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
Education What is “secular”? 13 May 200918 Sep 2017 In keeping with the last post on humanities, I thought I’d ruminate with no effort or knowledge to back it up on what the term “secular” means. If the fundamentalists are to be believed, it is a synonym of “humanist” and also “Satanist”, “infidel” and “homosexual”. But somewhat more seriously,… 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.