There are roughly 2.4 million podcasts in existence right now, with over 66 million episodes between them, and recent studies show that 28% of Americans listen to podcasts weekly.  Podcast genres are as diverse as human interests themselves; there are comedy podcasts, social and cultural podcasts, health and fitness podcasts, political podcasts, true crime podcasts (some of which have truly helped to solve crime!), and even a podcast entirely devoted to the pressing question: Whatever Happened to Pizza and MacDonald’s?

A select few podcasts are wildly popular, with millions of weekly listeners, but the overwhelming majority of podcasts barely reach beyond their creators’ close friends and family. (In fact, less than 25% of podcasts have 100 dedicated listeners/subscribers.) So why, oh why, does anyone need another podcast? Much less a philosophy podcast?

This week, HBS co-hosts Rick, Charles, and Leigh are joined by incoming (Season 6) co-host Jason Read to answer just that question.  Podcasting seems to be the new frontier of what is sometimes called “public philosophy,” and like all practices of public philosophy before it, philosophy podcasting comes with its own unique challenges and possibilities. We try to identify what podcasting is doing for and to the discipline of Philosophy, which philosophy podcasts we think are doing both Philosophy and podcasting well, what this new medium offers, and how we hope it might change not only how philosophy gets produced, but what philosophy gets produced.   

In this episode, we discuss the following thinkers, ideas, texts, podcasts, et al:

• The Bread and Puppet Theater
• 18th St. Brewery
• WIRED discussion of educational surveillance software
• List of philosophy podcasts compiled and maintained by @TruSciPhi (Kelly Truelove)
• Plato, Apology
• Jason Read’s blog Unemployed Negativity
• Lucia Ziglioli, “What public philosophy is, and why we need it more than ever” (Psyche, 2022)
• Plato, Phaedrus
• Jacques Derrida, “Plato’s Pharmacy”
• how listening to podcasts on headphones increases “perceived intimacy” with hosts
• The Partially Examined Life podcast
• What’s Left of Philosophy? podcast
• Our Season 2, Episode 24: “Specialization”
• Ferris Jabr, “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens” (Scientific American, 2012)
• Jonathan Bentley Singer, “Podcasting as Social Scholarship: A Tool to Increase Public Impact of Scholarship and Research” (Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research, 2019)
• Louis Althusser, Essays in Self-Criticism (1973)

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