This season, KI101 has had help from three—3!—incredible interns, Juliana Finch (sound design), Evie Wolfe (accessibility) and Rachel Zieff (social media). They’re on the mics this episode, talking public humanities, religion, and teamwork.
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Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
This season, KI101 has had help from three—3!—incredible interns, Juliana Finch (sound design), Evie Wolfe (accessibility) and Rachel Zieff (social media). They’re on the mics this episode, talking public humanities, religion, and teamwork.
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Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
This is keeping it 101 killjoys introduction to religion podcast in 2022 2023. Our work is made possible through a UVM reach grant, as well as a loose AR advancing public scholarship grant. We're grateful to live teach and record on the current ancestral and unseeded lands of the Abenaki Wabanaki Auco Cisco, Shikari and Aachen Ichi peoples. And as always, you can find material ways to support indigenous communities on our website. What's up nerds?
Megan Goodwin:Hi, hello, I'm Megan Goodwin, I'm a scholar of American religions race, gender and politics.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Hi, hello, I'm Elise Morgenstein Fuerst, a historian of religion, Islam race and racialization and South Asia and I'm the executive director of this motley crew.
Juliana Finch:Hi, I'm Giuliana Finch. I'm the audio intern for keeping it one on one. I'm a songwriter and performer who went back to school in 2020 to finish my degree in religious studies and history.
Evie Wolfe:Hi, hello. I'm Evie I'm the accessibility intern for keeping it 101, outside of the podcast I'm a senior at the University of Vermont I'm studying religion and Global Studies. I work at New farms for New Americans, which is a community garden for refugees in Chittenden County. I'm really interested in religion, queerness, and immigration and refugee studies. On the side I'm the president of the women's rowing team at UVM and I love to knit!
Rachel Zieff:Hi, hello, I'm Rachel Z for social media intern for keeping it one on one. I'm a senior at the University of Vermont dual majoring in religion and public communications. Outside of school, I work for the UVM program boards concert committee, I intern at higher ground, which is a local concert venue and I lead rock climbing trips for the UVM Outing Club.
Juliana Finch:And this is an intern takeover. All right, Goodwin, I've always wanted to say that and IRMF, always wanted to say that too. You're probably wondering why we invited you here today. We Your humble interns want to finally expose what's really going on here at KI101 We've heard the rumors. We know the conspiracy theories. It's time the world knew how the podcast gets made. Why I'm so glad you We'e so glad we're asking about the 101 on K 101, if you will. All right, Evie, Rachel, I am so excited because we get to work together virtually. But we don't get to look at each other's faces or talk to each other that often because this all gets made through the magic of the internet. You've already talked a little bit about what your role is here on the podcast. But if each of you can tell us a little bit about like, what's your day to day, stuff that you do?
Evie Wolfe:Yeah, um, so my role on the podcast is I take the audio that Goodwin and IRMF, record and I transcribe it. And then I usually pull like juicy quotes out of the transcription to be made into media, which gets handed off to Rachel. And then I set everything up on the website so that the show notes go through what we talk about on the website, or what we talk about every episode. And yeah, so I help with the website and with transcribing.
Rachel Zieff:Yeah, and I so once evey sends me the quotes then I turn those into quote posts for Instagram and visual sound bites and then I also do study guide, which is kind of taking Evie's show notes and putting them into an Instagram friendly format. And we're also working on some Tik Tok stuff. So IRMF has recorded some great videos that have gone up and IRMF and Megan have done some together too, which have been great for Tik Tok. So we're working on that as well. But that's my day to day.
Juliana Finch:I personally love both of our CO hosts reluctance and fear of Tiktok it's, it's really fun to listen to.
Megan Goodwin:We're very old, it's going, it's going great.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:I can't do the dances I used to do. Because fun fact about me I used to be the hype girl that came with Bar Mitzvah DJs so like memorizing music videos, and doing them in public was a thing I did for the money. So yeah, like if we played two truths and a lie about your professors like which one of us danced for money. It's me. It's just me.
