As you must know, YouTube is great for entertainment, but it is also great for learning and for sleeping and for calming down — all kinds of things! Little by little, I have been expanding the ways in which I depend on YouTube every single day. I don’t maintain manicured playlists of things which get deleted, nor do I upload my own videos, even though some day I will be a YouTube star of some kind. I mean, isn’t that the modern dream?
One of the things I rely on YouTube for is lectures. Now, don’t get me wrong, I generally hate lectures. In school, I had the hardest time in the world paying attention to a lecturer. And really, when I listen to lectures on here, I am not really paying the best attention. I have listened to dozens of them but I probably couldn’t tell you what they were even about! That’s okay though because I use them sort of as a blend of music and ambient sounds. And my favest of the faves, who I return to time and time again, is Aldous Huxley, as you probably gathered from the title. Give him a try with this little one, if you please.
I have listened to other smartos — plenty of them! And they are all varying degrees of fine, but none of their audio-videos have had as much staying power as those of Aldous Huxley. As he rambles seemingly without end about every topic that interests him, in a tone that sounds like he is perplexed that he is having to explain any of it, I can peacefully go about any of my tasks at hand. Unlike most podcasts, or that awful talk radio, I can happily have Huxley droning on in the background. I don’t even start obsessively counting how many times he calls something “extraordinary” and says the word “immense”!
His cadence is like a pleasant walk over a mountain path, offering breath-taking views at every turn. His choice of words is a hodgepodge of plain and ornate, direct and circuitous. His accents and inflections are aurally mesmerizing, if given the chance. The topics covered have all been food for thought — sometimes even a whole feast for the mind. But most importantly, all of this blends into an experience that can either be background noise that doesn’t intrude, or foreground matters to concentrate on while feeling like you are somehow bettering yourself. If you have a half an hour or so to fill, go ahead and watch to this interview which is universal and timeless!
There are so many available! Some are short and some are an hour or more. I have listened to many over the past year and all of them have been a hit with me. I have actually listened to a few more than once just because I find it so pleasing. I have even been able to sleep to them if that is the mood I am in. Even, as in the video above, when you can watch him talk, there is a hypnotic effect, as though you are watching an extremely intelligent lava lamp that is babbling out billows of wisdom. It’s all I’ve ever really wanted out of entertainment throughout my whole life, and I didn’t realize it until I saw these.