The Most Popular Philosophy Videos
Kelly Truelove compiles data about the online activities of philosophers, astronomers, physicists, and others, under the handle @TrueSciPhi. Recently, at his site, he posted about the most popular online philosophy videos.
In the “Under 20 Minutes” category, the most popular items over the past year have been offerings from 8-Bit Philosophy and The School of Life, with Wi-Phi and PhilosophyTube making a strong showing, too.
In the “Over 20 Minutes” category for the past year, here are the top 10:
You can also look at the results for the past month, quarter, and overall. The most popular philosophy video on YouTube of all time, with over 6.2 million hits, is the first lecture from Michael Sandel’s Justice course. It starts with the trolley problem.
Is there a lesson in this data for philosophers interested in bringing philosophy to the public?
I don’t know what conclusions to draw, but as someone interested in and involved with bringing philosophy to the community, thanks for pointing out this resource.
I was hoping my Robot Socrates video would have been included on the list. By the numbers it would be in the low 200s for viewcount: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSHHXqjXCV4
(that is the list of all time videos, since it wouldn’t be eligible for the videos from this year)
This is my favorite philosophy video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVQrpok9KPA
if soeone made a video on the “collected errors of alain de botton,” it would probably be a highly ranked video in the “over 20 minutes” category