Juliana Finch:Please tell me there was Paula Abdul straight up now tell me dancing when
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:I was a little bit old for that. But I can do the two steps forward to two steps back and then you do like the opposites attract with your legs. You're welcome. I know the whole fucking thing.
Megan Goodwin:You know what else she knows the whole dance to toxic?
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:I sure do.
Juliana Finch:That song slaps, as the kids say.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Let's move on. super gross. I'm not I
Megan Goodwin:I know.
Juliana Finch:And for our audience, what I do is I take Thanks, men. raw recordings of the podcast and edit out only occasional cursing. We keep lot of it and as you know, and turn it into something that sounds like, you know, a cohesive thing. And I get to listen to each episode many times, which is actually not bad, it's great. Like I learn a lot more because I feel like I get to listen to it three or four or five times. And then I get to learn more stuff. And so a podcast is not the typical way that most academics approach public scholarship, even though I think it's awesome, Evie and Rachel, what got you interested in working in working specifically with a podcast, and in public scholarship in general?
Rachel Zieff:Ilyse is my favorite professor. And so when she asked me to help on the podcast, that I was thrilled to just get to spend more time learning and working with her.
Evie Wolfe:Yeah no, I had a similar experience, I, like have taken so many of Ilyse's classes and have worked with her and a bunch of different ways. And I love the podcast, I think it's a super accessible way to learn about religion
Rachel Zieff:to add a little bit more. The podcast has been something that I can send to friends and family who don't really understand why I'm majoring in religion, and get a taste of why I love it so much, and why I'm so interested in this stuff. So I think it's a great way to show more people why we study this.
Juliana Finch:Yeah, I love it. I was actually a fan of the podcast, I was a listener of the podcast before working with y'all, which is why I'm all the way in North Carolina. And it was pretty cool to get to work on something that I've been listening to, for about a year, Megan go ahead,
Megan Goodwin:successfully raise my hand one time. Yeah, thanks. I'm proud of me, too. I just want to say and I suspect we'll say this a lot. But one of the things that's been so exciting about having like an actual KI101 team, rather than just Ilyse and I doing it whenever we can, is that you all are bringing skill sets and perspectives that we don't have. And I do feel like it has made our whole project really much stronger and better. And I'm excited about that. So we appreciate you
Juliana Finch:that actually leads into like something that I wanted both of you to jump in on, which is what possessed you to have a team of interns? And how's that going?
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Time, funding, and a knowledge that we don't know everything. So when we started this podcast, as we said, in many places in many different ways, we thought it would be easy. We thought it would be like we'll just lecture right? Like, we'll do like a tag team lecture. We're really good at lecturing, both of us, we say humbly, but like, whatever, we're good at it.
Megan Goodwin:We are good at it. And I'm not gonna say it humbly. But
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:You know, I mean, like a podcast isn't egotistical project we love hearing ourselves talk, so we did that. We really thought like the way that like preparing for classes, isn't that intensive anymore, because we have, you know, combined probably like 30 years of teaching experience at this point. And so we assumed it would be that, it was not that. Every episode was taking us like we in our heads, we were like it took five hours, it did not take five hours, it took like 30 hours, like when we actually sat down to say what goes into each episode. It was like a 30 to 35 hour labor. And so if we were releasing episodes every other week, we were fully working, like separate jobs. And so as we got bigger, both in terms of downloads and audience, but also in terms of like, well, we're both full time professors, we have other things to do at the time. And it was like, Alright, we got to apply for grants, someone's got to pay for this transcription service, someone has to help us out. And so slowly, but surely, we did that. And then this year, we just happen to, or I happen to find some grants that get us to like, quite a quite a good bit of money so that we could take on more than just one person doing transcription work. And that's all we had to pay them for. So like some of Evie's job, but not all of it. We had like, we had like half an Evie for two years. So with all that extra money, being able to farm out some of the labor that's really hard for us was really awesome. But also like, real talk, like y'all are just better at some of this stuff than us. Like, if you look at Evie's show notes, they're dynamic and interesting. And there's video and there's like font changes and stuff that I was really like, I don't have time for this, like I have time for the information to be there so that if people need it, it's there. It's functional, but it's not pretty, you know, it's like the difference between a living room that has a couch and a TV in it and a living room that's been designed, right? Like you can sit in both, you can zone out in both, but one of them is like delightful and the other is like very very utilitarian.
