On the radio....

Ah, so a little while back I posted about wishing philosophers did more to get their work 'out there'. In the spirit of putting my money where my mouth is, I've worked with the University on promoting some of my work about trust. The first notable output from this was a press release. You can read it here.

I felt ok about that. After all, it's in a medium I'm familiar with. But then....

I realise that in reality it's no big deal, but after that I had the opportunity to go and speak about the work on BBC radio Nottingham. The interview itself was fun--I hope listeners enjoyed it!

But two things really struck me. First--and it was a useful reminder--was just how insignificant me and my work are to folks as they go about their everyday lives. We (/I?) aren't a staple. Where what scientists say is probably held up as quite important, or at least interesting, it's a bit less clear that we can say the same about philosophy. Now that's not the fault of the people who don't do the philosophy! We've just done such a bad job as a discipline at getting ourselves into their lives, that we've allowed ourselves to be thought of as less relevant than we really are.

Second, and this was a bit less fun, was the reminder of the challenges that we can all face when in a novel environment. I've never gone on live radio before, and it's safe to say that I'd have benefited from training and practice. So in the hopes that this wasn't my first and last chance to do something like that, I think I need to locate some media training and work out a bit more of a plan. But in any case, a nice reminder. We often put students in novel positions (1st years away from home for the first time; personal tutees being expected to form a professional relationship with a tutor for the first time). It's always good to be reminded of just how daunting that can be.

[Updated: for a month or so, you can listen to me warble on, here [1:25:20 onwards].]