No, not for me (although some comments elsewhere in the ScienceBlogs galaxy have been rather more anti-philosophy than pro); for John Perry and Ken Taylor, the guys who do Philosophy Talk on public radio (and on streaming audio on your computer).
They’ve been doing the show for more than two years now. However, the seed money that got them started is dwindling. Here’s their bleg:
When we started, many people in radio took our ideas with a very large grain of salt. “Philosophy on the Radio?” they asked incredulously. “Two academics as co-hosts? A stream of professional thinkers, rather than journalists or politicians or entertainers as your guests?” “It will never work!” “No one will ever listen!”
I think we’ve begun to prove the naysayers wrong!! But we certainly have a ways to go.
To get to where we want to go from where we are now, we need your help. Up until now, Philosophy Talk has mostly been funded by Stanford University. We’ve also had a few small grants from various sources. But those funding sources have either already run dry or will soon run dry. To be sure, we are currently actively exploring many new avenues for funding, but we need your help too. Think about giving a gift, small or large, to keep this unique programming on the air and on the web. We do a lot with very little. John and Ken, for example, work for nothing more than the love of philosophy and out of a certain missionary zeal that makes them want to help philosophy reach the world.
You can give a gift online here. Or you can mail a check, made out to Stanford University to:
Philosophy Talk
c/o Department of Philosophy
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2155
Make the check out to Stanford University and write “for Philosophy Talk” on the comment line.
If you haven’t listened to the show, you should have a listen (it’s Tuesdays, 12 noon to 1 pm Pacific time). They also have an archive of past shows and, of course, a blog. John and Ken (and their guests) are working hard to get at the parts of philosophy that matter to real people, and to help the masses interact more meaningfully with the stuff they want and need to think about in their lives.
In short, they’re good people on a noble mission. If you were inclined to kick a few bucks into the project, I know they’d appreciate it.
It could be worse. You could have two academics talk about car repair on the radio.