Philosophy is one of the many subjects actor James Franco has studied during his numerous forays into higher education, and he is now sharing that passion with YouTube viewers. Franco is the co-host of Philosophy Time, in which he and Eliot Michaelson think about thinking alongside some special guests.
Michaelson, a lecturer at King’s College London, explained the process behind Philosophy Time in a lengthy post published by the philosophy publication DailyNous. As he tells it, he met Franco when he served as a TA in one of the actor’s classes at UCLA. Much later, he and Franco reconvened to perform several interviews with well-known figures in the world of philosophy. “Each interview ran about forty-five minutes,” Michaelson wrote. “I had prepared some suggested questions beforehand, but we ended up departing from those pretty quickly in each of the interviews. The goal was to take this raw footage and to pull one or two short, accessible segments out of each interview.”
The first two of those segments are now live. In Philosophy Time‘s premiere episode, Franco and Michaelson sit down with Liz Camp of Rutgers University to talk about metaphors:
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Philosophy Time is one of several digital projects led by Franco. He recently launched the third season of his web series Making A Scene, which mashes up pop culture touchstones, through the fledgling video app Blackpills.
Franco may be the biggest star involved in Philosophy Time, but he makes sure to give his guests plenty of space to explain the big ideas they study, and the show is better for it. If you have even a passing interest in philosophy, you should check this one out.
