Itinerary for an Intellectual Orgy

Amidst all the cat videos, conspiracy theorists, and painfully pathetic self-promoters on YouTube, the discerning searcher might even in these bad times find, hidden like crusty porn in a cyber back-cupboard, videos of actual intellectual value. As proof, I offer the following itinerary of a day-long highbrow orgy drawn from the Dark Tube.

We begin with a late-1970s interview (general topic: philosophy and literature) with novelist-philosopher Iris Murdoch, conducted by philosopher Bryan Magee:

Next, we raise our brow-height a few more feet when Magee interviews Noam Chomsky. Check out Chomsky's amused grin at the end when Magee brings things to a close as soon as Chomsky mentions the word 'anarchism.' They should've done two episodes:

I disagree with Bryan Magee's evaluation of Sartre, but I'm impressed, in all of his interviews, by the amazing amount of ground he can cover without ever seeming to rush the conversation. Here he discusses Existentialism with William Barrett, author of the classic 1958 study of the movement, Irrational Man:

Continuing with the existentialists, here's Magee and Hubert Dreyfus discussing, with surprisingly lucidity, the fundamental ideas of Husserl and Heidegger:

 

Next up, we fly our mental planes to Frankfurt for Magee's 1977 interview with Herbert Marcuse. This is a great example of two men who profoundly disagree on many issues and are secure enough in their thoughts to have a calm, civil, enlightening conversation. We need more of this in the world of today.

Next up is Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick's portrait of Jacques Derrida, a documentary in which we see Le Grand Deconstructeur as a man living a fairly ordinary bourgeois academic life in the Paris suburbs:

Here's an interesting, albeit melodramatic, take on the life and (some of the) work of Michel Foucault. Really, how can any doc on Foucault avoid melodrama?

And to bring it all to a close, check out this lecture by art historian T. J. Clark on Picasso's Guernica. Fascinating.

And if all this still leaves you intellectually and aesthetically unsatiated, check out this BBC documentary called "Picasso's Last Stand," a wonderful account of the artist's great but underappreciated late period.