What is a Podcast?

I remember clearly the morning several years ago when a colleague from the English department, one of my teaching partners in a team-taught interdisciplinary course that semester, revealed to our sophomore students that he had just entered the twenty-first century. He had purchased his first I-pod. The students cheered enthusiastically, more or less in the same manner that I imagine our cave-dwelling ancestors might have cheered a person who figured out how to use fire several years after everyone else had been enjoying their fire-enhanced lives. I didn’t mention, of course, that I did not have an I-pod. I still don’t.

Fast forward at least a decade. I received a cryptic email from a young colleague in Institutional Advancement at my college asking if we could meet to discuss a new initiative that he was involved with. We scheduled a coffee in the student center, where he first told me about his new project–the new Providence College podcast, scheduled to go live within a week or so. Here’s the description of the now live podcast on the site:

Second, my colleague asked if I would be willing to be the first faculty member interviewed on the podcast. “Sure,” I said–as the director of our signature humanities program for the four years before sabbatical, I became used to being the unofficial face of the faculty in any number of situations and venues. Shortly after our coffee meeting, though, I had a concern. I wasn’t exactly sure what a podcast is. Sure I know about their existence and have even listened to one or two of them on-line. But what makes a podcast different from, say, a video on a website? My ignorance of these things is boundless. I am not entirely ignorant about technology and social media–I’m pretty good on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn–but podcasts, apps, and such tend to blur into one fuzzy unknown for me.

Fortunately my colleague realized that I might need a bit of a primer–probably because once we scheduled the interview, I asked what I should wear. “A podcast is pretty much radio on demand,” he said; his colleague, the AV guy who would do the taping, assured me that I could wear whatever I wanted. Actually, as it turned out, a podcast could be recorded with everyone in the nude–but that would just be weird. I began to worry, since my colleague did not specify exactly what we would be talking about or even exactly why he had asked me to be part of this initial recording. It was only when I realized that I should approach the podcast the way I approach most of my classes–prepare a couple of good questions and see what happens–that I became less nervous.

As it turns out, we didn’t talk about the program I had directed or any number of other things I thought would be front in center. Instead, we talked about my blog, my experiences over my last two sabbaticals, and how to introduce people to philosophy. The descriptor on my podcast episode reads this way:

This episode features Dr. Vance Morgan, professor of philosophy and former director of the Development of Western Civilization Program at Providence College. Morgan recently completed a yearlong sabbatical that allowed him to finish a final draft of an upcoming book based on his popular blog,www.www.patheos.com/blogs/freelancechristianity. We discuss his career teaching philosophy, his foray in the blogosphere, and how he likes to throw his ethics students headfirst into moral and ethical dilemmas.

Enjoy!

https://soundcloud.com/providencecollegepodcast/providence-college-podcast-episode-2-prof-vance-morgan