Per­haps you’ve heard of a phe­nom­e­non called “pod­fade,” where­in a pod­cast — par­tic­u­lar­ly an ambi­tious pod­cast — begins by putting out episodes reg­u­lar­ly, then miss­es one or two, then lets more and more time elapse between each episode, one day ceas­ing to update entire­ly. It pleas­es us to report that The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps, the pod­cast offer­ing just that, on whose progress we’ve kept you post­ed over the past three years, not only shows no signs of pod­fade, but has even broad­ened its man­date to include a greater vari­ety of philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tions than before.

For those who haven’t heard the show, The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps comes from Peter Adam­son, phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Lud­wig Max­i­m­il­ians Uni­ver­si­ty Munich and King’s Col­lege Lon­don, and “looks at the ideas, lives and his­tor­i­cal con­text of the major philoso­phers as well as the less­er-known fig­ures of the tra­di­tion.”

The main show has put out 379 episodes so far, begin­ning with the pre-Socrat­ics (specif­i­cal­ly Thales) and most recent­ly exam­in­ing Fran­cis­can pover­ty, and now a new branch has grown, start­ing from Adam­son and col­lab­o­ra­tor Jonar­don Ganer­i’s intro­duc­tion to Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy. (Hear the first episode of the Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy series below.)

Episodes of this new series on the Indi­an tra­di­tion, Adam­son writes, “will appear in alter­nat­ing weeks with episodes on Euro­pean phi­los­o­phy.” He also men­tions a “fur­ther ambi­tion to cov­er the oth­er philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tions of Asia (espe­cial­ly Chi­nese) and also African phi­los­o­phy and the phi­los­o­phy of the African dias­po­ra, but of course India will take a while so you’ll have to be patient if you are wait­ing for me to get to that!”

You can sub­scribe to The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps’ Indi­an phi­los­o­phy series on its very own pod­cast RSS feed, or on iTunes here. Philo­soph­i­cal­ly-mind­ed binge-lis­ten­ers beware; you could lose a lot of time to these two shows. “I’ve been doing my laun­dry to it for months and I’m only up to Mai­monides,” says one com­menter on a Metafil­ter thread about the new series. “I am total­ly not ready for this Patañ­jali.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

200+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

A His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 81 Video Lec­tures: A Free Course That Explores Phi­los­o­phy from Ancient Greece to Mod­ern Times

Death: A Free Phi­los­o­phy Course from Yale

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Yes­ter­day we took a look at, or rather a lis­ten to, the “pod­cast­ing renais­sance,” high­light­ing a few of the new wave of shows and rec­om­mend­ing some of the pre-exist­ing ones you may have missed. Many Open Cul­ture read­ers will remem­ber our addic­tion to phi­los­o­phy pod­casts — The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, Phi­los­o­phy Bites, and Phi­los­o­phize This!, to name but three of our favorites — and some may won­der if The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps (iTunes – RSS Feed – Web Site), which we fea­tured back in 2011 and again in 2012, sur­vived the dark ages into which pod­cast­ing had appar­ent­ly fall­en. Could its host Peter Adam­son, pro­fes­sor at Lud­wig Max­i­m­il­ian Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich and King’s Col­lege Lon­don, have suc­cumbed to the dread­ed pod­fade some­where between Plot­nius on the soul and Chris­t­ian asceti­cism?

Wor­ry not, stu­dents of thought, for Adam­son has con­tin­ued these past few years, still reg­u­lar­ly and gap­less­ly, to pro­vide “the ideas and lives of the major philoso­phers as well as the less­er-known fig­ures of the tra­di­tion.” Just this past week­end, he put up a twen­ty-minute episode on the Car­olin­gian Renais­sance. If you haven’t kept up with the show since we last post­ed about it, you’ve got a great deal of intel­lec­tu­al­ly rich catch­ing up to do. You will find more than 100 new pod­casts, fea­tur­ing short talks on Latin Pla­ton­ism, Aris­totelian phi­los­o­phy’s “Bagh­dad school,” phi­los­o­phy’s reign in Spain, Illu­mi­na­tion­ism, and women schol­ars and Islam. If you’ve want­ed to learn the entire his­to­ry phi­los­o­phy in the most con­ve­nient pos­si­ble man­ner, now’s the time to jump aboard. If you planned on wait­ing until Adam­son gets to, say, Der­ri­da, I fear you’ll have a bit of a daunt­ing back­log on your hands — not to men­tion your ears and brain.

