If the Infinity Hotel is full, is it possible to still get a room? What is friendship? Does time travel make sense? Should we allow designer babies? Do destructive earthquakes and floods discredit the notion that there’s an all-good and all-powerful God? At what stage of the process does a balding man actually become bald?
For over three years now, Philosophy Bites has been asking these, and hundreds of other questions, to some of the best philosophers in the world. It started as a hobby. My day job is with the BBC World Service. Nigel is a philosopher at the Open University. But I have written a fair amount of philosophy, and Nigel has done a fair amount of broadcasting. Our combination seems to have worked. The podcast (www.philosophybites.com), has received nearly 8 million downloads to date – and the numbers are growing rapidly.
Many of our listeners have asked for transcripts of these interviews. Some prefer to read, rather than listen. Others like to do both. We hope that Philosophy Bites the book (only £9.99!) will also attract many readers who’ve never even heard of the podcast. All the interviews have been slightly amended to work on the written page.
For us, the Philosophy Bites project continues. We thought, when we began, that we might tire of interviewing philosophers, or that we’d run out of interesting ones. Neither supposition has proved correct. For us, Philosophy Bites is the perfect way to get free personal tuition from some extremely brilliant people on what we regard as the most fascinating of subjects .
'Philosophy Bites' by David Edmonds & Nigel Warburton is out now and published by Oxford University Press www.philosophybites.com
Is a book that only costs me only £9.99 in reality (for all intents and purposes) equivalent my to spending £10 on it, regardless of it being an interesting book with a fascinating pedigree? Or is it only my imagination when I’m looking high and low on the bookshelf for a veritable bargain?
Posted by: Drew Byrne | September 22, 2010 at 11:16 AM