Originally posted by kindofblue
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Paradoxically there’s never been more intellectually demanding fare publicly available- things like Wiki for example . Some of the science entries make very little concession to those without science degrees .There are also some pretty demanding podcasts out there. Several cultural critics have also noticed that following the plot lines of modern drama series like Billions or Line Of Duty requires a level of attention usually given to Shakespeare.
Theres no question R3’s speech content has dumbed down considerably over the years. You won’t hear the likes of Betrand Russell or AJ Ayer or even Hans Keller (who wasn’t quite in the same league ) these days. This weeks The Essay is a series of autobiographical tales from Adrian Edmondson . In what sense is it an essay?
The Sunday Feature can be good but it has too many progs essentially on identity politics for me.
Even back in the sixties there were plenty of critics of the Third Programmes speech programmes - Leavis in particular was scathing about its literary coverage (very Bloomsbury dominated ) but then he was pretty scathing about quite a lot of things.
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