Ophelia Benson

Who would have imagined that a weekly series of interviews with philosophers would hit the top 20 in the US iTunes podcast rankings? Or that a podcast of Nigel Warburton reading chapters from his book Philosophy: The Classics would be at 32 in the UK chart, ahead of BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time and Start the Week? But then who would have thought philosophy podcasting would be thriving all over the world?

The top 20 hit is the result of a collaboration between Warburton and David Edmonds, a producer of radio documentaries for the BBC and co-author (with John Eidinow) of Wittgenstein’s Poker and Rousseau’s Dog. The pair have recently started producing a collection of 10 to 15 minute interviews with well-known philosophers, called Philosophy Bites: “podcasts of top philosophers interviewed on bite-sized topics.”

They launched with Simon Blackburn on Plato’s Cave and Mary Warnock on philosophy in public life, then went on to Stephen Law on the problem of evil, John Cottingham on the meaning of life, Miranda Fricker on epistemic injustice, and Barry Smith on wine. At the time of writing, Warburton told me they have already recorded Edward Craig, Alain de Botton, AC Grayling, Adrian Moore, Jo Wolff, Tim Williamson and others, and they have impressive interviewees lined up for later in the year. “The plan is to release 52 interviews in the first year – we’re definitely well on schedule for that,” said Warburton, whose readings of his book Philosophy: The Classics are also being downloaded at a prodigious rate.

The appetite for philosophy podcasts had already been demonstrated by the success of In Our Time, which has regularly been one of the BBC’s most popular downloads, turning up like clockwork in its list of “Top Programmes This Week”. The long-running series features host Melvyn Bragg (see p68) discussing a topic in the history of ideas with three guests. Naturally it has an archive of philosophy programmes, which includes topics such as friendship, relativism, Spinoza, altruism, beauty, heroism, the mind/body problem and virtue. The editor of this magazine has been a frequent guest, as have Simon Blackburn, Jonathan Rée, Peter Singer and other such media stalwarts, as well as academics and scholars not usually heard on national radio.

North American pubic radio is also a good source of philosophical listening material. CBC (the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Radio’s “Ideas” is a daily programme about contemporary thought, which explores social issues, culture and the arts, geopolitics, history, biography, science and technology, and the humanities. Philosophers are frequent participants. I happened on the programme by accident a few months ago on a day when it featured a discussion among three philosophers who are regulars on the show. I was gripped and impressed – the philosophers talked like philosophers, wrestling over distinctions, justifications, and basic principles, disagreeing fundamentally and unapologetically, and most surprising of all, not obviously simplifying for a mass audience yet being understandable and interesting just the same. It was more like eavesdropping on a group of colleagues than like listening to a show aimed at sleepy evening listeners. Each week, a “best of” the programme is made available to download for four weeks.

National Public Radio in the US has a much more extensive archive for a now retired show, The Connection, which ran a good many discussions with philosophers over its ten year history. They’re stashed under the broad category “Letters”, but they’re also plentiful, so the browsing is not terribly exasperating. For instance, the first page of the index includes a programme called “Rethinking 25 Centuries of Philosophy”, in which George Lakoff argues Brain Science is overturning twenty-five centuries of Western Philosophy.”

There is also “The Life and Philosophy of Willard Van Orman Quine”, Jonathan Lear on Aristotle and Freud on happiness (he says they both got it wrong), and Tocqueville’s  Democracy in America. On the second page we get Cornel West on living the philosophical life and then an entire philosophy series, including God, justice, love, ethics, and Patricia Churchland on the philosophy of mind. There is no telling how many pages there are; there is no “Last”, there is only “Previous” and “Next” – so perhaps the pages go on forever. Explore and find out.

