Eclecticist

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Synopsis

Eclecticist is an exploration of everything, one topic at a time. Based in London, we take a very British perspective with a heavily colloquial bent on topics that either interest us or we feel warrant investigation. Our mission is to educate ourselves while researching and discussing a spectrum of interesting and mostly contemporary areas with the fringe benefit of distributing the value to any and all listeners. Please spend a little time, have a conversation with your friends and if you will, give us some feedback. Our method of operation is as simple as we could engineer: agree and research a topic then discuss our findings through the filter of our viewpoints. After each show, we publish the working document. Eclecticist.co.uk.

Episodes

  • ECLECTICIST 28: Star Wars

    10/01/2016 Duration: 135h53min

    In the days where you'd wait to see something on telly as opposed to watching whatever you want, whenever you want (wherever you want), Christmas would be the time where there'd be a Star Wars film on. Bloody Star Wars. Everyone has seen Star Wars. The 'western in space'. The film spawned a plethora of sequels some good, some awful and of course, the merchandise which according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is the most successful instance of toys, tat and geeky collectables sold off the back of a bunch of movies. And there's a brand new one. It's been impossible to ignore the military campaign of marketing and hype carrying 'The Force Awakens' and early reports (at least in my ear) are all positive and the box office has literally exploded. Could be because George Lucas isn't in the driving seat. Could also be because three beloved main protagonists from the first salvo of films have reprised their roles. That'll be weird seeing them all old. Am I ready to see a 60 year old Princess Leia in that sexy

  • ECLECTICIST 27: North Korea

    13/12/2015 Duration: 01h12min

    'Maintain vigilance against the ever-looming threat of an American invasion.', 'Let us hasten final victory through a revolutionary ideological offensive!', 'Let us turn ours into a country of mushrooms by making mushroom cultivation scientific, intensive and industrialised!' As they say in that darkest of nations, North Korea. It's a minor miracle that a country can succeed in alienating itself from the world's stage so completely but the technologically impoverished denizens of the retro-Soviet Democratic People's Republic of North Korea resolutely stand behind an electric fence of unending anti-Western propaganda—or so it would seem. What do we think we know and what do we actually know about the last Communist nuclear power? Eclecticist.co.uk.

  • ECLECTICIST 26: Kubrick: 237, 2001, 6655321

    06/12/2015 Duration: 106h27min

    Whenever we see lists of 'greatest' anything to do with cinema, the name Stanley Kubrick will almost certainly be there and his paragraph will likely have words like 'innovator', 'meticulous', 'control freak', 'freak'. He was freakish in the level of interest he would take into what he was working on, finely crafting every second of celluloid whether it was to appear in the final cut or not. His attention to detail and absolute perfectionism would win him frothing adoration from movie geeks and bemusement and incredulity from his actors and crew. And what of the box office? Contrary to popular assumption, his movies never initially set any records in fact it's fair to say that the three movies we're discussing today were slow burners with the possible exception of 'A Clockwork Orange' but that was withdrawn in the UK and only existed in notoriety until Kubrick's death in 1999. Eclecticist.co.uk.

  • ECLECTICIST 25: Celebrity

    29/11/2015 Duration: 01h01min

    Famous for one's works, famous for the works of others, famous for being famous. Celebrity has been currency ever since Moses dropped the first set of commandments. In today's age, If You're Not Famous at Fourteen, You're Finished. From premier league footballers to reality TV desperados to attention-seeking serial killers, celebrity is the ultimate confirmation of one's secret suspicion, 'I'm special'. They may be workaholics, sycophants, obsessives or uncommonly gifted in their field, they may have had fame thrust upon them. Alcoholics, drug abusers, sexual predators, confidence tricksters but at least, they're not faceless ordinaries. Must we all aspire to celebrity? Eclecticist.co.uk.

  • ECLECTICIST 24: Comedy

    22/11/2015 Duration: 01h08min

    Apparently there are basically only four jokes. Or five or some other low number. Depends who you ask. The point is that all jokes are derivative of only four actual jokes (or five or some other low number). Despite this, 'comedy' as an artform is forever popular. People like to laugh. Whether it's just a silly joke or a clever joke, some spiky piece of satire, gallows humour; comedy can be remarkably remarkably useful. As crazy as it sounds, in one form or another, it could have been humour that helped us deal with 9/11 and could even help us with the healing of the recent Paris attacks. Comedy is also extraordinarily subjective and often a fairly reliable barometer of whether someone is a decent bloke (likes It's always sunny in Philadelphia), or a total moron (likes Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps). But what of the people who create comedy and do they all have mental problems? Eclecticist.co.uk.