Juliana Finch:And the show notes are also great, because now it makes the show notes into a destination in itself. So it's not just like a thing you go to like I go look at them even though I've listened to I know exactly what the audio says I know what's in it. But I want to look at them because they're cool. Yeah. And it's it's a fun thing to check out.
Megan Goodwin:Well, and I think one of the things that it's important to highlight here too, is the yes, you all make our stuff sound and look better. And that's great. And I think if you do not do this work, it is easy to dismiss that as a secondary concern. But what for example, I see Evie bringing to the show by judging up the show notes is not just added aesthetics, although Lord knows I love an enhanced aesthetic. But also it makes it accessible, inviting to folks who might not engage with that material anyway, or otherwise. It matters that folks feel invited into the conversation at every stage of this production. And Ilyse, I think skimmed over how much work she particularly has picked up in finding the money for this kind of support. And also being the manager of all of y'all because she has to be because UVM is where the money comes through. So to see all of her labor rewarded with truly like value added to the show, ways that we truly for a number of reasons just couldn't do ourselves. That's That's so exciting. And honestly, I think makes the show much more than it could have ever been. If it were just us even though I love justice.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:No, but like my screwing around on Instagram and making posts that I thought were funny, right? Like, like that is not a media plan. That is me being like, what will Megan retweet? What will Megan think is kitschy? What do I find silly, right? That's not a media plan and doing it like when it when it dawned on me to do when I have a camera app open on my phone, like in between bath times with my kids like that is not a media plan. And so watching Rachel, for example, take like the pull quotes that EVs got, and all of her like comms knowledge and like having a legitimate plan where there is consistency. Yeah, and like brand, Holy shit. Holy shit, I don't have the time, the space or the skill set to do it. And it's clear, based on what I was doing before that I had neither the time the space or the skill set to do it. So it's not, it's not just like, yeah, I want to find opportunities for some of my, like, best and brightest students, which is absolutely true. But it's also like, you all know a lot of stuff. You are scholars and experts in your own right. And so, like, help me I need help. I don't have time. I can't give Simon a bath and come up with like a Mel Brooks joke post. And have both of those be successful. You know, like, the kid gets washed or the post goes up. And he's very sticky. He's so sticky. So sticky. All the time. Well.
Juliana Finch:Rachel, I would love to hear from you a little bit about you know, Ilyse and Megan and I are of the same generation, I'll say. And you too, are not how are we reaching the youths? You're helping us reach the youths? Yeah, well,
Rachel Zieff:I think the study guides are really in terms of Instagram, at least the best way to reach people. And I think the jihad one was reposted a few times. And I think a few of it was old religion students from UVM that have graduated that reposted them. Those infographics are really common on Instagram. And so once we kind of tap that audience, that can be a really easy and accessible way for people to learn more about this stuff and get more people interested in the podcast. But also Instagram reels with, quote posts with the visual sound bites are a really great way because that goes into an algorithm that feeds it to the right people. And that's the same thing with Tik Tok too. So I think once we get a lot of content up on Tik Tok, if we can make that work, that is a great way to reach people who wouldn't otherwise necessarily be interested in religion.
