Blogs, Podcasts and Online Guides

Blogs

Wondering aloud: Philosophy with young people is a blog written by Jana Mohr Lone, the director of the Northwest Center for Philosophy for Children at the University of Washington in Seattle, U.S.A. The blog includes posts about some of Jana’s philosophy classes with school students, thoughts about doing philosophy with young people, and ideas for how to introduce philosophy in K-12 classrooms.

American Pre-College Philosophy is a blog for philosophers, teachers and student about ideas and aspirations, arguments, plans and projects, events, news, and people.

The Education to Empower blog is maintained by an education nonprofit organisation aiming to cultivate innovative programs to provide youth with the confidence and skills to become active participants in civic life. Its flagship effort is the Young Philosopher’s Program, providing educators of all stripes the tools and support they need to teach philosophy. Daniel Pozmanter, Executive Director of Education to Empower, filmed interviews with teachers and students in California and Washington DC who had been involved in doing philosophy.

Talking Philosophy has categories on philosophy for kids and on critical thinking, among other topics. Talking Philosophy is the blog of TPM: The Philosophers’ Magazine. Julian Baggini, James Garvey, Mike LaBossiere, Jeff Mason, Jeremy Stangroom and Andy Walsh blog here.

The Philosophy Shop’s blog is maintained by the Philosophy Shop, a community interest company that teaches philosophy in schools and in the community.

Can an effective, worthwhile, and legitimate philosophy curriculum can be established at the high school level? Can a philosopher can make a credible, scholarly career out of teaching high school philosophy? In this post from the philosophy teaching blog In Socrates’ Wake, Jason Nicholson presents his research findings in response to these questions, and argues that teaching high school philosophy should be taken more seriously by professional philosophers.

One more question… is a new blog by P4C practitioner Steve Bramall.


Podcasts

Teachers have indicated that they use the transcripts and podcasts of the following programs in their classes.

“Teaching Philosophy for Children” with guest Maughn Gregory originally broadcast on the Why Radio Show on 11 July 2011.

Teaching Children to be Philosophers, featuring Dan Smith and Phil Cam on Radio National’s The Philosopher’s Zone on 6 December 2008.

The Philosopher’s Zone is broadcast on ABC Radio National Saturday 1.30 pm (repeated Wednesday 9.35 pm) and is also available for audio download. The Philosopher’s Zone is your guide through the strange thickets of logic, metaphysics and ethics. As well as looking at the world of philosophy, The Philosopher’s Zone will also look at the world throughphilosophy. Today fundamental and perplexing issues – risk assessment, bio-technology, our relations with animals, relations between cultures, the question whether a society can be open, tolerant and, at the same time, secure and the Philosopher’s Zone will look at what philosophical analysis can contribute to our understanding of these issues.

Philosophy talk is a weekly, one-hour US radio series produced by Ben Manilla. The hosts’ down-to-earth and no-nonsense approach brings the richness of philosophic thought to everyday subjects. Topics are lofty (Truth, Beauty, Justice), arresting (Terrorism, Intelligent Design, Suicide), and engaging (Baseball, Love, Happiness).

On Philosophy bites, Nigel Warburton presents podcasts of top philosophers interviewed on bite-sized topics. This is a marvellous source of brief, accessible interviews on a broad range of philosophic issues.

Nigel Warburton reads from his book Philosophy: The Classics. In his exemplary clear style, Warburton introduces and assesses philosophical classics from Plato’s Republic to Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. This brisk and invigorating tour through the great books of western philosophy explores the works of Plato, Aristotle, Boethius, Machiavelli, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Schopenhauer, Mill, Kierkegaard, Marx and Engels, Nietzsche, Russell, Ayer, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and Rawls.

The History of Philosophy… Without any Gaps is a series of podcasts on the history of philosophy being created by philosopher Peter Adamson (King’s College, London). In time, this series will cover at least all of ancient and medieval philosophy “without any gaps.” There will be plenty of Neoplatonism, though at the rate he is going it will take until 2011-12 to get there. The eposides will come out once a week. Episodes are available via iTunes, generic RSS feed, or from theKing’s College website. There is also a Facebook page.

The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, they pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text they’re talking about to follow and enjoy the discussion.

Radiolab believes your ears are a portal to another world. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience. In this beautifully produced podcast series, big questions are investigated, tinkered with, and encouraged to grow – so bring your curiosity, and Radiolab will feed it with possibility! Radiolab is presented by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich on New York public radio. Many episodes have philosophical themes, including Time, Choice, Morality, Mind, Emergence, Mortality, Deception, and Animal minds.

