Today, in a discussion with a coworker (ellipticcurve), I was mentioning Pirke Avot V:18, because she was remarking how I seem to know something about everything. For those that don’t recall, Pirke Avot V:18 says:
There are four types of those that sit in the presence of sages: the sponge, the funnel, the strainer, and the sieve. The sponge absorbs all; the funnel receives at one end and spills out at the other; the strainer lets the wine through and retains the dregs; and the sieve lets out the flour dust and retains the fine flour.
I’ve always viewed myself as a strainer, and this got me thinking to Steve Allen, and one of my favorite shows of childhood, Meeting of Minds. Steve Allen was a sieve, and he produced (at KCET in Los Angeles) a remarkable program, Meeting of Minds. This program, aired in the late 1970s, had a unique premise. Bring together famous historical figures (portrayed by actors, of course) for an intellectual discussion. In its four seasons, the following pairings occurred:
| Pres. Theodore Roosevelt Queen Cleopatra Father Thomas Aquinas Thomas Paine |
Pres. Ulysses S. Grant Queen Marie Antoineet Sir Thomas More Dr. Karl Marx |
Charles Darwin Emily Dickinson Galileo Galilei Attila the Hun |
| Frederick Douglass Empress Tz’u-hsi Marchese di Bonesana Cesare Beccaria Marquis Donatien Alphonse François de Sade |
Martin Luther Voltaire Plato Florence Nightingale |
Sir Francis Bacon Socrates Emiliano Zapata Susan B. Anthony |
| St. Augustine of Hippo Empress Theodora of the Byz. Empire Thomas Jefferson Bertrand Russell |
Aristotle Niccolo Machiavelli Elizabeth Barrett Browning Sun Yat-Sen |
William Shakespeare and others: Woman, Hamlet, Romeo, Ghost of Hamlet’s Father, Othello, Iago |
| Margaret Sanger Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi Adam Smith |
Niccolo Paganini William Blake Leonardo da Vinci |
Daniel O’Connell Oliver Cromwell Catherine the Great |
For those that haven’t seen it, just imagine the discussions! Alas, this series has not been released on DVD, although it appears to be available on Videotape or Audio Cassette. Vol. I and II of the scripts are available through Amazon; the entire four volume set is available through Prometheus Books. I have a copy of the scripts, and I was looking at them whilst eating dinner. I had forgotten how good they were. Boy, I wish they would re-air this program—it was a real classic.