Juliana Finch:Yeah, I think I think something that's interesting to me about the podcast is that initially, and please correct me if I'm wrong, I feel like the audience was maybe other people in universities and other academics. And then very quickly broaden to people who were not in school for religious studies who are not involved in this world. And there are people who are just like, Oh, here's an episode about Islam. And I don't know that much about it, and I want to hear it. And there aren't people outside of academia that I know of who are like looking up newsletters and white papers and published articles about religion, just out of curiosity, maybe the occasional person, but they'd also don't have access to like university libraries and stuff like that. So I feel like a podcast as a format that can spread in a way that a lot of other scholarship doesn't spread and even another a lot of other public scholarship doesn't spread the same way. Not everybody is reading Religion Dispatches, you know, on their news sources. What was your intention? around that, or how did you adapt to realizing that people way outside of academic circles are also listening to this?
Rachel Zieff:Gen Z tends to get news from social media. And I think, at least our generation is very versed in kind of double checking where the information is coming from, even if it's on Instagram, even if it's on Tik Tok. And so I think having experts in religion, talk about religion in a format that's really accessible to Gen Z, is a great way to reach that audience and will be received really well.
Evie Wolfe:The whole message of the podcast is kind of that religion isn't done with you, and that it's everywhere around us whether you like it or not. And I think that's something that I'm having fun with, with the shownotes is like, finding music videos, or like different media or like memes that fit into these things that we're talking about, which in an academic setting, we talk about in like this really kind of lofty, scholarly inaccessible way, and it doesn't, religion doesn't just need to be talked about that way. Because it's not really how it's experienced in the world, for the majority of like humans. So that's something that's fun with the shownotes. Is finding media that's relevant to these topics that we talk about in these like, very scholarly ways in the academy.
Megan Goodwin:Yeah, well, and I think this actually dovetails nicely with your question, Juliana, when I'm thinking about the way that the show came together, which is through jokes, inevitably, because that's who we are. I think it's easy to be dismissive of what we do as surface level or cursory. But the, the Zedi of Religious Studies, JZ Smith, when asked when he studied religion said, because they are very funny, religions are very funny. And that's why I study them. And hard, same Zedi. But also, if you look at, and Ilyse is more qualified to talk about this than I am. But if you look at a Mel Brooks movie, it is a way to disarm people to make them ask questions to be startled, right? Because that's what a joke is. It's a it's a startle moment that makes us feel good, but also unsettled. And that moment of unsettlement is a moment where you can get curious about, oh, what was different? Why? Why was I surprised by this? What else Don't I know? And obviously, not all of that. Hardly any of that is happening consciously. But that is a way that we invite more folks into the conversation. And once they're there, we really invite them to think about why they haven't been having this conversation all along. Who wins when we don't talk about religion? The folks whose religion is already winning the folks who are taking away as much as they can as quickly as they can. Your ability to be a safe whole person in the world. And I am hoping that one meme and Tik Tok at a time, we bring more folks into thinking about what's at stake here and why it matters. And also the fact that like school and learning, sorry to be reading nouveau about it, but this is who I am, it can be fun. If you do it, right. If you convey the enthusiasm you have for it, even the really, really dark shit that we work on, and we work on some dark shit can be a space where the work for feels worthwhile and where you don't have to feel so alone doing it.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:I think to come back to Juliana's question. We did not think about audience when we started this for real like and that sounds like the reason why a podcast is the collective noun for men ages 18 to 34. Right? Like, it sounds like I just need to hear myself talk. And everyone should listen because whatever. But we didn't think about it. We thought we would be cool at this medium. I think Megan It's not a lie to say, but correct me if I'm wrong, that I've been listening to podcast for a long time. Like I'm pretty well versed in podcasts in a way that like I don't know that when we started you were like you had a couple of things that you listened to. But I was like, here's the sound I want. Here's this I want to sound like this is the team thing. Like the genre is like buddy comedy like I had a real sense of like, the landscape of podcasting because I listened to an obscene amount of podcasts.
