Comment by jzymbaluk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jzymbaluk | Hacker News Reader

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+1 for HOPWAG. I've recently caught up with the series completely, including his other series on the history of Indian philosophy, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Peter Adamson is such a pro, he's got the conversational tone and dry wit of a really good professor (which he is), and the series has been so consistently good for nearly 300 episodes now. It's a big time investment, but a very rewarding one.

Podcasts have been my main form of entertainment now for over a year, so I'm gonna drop some history/other brainy recs too for anyone interested.

Hardcore History - essential listening for history fans, skews more toward audio book format than podcast.

History of Rome / Revolutions - a bit drier, but more thorough than hardcore history, I list these together because they're the same author. Very well researched

History of the 20th century - relatively new podcast aiming to tell a multidisciplinary history of the 1900's, very entertaining well produced

The Rhine - The history of Rome, but focuses on the Rhine region, he's planning on following the history of the region into present day

Planet Money - economics for everyone, an npr podcast

Omega Tau - deep deep deep dive interviews into engineering topics. Everything from Rollercoaster design to the gemini missions. English/German bilingual

Intelligence squared - debate club, basically. A thesis is decided, a team argues for, another against, audience decides who won

How do you think HOPWAG compares to "Philosophize This!"?

I ask because I have invested some time on Philosophize This and after the first 20 episodes it got much more enjoyable but I could see myself switching to another in-depth history of philosophy podcast if it's much better.

The only problem I see is that HOPWAG seems to be still on the 14th century, is it supposed to stop there or is it still ongoing and will someday arrive at modern times?

Peter Adamson is pretty thorough, living up to the HOPWAG name. However, he's still consistently putting out episodes every Sunday, give it a few years and it'll get there for sure.

This is also his second time in the 14th century, and he'll be going around the horn again at least once more. When he got to around the 6th or 7th century, Peter said he was going to do three passes over pre-renaissance philosophy. First he followed philosophy in the arabic-speaking world, following muslim, jewish and christian philosophers who wrote in Arabic (this is Peter Adamson's academic specialty). After following this thread nearly to modern day, he wrapped around and followed Latin and vulgar European philosophy, in which he's now beginning the 14th century. He has said it's then his plan to wrap back around and cover Greek language Byzantine philosophy before finally charging ahead into the Renaissance. Peter also publishes a companion podcast, The History of Philosophy in India (he alternates weeks publishing normal HOPWAG and the India series). He's also expressed interest creating similar companion series for Chinese, African, etc. histories of philosophy.

It says on the box "without any gaps", and that's really what you're getting, as complete and comprehensive a history of philosophy as you're likely to get in the podcast medium. This series lets you see how ideas evolved as philosophers responded to and engaged with each other throughout the centuries. Adamson does a really good job at framing how the various philosophers would have though about, and came up with these ideas in their own time and contexts. He engages each philosopher's ideas in the context where they were created, while still doing a good job relating these ideas back to what modern philosophers might think.

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