Meeting of Minds

Steve Allen has accomplished an outstanding way to make history fun and understandable, providing a framework to explore morality and serious philosophical subjects. He brings together improbable groups of historical characters of such stature as Emily Dickinson and Gengis Khan, in a lively person to person discussion at the present time. Profound but not boring, funny and touching, it makes you appreciate the beauty of opposing points of view and to discover the basic humanity of seemingly antagonistic positions. This is most certainly the best US television series EVER. At the end of each chapter you feel richer and much more tolerant, ready to appreciate and sympathize a little more your with fellow human beings. I am terribly sorry it did not continue for many years.

I've only ever seen two or three episodes of this series, but they enthralled me. I only wish it were possible to buy them on DVD.

Who else but Steve Allen would conceive of a talk show that had Genghis Khan debating with Emily Dickinson? Pure genius! Highlights from the other episodes that I've caught featured:

* The Marquis De Sade giving a most wonderful soliloquy on the sadism of God -- to the booing of the audience.

* Gandhi debating with a woman (whose name I forget) on the value of birth control (Gandhi was very much against).

* There was an entire episode entirely about Shakespeare and his various characters, but it was IMHO, one of the weakest of the episodes.

Too bad we can't have stuff like this now. Steve was a genius.

Just saw him in person dec 11th and he hasn't "lost" it.

This really was a great show. For those of you not familiar with this show, imagine if you will a round table talk show consisting of famous people from history. One show might include as guests Christopher Columbus and Emily Dickenson and Mata Hari with Steve Allen acting as host. Usually Jane Meadows (Steve's wife in real life) would guest star along with other well known and lesser known celebrities. The guests had "read up" of course on the character they were portraying so the show was an excellent opportunity to see history come to life in an interesting and dramatic fashion. Keep in mind that the guests would never break character throughout the show. The guests were indeed the famous people in history they were portraying. Highly imaginative television and available in VHS format!

Simply put, the general intellect and ability to listen to other points of view are all but no-existent today. Sadly, most people wouldn't even know who these historical personages were, let alone be engaged in an imaginary discourse with them. Mass / social media has succeeded in dumbing down our society. There is no going back.