Recent reading

Having only somewhat recently fallen in love with reading at the ripe age of 20, I perpetually feel like I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.  I present to you a snappy rundown of books I’ve consumed (in part or whole) in recent history.

bloggingheads.tv

Not a lot of people ask how I stay informed.  It’s safe to assume either they don’t care, I appear misinformed, the answer is obvious, or I’ve already raved about one or many of my sources.  I definitely pride myself on never watching the news or any tv for that matter.  Rarely will you find a newspaper in my hands unless it’s local or culturally related.  I guess somewhat unsurprisingly, I get all of my news from the internet.  All of it.  Blogs and podcasts are specifically my regular medium of choice.  A moment ago I started to write about the blogs I visit but that seems tangential to the topic I really hope to expose to readers.  The podcasts I listen to or watch in most cases have to do with current affairs in philosophy, skepticism, science, politics, film and more recently Canadaian news. I hope to eventually touch on each of these at some point but for the time being I want to animately plug an audio/video podcast I started following as of 8 months ago called bloggingheads.tv.

Bloggingheads [wikipedia] is a project started by the brilliant duo of Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus [wikipedia] which pits two experts toe to toe in a split screen video discussion on a relevant topic.  Anything and everything can and will be discussed from political happenings, to social theory, religion, science and philosophy.  The entire spectrum is exhaustively covered. Often one participant is debuting a book which serves as the topic of discussion, often garnering both praise and well constructed criticism.  Other times a current event is dissected and debated from both the left and usually the libertarian right; a considerably underrepresented and somewhat compelling perspective ideologically.  I can’t even begin to tell you how valuable these discussions can be and how much information one can gather by keeping up with them.  Specifically, the weekly Science Saturday diavlogs (the coined portmanteau of the phrase “dialog video weblog”) I find consistently the most interesting but there is something for everyone.  The talks are available in either audio or video format so if you fancy listening to podcasts in transit or while doing housework, you can easily stick them on your ipod or similar device.  Be warned, they’re typically about an hour so it’s a solid lecture, but most are quite fascinating and equally entertaining in their own right.  Check out the site if you have a moment or watch the creators doing their thing below.  I leave you with a somewhat recent (May 27th) clip of Wright and Kaus discussing the GM bailout to give you a taste of what I’m buzzing here.  If you like what you see, watch the full discussion here.  These guys clown way too hard for their own good.