Entitled Opinions – hosted by Professor Robert Harrison of Stanford University – is a weekly literary talk show that ranges broadly on issues related to literature, ideas, and lived experience. The show consists of a conversations with a special guest about select topics or authors about which he or she is especially entitled to an opinion. Past guests have included Orhan Pamuk, Paul Ehrlich, Richard Rorty, Shirley Hazzard, Andrei Linde, Rene Girard and Michel Serres. Search through the archives – there’s a lot on Philosophy.

In Our Time (BBC Radio 4): Melvyn Bragg and guests investigate the history of ideas.

A monthly podcast from the University of Chicago Philosophy department. Faculty members and guests talk with two graduate students (Matt Teichman and Mark Hopwood) about their latest work, covering a range of topics from the theoretical to the practical, including perception, moral motivation, and sexual orientation.

Justice with Michael Sandel: Professor Sandel lectures at Harvard University about justice, equality, democracy, and citizenship. This video series aims to help viewers become more critically minded thinkers about the moral decisions we face in our everyday lives. Sandel challenges us with difficult moral dilemmas, asks our opinion about the right thing to do, and then asks us to examine our answers in the light of new scenarios. This sharpens our own moral convictions and gives us the moral clarity to better understand the opposing views we confront in a democracy. This course also addresses the hot topics of our day including same sex marriage, affirmative action, patriotism and rights.

The Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford podcast page, including interviews with philosophers, philosophy for beginners, critical reasoning for beginners, general philosophy, and Nietzsche on Mind and Nature.

The Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge offers several podcast on diverse philosophical themes.

Online webcasts for a wide range of courses, including Philosophy, are accessible by scrolling down to the section entitled ‘General resource pages with webcasts’.


Online Guides

This section links to various online resources including encyclopedias and other guides to Philosophy and philosophers.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a peer-reviewed academic resource.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a dynamic reference work which maintains academic standards while evolving and adapting in response to new research. Each entry is maintained and kept up to date by an expert or group of experts in the field, and refereed by the members of a distinguished Editorial Board.

The A Companion to Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand contains a wide range of articles contributed by prominent philosophers and scholars, and includes biographical essays on selected philosophers, topics and controversies, as well as shorter entries on associations, research centres, departments, journals, pedagogy and international links.

Episteme Links is an extensive philosophy site arranged into topic sections with substantial searching facilities.

The Online Guide to Ethics and Moral Philosophy provides a very general introduction to ethics. The materials offer both historical and thematic perspectives on the subject. Key representatives of the history of ethics are presented and major ethical theories are analysed and critiqued.

In the Philosophy Pages, Garth Kemerling offers information for students of the Western philosophical tradition. 
The site includes a concise dictionary of technical terms and personal names encountered in the study of Western philosophy; a survey of the History of Western philosophy; and timeline of intellectual figures with detailed discussion of several major philosophers. 
It also offers summary treatment of the elementary principles of logic, a generic Study Guide for students of philosophy, and links to other philosophy sites on the Internet.

The Indiana Philosophy Ontology (InPhO) project offer a variety of tools for students, researchers and scholars. Its taxonomy browser provides an entry point for finding information on philosophical ideas. With it you can explore related ideas and conduct focused searches at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Noesis, and Google Scholar with a single click. The ontology covers philosophical ideas, thinkers, and journals.

Erratic Impact is a site built for research in philosophy, integrating text resources with the best online resources.Erratic Impact‘s Philosophy Research Base is a vast resource containing articles on philosophers, philosophical theories, terms and movements. Its study guide supports both academic and general interest in all philosophical fields.

Squashed Philosophers: Read the great works in an afternoon! Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Machiavelli, Descartes, Hume, Marx & Engels, Mill, Nietzsche, Darwin, Freud, Ayer, Sartre and the rest – meticulously condensed to retain the style, substance, format, arguments and ideas of the originals, while ditching the bulk of the verbiage.

Philosophy Bro: ‘Just a Bro who loves Philosophy’. An amusing guide to the history of philosophy through the lenses and language of a ‘Bro’. Warning: contains frequent expletives.

Another great guide by SmartScholar is the the “Philosophy Education Resource Guide“. Offers support and links to Philosophy Resources and courses – recommended by VAPS member Meghan.

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