Megan Goodwin:Ya know, when we started this I had been listening to Hannah McGregor on whatever medium she made available. And I listened to all of within the wires and Welcome to Night Vale and that was about it like it was story driven stuff. Even Hanna's stuff I got into because of Harry Potter. Yeah, so like I am, I am not historically a listen to words person. So this is radically shaped how I think about both teaching and audience.
Juliana Finch:One, whenever anybody asks me to briefly describe the podcast, I refer to the two of you as the Michael Hobbs and Sarah Marshall of religion. Because I'm a big fan of You're Wrong About podcasts and format like the buddy comedy format. Yeah. No,
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:it's like informative buddy comedy. Like, I think that's really where we came in it. But I think mostly, and we've said this before in a bunch of other places, we didn't care about audience. For two reasons. The first was joy. We wanted to do something that felt fun with our PhDs. Because I think, without stepping out of line, both of us we're not having very much fun at our jobs at the moment that we started this. And the second thing that we wanted, or the second thing that we and this is the egotistical piece, is it like both of us had been extremely online. Right? So we had had a pretty robust Twitter following and had a real sense that if we made something, at least a core group of people would listen, I don't think we ever anticipate I know, we did not ever anticipate the ways in which this has become like a high speed train. We did not expect that. But we definitely had a sense that like a couple of people would listen like we're, we're like, fairly well liked in our social circles. And we have a big online presence. And so that was enough. But as the audience has gotten bigger, it has been important to be even more like low barriers for entry even more accessible. And I will say one other thing about audience or listenership, or like what we think we're doing with public scholarship, I don't know that I see it as like, I want to entertain all the people who would never listen to this anyway. Like, I think that that's probably not real for me, because I know that I sound like an egghead even when I swear every other word, right? Like, I know that I sound like an academic, this is who I am. But I do want to give academics and our students another weapon in their toolkit. Like it matters a lot to me that my students who can sit and talk theory for like an entire semester, have a thing to show their parents of like, this is what I'm doing. This is why I care. Here are the real world examples. And that's the thing I do in my classrooms, but having a thing that you can send your dad instead of like a JZ article, no one wants to read JZ Smith, I mean, like I always want to read, but like, you're not going to pass that to your mom. You might pass your mom, you're like swearing, Muppet professors. Because like, that's kind of funny, and it helps them get to know what you do during the day. But it also helps them see what's what's at stake in these conversations. So I think having another tool in the kit, where you can get your parents to listen to think about JZ Smith without assigning them JZ Smith, which is heavy and hard, and requires a seminar discussion. Great. I'm happy to be that tool. That's a great tool to have in the box.
Juliana Finch:And Rachel, you said earlier that you do send these you send episodes to people, what kind of reactions have you had when you do that?
Rachel Zieff:Overwhelmingly positive for Yeah, all the time. And everyone I send it to as an even my parents who will my dad, especially who wouldn't necessarily ever want to listen to something like this was like, Oh, this is actually really interesting. I get it now. And that was kind of a big moment for me, because they've always been so supportive of whatever I want to study. But they didn't really get it at all. So it's been awesome since I played that stuff for them actually, over this past break. And they were really receptive to it, but and also other adults in my life, just to help explain concepts when they say, "Well, I don't, I don't really care about religion. Religion causes all wars, like religion is a problem." And I have so many thoughts about it. And all of them relate to stuff we've read in class, but I'm not going to send that to them again. So the podcast has really been so influential. And I think the lives of the people I send it to, I think it's awesome.
