NP: Podcasts/BEE Podcast/The Great Courses

[Ian Livingston]

At least some of the Great Courses are useful teaching tools. I use one on
drugs of addiction and the brain in my counseling work.

On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 9:46 AM, Steven Koteff <steviekoteff at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I am suddenly having to commute a lot more. I was basically living on, and
> gleefully, willingly into, debt for six months after grad school. Now I am
> working a lot more. (If I wasn't against the day before, holy shit am I
> now). I'm still very blessed as far as all this goes--I'm only working
> half-time and am making enough to live healthfully, with relative comfort,
> freedom, etc, in a major metropolis--but I am often a big baby about it.
> (Then again, Kafka never actually worked very long hours, from what I
> understand.)
>
> PODCASTS
>
> Longer commutes beget more time listening to things. Any podcast
> recommendations are welcome. And I mean any--interested in mind expansion,
> here.
>
> BEE PODCAST
>
> I have started listening to The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast. I have
> conflicted feelings about it generally. I think, on the one hand, it
> reveals that BEE's best contributions in recent memory are as a cultural
> critic/pundit type. And in that regard he is actually a voice I really
> value. But. I will say that I think the medium of podcasting--as opposed to
> nonfiction writing, say--is a complicated, and sometimes good translation
> of him. Hearing him--both in just human auditory processing/personality
> parsing and in what effect having to more or less improvise has on
> him--reveals a lot more of his humanity, as his nonfiction writing is often
> too like his fiction in voice. Kind of disaffected. It has elements so
> overtly affected they obscure his humanity and niceness. Too confident. In
> the podcast he seems like a caring guy. But he also loses a bit of
> precision/intelligence. Which makes sense given that his writing process is
> often sort of tortured. (He, like Didion talks about, is a different person
> behind a typewriter.) But I recommend at least trying an episode of the
> podcast. It treats pop culture and entertainment with an intelligence and
> perspective I don't get from many other places, myself.
>
> THE GREAT COURSES
>
> One of the things that advertises on his show is this subscription to The
> Great Courses. These are, copy says, college-level courses curated by world
> class professors. It seems suspiciously unCool to me. And also unacademic.
> But I am feeling, as ever, totally deficient in every body of knowledge
> (especially history). Do any of you guys have any experience with this? -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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