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
Creationism and Intelligent Design Irreducible complexity robotics 29 Dec 201121 Jun 2018 Click on the image to go to the comic. Read More
General Science Laws, theories and models 21 Feb 2009 A 6th grade maths and science teacher emailed me about whether theories could become laws. Below the fold is his request and my reply. The short answer is that when laws grow up, they become theories, not the other way around. Read More
Evolution The “design” mistake 18 Feb 2008 Back when Darwin was a student at Cambridge, he read, and almost memorised the Rev William Paley’s Natural Theology, and thereafter remained impressed by the obvious adaptiveness of the parts of organisms and their interrelations. As is well known, he gave an explanation differently to Paley’s external intelligence that designs… 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.