Upvoted for using 'ebullient,' a word we should use more often. But you meant 'University of Austin,' which seems to have dropped off people's radar. The University of [Jane] Austen is something I could support!
I have always found reading (and listening) to your thoughts enlightening. But I wish you had a two step process to your podcasts - one in which only involves you - to inform us of background, which is necessary to get more out of your discussions with your guests, and a second podcast with your chosen guests in a discussion. The time limits of a single podcasts robs from one or the other objectives.
One thing I've always enjoyed about your substack, Jeet, is the attention to detail to the various schools of thought and the various literary cliques who trace their threads of influence like embroidery in the weave. I will admit that I don't have time or energy to read everything I'd like to read in my dotage, even though the pandemic removed various distractions and responsibilities. Even before the pandemic, I have had an itinerant/peripatetic tendency to read "whatever's around", rather aimlessly, as Sarah Palin famously told Katie Couric when asked what she reads to inform her worldview. Many people thought it made her look less serious, on top of what was already her shallow fund of knowledge about world events, so I rarely admit that my reading habits don't often steer me toward thematic magazines like Commentary. I tend to read people like you who alert me to the interesting articles I may have missed that often lead to their own google rabbit holes that may or may not end with a visit to periodicals like Commentary..
Honestly, I'll go down the google rabbit hole on any shiny topic that catches my eye, which is far a less deliberate strategy than my professional reading. I have no idea if I'm just lazy, or too easily distracted by all the news that keeps me doomscrolling on the web because these are crazy times filled with crazy people spouting crazy ideas. Commentary likely suffers because of information junkies like me who don't support one school of thinkers, but graze at the smorgasbord of news and opinion available from the web, at a time when the web is our sole connection to the academic and scholarly universe now that so many of us work from home.
Upvoted for using 'ebullient,' a word we should use more often. But you meant 'University of Austin,' which seems to have dropped off people's radar. The University of [Jane] Austen is something I could support!
I have always found reading (and listening) to your thoughts enlightening. But I wish you had a two step process to your podcasts - one in which only involves you - to inform us of background, which is necessary to get more out of your discussions with your guests, and a second podcast with your chosen guests in a discussion. The time limits of a single podcasts robs from one or the other objectives.
One thing I've always enjoyed about your substack, Jeet, is the attention to detail to the various schools of thought and the various literary cliques who trace their threads of influence like embroidery in the weave. I will admit that I don't have time or energy to read everything I'd like to read in my dotage, even though the pandemic removed various distractions and responsibilities. Even before the pandemic, I have had an itinerant/peripatetic tendency to read "whatever's around", rather aimlessly, as Sarah Palin famously told Katie Couric when asked what she reads to inform her worldview. Many people thought it made her look less serious, on top of what was already her shallow fund of knowledge about world events, so I rarely admit that my reading habits don't often steer me toward thematic magazines like Commentary. I tend to read people like you who alert me to the interesting articles I may have missed that often lead to their own google rabbit holes that may or may not end with a visit to periodicals like Commentary..
Honestly, I'll go down the google rabbit hole on any shiny topic that catches my eye, which is far a less deliberate strategy than my professional reading. I have no idea if I'm just lazy, or too easily distracted by all the news that keeps me doomscrolling on the web because these are crazy times filled with crazy people spouting crazy ideas. Commentary likely suffers because of information junkies like me who don't support one school of thinkers, but graze at the smorgasbord of news and opinion available from the web, at a time when the web is our sole connection to the academic and scholarly universe now that so many of us work from home.