One of the main virtues, in my view, of the podcast medium is that it can accommodate 60- to 90-minute interviews because listeners like me need stimulation during dull commutes and tedious workouts. Nevertheless, a common reaction to my podcast, The Political Theory Review, is “Do the conversations have to be that long?” “Yes” tends to be my answer because, as discussed herein, I think long-form conversations benefit authors and the discipline—and also could be a good teaching tool.
Like other podcasts, The Political Theory Review consists of conversations with authors about their new books—in particular, books about political theory and social and political philosophy. In these conversations, we discuss the main argument of the book and its broader significance and application, and we work through the evidence that the author marshals in support of the overall claim.
If you have written an academic book, you are accustomed to the usual publishing process. You spend 5–10 years painstakingly researching a topic, writing each chapter with care and rigor, proofreading closely, and then…very little response: a handful of book reviews, perhaps an “Author Meets Critics” panel, or—if you are very lucky—a 30-second interview on the local NPR station. This response is dissatisfying because authors yearn to have the deep, probing engagement over the work they spend so much effort crafting.
The first benefit of a long podcast then—and the reason I began mine—is for the authors. There are several good books published every month in my field and others, and they deserve close attention. The authors I interview consistently express gratitude for closely reading their work and engaging them at length—refreshingly unlike the typical practice in academic life and the short-attention-span media of radio and television.
The second benefit is for the discipline. The audience for most academic podcasts, including mine, is mostly fellow academics. Some (e.g., EconTalk) reach a much broader audience, which is another virtue of the podcast medium. Yet, there is a benefit of the niche podcast for the narrow discipline that is their subject. In most fields, divisions often exist—for example, in my field, political theory, critical-theory scholars rarely engage with analytic-political philosophers. Scholars fail to reach across the divide in part because, in our specialized disciplines, we do not read others’ work and therefore do not know the intricacies of their arguments. Indeed, for my 50th episode, I invited two authors, Jeanne Morefield and Ryan Hanley—who have very different backgrounds and approaches—to talk to one another about “What Is Political Theory?”
Thus far, I have interviewed more than 50 scholars across the diverse field of political theory. The long-form conversation affords the time to delve deeply into the argument and background assumptions of each book. This gives the academic audience a fuller understanding of the work produced in their field. My hope is that doing so engenders many more connections that can be drawn across the discipline, bridging the divides and inspiring listeners by ideas from authors whose books they might never have considered reading.
The third benefit is for teaching. Many “innovative-teaching” suggestions involve incorporating podcasts or electronic media to supplement classroom learning. The problem with these suggestions is that there often is little suitable content to supplement classroom work. In my podcast and others like it, I attempt to ask broad and enduring questions about politics rather than arcane, specialized questions that drive the scholarly world. These questions got me into political theory in the first place and they fuel my love for the conversations in this podcast. Moreover, these questions are accessible and exciting to students as well.
The long-form interview can attract student interest, but it also can assist in teaching political theory by modeling how political theory is done in the academy. We spend significant time studying the classics—Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli—but little time demonstrating to students how to conduct research on these figures. Of course, we can assign secondary works, but a conversation about the primary texts by an intelligent author ignites student interest and also demonstrates what types of questions they should be asking about the text and how to read it closely and well. I invited Michael Walzer to discuss his recent book on the politics of the Hebrew Bible and required my students to listen to it—they had many suggestions of which questions I should have asked!
In the two years since I started this podcast, I have expanded my own horizons as an academic, reading texts from authors whose training was very different than mine. The experience has been extremely enjoyable and also enriching of my own work in that I find myself speaking to a broader imagined audience. I hope that my podcast and others like it can build a forum in which we can escape the academy’s often deadening specialization and discuss issues of great significance at the great length they deserve.
