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- Intellect, Faith and Philosophy
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- Jenny Attiyeh
(NOTE: length is 57:30, NOT 57:22, despite what the PRX software thinks... )
Who are our public intellectuals today? What purpose are they meant to serve, and are they in fact serving it — or us? Well, ThoughtCast has tracked down one bona fide public intellectual -- his name is Jack Beatty, a senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly, and a regular contributor to the NPR program On Point. He speaks with Jenny Attiyeh for the first half of the show. In the second half-hour, ThoughtCast talks with two very different men - one founded on faith, the other on reason. Harvey Cox, the renowned Harvard Divinity School Professor and author of The Secular City and When Jesus Came to Harvard, talks with ThoughtCast about his faith, and the religious resurgence taking place here in America and abroad. Simon Blackburn, on the other hand, rejects religion but embraces the wisdom of philosophy. He too is an author, and also a professor at the University of Cambridge, in England. He puts forward a philosophy that's not just for the educated elite, but for the rest of us!
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The Peabody Sisters: an interview with biographer Megan Marshall on ThoughtCast
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Piece Description
(NOTE: length is 57:30, NOT 57:22, despite what the PRX software thinks... )
Who are our public intellectuals today? What purpose are they meant to serve, and are they in fact serving it — or us? Well, ThoughtCast has tracked down one bona fide public intellectual -- his name is Jack Beatty, a senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly, and a regular contributor to the NPR program On Point. He speaks with Jenny Attiyeh for the first half of the show. In the second half-hour, ThoughtCast talks with two very different men - one founded on faith, the other on reason. Harvey Cox, the renowned Harvard Divinity School Professor and author of The Secular City and When Jesus Came to Harvard, talks with ThoughtCast about his faith, and the religious resurgence taking place here in America and abroad. Simon Blackburn, on the other hand, rejects religion but embraces the wisdom of philosophy. He too is an author, and also a professor at the University of Cambridge, in England. He puts forward a philosophy that's not just for the educated elite, but for the rest of us!
Timing and Cues
(NOTE: length is 57:30, NOT 57:22, despite what the PRX software thinks... )
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Emily Corwin
Posted on December 28, 2008 at 12:39 PM | Permalink
food for thought
I mean it as both a compliment and a criticism when I say that the opening of this piece should come with a suggested reading list. Attiyah's questions were pointed enough and Jack Beatty's responses were provoking enough to hold my interest despite their reliance on references to books and personalities I was not familiar with. The latter part of Beatty's interview is more accessible and very compelling, as they discuss the triumph of the private persona in the public sphere and the toll that has taken on the quality of American political discourse.