Hello Heathens,
well it’s Tuesday so that means it’s time for another blog post. Today’s show is going to be a mix of classics and new releases as that’s what I’ve been listening to for the last week in the office while I did some photo editing. Maybe I felt inspired by all the Manowar that I listened to with Dr Grrrip at the gym last week, but I had a good time visiting old playlists for the show and thinking about the days when Harry and I were still doing the show and we just did comedy bits with a little metal sprinkled in. As the meme goes one day we recorded our last show as the duo of Barry and Harry and we didn’t even know it. I will say that visiting these old tracks that were favorites on the show made me realize what a golden era for metal the early 2010’s were. I think that right now we live in a pretty wild era for finding new music. It’s never been easier to find communities to trade recommendations with, blogs to read, new bands via Bandcamp, YouTube, etc. Maybe if I get desperate for a blog idea I’ll post where I like to find new music.

Something that I keep seeing when I read about philosophy, history, and politics is the power of anecdotes. Everyone likes to believe that statistics sway the majority of opinion, but really it’s the humble story that sways the listeners to a debate. This isn’t a new idea, but goes all the way back to Ancient Greece when people were trying to figure out the best way to understand the world and some believed it was with logos (logical arguments), but others believed it was with mythos (stories) that we would understand the nature of the world. We all reach back to this tradition when we have conversations with people about current issues. Everyone likes to tell the story of their friend, family member, coworker, or acquaintance who has direct experience with the thing at hand. If you enjoy talking with people about current events you should not dismiss anecdotes as worthless attempts to pander, but instead embrace sharing stories.

An example of this happened to me recently when someone was talking about the “rampant issue of mathematicians not respecting other majors in universities.” I asked if this was something with statistics to back it up, but they only had a few anecdotes to cite as proof that mathematicians are elitists who look down on English majors. I brought up my experiences talking with other math students about general education classes like creating writing, technical writing, etc. and none of them said, “Yeah I think this philosophy class is a waste of time.” I pressed on saying that in fact I never met anyone in the field of mathematics who has said disparaging things about other majors. While I didn’t convince my (bad faith) interlocutor I did convince several other onlookers to share stories about how math majors understand that math sits at an intersection between many other fields and a good mathematician needs to use all the tools in our toolbelt to construct proofs.

Keep heavy the Sabbath day.
6.15.21 Playlist