FreshEd #400 - Podcasting With Love (Sadie Ryan)

·33 min·3 clips

Will Brim celebrates FreshEd's 400th episode by exploring why podcasting matters with Sadie Ryan, whose show Accentricity won awards.

Will Brim opens the 400th episode of FreshEd by reflecting on nearly ten years of the podcast. He introduces guest Sadie Ryan, a lecturer in Languages and Intercultural Studies at the University of Glasgow and founder of the podcast Accentricity, which was shortlisted for a British Podcast Award. Ryan explains she started podcasting during her PhD to share her sociolinguistics research beyond academia. She began by interviewing friends, family, and then strangers in Glasgow markets like the Barras, using vox pops to engage the public. Ryan argues that podcasting differs from academic writing because the voice reveals personal identity, such as emotion, background, and gender, disrupting the idea of a 'disembodied expert.' She emphasizes that podcasting is a two-way process, allowing her to learn from non-academics and challenge field dogmas. The host and guest discuss the intimacy of audio, comparing it to conference conversations that humanize academics. Ryan describes her editing style as slow and meticulous, taking months per episode, which she sees as a form of 'slow academia' resisting neoliberal university pressures. She layers interviews with academics, non-academics, and poets to create narrative documentaries that show parallels between voices. Ryan also talks about the rise of podcasting as marketing, noting pitches from figures she disagrees with, and FreshEd's policy to focus on guests with new published work. She details her 'My Voice My Glasgow' project, funded by a grant, where she works with teenagers in two Glasgow schools to make podcasts about language and identity. One group interviewed university experts, while another, comprising hijabi Muslim girls from migration backgrounds, visited other schools to share experiences, broadening their social circles. Ryan aims to use this research to help schools support linguistic diversity. The episode concludes with Ryan hoping podcasting and other media become default knowledge-creation tools in academia alongside writing.

As heard by us

A 400th episode that treats voice, identity, and editing as a single craft.

Fresh Ed uses its 400th episode to step back from educational research and consider why podcasting matters, with Will Brim speaking to Sadie Ryan about the force of voice.

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Why you'd press play

A 400th-episode conversation about why speaking can reveal identity, place, and feeling before academic language can.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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