General CriticismPostman
– Dr. David Grubbs!
– Listener feedback
– Lewis as gateway drug
– The Christian Feminist Podcast
– Swearing on the podcast!

Brave New World or 1984?
– Government and culture
– Television as soma
– Unintelligible promiscuity

Material Conditions
– MTV and the rise of cable television
– The home computer
– Arcades and home arcades
– FM radio
– A televised print culture

From Print to Television
– The medium is the metaphor
– Loss of the long-form argument
– Viewer as product
– Quick cuts
– The loss of narrative

Lincoln vs. Reagan
– Six score years
– Conservative on conservative crime
– Pay attention!
– The unelectable Lincoln
– Why it’s not the same
– Who are campaign ads for?
– Is Dan Carlin the cure?

Television Education
– And The Voyage of the Mimi
– The real problem with television
– Why Sesame Street ruins you
– Postman would hate Argo

Postman on the Web
– Television + device
– The internet’s attention span
– Buzzfeed as the cemetery of God
– Is the internet a medium?
– Democracy/populism now

2 thoughts on “The Christian Humanist Podcast, Episode #130.1: Amusing Ourselves to Death”
  1. As I mentioned a long time ago, I found this site by doing an iTunes search for “Neil Postman.” I badgered you guys a couple of times over the years and – mirabile dictu! – here it is. I’m greatly looking forward to this.

  2. I had never read any of Neil Postman’s work, but I found this episode very interesting.  We are TV free with our 3 year old daughter, and the attention span she has as a three year old is way longer than mine is now.  She will sit a listen to a chapter book for an hour, and sometimes I have to stop before she has lost interest.  The correlation between TV and attention spans seems true for my kid.  Now, excuse me I am going go watch some netflix, now.

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