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Friday, November 4, 2022

The Hilaritas podcast on McLuhan


Marshall McLuhan leans on a TV set with his image. (Public domain photo). 

Although I don't listen to podcasts all the time, I have checked out all 14 Hilaritas podcasts; yesterday I listened to the one released Oct. 23, about Marshall McLuhan, the "medium is the message" guy.  It was pretty good; it features Andrew McLuhan, the media philosopher's grandson.

The moments I liked included discussion of how to learn about McLuhan if you are a newbie; the suggestion is to watch interviews on YouTube. Andrew McLuhan admits reading grandpa's work can be tough sledding and compares it to reading poetry. He also said he learned when teaching courses about McLuhan's work that the students actually prefer getting homework assignments. It reminded me of RAW's insistence that Prometheus Rising readers need to do the exercises. 

I was less convinced when Andrew McLuhan talked about FDA regulation of drugs and said that in a similar vein, the government should regulate social media; a few minutes later, he did admit it's not an exact analogy.

As usual, there are useful links at the official podcast site, and you may be able to listen using your favorite smartphone app. The podcast is officially released at Podbean, Apple, Google, Spotify and TuneIn, but I've also been able to get it at Podkicker, the main podcasting app on my smartphone. 

The podcast to be released Nov. 23 is on Claude Shannon; I'm really looking forward to it. 

1 comment:

quackenbush said...

Andrew completely lost me with the govt intervention piece as some sort of solution to something, but whatever, kudos to him for keeping his grandfathers work alive.

Studying McLuhan for this interview was my most mind blowing experience of 2022.