A year of Careful Thinking

Reflections on twelve months of podcasting about care

The very first episode of the Careful Thinking podcast appeared a year ago, in November 2023, so I thought this would be a good moment to reflect on twelve months of podcasting about care. And I thought a useful way of doing that might be to turn the tables and interview myself for a change. So here goes.

Thinking back to this time last year, why did you decide to start the podcast?

I’d been mulling over the idea of creating a podcast for some time, mainly because I’m a compulsive podcast listener myself and really like the way the medium creates a space for thoughtful, long-form conversations about important topics. I was also influenced by the success of Now and Men, the podcast on men and masculinity co-hosted by my friend and former co-researcher Sandy Ruxton, for which I was privileged to be the very first guest back in 2021. It occurred to me that if they could do it, then so could I.

Also, to be honest, hosting a podcast looked like it might be fun. Since the early days of the internet I’ve enjoyed creating content and sharing ideas online. I was an active political blogger for a number of years, and I’ve also created multiple websites as a way of sharing my interests in family history, local history and art history. I love the immediacy and reach of the internet, the fact that you can communicate instantly with people all over the world and get to know those with similar interests across geographical boundaries. Podcasting seemed like a natural extension of those activities.

As to why I decided to focus the podcast on exploring ideas about care: I thought it would be a great way to meet and talk with some of the thinkers about care – the focus of my academic work – whose writing I admired. My interest in care ethics and care theory is quite recent: it developed when I was writing my book on men’s care for children a few years ago. I realised that what I was really advocating was for men to develop an ethic of care, and googling that term opened up a whole stream of work that I’d hardly been aware of before. Since then, I’ve attended conferences on care ethics, contributed to an edited volume on the subject, and begun to incorporate the work of care ethicists into my own research and writing. I thought that launching a podcast which explored ideas about care would enable me to pursue those interests further, in conversation with thinkers whose work intrigued me, as well as being a way of actively participating in ongoing debates in the growing field of care theory. And, as it turns out, getting to interview some of those key thinkers has also motivated me to engage properly with their work, and to get around to reading some of the books on care theory that have been taking up an increasing amount of room on my shelves.

How did you actually get started, and what was it like in the early days of the podcast?

Having made the decision to launch a podcast, I signed up with Captivate, one of the leading podcast hosts, and enrolled on their really helpful online Podcast Launch Accelerator course, which talks you through every stage of creating a podcast, from developing the concept, through finding the right equipment, to recording, editing and disseminating episodes. Following their advice, I also registered with SquadCast, which provides an online recording space, and with Alitu, who make editing recordings incredibly straightforward. I then set about recording a brief trailer, describing what I planned to do in the podcast, and uploaded it to the website which Captivate helped me to create.

Having done all of that, I set about recruiting my first guests. I decided to stay close to home for the early episodes, while I was finding my feet, and to begin by interviewing people I already knew. So the first episode was a conversation with two of my Open University colleagues who’d recently completed some research that I wanted to know more about. Then I moved on to other existing contacts, such as my old university friend, Nigel Rapport, whose recent academic work I’d found intriguing. Other early guests included Xavier Symons, who was then at Harvard, and Petr Urban, in Prague, with both of whom I’d previously corresponded about their work.

In fact, it was my interview with Petr for Episode 4, published in February this year, which really helped the podcast to take off. It always helps when podcast guests share the link to the episode with their networks, and Petr must have very good networks, as the wider world of care theorists suddenly began to take notice of Careful Thinking. Listener numbers shot up, and suggestions for future guests began to flow in.

What do we know about the audience for the podcast?

In the first year of its existence, Careful Thinking has attracted more than 1500 unique listeners, across seven continents. The vast majority have been from either the UK or the USA, but the podcast also has a substantial following in the Netherlands and India, and significant numbers have listened in from countries as diverse as Switzerland, South Africa and Australia, as well as one or two from Hong Kong, Russia and Iran, to name just a few of the locations.

Where have your guests been located, and what’s it been like, interviewing people from across the globe?

Over the past twelve months, I’ve published 16 episodes of the podcast, featuring 17 guests. Four of my guests have been based here in England, but most of the other guests have come from further afield. One was from Scotland, another from the Netherlands, one was based in Paris, another in Prague, two on the west coast of the USA, two on the east coast, one in Canada, one in Australia, and one in New Zealand. This has meant some careful juggling with time zones: recording episodes late in the day UK time, to accommodate guests just beginning their day on the west coast of America, and starting extremely early in the morning here in England to catch guests ‘down under’ at the end of their working day.

Given the long distance nature of some of these episodes, the technology has held up remarkably well. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I can have a conversation with someone 6000 or more miles away as if we’re in the same room, and in fact some of the smoothest recording experiences, technically speaking, have been with guests furthest away. Thankfully, there have only been a couple of technical hitches in the past twelve months. During one recording, text messages from my daughter kept ‘pinging’ on my computer, and nothing I did seemed to stop them, but miraculously, Alitu’s automatic clean-up software removed all trace of them. More seriously, on another occasion, my guest’s side of the conversation was captured perfectly, but my own questions and comments were distorted, so I had to re-record them after the event and splice them in, hoping that listeners wouldn’t notice the joins.

