virtual philosopher

Philosophy Bites One Year Old Today!

We have just posted the 52nd episode of our Philosophy Bites podcast series:

Listen to Chandran Kukathas on Hayek's Liberalism

A year into the series and the download figures are amazing - beyond anything we expected. And we are currently at no. 15 of the US iTunes top 100 podcasts.

Readership of leading UK political magazine, The New Statesman, 26,000
Attendance at today's Liverpool v Manchester City, 43,074
Last week's downloads for Philosophy Bites, 56,633

Podcast on Mill's On Liberty

Richard Reeves, author of a recent biography of John Stuart Mill, is the interviewee on this episode of Philosophy Bites:

Listen to Richard Reeves on Mill's On Liberty

Read 'Mill is Dead White Male with Something to Say'

Philosophy Bites Podcast - Half Century!

We have now posted 50 episodes of Philosophy Bites the series of podcast interviews with top philosophers (also available on iTunes)...if you include the interviews we've released on the Open University sponsored Ethics Bites, the total is 60.

You can subscribe to the RSS feed of Philosophy Bites here.

The 50th episode of Philosophy Bites, posted today, is David Miller on National Responsibility.

The total number of downloads to date is 1,192,071. Thank you to our subscribers and thank you for all the messages of support and encouragement. Thanks too to our excellent contributors.

Another episode of Philosophy: The Classics podcast - Mill's Utilitarianism

Listen to my podcast on John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism (12 mins 58 sec). This is part of my ongoing podcast of my book Philosophy: The Classics (3rd ed.).

Listen to Roger Crisp on Philosophy Bites on Mill's Utilitarianism

The best books on utilitarianism that I know are shown below:

Richard Posner on Plagiarism and Copyright

I interviewed Judge Richard Posner, author of an interesting book on Plagiarism (read my review here) for the Open University's Ethics Bites podcast. Unfortunately the ISDN line to Chicago was a bit crackly...There is also a transcript available.

Listen to Richard Posner on Plagiarism and Copyright

David Hume WAS an atheist

Hume specialist Peter Millican is the interviewee for the latest episode of Philosophy Bites on the topic of David Hume's Significance. In the course of the interview Peter explains why he believes that Hume died an atheist...

Listen to Peter Millcan on Hume's Significance

For textual evidence of Hume's Atheism, see this post (added April 27th)

Peter Millican has also provided a very detailed linked bibliography on David Hume:

Peter Millican's Bibliography on Hume

My thoughts on Alan Ramsay's portraits of Hume and Rousseau

Roger Scruton on Sexual Perversion - A Podcast

Listen to my interview with Roger Scruton on Ethics Bites.

New episode of Philosophy: The Classics podcast

I've been persuaded to continue podcasting chapters from my book Philosophy: The Classics. So you can now listen to my summary of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty here. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or here (these podcasts are free - but I of course hope some of you will buy the book!).

(If you are interested in Mill can also listen to Radio 4's In Our Time episode on Mill with contributions from Alan Ryan, Anthony Grayling and Janet Radcliffe Richards).

I'm thinking about starting a podcast based on selected sections of my book Philosophy: The Basics - shorter episodes of perhaps  5 - 10 minutes each. I'd be really interested to know if there is any demand for this.

Three recent podcast interviews

Raimond Gaita on Torture (Philosophy Bites)

Derek Matravers on the Definition of Art (Philosophy Bites)

Janet Radcliffe Richards on The Ethics of Selling Human Organs (Ethics Bites)

Michael Sandel on Genetic Enhancement in Sports

You can now listen to my interview with  Harvard Professor Michael Sandel on the ethics of using genetic enhancement in sports on Ethics Bites (a transcript is also available).  You can also read a blog post I wrote for the Open University site Open2.net.

Michael Sandel's summary of the main themes of his book The Case Against Perfection.

Listen to Michael Sandel interviewed about Genetic Enhancement and Sport for Ethics Bites

Watch a video of Michael Sandel lecturing on Justice