Philosophy Bites, the podcast I make with David Edmonds, has broken the 5 million download barrier! We have 110 episodes so far and are releasing one a fortnight. These are all available free from www.philosophybites.com and you can download them easily for ipod/iphone use from iTunes here.
Angie Hobbs, whom I've interviewed a couple of times for the Philosophy Bites podcast (on Plato on Erotic Love, and Plato on War) has just been promoted to a new post at Warwick University with a brief to promote the public understanding of philosophy. She will clearly be an excellent advocate, particularly on the importance and continuing relevance of ancient philosophy. She has been superb on Philosophy Bites and on In Our Time.
Perhaps other universities will create such a role too...(I'd love to have that brief!).
Angie Hobbs has just begun tweeting as @drangiehobbs
Michael Sandel's Justice website is a superb example of how academics can use the Internet to reach out to a world audience. Based on his renowned Harvard lecture course, it combines slick recordings of his 12 lectures (first 3 available already via a YouTube link) - which are also being broadcast on public service TV in the States - with associated reading lists, back up material discussion groups, etc. And his new book: Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?
In the UK, many of us still look back fondly to Bryan Magee's BBC television series 'Men of Ideas' (not a title that would work today) and 'The Great Philosophers' (search 'Bryan Magee' in YouTube for long extracts), but since then, apart from Michael Ignatieff's interviews with thinkers, philosophy on television hasn't really achieved what it might have done (instead we've got the sugared pill of biographical sketches which tend to play down the ideas, or else philosophy lite, or philosophy as self-help). TED.com's popularity, though, should make those commissioners realize the appeal of dynamic speakers presenting ideas they believe in.
It helps, of course, that Sandel is an excellent communicator, engaging in a quasi-Socratic dialogue with questioners even in a large lecture group. In fact, his presentation is so good, that it is easy to be drawn into his worldview (as an antidote, read Michael Sandel Wants To Talk To You About Justice which includes some interesting pointers about where he is coming from and why some philosophers disagree quite strongly with his approach).
I've interviewed Michael Sandel twice - for the podcasts Ethics Bites and Philosophy Bites
Michael Sandel interview on Genetic Enhancement in Sport
Michael Sandel interview on What Shouldn't Be Sold
Sandel gave the 2009 Reith Lecture Series on the theme of 'A New Citizenship' (basically, the themes from his Justice course). You can listen to all 4 Reith lectures here.
In the wake of the Renault deliberate crash, Bloodgate, and Eduardo's onfield acrobatics, Le Monde just ran an interview with me on cheating in sport: Pourquoi les sportifs trichent-ils?
You can read an earlier piece I wrote on sports cheats just before the 2006 World Cup for Radio 4's (now defunct) The Sports Programme here.
On the related question of whether genetic enhancement in sports is a good thing, listen to my podcast interview with Michael Sandel on this topic for the Ethics Bites podcast.
You can now book by telephone on 0207 887 8888 for my 7 Ways of Thinking About Art course on Monday evenings at Tate Modern 19th October to 30th November 2009 (7 sessions). If you need information about the sorts of topics covered and the approach, you can check out notes from a previous version of this course. Further details of the course should be on the Tate Modern website next week and in the forthcoming events leaflet.
Watch this nice video about Ernö Goldfinger's own house, now owned by the National Trust, but take with a pinch of salt the Ian Fleming story about Goldfinger - the truth about how Fleming named his villian is here 'The Real Goldfinger'
I'll be giving a free lunchtime lecture on Ernö Goldfinger at the National Portrait Gallery in October 2009, further details here.
G.A. Cohen, the political philosopher sometimes known as Jerry Cohen, died in the early hours of this morning of a suspected stroke (see Normblog for some further details). More links and memories on Leiter Reports
I interviewed him for a Philosophy Bites podcast in his rooms at All Souls in Oxford in December 2007. Before the interview he performed a few snippets from his stand up comedy routine, and seemed in fine form. We'd hoped to go back to interview him on Marx at some point. (An Open University interview with Cohen on Marx's German Ideology (Part One), audio track 7 from the course AA311 Reading Political Philosophy: Machiavelli to Mill, has recenty been made available on iTunesU - further details here). Links to podcasts of a recent Oxford University conference on his work here.
Listen to G.A. Cohen on Inequality of Wealth. (Philosophy Bites)
Tate Modern - I will be teaching the course 'Seven Ways of Thinking About Art' on 7 consecutive Monday evenings from 19th October until 30th November. Booking required.