Megan Goodwin:I was gonna say in terms of thinking about public scholarship, because I feel like we've done the we didn't really think about audience which was 100% True, and also exactly the wrong way to do public scholarship, you should always start by thinking about who your audience is, and why you want to communicate with them. We didn't do that. And I definitely told the story about just like being excited to learn the new technology, which was really it for me, it was like I wanted to play with Ilyse and learn a new thing for him and her brain. And I thought we would be done. But one of the things that I have learned about public scholarship is that while yes, you should always start with your audience, also, not knowing who your audience is from the jump is kind of a blessing. Big time. I don't know that we would have done what we did, or the way that we did it if we felt like, oh, people who set curricula across oceans from us are going to want to talk to us about how they should be teaching religious studies because we got on mics and we think we're funny, because we are and we think we're good at teaching because we are. That has been really humbling. But like that's so exciting. So for me, one of the biggest lessons of public scholarship has been realizing there truly is a hunger for these conversations. It's not that people don't necessarily want to look something up or read something challenging. One of the terrifying but provocative things about an phenomenon like you Anon, right, is that people actually really some people's really actually do want to be doing research. And they didn't get trained on how to do it. And the info media landscape at this point is so disgusting and deliberately obfuscating that it can be really hard to track down what you should be reading or where you should be doing research. So making it possible for folks to both get why this matters, but also how to learn more on their own is our entire jam as teachers, and it has been really great. And honestly, like, one of the brightest spots of my quarantine was realizing that we weren't just kind of yelling into microphones that we were in conversation with people truly all over the world that we would never have been conversation partners with otherwise,
Juliana Finch:sounded so great. I mean, it's an accessibility issue to like, literally, people don't have access to the libraries or people have, you know, trouble with reading long form stuff or cash. Like for me, it's so much easier, I have ADHD, it's much easier to be on a drive and listen to smart people have a conversation about something I find very interesting. But I'm probably not going to sit down and read all of the textbooks and the homework, necessarily, but I might after engaging with a cool, funny conversation, go pick up one of those that you mentioned,
Megan Goodwin:well, in the accessibility piece of podcasts, I think often gets talked about in terms of folks who learn differently. And that's true. But accessibility is also about, like the portability of the medium, right, you can go other places and do other things while you're working for me during quarantine was absolutely accessibility for my students who had vastly different levels of security and privilege. So not everybody could do a regular, you know, Zoom class every day, because they just didn't have the equipment, they didn't have reliable Wi Fi. Thank you, Boston for that, by the way. But you can download a podcast because it's small file and you can take it anywhere. It's also a place where folks who have to give care and engage in intellectual conversations, while they are doing that, they can stop and start and come back in a way that you can't. Or that can be really challenging if you're trying to do it in a written space or watch a video. And again, none of these were things that we knew when we started, but it's been really great to learn about it.
Juliana Finch:Even when you're translating an episode into show notes, that's a kind of that's another layer of public scholarship, you know, what we're doing is translating is taking these academic concepts and these theories and then packaging them in a way that a person who does not want to sit through months of theory or historiography and all of that stuff to understand it can and then you're taking the audio and you're making a different public scholarship product artifact out of that. How does that process work for you? What is that, like when you're taking that and then making it into a new thing?
Evie Wolfe:Yeah, um, I think that the podcast is already really well laid out. So that you can get usually just like a super general overview of something that you could study for years and years. So creating the show notes is like a study guide about like too long didn't listen or like, here's a line that you can give while you're explaining something to your mom, or like to your roommate, who's a chemistry major like me, like, I'll send my friends, the shownotes if they either want more media that they can listen to about a certain topic, or if they want to see examples of how this would show up, or even just like the regular thesis statement of kind of what we want to get across with the podcast. And so I think there's a delicate balance of seeing how to like, lay out these huge ideas in a few bullet points and a thesis statement. And then also, I think the show notes are important because they pretty easily refer you to other people who are also doing this work and who are experts on whatever topic and episode is about and the homework in the show notes aren't always academic papers, they're also videos and like other podcasts or like people's Twitter's because we're referring to other experts in the shownotes, which I think is important too.
Juliana Finch:All right, good one. Did you want to grill us for a minute?
