Obviously, this blog hasn't been buzzing with activity recently. That's mainly because life and work have been incredibly, incredibly busy for both John and me. And it seems harder and harder to get our on-air guests to take us up on our invitations to guest blog. So much to do, so little time to do it! I'm sure you understand. But I hope we can do better in the coming months.

I can already see a new New Year's resolution coming. I will blog on a more regular basis.

Just to get back in practice, I thought I would write not so much of a philosophical blog entry, but an entry about about the recent comings and goings of the Philosophy Talk crew and about some things that are on the horizon. It's been a busy and exciting time for us.

首先我应该提到的是，我们正在进行一个令人兴奋的节日促销，关于这个你可以在下面找到更多信息。我被告知，你可以在我们的网页上找到更多信息，今晚晚些时候或明天早上开始。

Visitors to this space will know that the response to our original offering of a paid download service a couple of months ago was, well, interesting. Lots of people took us up on the offer. But an equal number were quite resentful at not being able to get our download service for free. Personally, I wish we could afford to give Philosophy Talk away to everybody completely for free. But I don't see any way to do that just yet. Maybe some Angel out there wants to make it possible. Hint! Hint!

But enough about financial woes. Thinking about that end of this whole Philosophy Talk endeavor just makes me tired, quite frankly. And I feel the same about the endless struggle to convince Program Directors -- the risk averse gatekeepers of the public radio airwaves -- that people do actually want to hear something intellectually challenging on the radio.

The fun part -- the really, really fun part -- is actually doing philosophy and doing it in a way that sometimes connects with real people and their real concerns. For example, we've taken the show on the road twice more in recent days. We took the show to a small junior college, the College of the Sequoias, in Visalia California. There we did a show on Immigration in front of a very engaged and engaging audience of about 100-150. Some folks even made the trek up from Bakersfield, which is a fair distance away, to take part in the program. Folks stayed and asked questions long after the show was over. A fair number of folks even joined our dinner party for a raucous good time afterwards. It was a blast.

What was most impressive is that all this happened in a place where our show isn't even carried on the local public radio station. People knew of it only through the wonders of the internet. Makes you wonder if the days of broadcast radio might not be numbered.

That episode aired a couple of weeks ago, by the way. Check it outhere.

More recently, we travelled to Shreveport Louisiana, to Centenary College. John and I were invited to be Attaway Fellows. We spent four days on campus. We did a number of non-radio public appearances for something called the Freshman experience there. And we were wined and dined in very fine southern style. Also, our production crew guest lectured in a couple of media courses. But I think for all of us the highlight of our visit was recording an episode on "Work" in front of an audience of about 400-500 students and faculty of the college -- many of whom came to our non-radio events as well. It was really a blast. We broadcast a second episode live from the college radio station at Centenary -- which carries the show regularly. We were in a studio in Shreveport and our guest, Lanier Anderson, was back in KALW in San Francisco. That was a twist. But it was cool too. Many thanks to the folks at Centenary for a fabulous time. The show on work will be broadcast early next year -- It will be either the first or second episode we broadcast in the new year.

虽然我们已经举办了10次巡回演出，明年还会有几次，但我们最近意识到，我们从未在旧金山的现场观众面前举办过这场演出——尽管我们曾在帕洛阿尔托和斯坦福校园举办过。不过，我们即将纠正这一缺陷。如果你最近访问过我们的网页，你就会知道我们将和Kronos四重奏的David Harrington在饼干蓝调乐队，在旧金山市中心，12月3日，星期一，做一场演出。主题将是“为什么音乐很重要”。大卫将是一位非常迷人的客人。录制结束后，会有茶点，然后大卫会介绍新组合“纳诺斯轻歌剧”(Nanos Operetta)的音乐会。如果你在这个地区，来看看我们。门票为100美元，但所有收益都将捐给“哲学讲座”的赞助人电台——旧金山当地公共电台KALW。中国伊朗亚洲杯比赛直播(对于那些不在湾区的人来说，“当地公共电台”这个词是为了区分KALW和KQED，前者规模小，资金不足，信号弱，但极富创造力，后者规模大，更富有，信号强，但也有点古旧。这有点像大卫与歌利亚之间的较量——也许你不知道。)

Anyway, we like the idea of doing live shows so much, that we're thinking of making them a more regular part of what we do. First, we'll keep accepting invitations to take the show on the road. We're going up to Portland again in February, around Valentines Day, for example, at the invitation of Powell's City of books, our sponsor. We're going to do another show at the Residence by Hyatt on Philanthropy down in Palo Alto. And we're probably going to head out to the East Coast to do a show at the University of Delaware. We're trying to work that last one out even as I type. We really like doing these trips, but they are time consuming and expensive. If you think you might want to have us on your college campus, let us know, and we'll see if we can work something out.

But last but not least, our latest brilliant idea is to put the show on in front of live audiences in San Francisco, our home market, on a recurring basis. The idea would be to find a venue that we could use, maybe once every quarter. We'd schedule and record two shows back to back -- maybe an early evening show and a late evening show -- with two separate guests and two separate topics. We'd probably charge a modest admission -- to help pay for the venue, which probably wouldn't come free -- and the additional production costs that come with a pre-recorded show (lots of editing). Between doing the show live in San Francisco twice/quarter and our traveling road shows, we think we could manage to produce about a dozen shows a year in front of live audiences. I personally think that would be really fun. Though I love the call-in shows, there's something special about being to play off of a live audience. I think it really brings out the best in my buddy and partner John. And I like it too.

希望我们在这座城市的现场演出能成为一种机构，甚至可能成为热门项世界杯赛程2022赛程表欧洲区目。也许你在城里的时候可以顺便来看我们。晚餐和一集哲学讲座。中国伊朗亚洲杯比赛直播听起来是不是很有趣?总之，我们才刚刚开始探索这种可能性。也许夏天或秋天，我们就能开始运营了。

We're also thinking of putting information on our webpage about what it takes to bring Philosophy Talk to your town or College Campus. So far, we haven't sought out these invitations at all. They've just sort come to us. But we've had such a good time doing them and have gotten some really great shows out of them that we're eager to do it some more -- at least within limits. They take a lot out of the whole crew, so we have to choose our spots wisely.

As Ian Shoales says, "I gotta go." But I do promise to be a mor regular blogger. Can't make promises on John's behalf though.