  • ECLECTICIST 23: Video Gaming

    08/11/2015 Duration: 01h33min

    Wherever electricity can be found, so too the means to play video games. Worldwide youth culture has a sizable slice of it's collective time absorbed by the competitive pixel shuffling offered up on a rapidly growing spectrum of hardware. From simulation to Space Invaders, arcade hall cabinets to massively multiplayer fantasy epics enjoyable from the comfort of one's own broadband connection—games and gamers are spoiled for choice. A growth industry almost without compare, what is the state of the art and how far has it come? Who are the gamers? What of the future - will we be tapping in our initials on our deathbeds? Eclecticist.co.uk.

  • ECLECTICIST 22: Fast Food

    01/11/2015 Duration: 01h05min

    Imagine you had a car idling in your living room. You'd be sitting there watching TV or playing snap or whatever it is you do, breathing in air laced with toxic fumes. You would recognize that it's probably not a healthy place to sit because we breathe all the time. We also eat all the time. We spend each day of our lives literally putting food into our faces. Surely we would want only the best and healthiest foodstuffs passing through our mouths because in a very true sense, we are what we eat. But 'fast food' or perhaps more accurately 'junk food' is big business. Fast food restaurants are wide-rife in our high streets as are human blimps. Is it like smoking? Are people compartmentalizing their brains? Something about trans fats being banned and more and more healthier options appearing. Eclecticist.co.uk.

  • ECLECTICIST 21: Islam

    18/10/2015 Duration: 01h21min

    There is a God and there are no others. The name of God is Allah, He is merciful and His existence was revealed to the world through his last prophet, Muhammad. For fourteen centuries Islam (submission to the will of God) has been followed by Muslims (those who submit) in accordance with the moral teachings found in the holy book, the Qur'an. In our increasingly multicultural world, how might a behavioural report card on Islam fair? How is it getting along with its peers? How happy are its adherents? What is the future of Islam? Eclecticist.co.uk.

  • ECLECTICIST 20: Cinema

    27/09/2015 Duration: 01h31min

    Sitting watching lots of photographs per second in a room full of strangers has been a pastime enjoyed by all walks of life in all corners of the globe for over a hundred years. The appeal of those halcyon days is obvious: folks didn’t have TVs or iPads and apart from going to church or lynching, there wasn’t all that much to do in their downtime. In the 21st century, going to the cinema is facing stiff competition from internets, disco dancing, pop music and gum chewing. Who wants to go to the cinema anyway? Spending fifteen quid on a ticket to see some three hour Michael Bay nonsense, drinking a Coke for a tenner, having to try and ignore arseholes either chatting, texting or slowly advancing on your armrest, straining your neck to see the screen through a tiny gap between the heads of a canoodling couple. Eff that. Eclecticist.co.uk.

  • ECLECTICIST 19: Near Death Experience

    20/09/2015 Duration: 01h18s

    The state of death, as it is commonly understood, is substantially defined by the fact that nothing ever returns from it. As risk abounds, individual organisms often narrowly escape Death's icy fingers as a feature of life. During these close encounters, is it possible to experience the threshold? Could such near misses afford glimpses of what may lie beyond? Is there any evidence to back up the claims and if so, how was it conducted and what does it suggest? Eclecticist.co.uk.

  • ECLECTICIST 18: Feminism

    13/09/2015 Duration: 01h32min

    Since time immemorial and throughout the world women continue to struggle against sexism, sexual violence, misrepresentation, economic inequality and social exclusion. The term 'feminism' appears to many as a collective term for the fight against these affronts. Should all gender designations in the West become feminists or has it become a victim propaganda gone too far? Eclecticist.co.uk.

  • ECLECTICIST 17: Extraterrestrial Life

    30/08/2015 Duration: 59min

    From the most corpulent blue whale down to the tiniest viral particle-everything that has ever lived has done so on our very own tectonically plated, watery shrouded, iron cored four billion year old mote of dust. Or maybe not. Perhaps, despite the disappointing lack of findings from the SETI programme, there is a single planet or moon orbiting one of the 200 billion or so stars in the galaxy harbouring what we would recognise as life. Are we alone? Will we ever detect alien life given the distances involved? What are the odds? Eclecticist.co.uk.

  • ECLECTICIST 16: Dinosaurs

    16/08/2015 Duration: 58min

    Over 200 million years ago, terrestrial and oceanic reptiles known collectively as Dinosaurs appeared and dominated Earth's fauna for approximately 135 million years. Fuelled by lush forests, warm temperatures and a conducive atmosphere, the diversity of clade Dinosauria ranged from rodent size carnivores, building size herbivores, seafaring goliaths and airborne hunters. Contemporaneous for much of their reign with birds and mammals, environmental changes conspired to tilt the balance of power towards these competitors ending their dominance and ultimately leading to their extinction. What do we know about the epoch in which they lived? What is the appeal of their enduring legacy and will we ever see their like again? Eclecticist.co.uk.

