Ep. 268: Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" (Part One)

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Mark Linsenmayer

Casey, Paskin, Philosophy, Linsenmayer, Society & Culture, Alwan

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 26 April 2021

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) with guest Brian Hirt.

How does the form in which we receive media affect how we think? Education theorist Postman (building on Marshall McLuhan) claimed that television has eroded our capacity to reason and given us the expectation that everything in the world must entertain. Is this a viable piece of social construction theory? How does the critique apply to the Internet age?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Parts of the Examine Life, a podcast some guys were at 1.7
0:11.1	on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it.
0:13.4	Our question for episode 268 is something like, how does the form in which we receive
0:17.9	media affect the way we think?
0:19.7	And we read Neil Postman's, amusing ourselves to death, public discourse in the Age of
0:24.0	Show Business from 1985.
0:26.0	For more information please visit partiallyexaminelife.com.
0:29.6	This is Mark Linton-Meyer and Madison Wisconsin of whom all images are graven.
0:33.8	This is Seth Pascon shifting from my ear to my eye as my organ of language in Austin, Texas.
0:40.8	This is Wes All-One still trying to get over my addiction to the telegraph in Cambridge
0:46.2	Massachusetts.
0:47.6	This is Dylan Casey binge watching Kung Fu in Madison, Wisconsin.
0:52.8	And this is Ryan Hurt, like Alice searching for order in a world of semantic nonsense.
0:58.3	We're trying to in Lincoln, Nebraska.
1:00.3	All right, so this is a topic that is long, long, long been on our radar.
1:05.7	Marshall McClellan was someone that Wes had suggested we do very early on and Postman
1:10.8	is including and updating, well, 2.1985, Marshall McClellan.
1:17.0	It is a popular book but it seems like a good one to get us to have a good discussion about
1:22.6	this topic.
1:23.6	We also have done the two books that he contrasts at the beginning of dystopian futures tied
1:30.2	to media, 1984 in Brave New World.
1:33.8	Yes.
	...

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