And So It Goes

Ever since I got my ADSL last week, I've been running streaming audio of my favorite public radio station, KALW in San Francisco, in the background. The time shift (16 hours, or 8 hours behind and minus 1 day, depending on how you look at it) isn't so bad. Especially given that it's been overcast for the last week, which confuses the usual time cues and allowing me the illusion that I'm back in Berkeley listening to my radio.

I suppose I could rely upon RealAudio archives, but many radio programs don't have them, so I've had to create a spreadsheet with program highlights and time-shifted slots, otherwise I could never keep the time differences straight.

At the moment, my live listening list includes:

KQED's City Arts & Lectures series, with Calvin Trillin and Studs Terkel (Tuesday at 8 p.m. and Wednesday 2 a.m., PDT, which means Wednesday at 12 noon and 6 p.m. Tokyo time if my calculations are correct).

BBC Radio 4's I Have a Cunning Plan (Saturday at 10:30 a.m., or Sunday at 6:30 p.m. Tokyo time), a documentary on the classic TV comedy series Blackadder.

Ian Shoales' commentary on KQED (Saturday and Sunday mornings at 5:35 a.m. PDT, or 9:35 p.m. Sunday and Mondays Tokyo time).

But what really got my attention was a promo I heard on KALW for a radio show pilot they'll broadcast on Wednesday at 1 p.m. (5 a.m. Thursday in Tokyo), in place of Car Talk:

Philosophy Talk, hosted by Stanford philosophy professors Kenneth Taylor and John Perry. From the Stanford press release:

Whereas Click and Clack, the onomatopoeically styled hosts of National Public Radio's "Car Talk," are mostly interested in solving callers' automotive conundrums, philosophy professors Kenneth Taylor and John Perry are out to tackle bigger questions.
What is justice? Can machines be programmed to think? Is free will an illusion? Or in the case of the upcoming pilot of their radio show, "Philosophy Talk," is lying always bad?
...
Each installment of the program will feature interviews with experts and call-in questions, including a segment called "Conundrum," during which the two philosophers try to solve a caller's ethical or metaphysical dilemma, or some dilemma to that effect. (In one of the demos, they respond to a caller's moral uncertainty about giving money to a panhandler.)

I mean, this sounds like a parody of public radio, but appears to be real. I have to tune in and hear for myself.

Update (8/23/03):

Looks like Professor Taylor found out about my posting:

If you missed our broadcast, it is archived at:
http://www.stanford.edu/philosophytalk/
Check it out. Let us know what you think.
We'll be on the air regularly starting in January -- provided we can raise enough money to fund the program.
ken [apple] 8/22/03; 11:37:26 AM

Perhaps I will. I tried listening live, but I fell asleep (lying in bed at 5 in the morning is not conducive to close radio listening, after all). When I'm awake--or least out of bed--it'll probably be a different story.