Brad Spurgeon's Meetings With Remarkable People

Meetings With Remarkable People. Episode 4: David Douglas Duncan

David Douglas Duncan / Credit Jorge Zapata/European Pressphoto Agency [https://i0.wp.com/bradspurgeon.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/ddd-selfie.jpg?resize=1280%2C853&ssl=1] David Douglas Duncan / Credit Jorge Zapata/European Pressphoto Agency This is the fourth podcast episode in my series “Meetings With Remarkable People.” Before I even finish posting all of my episodes with the remarkable Colin Wilson, the angry young man of British literature, today I wanted to leap ahead into January 2013 and put up today this interview I did with David Douglas Duncan. It felt urgent to me because today, 23 January 2023 marks what would have been the 107th birthday of David Douglas Duncan, one of the greatest of the 20th century war photographers, and a friend and photographer of Pablo Picasso. It just seemed I could not miss this anniversary, as it was also precisely 10 years ago this month that I conducted the interview with him. While I may have feared meeting this new friend too late in our lives, he went on to live for another five and a half years, dying only in June 2018 at the age of 102 https://bradspurgeon.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Meetings-With-Remarkable-People-Podcast-Ep-5-David-Douglas-Duncan.mp3 [https://bradspurgeon.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Meetings-With-Remarkable-People-Podcast-Ep-5-David-Douglas-Duncan.mp3] And what a life this man – often referred to as DDD – had! From his very first published photograph in the 1930s when he was just a teenager and caught a shot of a man running in and out of a burning hotel in Kansas City that turned out to be the infamous gangster John Dillinger to his first ever photo of Picasso … in his bathtub! He had a blessed life, and one that traversed almost every major historical moment of the second half of the 20th century. David Douglas Duncan Soldier [https://i0.wp.com/bradspurgeon.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/david-douglas-duncan-soldier.jpg?resize=311%2C400&ssl=1] David Douglas Duncan Soldier I was fortunate to meet him through my Formula One writing, as Duncan also had a love of cars and racing and I learned through a friend of his who was a Formula One photographer that he wanted to contact me about one of my articles on the series. I went to his place in the south of France for lunch one day and then asked if I could conduct an interview with him for a future column I planned about meetings with remarkable people who were also Formula One racing fans! He agreed and I left his home that afternoon with this extraordinary recording of his life in history. Part 5 of the podcasts will probably return to Colin Wilson But I could not miss David Douglas Duncan’s birthday, and the 10th anniversary month of this recording! Follow @BradSpurgeon [https://twitter.com/BradSpurgeon]

Meetings With Remarkable People. Episode 3: Colin Wilson, Part 3

Colin Wilson [https://i0.wp.com/bradspurgeon.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/colinwilson.jpg?resize=220%2C300&ssl=1] Colin Wilson, author of The Outsider and The Occult This is the third podcast in my new series “Meetings With Remarkable People.” It is also the third part of my meeting with the remarkable Colin Wilson, the angry young man of British literature [https://www.britannica.com/biography/Colin-Wilson], who I met for the first time in 2005 at his home in Cornwall, England. We launch this episode with a talk inspired by the part of Wilson’s autobiography in which he speaks of trying mescaline, and of course the obvious inspiration for that, the work of Aldous Huxley in his book The Doors of Perception. I talk about my own decision that drugs are not a way to reach the “peak experience” that Wilson made one of his life goals to achieve. This leads to his discussion of his “seven levels of consciousness,” and his ability in the previous year of his life to stay in this higher state than ever before. In short, the segment is all about trying to control our levels of optimism and general contentedness, and to induce the peak experience. https://bradspurgeon.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Meetings-With-Remarkable-People-Podcast-Ep-3-Colin-Wilson-Part-3.mp3 [https://bradspurgeon.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Meetings-With-Remarkable-People-Podcast-Ep-3-Colin-Wilson-Part-3.mp3] This is the original interview that served as the basis of the article I wrote about Wilson that appeared in August 2005 in the International Herald Tribune and then The New York Times. I later expanded it, and worked with Colin Wilson himself, to develop the interview into a book that was published to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of “The Outsider,” which appeared in 1956. My book, Colin Wilson: Philosopher of Optimism, is now in its second edition, and still available in many online bookstores and directly from the publisher, Michael Butterworth books in Manchester [https://michael-butterworth.co.uk/product/colin-wilson-philosopher-of-optimism-by-brad-spurgeon/]. The above book and this interview led to a British film company inviting me the following year to do a filmed interview of Colin Wilson, and excerpt of which is on my YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myEgr3glF-0&t=10s]. Part 4 of the interview will follow soon. Follow @BradSpurgeon [https://twitter.com/BradSpurgeon]

