Recently, while looking for covers of a tongue-twisting novelty song about Barbara’s rhubarb bar (beloved of bearded barbarians and their barber), I encountered a video in which a recent refugee from academia told a sad and sorry story of toxic personalities, systematic exploitation, and catastrophic disenchantment. In the course of doing this, moreover, Sabine Hossenfelder described the pernicious practices and maleficent initiatives of the world she left behind in ways that suggest that the problem could not be ascribed to the occasional bad Apfel.
That’s the bad news. Now for the good. Thanks to YouTube, Dr. Hossenfelder has found a new, and, I suspect, much more congenial place to ply her trade. Indeed, with more than 1.3 million subscribers and several videos in the same league (viewer wise) as ‘piglet makes friends with baby monkey’, I think it is safe to say that she is teaching far more science to far more people than she ever did (or, indeed, could) when confined to the Ivory Tower. Better yet, Hossenfelder is reaching folks who, like Your Humble Servant, know just enough physics to understand her joke about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.1
Having noticed my fondness for the videos made by Sabine Hossenfelder, as well as those of David Starkey and Jackson Crawford, the YouTube algorithm decided to treat me to the works of other people whom, faute de mieux, I have come to call ‘ascended academics’. Some of these, like Doctors Hossenfelder, Starkey, and Crawford, spent a long time in the Ivory Tower before making good their escape. Others, I have recently discovered, jumped that slowly sinking ship at earlier points in their professional lives.
Consider, if you will, the creators of two YouTube channels I have recently come to enjoy. Cassidy Cash, who bringeth forth That Shakespeare Life, has been shedding fresh light on the life, work, and world of the Bard of Avon for a full week of years.2 (In her meditation upon life as an independent historian, Mrs. Cash opines that, when it comes to the past, everything has been said before. However, methinks the lady doth protest too much.) Jess of the Shire performs a similar service for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien.
Notwithstanding the impressive expertise of these two educators, neither possesses a degree, terminal or otherwise, in the field in which she teaches. Rather, as is so often the case with genuine virtuosi, the proficiency showcased in the videos these scholars make owes much to the sort of deep curiosity, abiding fascination, and self-directed quests that fit poorly into the frameworks imposed by formal academic programs.
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A police officer, who has just pulled Werner Heisenberg to the side of the road, asks him. “Do you realize that you were going ninety miles an hour?” “No,” answered the famous physicist, “but I can tell you where I am.”
Parents who teach their children at home will appreciate the emphasis that Cassidy Cash places on the answers to the sort of questions that children ask, her focus on the meaning of words, and her emphasis on the pedestrian aspects of life in Shakespearean times.
https://youtube.com/shorts/7OJe4SaByG8?si=EH51xdZas3UY7qMI
This song?