The creator and first host of The Connection was Christopher Lydon, who left after a dispute with NPR over creative control. Lydon is now host of Open Source, another idea-driven talk show that often talks about philosophy or to philosophers or both. It is broadcast on forty public service radio stations in the US and online. Its archive is organised only by date, but it has a search feature, and typing in “philosopher” gets results. Open Source can be good, but Lydon is the kind of host who finds it necessary to interrupt often and abruptly and for no apparent reason except that he feels like talking about something else now. This seems rude, and is frustrating when the interrupted guest was saying something worth hearing. Furthermore Open Source is, like pretty much all US public radio talks shows, a call-in, so people with something interesting to say often sit by in silence while people with nothing interesting to say say it at length over the phone. This seems like a waste of time and resources, but it appears to be a near-requirement of spoken word radio in the US: Democracy in America, no doubt.

The Center for Inquiry, founded and run by emeritus professor of philosophy Paul Kurtz, has a weekly interview podcast, Point of Inquiry (on which I have appeared), exploring three broad areas: pseudoscience and the paranormal, alternative medicine, and religion and secularism. The host DJ Grothe interviews intellectuals such as scientists, journalists, lawyers, and a good many philosophers, including Philip Kitcher, Susan Haack, Victor Stenger, Barbara Forrest, Peter Singer, and Daniel Dennett.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has several philosophical offerings that can be listened to online. ABC Radio National has a weekly show called The Philosopher’s Zone, presented by Alan Saunders, which has an archive going back to 2005; it also, usefully, has a transcript of each show. Recent shows include a tribute to Richard Rorty, a discussion on “What do we know and how do we know it?,” a conversation about teaching philosophy in a graduate school of management, and one on Shakespeare the philosopher.

ABC also has a series called Big Ideas. In May and June it featured the 2007 Reith lectures, and in April it played the Massey lectures from 2006 on “The Ethical Imagination”. However, only the most recent programme is available to listen on demand.

Also of philosophical interest is All in the Mind, with such topics as “Teaching your brain to be happy,” “Writing the brain – neuroscience and creativity”, “The neurobiology of suicide”, and “Is music the universal language?” Like The Philosopher’s Zone, this has an extensive archive and transcripts of each programme.

If browsing the web looking for good podcasts seems like too much hard work, Listening to Words does much of the work for you, collecting links to lectures from around the web. Its philosophy page points to lectures such as Bernard Williams on “The Human Prejudice,” Slavoj Žižek on “The Ignorance of Chicken, or Who Believes What Today?”, Alain Badiou on “Politics, Philosophy and Democracy: an Obscure Knot,” Simon Blackburn teasing with “My Claim is That Morality is Nothing Other Than the Advantage of the Stronger Party…Well, Why aren’t you Applauding?” and much more.

As well as audio, there are also a few good sources of video on the web. The ubiquitous YouTube contains thousands of clips, including archive footage of Bertrand Russell, but finding the serious gems in among all the spoofs, music and comedy clips can be hard work. It’s good for light relief, however: check out Borat crerator Sasha Baron Cohen as Ali G interviewing Noam Chomsky.

Easier to use is TED – Technology, Entertainment, Design – whose subtitle is “Ideas worth spreading”. TED began in 1984 as a conference to bring people in those three fields together. It holds an annual conference at which “the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).” The site, launched in April 2007, makes many of these talks available; it currently contains more than a hundred and adds more every week. The videos are released under a creative commons license, so they can be freely shared.

TED has some themes of interest to the philosophically inclined. How the Mind Works includes talks by Daniel Dennett on our consciousness, Daniel Gilbert asking “why are we happy?”, Michael Shermer on believing strange things, Tony Robbins asking why we do what we do, and more. “Is There a God?” features Rick Warren on a life of purpose and Daniel Dennett’s reply to Warren, along with Richard Dawkins, Julia Sweeney and more. There is also “Evolution’s Genius” and “What Makes us Happy?”

There is more stimulating listening out there than there are years to listen to it all, so you’d better get started.

Ophelia Benson is editor of butterfliesandwheels.com and co-author of Why Truth Matters (Continuum).