There’s an Agora born every minute.
It’s hard not to feel bad for Socrates, stuck with one measly Agora to philosophize in. Imagine if he’d had access to an agora where the price of overstaying your welcome wasn’t a hemlock smoothie.
Today, the digital world allows us access to thousands of Agoras, and philosophy is enjoying a cultural moment in the sun. People are feeling a need for better language and tools to work through the flood of information that social media and the 24/7 news media has thrust upon them.
With great change comes great opportunity, and in my case great luck. Two years ago, I was presented with a series of amazing opportunities. First, I fell into a part-time lecturer position at Rutgers University, which came with an opportunity to teach what I love–but also a one hour commute. The commute pushed me to finally start listening to podcasts, and it is tragic I hadn’t explored that world sooner, because it is a wonderful new resource for philosophers to get our content out of the university and into the minds of people who need it.
It was at that point that my longtime friend and sound engineer/designer GW Rodriguez suggested we start our own podcast. Inspired by the horror show of the 2016 election, we hit upon a show hook: “What if this is the worst of all possible timelines, and how do we deal with that fact?” We wanted a show that was honest about the uncaring universe we all face, but that would give our listeners a feeling of community with likeminded suffers, and a set of philosophical tools to accept and understand what they were experiencing.
We called it Embrace the Void, and a year and a half later it remains one of the best things in my life. The community we’ve built and the positive messages we’ve received from the people we’ve reached have really been the best kind of synergistic philosophical therapy, both for listeners and myself.
The show’s topics vary quite a bit, depending on guests and the interests of our listeners, but it maintains a continuous theme of applying philosophies like stoicism and existentialism to help people down in the trenches of existence. We often discuss moral luck, which is my favorite philosophical hobby horse, and a concept that seems essential for helping people deal with the void. GW, as a non-professional philosopher, does a great job making sure everything is clear and accessible. Even if you don’t plan on starting a podcast, I highly recommend cultivating partners like that outside academia to get that second perspective on your work.
Podcasting has been a revelation for me, personally, as a socratic. I have always struggled with academic writing as the main form of distributing philosophy outside of the classroom. For me, a dialogue with a co-host and interacting with a community of non-academics feels far much more productive. I love providing a bridge for the many people who like philosophy but either had bad luck with their one taste of it in college or had a great experience but just don’t know how to get into it further in daily life. When trying to convey a philosophical problem, I have learned that this is where hooks come in handy: setting out in non-jargony language an ‘elevator pitch’ of a philosophical puzzle or problem. If you can set out that hook and show why the problem is worth taking seriously, non-academics are ready to take you (and philosophy) seriously. Thankfully another upshot of philosophy’s cultural revival is that there are a wealth of hooks we can use to pull people in, and then once you have them in that frame of mind it’s really no different than any other educational environment.
Another great thing I have seen about the podcast community is how accessible content creators are. Even before GW and I started Embrace the Void, I had become friends with Thomas Smith, a full-time podcaster with several well-established shows, including Serious Inquiries Only and Opening Arguments, both of which I highly recommend. Like GW, Thomas loved philosophy and had even considered going back to school to do a degree in it, but struggled to find the time as many do. We were always debating the philosophical themes in shows like Rick and Morty, and we realized there was a great premise that could make for a great show.
This lead to my second educational podcast: Philosophers in Space. Each week, we take a piece of science fiction and discuss how it relates to a philosophical idea or debate. The show has done well with folks as a way to get a break from the worst of all possible timelines while still working the mind. It has even inspired the formation of a philosophy book club amongst our listeners! Providing that kind of gateway drug to reading primary texts is living the dream.
I’ve been profoundly lucky in all of these opportunities, but I really do believe that the current technologically enhanced social upheaval can make that “luck” more accessible than ever before. There are more “right places” and “right times,” and the cost of entry is remarkably low. This is true not just with podcasting: Potential collaborators are now only an email away, and spaces like Twitter can have a fascinating leveling effect between people at very different places in their careers.
So, while things may be voidy, there is also so much to learn and share, and so many more places to do it. Philosophers aren’t just academics, we’re community builders. We have crucial skills that our world needs right now, and fun new tools to share those skills. It’s a good time to be a philosopher. Go get yourself an agora.
Aaron Rabinowitz
Aaron Rabinowitz is the philosopher in residence at the Rutgers honors College and a part time lecturer in the Rutgers philosophy department. He specializes in ethics, metaethics, and problems surrounding AI and personhood. He earned his M.A. in Philosophy from Colorado State University. If you have a potential show topic or would like to offer up yourself or someone else as a future guest, you can email Aaron at Voidpod@gmail.com or Philosophersinspace@gmail.com. We genuinely love to hear from folks.