Meetings With Remarkable People. Episode 2 : Colin Wilson, Part 2

Colin Wilson [https://i0.wp.com/bradspurgeon.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/colin-wilson-pose.jpg?resize=234%2C268&ssl=1] Colin Wilson This is the second podcast in my new series “Meetings With Remarkable People.” It is also the second part of the meeting with the remarkable Colin Wilson, the angry young man of British literature [https://www.britannica.com/biography/Colin-Wilson], who I met for the first time in 2005 at his home in Cornwall, England. In this part of the interview Wilson talks about intentionality, Husserl, Sartre, Tom Sawyer…and how we must concentrate on what we look at in order to see it… or how to make our lives more interesting and interesting by changing our mental attitude to how we see it. He also speaks about how he wanted to create a philosophy on a new foundation, and about Kierkegaard and his flaws and need for philosophical spectacles. Not to mention Abraham Maslow and studying healthy people as a psychologist. Above all, Wilson introduces here the idea of the “peak experience.” I’ll let you listen to it to learn about that! https://bradspurgeon.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Meetings-With-Remarkable-People-Podcast-Ep-2-Colin-Wilson-Part-2.mp3 [https://bradspurgeon.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Meetings-With-Remarkable-People-Podcast-Ep-2-Colin-Wilson-Part-2.mp3] This is the original interview that served as the basis of the article I wrote about Wilson that appeared in August 2005 in the International Herald Tribune and then The New York Times. I later expanded it, and worked with Colin Wilson himself, to develop the interview into a book that was published to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of “The Outsider,” which appeared in 1956. My book, Colin Wilson: Philosopher of Optimism, is now in its second edition, and still available in many online bookstores and directly from the publisher, Michael Butterworth books in Manchester [https://michael-butterworth.co.uk/product/colin-wilson-philosopher-of-optimism-by-brad-spurgeon/]. The above book and this interview led to a British film company inviting me the following year to do a filmed interview of Colin Wilson, and excerpt of which is on my YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myEgr3glF-0&t=10s]. By the way, in the short introduction of this podcast I also speak about how I felt personally at the time while doing the interview, and why I sometimes sound a little cold and detached during Wilson’s fascinating talk. Part 3 of the interview will follow soon. Follow @BradSpurgeon [https://twitter.com/BradSpurgeon]

Podcast: Meetings With Remarkable People. Episode 1 : Colin Wilson

Philosopher of Optimism [https://i0.wp.com/bradspurgeon.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/colinwilson.gif?resize=210%2C298&ssl=1] Philosopher of Optimism This is the first of a new series of podcasts that I have decided to do. Having worked for 30 years as a journalist, and always used great sound recording devices for my interviews, I recently realized that I had a lot of great interviews with remarkable people that I had made for the writing of my articles, but that can serve as podcasts as well. Most of these interviews are with people who in some way provided answers to some of the life questions that I had or have, and I approached them to do stories that were close to my heart. By sharing them, I hope that the interviews will be as valuable as life guides to listeners as they are to me. The goal, however, is also to continue interviewing remarkable people in the future specifically for this series. https://bradspurgeon.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Meetings-With-Remarkable-People-Podcast-ep-1-Colin-Wilson.mp3 [https://bradspurgeon.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Meetings-With-Remarkable-People-Podcast-ep-1-Colin-Wilson.mp3] This first interview is the one that I did in July 2005 with Colin Wilson, the angry young man of British letters, who became famous overnight in 1956 at the age of 24 after publishing his first book, called, “The Outsider.” The interview was the basis of what became an article in both the IHT and the NYT, and then became the basis of the book that I published in 2006 called: Colin Wilson: Philosopher of Optimism [https://michael-butterworth.co.uk/product/colin-wilson-philosopher-of-optimism-by-brad-spurgeon/]. One of the people that Wilson wrote about in the book was Georges Gurdjieff, who wrote a book called “Meetings With Remarkable Men.” So comes my title for the podcast. This is the first instalment of the Wilson interview, which I am editing into several episodes – so if you enjoy it, keep posted for the next ones! Follow @BradSpurgeon [https://twitter.com/BradSpurgeon]