Philosophy Bites
By John Taylor; 2007 Dec 09, 2007, 17 Qawl, 164 BE
Since we got an ipod in September, I have become an ever more enthusiastic fan of the podcasts coming out of England called "Philosophy Bites." This is their site:
The Philosophy Bites web site has a button you can hit to subscribe to their RSS feed, and you can put it on your igoogle homepage, or on Google Reader (you can do the same with the Badi Blog, though I do not know if it is as quick and easy to sign on.)
The name itself shows how huge a linguistic difference the pond makes, since over here a show called "Philosophy Bites" would be run by disgruntled former philosophy students who detest the discipline. But this is fer, not agin; it is serious, world class philosophy consisting of "bite-sized" -- just long enough to expand your head a little without cracking the skull -- interviews with the best philosophers the UK has to offer. Since all a podcast is is a downloadable, on-demand radio show, my sole exposure over these months to the name "Philosophy Bites" was auditory; as a result, I thought they must be saying "Philosophy Bytes," making that hoary, overdone pun with digital bits and bytes; but no, I went to their site and that is what they call it, Bites.
I find both hosts of these broadcasts to be so good at what they do that, well, I cannot put it in words. To my philosophical duffer's ears they are almost superhuman in their insight. I am the type who as soon as he stumbles into a serious discussion trips up pronouncing words like "Nietchze" or "deontology." To hear these guys go on it is, well, almost a religious experience for me. I feel like, dare I say it?, praying to them. Silly, I know, they are still alive and far from being the dead saints you pray to, but it has been an eternity since I saw or heard anything like this in any media, be it television or radio. The old media are deserts; they made podcasting into an oasis, for they _are_ podcasting, they are the new internet moderated media.
I feel I have died and gone to heaven listening to each new broadcast, going avidly over their archive of old shows, hoping upon hope that they will never run out. In fact so incisive are they that as often as not their guests, experts in abstruse branches of philosophical inquiry, just stop in their tracks and say admiringly, "You know, that is a very good question," or, "You just summed this up better than I ever could."
I love to walk through the streets of Dunnville with my noise-canceling earphones blocking out the traffic noise and enter completely into the sweet world of these minds. I go in and never want to come out again. Why, oh why, is there no such thing as stupidity-canceling earphones? If there were leaving my auditory world of Philosophy Bites would not be so jarring. Television shows would be tolerable, with SCE; I could plug in the earphones and even people would start making sense. Or, maybe the whole world would go dead and all I would hear would be the sound of silence. Sounds lonely. Now I am starting to sound like a Dilbert character.
At first I thought I would use the twin philosophers of Philosophy Bites as models for any future Badi' Blog podcasts where I plan to read older essays aloud. But the more I listen to Philosophy Bites the higher the bar, the tougher it gets for me to imagine myself doing that. I admit it, I am the type who stumbles over words from time to time. I mess up. I misunderstand. I repeat. I stutter. I spoonerize. I miss things. These podcasts are absolutely flawless; not a word, not a thought, not a phoneme is out of place. These two podcasters are frighteningly like those widescreen, Technicolor movies they made in the 1950's where every hair on every actor was in place and ugliness and missteps just did not enter into their world.
Having said all that, this would not genuinely be coming from me if I did not have some criticisms, minor as they may be. For one thing, philosophy in general is awfully prone to name dropping. Interviewing experts in their fields, I find that they tend too often to be experts on other philosophers, almost always dead philosophers. Few are original thinkers in their own right. In view of the nature of philosophy, which has to involve thinking for oneself, independently, this rings wrong in one's ears. It is mildly distressing, offensive. And, as the Biters themselves point out at one point, too many philosophers, Kant first among them, were terrible writers. Unlike intellectuals in other disciplines, most modern philosophers have just given up on appealing to a popular audience. This is a grating pity.
The result of philosophers' exclusively academic rut is an inbred mind-set, and from what I hear Oxford and Cambridge philosophers have a reputation even among other philosophers for their insularity. Brrr... The epitome of this was the Philosophy Bites podcast where they interviewed a rare philosopher who shut up his dead philosopher books and actually went out into the world to make his own observations. In his case, he went on a wine tasting kick.
Neither he nor the interviewers seemed aware of the double blind studies proving that nobody can tell the difference between vintage wines and dime store plonk (okay, slight overstatement). Wine tasting has little or nothing to do with what people actually taste. Other statistical studies in the early Nineties found that wine tasters and other so-called experts in this area are beaten out in predicting good and bad vintage years for annual grape crops. The scientific consensus is that on the whole the entire "high" culinary experience is in the head, in the psychological buildup before eating. Not that this is not fertile ground. If they wanted to be philosophical about it, they could have discussed the placebo effect, a highly interesting phenomenon, philosophically, at least to me. But to buy into the high brow nonsense spouted by a fellow who makes his living producing words that sound good to other academics, that is a stretch.
If you want to talk about vintages, talk about Nigel himself, for most mesmerizing of all about this show is his slightly slurred Oxford accent. I so look forward to hearing the interviews given by him, though I must say that I keep wishing the interviewees would just shut up and let me hear him talk some more. If they ever cast a new Bertie Wooster for P.G. Woodhouse's Jeeves stories, they need go no further than this guy. He would be perfect for the role. True, Bertie is a blathering idiot, and Nigel is at the reverse end of the IQ spectrum. But who knows, maybe Nigel can act. Even if he cannot, it would be great to just hear his voice, even if the art does not quite ring true. For decades I devoured one of Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster novels every month, and the voice in my head during that whole time was just what you hear when Nigel Warburton opens his mouth. Wonderful experience, I am speechless with nostalgia the whole time.
My friend Doug just pointed out to me the following philosophical attack ad, at:
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