“The feeling that while men raise their voices in anguish God remains with folded arms, silent.”
― Shūsaku Endō, Silence

I really like listening to podcasts. Sometimes I wonder whether I listen to podcasts because I need to clean, travel, and go grocery shopping, or whether I clean, travel, and go grocery shopping mainly because I want an excuse to listen to podcasts.

Being a little bit of a religious nerd, I often listen to podcasts that talk about religion. I particularly like The Classical Ideas Podcast.  I think it is a good podcast because it puts together academic and non-academic works in a way that is really clear and understandable. Also, several episodes feature very interesting people that talk about themselves in a way that makes you want to be friends with them. I am about to tell you that Greg, the great host of The Classical Ideas Podcast, interviewed me, so I MIGHT appear slightly biased. In my defense, I would never accept to be interviewed by a so-so podcast, would I?

You can find my episode here.

Before you listen, I have to admit that my voice is a weird mix of Alvin and the Chipmunks and Don Corleone.  So, I first widely shared the podcast without listening to it, knowing I don’t like my voice. Then, I finally started listening to it and I had an epiphany about why I never made it as a famous singer or as a TV host. I have several friends who are also scholars and nobody ever finds their voice agreeable, so I feel this is quite common. I believe I’m not alone in cringing out of shame when I transcribe interviews and I have to listen to my voice over and over again. This small digression is just to make people outside of social sciences understand how hard it can be to pick qualitative methods.

Despite my voice, it was a lot of fun to talk to Greg for the podcast. We did the interview over Skype and I felt really comfortable talking with Greg, it was like a chat with friends. I mainly talked about my book, but I also mentioned my relationship with religion, my academic journey, my media use. Greg read my book (yay! Someone is reading it!) and had a lot of very good observations which I noted for my future work. This conversation made me better understand some aspects of my work that I often presented at conferences, but never talked about in an informal setting such as a podcast.

My conclusions are that it’s good to ignore our silly fears and actually start listening to our own voice (in a metaphorical&concrete sense). Recording yourself talking about your work allows you thinking about some issues more clearly and discovering new connections. When you need to say out loud what your research is about, you are forced to articulate it in a way that people outside your brain can also understand. So, I took some courage, and today I listened to the whole episode, thinking at the end that my voice could be worse and my accent is sort of cute. And, best of all, I have now a perfectly clean apartment.

If you listen to the podcast, let me know what you think!