I’m a night owl. OK, insomniac actually. For the sleep-challenged among us there’s little to watch on the tube after midnight. Yes, TiVos and DVRs have helped, and IPTV is just around the corner. But back in the early 90s, when I was a grad student at the University of New Mexico, those technologies were still a long way off.<\/p>\n
One show that took my mind off the fact that I couldn’t sleep was\u00a0The Western Tradition<\/em>, a 52-part lecture series covering the entire sweep of Western history from 3000 BCE to the current age and beyond. The series was produced by WGBH in Boston (c1989), and is now\u00a0available<\/a>\u00a0for free on the\u00a0Annenberg Media web site<\/a>. The appeal here lies primarily in the person of\u00a0recently deceased<\/a>\u00a0UCLA history professor Eugen Weber. The British-educated Weber delivers up engaging lectures in an over-the-top, highly mesmerizing, English accent. My local Albququerque public TV station would insidiously run these lectures back-to-back, thus contributing to my insomnia. After listening to lecture 9 on\u00a0The Rise of Rome<\/em>\u00a0who could possibly resist lecture 10,\u00a0The Roman Empire<\/em>?<\/p>\n —David C. Murray<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m a night owl. OK, insomniac actually. For the sleep-challenged among us there’s little to watch on the tube after midnight. Yes, TiVos and DVRs have helped, and IPTV is just around the corner. But back in the early 90s, … Continue reading