Intellectual Intercourse: The Art of Conversation
I happily engaged in Intellectual Intercourse during a LIVE UM Radio broadcast on 12/6, with fellow podcaster, philosopher and intellectual ponderer Jarett Sanchez. We discussed... well... discussing. In our modern, fast paced culture, wherein we are almost constantly bombarded with talk and noise and artificial stimuli, we find ourselves talking quite often. We talk on the phone, in comment threads on line, via text and Twitter and passing by as we move around our hectic lives. But are we discussing topics and issues with substance? Do our conversations have character or are we simply producing streams of words in order to be heard and move on? If we are lacking in conversational skills, is schooling to blame? Moreover, does it matter? Listen in as Jarett and I discuss conversations that matter and ponder the questions that can ignite more intellectual intercourse.
This episode in its entirety was recorded during a LIVE broadcast so there are differences in format. I did however, trim out breaks, minor segues and mid-music for brevity. Unfortunately, there are some sound issues. We've cleaned it up, but we do apologize in advance for minor distortions. Rest assured we are working on properly identifying the source of the sound issues and intend to rectify the problem for future episodes :)
On Qualifications...
In the beginning, Jarett qualified himself to speak on this topic. I mentioned there and at several points during the episode that I wanted to remark on that idea - the perceived necessity of qualifying the speaker and using that as a measure to judge the content. While this may seem like a perfectly reasonable exercise, it is prudent to consider the possibility that even a layman may have valuable insight to offer - even at least for pondering. Not saying that Mr. Sanchez is a layman, by no means is he. I'm simply pointing out that we have developed a tendency to want to qualify everything we hear before we will hear it and while this seems logical, it does reek of arrogance, Ad Hoc, and can prevent potentially useful information. Not to say we shouldn't exercise a fair amount of caution - certainly there is a fair amount of nonsense floating about, but let us not get so hung up and reliant on our schooling that we won't at least hear an opinion unless it's attached to a degree. To that end, I'd like to refer to the opening quote from Dorothy Sayers essay, The Lost Tools of Learning:
That I, whose experie