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:I do since this is an intern takeover. But ultimately I pay your bills. Let's do some questions here, shall we? So I have a question about like, not just like what are you doing for us because I think that that level of like, capitalism, like we pay you You do a product, you give it to us and I pay you again,
Megan Goodwin:dance monkeys
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:hurts my heart. But like, what are? What are the things that you're learning about doing this work? And I'm going to do the same thing I do in class, which is what are you learning about religion, about scholarship about public scholarship? Or about technical things, you can choose your question to answer, but what are you learning?
Rachel Zieff:I think I've learned how important public scholarship is because I've before the podcast, when I was just a student of IRMF'S, I was assigned the podcast a few times in various religion classes. And I was always like, Oh, this is great. Like, this is so helpful for whatever we're learning. But it's really so helpful for everything, and for anyone. And I think that's what's come across in my work, and just being able to kind of reformat all the work that Evie is doing into the Instagram accessible stuff, and kind of realizing how much how big of an audience we have is really, really awesome and really interesting. And I just, I love being able to do that work for something that I care about. So the public scholarship piece for me is really where I've kind of had the most aha moments.
Evie Wolfe:Yeah, I think sort of combining what I've learned about religion and about public scholarship is like, it's interesting having this job that focuses on religion and public scholarship, while I'm also like, really immersed in being like, like learning religion from like, a super academic standpoint. And so it's definitely taught me where, where I can, like apply the theory and the stuff that I'm reading in class, in order to make it digestible and like why that is the most important because I could like talk about religion all day with my classmates, who are also majors. But the work that that's doing is, I think, really different than like, talking about it with my like, sister and my grandma and my roommates. And so yeah, I think learning about how to make these things like, accessible, but then also, like, challenging, like, it's not, we don't all talk about easy things on the podcast. But I do think we can make it less intimidating. And I think I'm learning that that's like, the, the way that I like, would like to transfer my knowledge about religion.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:They love that, Juliana
Juliana Finch:I think for me, one of the biggest things that I'm learning through this project, and through also being, you know, a history student, is that there's such power inherent in knowledge production. And so the fact that, you know, we are coming at this, we're not a group of middle aged men, you know, making the podcast that's important to me, but also, that we talk routinely about the power structures that have created our ideas of religion, our concept of what we mean, like when Rachel was saying, oh, religion causes all these problems. When people say that to me, now I say, which religion do you mean? Name it, like, What are you talking about? And it gives me a way to challenge what people are saying, when they sort of have this idea of religions not done with them, that there's a lot of religion infused in all sorts of parts of our culture, but not enough to really challenge their own biases about stuff. And so I can be reading Smith and Bell and Asad, and have all of these ideas about like, what are we even saying when we're saying religion? But to have a project like this, be able to translate, like you'd be saying to Grandma's and friends, and give us an accessible way to have those conversations about? Well, why do you think religion looks like this thing that happens to look like? I don't know, Protestant Christianity, for example. And not other things, you know, that's the, it really helps emphasize my history work. And my religious studies work in a way where I'm seeing more of the big picture connections.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:That's awesome. One of the things we hope you're learning is really not to sound like all liberal arts education about it, nor to sound like like theories of language as someone who has studied quite a number of languages, but like, All work is translation work, right? Like all intellectual labor is translation work, but also all communication is translation work, because like what goes on in my head is not always readily available, accessible or understandable to the person I'm talking to, and this can be a translation.