  • ECLECTICIST 15: Podcasting

    02/08/2015 Duration: 01h16min

    Podcasting as a broadcast medium has now firmly established itself as an advertising channel amenable by all product categories. No greater validation exists for the confirmation of a new method to draw a crowd of potential consumers than to have paying sponsors vying for the most compelling players in the market. Podcasts, syndication mechanisms, listening hardware and the pervasive behemoth that is the internet is the ecosystem in which personal broadcasting has taken off and is threatening traditional sources by outreaching them in terms of convenience, niche and hardware support. Are we headed to a better informed, more meritocratic future where everyone wields a microphone with intent? Eclecticist.co.uk.

  • ECLECTICIST 14: Anti-Americanism

    19/07/2015 Duration: 50min

    'Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free' said the Statue of Liberty to the world, at least in the words of Emma Lazarus, a 19th century American poet. Let's also not forget those 'inalienable rights' from the Declaration of Independence 'Life, Liberty and pursuit of happiness'. The United States of America has, since its inception, been a refuge for the world's ravaged, a land of opportunity for those oppressed in war-torn and heavily statist regimes. Today, it has a larger influence than any other nation in the categories of food, science, culture, weaponry and democracy. So why all the hate? Why does the American in a pub feel the need to defend his own country from derision while his Belgian and Korean friends remain unaccosted? Eclecticist.co.uk.

  • ECLECTICIST 13: Climate Change

    11/07/2015 Duration: 01h04min

    It is a hostile universe. The near vacuum of space separates us by 25 trillion miles from our nearest star. In the 3.8 billion years of life on our planet, only 24 individuals (all human) have travelled beyond low earth orbit. It is safe to say, this world is all we know--It has provided everything we have needed to evolve and survive for aeons. It is however, a cooling rock prone to core and surface changes. Catastrophes have been known to happen. Armed with scientific methodology, we are now confirming our suspicion that it is human activity driving up global temperatures. Can anything be done? Is it too late? Or is it a tissue of lies spun by vested interests and the media? Eclecticist.co.uk.

  • ECLECTICIST 12: The BBC

    28/06/2015 Duration: 01h02min

    The British Broadcasting Corporation is the largest, oldest, most innovative and most revered media broadcasting organisation in the world. From its royal charter inception in the early 1920s, the BBC has steadfastly remained a publicly owned and financed service with national and international commercial reach. How will modern day attitudes change regarding its unique funding, allegations of bias and increasing competition from a disruptive and distributed internet? Do we love Auntie enough to continue funding her unfair advantage over the best of the rest? Eclecticist.co.uk.

  • ECLECTICIST 11: Michael Jackson (King of Pop)

    21/06/2015 Duration: 01h05min

    At one time, in virtually every walk of life, the name Michael Jackson was synonymous with pop, superstar, band-aids. As is so often the way with these mega global icons, it didn't take long for the extravagant not-of-this world facade to slip and make fertile soil for scrutiny every bit as extreme as the strange creature himself. You see what I did there? It's all too easy to forget that Michael Jackson was a human being. What's also seemingly easy to forget is just how talented he was. Just compare the two Kings: Jackson was a songwriter that actually wrote all his biggest hits. Elvis Presley didn't write anything. Jackson also invented the phrase 'sho-mo'. Both men, however, were white, went weird and died prematurely. Michael Jackson: Bad? Eclecticist.co.uk.

  • ECLECTICIST 10: The British Monarchy

    06/06/2015 Duration: 01h09min

    Rulers recognised as monarchs appear in recorded history as early as 757AD when Offa became the king of Mercia, the then principal kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England. Throughout the following 1200 years, Kings and Queens have inherited, usurped and returned to the top of the social order to establish a gnarly tree of competing dynasties. Today, the royal family is virtually a political institution able to deftly negotiate its holdings with the largely secular government and increasingly secular church. As the rest of the world maintains a keen fascination with the celebrity and colourful lives of the extended family, are they managing to stay relevant in the shrinking world of the modern era? Eclecticist.co.uk.

  • ECLECTICIST 9: Smoking and Smokers

    23/05/2015 Duration: 01h09min

    The deliberate consumption of smoke from burning organic matter pre-dates recorded history and endures as one of the most popular forms of recreational poisoning humans enjoy throughout the world. From analgesic self-medication and spiritualistic ritual to overt displays of status and peer group inculcation, smoking finds friends in those willing to justify the practice despite the increasingly well evidenced detrimental effects on health. In the West, full prohibitions in public places are becoming commonplace and social tolerance of smokers is diminishing in tandem. Is there value in seeking to preserve the practice or right of smoking? Is it destined to go the way of lead-based makeup and leeches? What accounts for smokers' cognitive dissonance? Eclecticist.co.uk.

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