Articles

Can TV Drag Us Out of Our Cave of Ignorance?

Greg Kitsock takes a look at the philosophical television show No Dogs or Philosophers Allowed and its founder Ken Knisely.

If Socrates were among us, would he live in a giant milk bottle, host his own TV talk show, and periodically check out the hits on his website?

Ken Knisely has done all three.

As a TV philosopher, Knisely feels more at home on a sound stage with a microphone attached to his lapel, than he would hunched over a podium in a stuffy lecture hall. For the last 15 years he's hosted a show called No Dogs or Philosophers Allowed. During that span he's logged over 200 hours of airtime, tackling topics ranging from St Augustine's theory of a just war to the joy of logic to philosophy of sports. No Dogs has evolved from a cheaply-done public access program to a polished presentation broadcast regularly on the University-House channel on the DishTV system, and north of the border on Canadian Learning Television and Book Television.

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