Can you say something about your guests’ background and experience?

It’s perhaps no surprise that many of my guests have a background in philosophy, and the majority would probably also describe themselves as care ethicists or care theorists. But my guests over the past year have also included three anthropologists, a gerontologist, a political scientist, and a legal scholar, as well as a philosopher who is also a dancer and an academic researcher who’s also a theatre practitioner. The interdisciplinary nature of care theory is surely one of its strengths, with all of these diverse intellectual traditions and practical experiences contributing to its dynamism.

Are there any common threads that have emerged over the past year of podcasting about care?

Not surprisingly, certain words and themes have recurred across episodes: relationality, interdependence, empathy and embodiment being four that spring immediately to mind. Feminism has obviously been a key influence for almost all of my guests, which again is not surprising given the feminist foundations of care ethics. Perhaps more surprisingly, religious faith of various kinds has been mentioned either as an influence, or as an entry point to an interest in care theory, by a number of my guests, which is something I plan to reflect on further in a future post.

A number of key names have also come up repeatedly. Again, it’s no surprise that many of my guests have described being influenced by some of the major figures in care ethics, such as Carol Gilligan, Nell Noddings, Joan Tronto and Eva Feder Kittay. And guests have often generously cited other guests as important influences on their thinking, with perhaps the most frequently mentioned being Maurice Hamington, my guest for Episode 6.

In terms of broader philosophical influences, phenomenology has clearly provided an important intellectual framework for many of my guests, with the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty being cited repeatedly in our conversations. Then again, it’s also been refreshing to come across care theorists who have been influenced by alternative schools of thought, such as analytic philosophy and existentialism.

What have you personally learned from a year of podcasting about care?

As I say, the experience has made me engage with texts that I might not otherwise have got around to reading, and I’ve found this an immensely enriching experience. Sometimes it’s also been challenging: for example, when I’ve had to translate a text from another language, at the same time as trying to get my head around unfamiliar philosophical concepts.

On a purely intellectual level, I’ve learned an enormous amount from these podcast conversations, helping me to clarify and deepen my own thinking about care. But I should add that I’ve also found interviewing this amazing group of thinkers, writers, researchers and practitioners incredibly humbling. I always come away from recording an episode with a deep admiration for my guests’ knowledge and insight, but I’m also often moved by their personal accounts of caregiving and being cared for, and by the ways in which those experiences have shaped their research and writing, as well as by the care and attention they’ve shown in preparing for and engaging with the podcast.

As you look back on this first year of Careful Thinking, is there anyone you’d like to thank?

I’d like to thank my all of my listeners and subscribers around the world, for listening in, for spreading the word about the podcast, and for their helpful feedback. And naturally, I have to thank all of my guests, for generously giving up their time and for offering such stimulating and thought-provoking insights into their work. So thank you Mary, Manik,  Xavier, Nigel, Petr, Christine, Carlo, Erica, Steven, James, Aaron, Sarah, Susi, Ira, and Elissa. I should pay special tribute to Ruth Groenhout, who was seriously ill at the time she took part in the podcast and has since sadly passed away. Another special ‘thank you’ must go to Maurice Hamington, who was not only a fascinating interviewee in his own right, but who has also been an enthusiastic supporter and promoter of the podcast, and to whom I owe the initial contact with so many of my other guests.

So finally, what’s next for Careful Thinking? Are you planning to do anything differently in the second year of the podcast?

The growth of Careful Thinking over the past year has been mostly organic and unplanned, so I’m happy to continue to leave things open for Year 2 and see what develops. However, if you were to press me, there are one or two ideas germinating at the back of my mind. Although the podcast is already an international affair, I’d like to feature more thinkers and writers on care from parts of the world we haven’t yet reached, particularly in the global south, such as Africa and South America, including theorists who draw on indigenous traditions of thought in their work.

I’d also like to include more contrary voices in future episodes. As I’ve mentioned, many of my guests over the past year have been influenced by the same group of thinkers and they’ve tended to agree on many of the fundamentals. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I’d like to think of care theory as a broad and diverse field of enquiry, rather than a unified philosophy or worldview. So I’d like to spark a bit more debate and disagreement as we move into the next phase of the podcast’s development, all in a spirit of care and mutual respect, of course.

And I’d love to hear from podcast listeners and readers of this newsletter, if they have any suggestions for future guests, topics for discussion, or ideas for the future direction of the podcast. If you’re doing interesting work in care theory yourself, and are keen to share it with a broader audience, please don’t be shy about suggesting yourself as a guest.

But as I say, I quite like the idea that the future of the podcast is as yet unwritten. So do please continue to watch this space for updates, and if you’re not already a subscriber to this newsletter, what are you waiting for? It’s free after all, and always will be.

Here’s to another year of Careful Thinking.

                                                           (via spectator.co.uk)

The header image for this post is a gallery of photographs of all the guests who have appeared on the Careful Thinking podcast during its first year.