The course explores the philosophical basis of our attempts to understand works of art. Topics covered include the question of whether works of art are simply catalysts to purely subjective responses, the relevance of an artist's intentions, a work’s historical context, its originality, and its context within the gallery.
Participants have the opportunity to explore a range of positions from a theoretical perspective and to test their application against particular works of art in the gallery.
Booking will open in September. All booking is via the Tate Modern booking office.
In the Spring I will begin the cycle of three 6-session courses on Aesthetics at Tate Modern Classic Aesthetics, Modern Aesthetics and Contemporary Aesthetics.
My Twitter updates from www.twitter.com/philosophybites now appear in the right hand column of this weblog. They include links to philosophy-related material on the Web.
For the uninitiated, a 'Tweet' is simply an entry in Twitter (which is a kind of microblogging - each entry restricted to a maximum of 140 characters).
A 'Retweet'(abbreviated to RT) is when someone forwards someone else's Tweet.
The @ sign is used to refer to another person's account name on Twitter - so I am @philosophybites
(sometimes when people reply to other people's comments they include this @ sign, but nothing about the original message being replied to, so that can get quite confusing).
A 'trending' topic is one that is popular enough to appear in a constantly updated top ten.
The hash tag (hard to find on a Mac keyboard!) is a way of labelling a topic so that others can easily find it in the search box.
You can send direct messages (i.e. not public ones) to other people on Twitter once you join.
The easiest way to add URLs is by shortening them, e.g. by going to www.tinyurl.com
If you join Twitter (which is free) you can follow other people's tweets (i.e. they automatically appear on your Twitter home page)...and they can follow you. I have nearly 900 followers at the moment.
It's a lot simpler to get the hang of than it sounds from this. Please follow me if you are already on Twitter.
Take Another Look: Ernö Goldfinger - free lunchtime lecture 1.15 pm in the Ondaatje Lecture Theatre of the National Portrait Gallery, London on 8th October. I will be speaking about the architect Ernö Goldfinger's career.
Learn more about Ernö Goldfinger here (including the link with James Bond's enemy).
Yesterday was the 50th Anniversary of an important First Amendment decision, see Fred Kaplan's interesting article in the New York Times. A nice formula emerged: if it's both prurient (or lustful, lewd, or lascivious) and utterly socially worthless, it's OK to censor it; if it has some miniscule social worth, then prurience doesn't justify a ban. Judges are there to determine in particular cases whether or not the communication in question is utterly without social worth...
Open Culture has links to a number of free Philosophy Courses. It should soon be possible to construct a degree-type Philosophy curriculum from the material on the Web. Autodidacts never had it so good.
There are still a few places left for Philosophy By Bicycle which will take place in London on 25th July. Booking details here. Read more about it on The School of Life blog
Cosmopolitanism, the philosophy which foregrounds common humanity while recognizing difference, seems to be the philosophical underpinning of President Obama's approach to international relations. Carlin Romano's fascinating article 'Obama, Philosopher in Chief' (c/o the brilliant Arts and Letters Daily) analyses his speeches linking them to Kwame Anthony Appiah's thinking on the topic (you can listen to Appiah on Cosmopolitanism on the Philosophy Bites podcast) - though Romano economically describes Appiah as 'Ghanian-American' (more on Appiah's genealogy here).
Romano claims that Obama is 'countering' Machiavelli with his advocacy of a consensual politics over coercion, and recognition of rights over party politics. Cynics might note that the expression of such views is completely consistent with Machiavelli's approach (since Machiavelli is all for appearing to take the moral high ground). But surely, as Romano points out, we have entered a new age when an American President sounds like an existentialist:
"Our history has always been the sum total of the choices made and the actions taken by each individual man and woman."
Can we now hope that the US people will be encouraged to apply reason to the area of religion too? While some way ahead of the UK in politics, the US seems to be lagging behind in metaphysics.
If you want to hear my contribution to a debate about agnosticism and why it is often a cop out on the Richard Bacon show on Radio 5 Live this week, then go here, click on 'Tuesday' scroll to about 2hrs 13 into the show and you should be able to listen to it for the next three days.
Download Janet Radcliffe Richards on experimental philosophy 'Thought Experiments',an episode of the BBC Radio 4 series Analysis. This programme was produced by David Edmonds, my co-podcaster on Philosophy Bites (who is also co-author of an article on X-Phi for Prospect Magazine 'Philosophy's Great Experiment').
Philosophy by Bicycle, an unusual one-day event in East and South East London c/o The School of Life on Saturday 25th July 2009. I'll be leading philosophical discussion and Jack Thurston of The Bike Show will be sorting out the route (and possibly mending punctures). Strictly by pre-booked place only.