­tains his defense — or, to be more pre­cise, his endorse­ment — of swear­ing. “It would be impos­si­ble to imag­ine going through life with­out swear­ing, and with­out enjoy­ing swear­ing,” he attests. Some would call swear­ing unnec­es­sary, and Fry recon­tex­tu­al­izes their argu­ment like so: “It’s not nec­es­sary to have col­ored socks. It’s not nec­es­sary for this cush­ion to be here. But is any­one going to write in and say, ‘I was shocked to see that cush­ion there! It real­ly was­n’t nec­es­sary’? No. Things not being nec­es­sary is what makes life inter­est­ing.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Stephen Fry Gets Ani­mat­ed About Lan­guage

The His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Lan­guage In Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

Eng­lish And Its Evo­lu­tion

Carlos Fuentes: “You Have to See the Face of Death in Order to Start Writing Seriously”

in Literature | May 16th, 2012

“I think you have to see the face of death in order to start writ­ing seri­ous­ly,” Car­los Fuentes said in his 1981 Paris Review inter­view. “There are peo­ple who see the end quick­ly, like Rim­baud. When you start see­ing it, you feel you have to res­cue these things. Death is the great Mae­ce­nas, Death is the great angel of writ­ing. You must write because you are not going to live any more.”

Fuentes died Tues­day at the age of 83. He wrote seri­ous­ly right up to the end, pub­lish­ing more than 50 books in his life­time, includ­ing Where the Air is Clear, The Death of Artemio Cruz and Ter­ra Nos­tra. He was one of Latin Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing voic­es of the past half cen­tu­ry, and Mex­i­co’s most renowned nov­el­ist. Despite his deep con­nec­tion with his native coun­try, Fuentes lived a sig­nif­i­cant part of his life abroad. As the son of a Mex­i­can diplo­mat he was born in Pana­ma and began his school­ing in Wash­ing­ton D.C.. Lat­er he accept­ed his own diplo­mat­ic and aca­d­e­m­ic post­ings abroad. As he told the Paris Review, the sep­a­ra­tion helped him as a writer:

I am grate­ful for my sense of detach­ment because I can say things about my coun­try oth­er peo­ple don’t say. I offer Mex­i­cans a mir­ror in which they can see how they look, how they talk, how they act, in a coun­try which is a masked coun­try. Of course, I real­ize that my writ­ings are my masks as well, ver­bal masks I offer my coun­try as mir­rors. Mex­i­co is defined in the leg­end of Quet­zal­coatl, the Plumed Ser­pent, the god who cre­ates man and is destroyed by a demon who offers him a mir­ror. The demon shows him he has a face when he thought he had no face. This is the essense of Mex­i­co: to dis­cov­er you have a face when you thought you only had a mask.

To learn more about Fuentes, you can watch the brief video above from AARP Viva, which is in Span­ish with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles, and a 19-minute inter­view below with Char­lie Rose. Both were record­ed last year. In 1981, when the Paris Review inter­view­er asked Fuentes what hooked him and made him want to begin writ­ing, he said: “That won­der­ful thing Ham­let says about ‘a fic­tion, a dream of pas­sion.’ My fic­tion is a dream of pas­sion, born of a cry that says ‘I am incom­plete.’ I want to be com­plete, to be enclosed. I want to add some­thing.”

Willie Nelson Sings Pearl Jam’s “Just Breathe” (And We’re Taking a Deep Breath Too)

in Music, Technology | May 16th, 2012

Usu­al­ly the young cov­er songs by the old. But these days, it’s often the oth­er way around. Per­haps you remem­ber John­ny Cash cov­er­ing U2’s song “One.” Now, we have the great Willie Nel­son singing a ver­sion of Pearl Jam’s “Just Breathe” with his sons Lukas and Mic­ah. The tune also hap­pens to appear on his new album Heroes.

“Just Breathe” isn’t a zen com­mand­ment, at least that’s not what Pearl Jam meant by the phrase here. But “Just Breathe” has been our mantra dur­ing the past two days as we’ve expe­ri­enced some down­right hideous host­ing prob­lems. Hope­ful­ly things are now sta­ble, and, with a lit­tle luck, we’ll be in a much bet­ter posi­tion to recov­er in the future. We real­ly appre­ci­ate your patience and sup­port dur­ing this bad hic­cup. H/T @webacion

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Freddie Mercury: The Untold Story of the Singer’s Journey From Zanzibar to Stardom

in Film, Music | May 15th, 2012

How to explain a per­former like Fred­die Mer­cury? First you’d have to describe, in con­ven­tion­al terms, the thor­ough­ly uncon­ven­tion­al musi­cal per­sona he devel­oped as the front­man of the glam rock band Queen. Then you’d have to explain how he got there from his birth as Far­rokh Bol­sara, his child­hood in Zanz­ibar — yes, Zanz­ibar — and his school­ing in the strict, tra­di­tion­al British Indi­an envi­ron­ment of St. Peter’s Board­ing School. In 2000’s Fred­die Mer­cury: The Untold Sto­ry, direc­tors Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossach­er attempt just this, talk­ing to those who knew Mer­cury well in the many ways one could know him: fam­i­ly mem­bers, teach­ers, col­lab­o­ra­tors, lovers. This in addi­tion to dozens of brief, high­ly admir­ing com­ments from Mer­cury’s famous col­leagues in both rock and flam­boy­ance: Phil Collins, Mick Jag­ger, Elton John, Liza Min­nel­li.

By 2000, Mer­cury had already been dead of AIDS for near­ly a decade. At the time he acquired it, the dis­ease remained poor­ly under­stood, and any­one liv­ing as far out on the social, phys­i­cal, and sex­u­al edge as he did must have run a great risk of it. But the provoca­tive, uncom­pro­mis­ing Fred­die Mer­cury of The Untold Sto­ry could nev­er have exist­ed with­out great risk, espe­cial­ly of the aes­thet­ic and per­for­ma­tive vari­eties. The film spends time gaz­ing upon the draw­ings the young Fred Bol­sara, as he was then known, made as a visu­al art stu­dent. Who could resist think­ing of him as a kind of a visu­al artist all his life, one who craft­ed the image of Fred­die Mer­cury, embod­ied this image, and ulti­mate­ly became it? Only a man dar­ing enough to cre­ate him­self, after all, could pos­si­bly have been dar­ing enough to stage the Felli­ni-esque birth­day par­ty we see pieces of and hear hazi­ly remem­bered. Who among us feels bold enough to cel­e­brate our own 39th with dwarfs cov­ered in liv­er?

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

True Story: The Time Pixar Almost Deleted Toy Story 2

in Animation, Film | May 15th, 2012

Dur­ing the late 1980s, two short films — Luxo Jr. and Tin Toy — saved Pixar from bank­rupt­cy. Dur­ing the late 1990s, anoth­er film, Toy Sto­ry 2, almost cre­at­ed a finan­cial cat­a­stro­phe for the com­pa­ny. In this clip excerpt­ed from the Blu-ray ver­sion of the film, Oren Jacob (for­mer CTO of Pixar) and Galyn Sus­man (Pixar pro­duc­er) remem­ber the time when Toy Sto­ry 2 near­ly became the vic­tim of the com­put­ers that gen­er­at­ed it. One com­mand — RM* — almost delet­ed an award-win­ning film that went on to make $485 mil­lion at the box office.

via Kot­tke

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