If you have never had the opportunity to enjoy William F. Buckley’s conversation with Mortimer Adler on the subject “How to Speak, How to Listen,” you should do yourself a favor. And if you have, you should listen again. It is time well spent.
Listening, it occurred to me that WFB would have been a very good podcaster. Though maybe he gained something from the apparatus that went along with having a talk show.
Mortimer Adler wrote a famous booked called How to Read a Book. One quirk of his career is a reminder of less rigidly bureaucratic times: He received a doctorate from Columbia without ever having received an undergraduate degree. He was refused an undergraduate degree because he declined to take a required swimming test. Columbia later gave him an honorary bachelor’s.