John Cage’s 4’33” and Experimental Phenomenology
Death Metal band Dead Territory has a wonderful video cover of John Cage’s 4'33" that I use in my Introduction to Latin American Philosophy...
Collecting Nuts and Bolts: Reintroducing the Teaching and Learning Video Series
Whenever I teach an introductory-level philosophy course, I spend some time working through different reading strategies with my students, who are largely unfamiliar with...
The Godfather’s Mafia Meeting Scene: A Fictional Narrative of Hobbesian Contractarianism
Whenever I teach the undergraduate courses of Ethical Theory and Contemporary Social Ethics, I include The Godfather’s mafia meeting scene as part of these...
Teaching Moral Reasoning with Terminator and Jesus
Semester after semester, I embarked on helping students to appreciate that morally relevant decisions are not a matter of personal preference, and I struggled...
Dusty Slay and Zhuangzi’s Three in the Morning
Comedian Dusty Slay tells a story about trying to purchase some DVDs at a flea market. The DVDs are cheap: three for five dollars....
Zeno’s Paradox Illustrated by an Impossible Dance
It can be difficult to teach Zeno’s paradox to a class of incoming freshmen. Therefore, I was delighted when a student of mine pointed...
Abbott Elementary and Utilitarianism
In this clip, the teachers at an underfunded Philadelphia public elementary school are debating the pros and cons of having a “gifted” program that...
Positive Propaganda: Dave Chappelle and his White Buddy “Chip”
This video highlights, via humorous understatement in a brief narrative, the very different experiences white and black people often have with the police. An...
George Carlin and the Philosophy of Religion
In this clip from the 1999 stand-up comedy special You Are All Diseased, the late comedian George Carlin offers a scathing attack on religion...
Thought Experiments, “Reverse-Racism,” and Comedy
In the following clip from comedian Aamer Rahman, the concept of “reverse racism” is considered. Is it a meaningless rhetorical construction, or does it...