simplerich

When I heard the name, “Phileas Club” I immediately thought of Phileas Fogg in Jules Vernes’ Around the World in 80 Days. I was driving though so couldn’t verify if my guess was correct. It was being mentioned in another podcast (1). I jotted it down and downloaded it a while later and found that I was right. The show is hosted by Patrick and he, like Jules Verne, is French. Unlike Jules Verne, Patrick is still alive. That is an important difference and one that helps the pace of the show quite a bit.

What is “Phileas”?
This is a reference to Phileas Fogg, the main character in the book “Around the World in Eighty Days”, by french author Jules Vernes. We thought it would be an interesting way of summing up what this show is about, and the fact that Patrick is french also makes it all the more fun.

The premise of the show is that Patrick and two other people on the show with him from different countries around the world discuss the previous month’s headline news. The different perspectives and takes on things is a good mirror to my own thoughts on the different topics. In the first two episodes there weren’t any heated arguments, fights, or anybody stomping off in disgust. Perhaps that’s being saved up for some time in the future, perhaps as the election results come in November.

The feeling of all of them sitting in room with dark wood panelling in over stuffed chairs sipping on drinks in glasses that sparkle and catch the light coming from sconces on the wall is really strong. The people are not people who know each other and thrown together as they are to discuss things as ersatz representatives of their countries they do really well at being very civil and considerate.The first show was sort of all over the place, but Patrick I think felt it too and by the second show there was quite a bit more direction, moderation, steering of the conversation to keep it short and to the point. The quality of the second show was quite a bit better than the first. It was much tighter than the first. Patrick knows where he wants to go with this, and listens back to his podcast to see what was right and what could use tweaking. I look forward to finding out just how great it will get as time passes. I’m very excited about the show.

On the one hand the time between shows (about a month it seems) is good because it allows enough news to talk about. On the other hand my appetite for the show is such I would love more. The time between is nice. It helps reduce immediacy and knee-jerk reactions and people’s answers seem more thought out. I wish the self-imposed time lapse between event and reaction were still there. Sometimes immediacy and haste to react is a bad thing. As the world gets smaller and communication faster I worry we lose something in everybody making snap decisions all the time just to keep up.

I often hear people talk about how the internet is an anonymous cess-pool of every dark vice and unmentionable sin the world has to offer. People bemoan the loss of communication skills as people no longer interact face to face, and I think anybody who has ever gotten a text message from someone under twenty weeps at the spelling without knowing if they know better or are abbreviating intentionally. SRSLY. (For a more in-depth discussion of this check out this other podcast, it’s towards the end.)

This show is an excellent example of why that isn’t the whole story of the Internet. I’ll go over other podcasts in the future. I wanted to start with this one as it ties in more nicely with my previous post about whipping my brain into shape.

(1) Podcasts are like radio shows you can download to your computer and listen to when you want to.