Aysegul Salamis Sentug, PhD Candidate in The Contemporary Novel: Practice as Research in the School of English, has launched a podcast miniseries, entitled ‘Let’s Get Bored: A Four-Part Podcast Journey to the Very Heart of Boredom’, in collaboration with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking.
The coronavirus has given us plenty of time to ourselves. One consequence is that people around the world will experience a staggering amount of boredom. Aysegul’s podcast miniseries aims to examine the very nature of this state of mind.
Everyone feels boredom, but do we all understand the same thing by it? Do we all suffer from the same kind of boredom? Do different cultures define boredom in different ways? And what about different historical periods? Is boredom necessarily a bad thing, perhaps even immoral? Or can we use boredom as a means to a better end? Can we learn something from this feeling? And what are the limits of the human capacity for boredom?’Let’s Get Bored’ seeks answers to these timely questions.
Two episodes of the four-part series have been released so far. The first, which focuses on the nature, history, and typologies of boredom, can be listened to here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKbbfJThRH0
The second episode explores philosophical perspectives on the issue, and can be listened to here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVu1f74P5mQ
The remaining two episodes, which examine boredom in art and the most bored characters in literature, will be released over the coming weeks.
You can listen to the full series on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking website:
https://parisinstitute.org/lets-get-bored/