Megan Goodwin:Just drag, that's fine.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:This can be translation like between you and your friends. Or this can be a translation between like you and an audience of 1000s. It doesn't really matter and so I actually care a lot that you all get something out of it. I want to take this idea. And I need to communicate it in these ways. And how do I do that? And some of that is asking the the audience question, how will Gen Z respond to this that's different than Ilyse's dad, classic Boomer, or some of it's like what color scheme, we'll grab attent... Right? Like, that's also a translation moment that it's playing with all these notions. And I think so often humanities majors broadly, and religion majors, specifically, particularly at institutions that are trying to cut the program out from underneath us. She says, taking all the money. Like, I think that there's a way we devalue the work you're doing. Just inherently, just by telling you that we don't have as many classes as political science, or you're the Career Center, God forbid you go visit them. It's like, well, I don't know what to tell you. You want to be a minister? Like it's the same as it was when I was in college, which is, frankly, too long ago to still have that same bullshit happening. But I think if we can give you something like, no, actually, I know how this works. So when you have a white collar job, when you are in a place that not only is that trade translation skill, part of the skill set you're bringing, but it's also like, I noticed on the company calendar that we don't have any other holidays besides Christmas off. Could you talk to me about that? Not fuck you. Could you talk to me about that? Right? Like, I think that there's something inherently interesting about taking a field and a discipline that can be either Wikipedia facts. What do you know about Judaism? What do you know about Buddhism? or way too heady theory, let's talk about race. Let's talk about class. Let's talk about gender. I think there's something interesting about providing students opportunities to be like, No, actually, this is pretty relevant. So how do I do this on a day to day way? So I'm hoping that you're getting some of that. Goodwin final thoughts?
Megan Goodwin:I also hope you're getting something out of that. This is a place where I just am really excited to keep learning what it is to do public scholarship from folks who are bringing such different perspectives and different skill sets to the work. This is a better show, because you all are part of it. And I am really excited about that. I also want to say again, that none of you being part of this team would be possible without Ilyse having done the labor to get the money to pay you to do the labor. Because in response to your question, Juliana, we started thinking about interns. No, I'm sorry. We never thought about interns. We thought about research assistants. Because we needed research assistants, we do not have space, or the political inclination to take advantage of free labor, even if you're getting offered credit for it. So Elise made it possible for us to collaborate with you all and to benefit from your labor by doing an awful lot of other labor. And I appreciate that. And also just want to make sure that it's visible, because this doesn't just happen.
Juliana Finch:As a student and a musician, I appreciate the financial component. Get Paid. Yeah. And that's actually something that it's not on our notes. But I just want to put out there that one of the things I appreciate the most about being on this team is the humanity of the team, is that when something is up, and like we're having human experiences that might be tough, or we need to reschedule something, it's like yeah, of course, like your life is actually more important than capitalism. Yeah, it does not happen in a lot of jobs. So I appreciate that a lot.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:No, it doesn't. But what's the point about being an academic if we can't act like our schedules flexible? Yeah, like honestly, I work a fuck ton of hours, but like they are flexible hours. And if I'm not affording that to my students or my employees, then I'm a sort of monster and I would like not to be a monster. That's like a life goal. Don't be a dick.
Megan Goodwin:I would like to be a good kind of monster, please. And thank you.
Juliana Finch:Yeah, which in a hut as the edge of the village is the kind of monster I aspire to.
Megan Goodwin:skulls of my enemies decorating my front lawn. Just give me time. Give me time. All right, let's
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:get back on track here. I was on track. Shout out to. Evie Wolfe, Rachel Zieff, and Juliana Finch. The keeping it 101 team who's incredible work make this pod accessible and therefore awesome, listenable, social media-able, among many other things for which we are ominously unseemly grateful.
Megan Goodwin:We are grateful in so many syllables. You can find Meghan that's me on Twitter for as long as she's living@mpgphd and Ilyse @profirmf or the pod at keeping it underscore 101 Find the website with all of these amazing show notes and keeping it one on one comm Find us on internet and now tick tock because Rachel is smart about social media and is helping us be better even though I'm a whiner, drop us a rating or review on your pod catcher of choice because Giuliana makes that possible and with that, peace out nerds. Do your homework. It's on Syllabus
Rachel Zieff:bye nerds.
Evie Wolfe:Peace out Girl Scouts.
Juliana Finch:See you in class
Rachel Zieff:I want to be your assistant. Really? You hate it here? Sorry, you. I'll make sure you don't have to go to any meetings. If anyone comes to see you, I'll scare them away. Wait April if you had to choose between these two ties you're hired