Unless you have been living in a cave for the last three years, you know all about YouTube.com, which is a video website, created in 2005. It has a vast number of video clips, many of which are hilariously funny, and an even greater number of which are incredibly mindless and stupid. The big news, however, is that almost all of your students are probably already familiar with it and, at any rate, it is extremely simple to use. You just paste the URL of any particular clip in your browser window and, in a few seconds you are watching a video. Surprisingly, there is a great deal of material, humorous and otherwise, that might be useful in philosophy classes and, indeed, you could easily upload your own materials (perhaps a mini-lecture).
Using Existing You Tube Material. Below we list just a few YouTube videos that might be useful, but if you have others that you have found useful, please send us the link, and a sentence or two about why you found it useful. Probably the simplest way to proceed is to use YouTube's powerful search engine. If you enter the name of a contemporary philosopher, for example, you may well find a clip of an interview. When you bring up that clip, YouTube will also prompt you with related clips. Here are just a few examples to get you started.
- Philosophy Movie. This is an absurd, yet somehow captivating, animated clip about Locke and Berkeley.
- Monty Python. There are quite a few Monty Python skits, reflecting a rather sophisticated knowledge of philosophy, including the "World Philosopher's Cup" soccer match or the Philosopher's Song.
- On a more serious side, there are clips from many contemporary philosophers including, to mention only a few:
- English journalist and author Bryan Magee has a number of very interesting interviews on philosophers, which you can find by doing a search on YouTube under his name.
- There are many other interesting materials such as the famous Story of Stuff presentation, which gives a Marxist interpretation of consumerism.
In other words, if you want your students to put a face with a name, and get a feel for who these authors are, you may find something of use on YouTube.
Creating your own material. You might also consider putting your own material on YouTube. TΦ101 does not know anyone who has done this yet, but imagine this scenario: you have assigned your students to read a difficult text for next Monday, and you would like to give them a brief lecture about the material before they read it. You could make up a short video clip of yourself giving the information, and instruct them to watch it before they read the assignment. Of course, your material would be open to anyone who wanted to see it, but it is unlikely that very many people would find it, unless, of course, you are a lot funnier than you think you are. There are a number of websites with instructions on how to upload video material to YouTube, and, of course, you need the appropriate video hardware.
Author: John Immerwahr
Update: August 9, 2010