Episode 43: amusement
Every day, we look for amusement: from our phones, from our friends, from our books. The history of this word surprised me: English lexicographers reject any link with the Muses of the ancient world. Here, we discuss the proposed link between amusement and an Old French word for "face": mus. After our last discussion of "stereotype" in Walter Lippmann, it seems only fair to turn to John Dewey and his The Public and Its Problems, Dewey's response to Lippmann's critique of democratic culture. He warns his readers about the dangers of widely available amusements, a warning that is all the urgent in our era of screens.
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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
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