Note: This arti­cle was first pub­lished in Novem­ber, 2014. As of Feb­ru­ary, 2016, there are 247 episodes in this series. The title of the post has been updat­ed to reflect that.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life: A Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

Phi­los­o­phize This!: The Pop­u­lar, Enter­tain­ing Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast from an Uncon­ven­tion­al Teacher

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Pod­cast­ing has treat­ed few fields of human inquiry as well as it has phi­los­o­phy. You’ll already know that if you’ve sub­scribed to the phi­los­o­phy pod­casts we’ve fea­tured before, like Phi­los­o­phy Bites, The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps, and The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life. Per­haps we can chalk this up to what any­one who has tak­en a course under an astute phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor has felt (see our list of 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es): the sub­ject sim­ply lends itself bet­ter to con­veyance through the spo­ken words of liv­ing, breath­ing peo­ple, espe­cial­ly those with an enthu­si­asm for the sub­ject. And those who’ve ded­i­cat­ed their lives to phi­los­o­phy, giv­en the field­’s famous­ly per­sis­tent lack of both finan­cial rewards and con­crete answers, tend to have more pure enthu­si­asm for their sub­ject itself than do many oth­er intel­lec­tu­al pro­fes­sion­als. Stephen West, host of the new­er Phi­los­o­phize This! pod­cast [iTunes — Web — RSS — Lib­syn), does­n’t move among intel­lec­tu­al pro­fes­sion­als. He nev­er even took a phi­los­o­phy course him­self, with an astute pro­fes­sor or with­out one. Yet he can teach you about phi­los­o­phy with greater clar­i­ty and engage­ment than most pod­cast­ers can muster even about their favorite tele­vi­sion shows.

West begins the series, which has come to eigh­teen episodes since last June, with a two-part talk on the very ori­gins of phi­los­o­phy (Ion­ian and Ital­ian), telling us what, exact­ly, the so-called “pre­so­crat­ic” thinkers thought about the human race and whether it had devel­oped suf­fi­cient­ly advanced sur­vival mechan­ics to begin think­ing about things at all. He then con­tin­ues through his­to­ry and across the globe, explain­ing the ideas of the best-known philoso­phers from Socrates to Aris­to­tle (a two-parter) to the Bud­dha to (most recent­ly) Avi­cen­na, break­ing down how they came to those ideas, and con­nect­ing them to the broad­er philo­soph­i­cal expe­ri­ence in their his­tor­i­cal con­text and ours today (which means ref­er­ences to, among oth­er touch­stones of mod­ern life, The Walk­ing Dead). And lest you doubt the un-degree’d West­’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions, do read his brief auto­bi­og­ra­phy, which tells the sto­ry of how he rose from the worst child­hood I’ve read about in quite some time, guid­ed dur­ing his all-day shifts dri­ving a pal­let jack by the great philoso­phers: “Hume, Kant, Hegel — these men were my fathers. They were the peo­ple who made me ask ques­tions and strive to con­stant­ly improve myself.” You might place West in the tra­di­tion, now some­what with­ered, of the robust “blue-col­lar” think­ing man, draw­ing his need­ed strength from ideas. But giv­en the way he’s har­nessed our era’s tech­nol­o­gy to become a phi­los­o­phy teacher to thou­sands — hun­dreds of whom have left five-star reviews on iTunes, lead­ing to an aston­ish­ing #32 rank­ing in its Top 100 pod­cast chart — I’d say he embod­ies a brand new type of homo philo­soph­i­cus alto­geth­er.

You can lis­ten to the first first episode of Phi­los­o­phize This! above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life: A Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.