Phil Plait destroys the earth 23 Jul 2010 The Bad Astronomer has a TV show! Bad Universe: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiSJ73pckw4] I hope it gets to Australia before the Big One hits. [Why can’t we do a philosophy show like this? Oh, wait…] Education General Science Humor
General Science Is information essential for life? No. 16 Jan 200818 Sep 2017 A recent New Scientist article poses the often-posed question in the title. The answer is mine. Forgive me as I rant and rave on a bugbear topic… Read More
General Science Congrats to Phil Plait 4 Aug 2008 Phil, of Bad Astronomy fame, has been offered and accepted the chairmanship of James Randi’s Educational Foundation. I think that’s a great choice by Randi and a great honour for Phil. Couldn’t happen to a better guy. Read More
General Science Physicists undertake stamp-collecting 28 Mar 200818 Sep 2017 Ernst Rutherford, the “father” of nuclear physics, once airily declared “In science there is only physics. All the rest is stamp collecting”. By this he meant that the theory of physics is the only significant thing in science. Such mundane activities as taxonomy in biology were just sampling contingent examples… Read More
We could do a philosophy show like this. One episode could examine the best methods for dealing with an outbreak of P-Zombies. Much gunfire and explosions would be used. Note that P-Zombies can be destroyed by head shots and decapitation. The next episode will deal with issues in the philosophy of science, including what to do when you are attacked by a horde of purple ravens, and if you are in a dark room with blue walls how not to be eaten by grues. Then we’ll have Johnny Depp in a special guest appearance in Curse of the Ship of Theseus. There’s plenty of material for a show on philosophy.
Get started on the script, while I find a producer… Just promise me that you won’t make Chalmers the presenter. Bastard’s way too camera-friendly…
Well, Eliezer Yudkowsky’s already proposed a script for a movie with P-Zombie villains: http://lesswrong.com/lw/pn/zombies_the_movie/ Maybe parts of that could be adopted for a TV episode.
On BBC radio a short while ago, they had a two-part philosophy series about the trolley problem called “Would you kill the big guy?” It was done in a pretty accessible manner without sacrificing content. What I’d love to see actually is a video production of David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
You could do a “live like Diogenes” reality show. If you’d include the masturbation in public bit, it would be a sure fire hit.
It is hard to see how a philosophy show could fit in enough explosions to attract the attention of the proto-geeks. You guys don’t even demolish arguments anymore. You dissolve problems. Just doesn’t work on television. But Kel may be right about what might work. Dialogs. A series consisting of college bullsessions. Photogenic youth in a co-ed dorm struggling with the Big Questions. Throw in some humor, some character development, a little romance, and a good repertory cast, and you have something which just might be watchable. It would take some damn-good script-writing, though. And it can’t succeed if it seems preachy or partisan. So, Kel, as much as I like Hume’s “Dialogs”, I don’t think that something so one-sided will draw and hold an audience.
Off topic, but it relates to today: I liked your Venice header (or banner, or whatever it’s called) better. The colors remind me of “zombie day” in Sb.