100

As the podcast turns 100 episodes old, I thought it might be a good time to reflect on this whole project. I have to say that for me it has been a wholly positive experience. When I first thought of doing it, I mulled it over for some months before actually starting to write scripts and buy a microphone. Basically I was thinking: this seems like a great idea, but could it be that it is actually a really stupid idea? Or a variant of that: it’s a great idea that someone or other should do it, but is it a stupid idea that I myself should try to do it? I had several worries, most that it would be too time-consuming but also that it might not find an audience, and that other professional philosophers would think it was, well, a bit silly (or notice loads of mistakes, especially given how fast I have to churn out the material). Plus it is ridiculously ambitious, in fact I’d always been rather bemused by people like Copleston, Russell, and more recently Kenny who had the temerity to try to cover the entire history of philosophy.

On most of these points I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Above all I have been amazed at the size and engagement of the audience; certainly the best thing about the podcast, for me, is hearing from listeners and discussing the philosophical themes with them. I find it especially rewarding when people from outside academia get in touch – my greatest hope was to bring the history of philosophy to people who wouldn’t otherwise be learning about it. But also I have been amazed at the positive reaction from colleagues. Obviously quite a few have actually appeared as guests, and it’s been a real privilege to have on some of the leading lights in my field and also to feature some less established scholars whose work I really like. It’s also been impressive how good the guests have been in talking about this stuff extemporaneously. Other colleagues have been generous with their time and advice and even read scripts for me before I recorded them (for instance Michael Griffin on the Peripatetics and Mark DelCogliano for the upcoming Christian episodes). The involvement of other scholars has helped a lot with the “too ambitious” issue, I think. Plus I am going at such a slow pace (historically speaking) that it somehow doesn’t feel like I’m trying to cover the whole history of philosophy, more like I’m just trying to deal with whatever topic comes up in the next episode.

As for the time-consuming issue… well, yeah. But I regard it as more of a hobby than part of my job, so I don’t mind that so much. Actually I’ve discovered that it is a way of tricking myself into reading about topics and figures in the history of philosophy that I wouldn’t otherwise be looking at. Since it is connected to the podcast it seems more like fun than work. Here it has been especially eye-opening for me to do the reading for the upcoming episodes on Christian antiquity, something I didn’t know a lot about before – I’m now telling everyone I meet that they should go read Origen. More generally, my favorite parts of the academic job have always been teaching and the actual writing of research articles and books. The research in advance is also fun but my favorite part is actually presenting the ideas, either to students or by sitting at the computer and putting together sentences. The podcast constantly gives me a chance to do that and it is a lot like teaching too since I have to think about how to get ideas across in a comprehensible and memorable way. (As with teaching I also worry that people will remember the Buster Keaton and giraffe style antics, rather than the ideas, but I hope it is more helpful than distracting.)

Regarding the next 100 episodes, I have to admit that my strategy was in part to build an audience with the more famous ancient topics – Plato, Aristotle, etc – and then hopefully get that audience to stick with me for my favorite parts of the history of philosophy, namely late antiquity and the medieval Islamic world. We’re well into late antiquity, so this plan is already bearing fruit. But haven’t reached the Islamic world yet so that’s something I’m looking forward to. (It will also be easier for me to write the episodes! The Church Fathers have been fascinating, but hard work.) I’m also very interested in Latin medieval philosophy and, as with antiquity, on that front the podcast will give me a chance to fill some gaps in my knowledge I’ve been meaning to close. I’m pretty good on Eriugena, Anselm and Aquinas, for instance, but I only know Abelard or Ockham in broad strokes – maybe because with my Neoplatonic sympathies, I don’t get nominalists? I suspect that the rest of late antiquity and then Islamic, Jewish and Christian medieval philosophy will take us another 100 episodes. So in two and a half years or so, if all goes well, I’ll write another blog post like this looking back at medieval philosophy and looking forward to early modernity.