We need more academic podcasts

●Discussion Got Invol

We need at least one academic podcast on every topic, and they can be successful even with a relatively small number of listeners.

This text is a discussion post. The content of the text expresses the author's own opinion.

Academic podcast It can be important to a field in the same way that it is important to have scientific journals where researchers in that field can also publish “narrow” scientific work.

That's why I fired Recently a new podcast, «Theoretical neuroscience Podcast”, which covers my “narrow” topic area of ​​theoretical/mathematical neuroscience – and I encourage other researchers to create similar podcasts in their own fields.

In the theoretical/mathematical field
In neuroscience, there are only a few thousand researchers and research students worldwide, and only a handful in Norway.

This is often They are completely alone in their professional field where they work, so having a podcast, where they get new professional motivations, can mean a lot.

Before, I drive The podcast “Vett og Vitenskap”, which aims to provide general information about ideas and science. The podcast, which was launched in 2019, achieves between 10,000 and 15,000 downloads per month, and the number of episodes is approx. 6,000 downloads on average, but there is a lot of variation from episode to episode.

Academic podcast It has a completely different purpose than such a popular science podcast.

The concept behind it Academic podcasting is about having an expert delve into what other experts have done, and I think that makes sense.

For stability in the work of other researchers, something researchers don't often accomplish. Personally, I don't read a lot of popular science books, except when I'm preparing for an episode of “Wisdom and Science.”

Inspiration to create I got my new academic podcast from the American podcaster “Brain Inspired – Where Neuroscience and AI Meet”. I listen to every episode of this podcast, which is written by a researcher in the field.

Narrow academic podcasts It can be successful even if there are only 100 listeners.

applies to Attracting the right listeners and creating the right environment, rather than targeting as many listeners as possible.

Example What speaks to the potential of academic podcasts is how during the pandemic academic conferences were forced to shift from physical to digital — and gained dramatically more participants.

A conference They were supposed to participate in Australia during the pandemic, and there were supposed to be about 300 participants, but when they had to do it digitally, the total number reached 2,000!

So I think so It can be very important for a subject area to have at least one academic podcast – especially for students, but really for anyone who wants to stay up to date and have an academic community.

Moreover, it is It's fun to make podcasts: you get to talk to a lot of people, it's great for keeping up to date and it's not too difficult to create technically – it's pretty low key.

And then it's fun To create profiling articles. I've made a number of “Theoretical Neuroscience Podcast” pens that I hand out with great cheer when I'm at workshops, conferences and professional visits.

For those who You love talking to people, it's a great way to communicate, as you can reach a lot of people. Unfortunately, there are very few such academic podcasts today, so I hope more researchers will take up the challenge and get involved.