Youtube is a great place to create and stort your own video lectures. TP101 highly recommends creating some of your own original video content if you teach an online class, as it gives students a sense of who you are. Just a short video introducing yourself can make a world of difference. Youtube includes auto-captioning, which helps make your videos more accessible as well. However, you shouldn't think you have to reinvent the wheel. 

 

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.

 

• Wi-Phi (Wireless Philosophy).  Wi-Phi, in the words of Executive Director Guarav Vazirani, makes "free, accessible, and entertaining video lectures to introduce the public to philosophy. These lectures are made in conjunction with philosophy faculty at over 40 institutions in the US and UK. We currently have 115 videos and plan to add significantly more content including short mini-intro courses."  Wi-Phi's videos have the virtue of being both engaging and of reliable philosophical quality, as they are produced in collaboration with philosophy faculty.

• Crash Course Philosophy. Crash Course philosophy can be found on Youtube, but they also have their own dedicated site. TP101 find Crash Course to be very high quality: It manages to present topics in a clear fashion and with a bit of humor without dumbing the topic down or misrepresenting it. 

• The History of Philosophy Without the Gaps. A great, in depth resource covering the history of philosophy. The episodes can be listened to as a podcast or on Youtube.

• Philosophy vibe. Philosophy vibe is a bit dry, but it presents clear explanations of a variety of topics in an accurate fashion. 

• Three Minute Philosophy. This is an animated series that purports to summarize a philosopher's most famous views in three minutes.  There are, of course, serious limitations (and sometimes outright inaccuracies) in these videos, but they are funny and get students engaged--and, they can be useful as a teaching tool if you make showing them into a game of "spot the errors."

• Philosophy Movie.  This is an absurd, yet somehow captivating, animated clip about Locke and Berkeley.

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There are tons of interviews with philosophers you can link to in your course, well-made material by other philosophers, and Ted Talks or other video lectures where the philosopher you assigned your class to read is explaining the topic themselves. Here are a few examples:

• Philosopher John Corvino (Wayne State University) has  a well made Youtube channel where he covers contemporary and classic issues. 

• Michael Sandel (fascinating lectures from his course on justice at Harvard). Also there is a hilarious clip that illustrates Sandel's famous "trolley problem," about whether it is OK to push someone in front of a trolley to save the lives of others. 

• Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor discuss disability in the Examined Life series.

• There are tons of video lectures from basically any philosopher who published a book that managed to gain some widespread acclaim. Link to them in your courses where appropriate.

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Miscellanea: 

• 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."​

• 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.

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Author: John Immerwahr
Update: January 2016 (E. Tarver); April 2020; 2-2-2026-D.Sackris