In tomorrow’s Servant of Pod. The multi-talented Chenjerai Kumanyika is on the show this week, and over the span of a thirty minute episode, we try to build a profile that adequately captures his incredibly interesting path up to this point as well as his robust worldview, which is grounded in a radical orientation that feels especially salient right now.
Most folks reading this newsletter probably know Chenjerai from his work as the co-host of Uncivil, the Gimlet Media podcast that sought to “ransack” the official history of the Civil War, along with the two seasons of Scene on Radio that he co-hosted with John Biewen, “Seeing White” and the more recent “The Land That Has Never Been Yet.” But his podcast work is just one of the many ways he engages with the world. In addition to making podcasts, Kumanyika is also an academic, an organizer, an artist, and a journalist, with the thread unifying all these roles being his distinct interest in voraciously interrogating the way things work.
I really enjoyed speaking with Chenjerai, and I’m pretty happy with how the episode turned out. Still, it’s a shame that Servant of Pod is committed to the brevity thirty-minute episodes, because our conversation sprawled for over an hour and it hit on a bunch of things — political economy, fomenting a worker’s revolution, etc. — that didn’t end up in the final cut. At the end of the day, the format defines the choices. Next time, perhaps.
You can find Servant of Pod on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or the great assortment of third-party podcast apps that are hooked up to the open publishing ecosystem. Desktop listening is also recommended. Share, leave a review, so on. |