Podcast Intellectuals Podcast Panel #1
Podcast: New Books Network
Date: March 12, 2026
Panelists: Benjamin Walker, Fanny Grabinski, host Robert Boynton
Episode Overview
This special panel kicks off a New York Institute for the Humanities series exploring how scholars and academics are producing original scholarship through audio—and not simply translating books into podcasts. The discussion focuses on two high-concept, highly produced, limited-series podcasts in progress at NYU: "Tuning Time" (about time-stretching technology and audio for blind users) and "The Elephant in the Music Ecology Empire" (a material and ecological history of the piano), with a particular emphasis on the latter.
The participants examine what drives academics and audio producers to new narrative forms, the challenges and transformations that come with blending scholarly rigor and storytelling, and the opportunities to reach audiences beyond the academy.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. The Evolving Role of Podcasts in Academic Scholarship
- Academic Podcasting as Original Research: The panel emphasizes that narrative podcasts can be vehicles for serious, original scholarship—not just promotional tools or casual conversation.
- "One of our hypotheses is that chat is the floor, not the ceiling, for academic podcasts." (Robert Boynton, 03:31)
- Universities as Labs for Experimentation: As commercial podcasting contracts, academia's steady, idealistic experimentation is emerging as a promising space for high-quality narrative audio.
- "Perhaps this is a good time for intellectuals...to explore the possibilities of idea driven narrative audio work." (Robert Boynton, 03:59)
- Why Now? Podcasts haven't been "consumed by the academic publishing machine of points and rankings"; their future shape is still up for grabs. (Ian Cook cited by Boynton, 04:23)
- Outreach as a Goal: Bridging the university-public divide is more important than ever. Public events and "podcast curious" workshops aim to build a community around these emerging genres.
2. Project Spotlights
a. "Tuning Time"
Producer: Mara Mills (not present), with co-producer Jonathan Stern (posthumous)
- Focus: The history of time-stretching technology (originally hacked by blind readers and later musically exploited).
- Origins in Deep Research: Heavily rooted in archival sound, interviews, and academic publications.
- "A lot of the work ended up being just listening... we spent a lot of time listening and then chatting about them and taking notes... often really cracking up and laughing about them, puzzling over them." (Mara Mills, 10:11)
- Twin Strands: One following blind users hacking audio technology for reading, another tracing direct lines to experimental musicians and the invention of Auto Tune.
- Narrative Challenge: How to weave historical sound and multiple voices (including archives of Jonathan Stern) into an audio story.
- Timeline: Aims to complete three-episode miniseries by June 2026.
b. "The Elephant in the Music Ecology Empire"
Producer: Fanny Grabinski
- Focus: The material history of the piano circa 1900, tracing the global ecological, economic, and human impact of its construction (ivory for keys, spruce for soundboards, etc.).
- Method: Deeply interdisciplinary; blends musicology, history, environmental studies, ethnography, and oral history.
- Podcast as Extension: The podcast complements the book by incorporating field recordings, site visits, songs, and oral histories that would be hard to fit in print.
- Notable Quote: "How do you even go about including something like that in a book? That's the joy of having podcasts..." (Fanny Grabinski, 23:07)
- On Sensory Power: "It seems to me a privileged way of entering the sort of sensory, embodied experiences that we're trying to get at with these stories and let the materials speak for themselves." (Fanny Grabinski, 23:23)
Memorable Moments and Notable Quotes
The Materiality of Sound & Storytelling
- Understanding Spruce in Pianos:
- “So the best soundboard spruce has the highest stiffness to weight ratio. It's very stiff along the line of the grain, but it's also very light.” (Mike Moore, Steinway Factory, 16:16)
- “It's free to vibrate and eager to vibrate and eager to move the air.” (Benjamin Walker, 16:26)
- Fieldwork: The Adirondack Guide Boat:
- “The weight is the most important part. You know, I would never build this boat like this at all if weight wasn't the factor. It's the number one factor for the boat.” (Nate, boat builder, 17:09)
Emotional/Historical Resonance
- Ivorytown Song & Memory:
- The episode features a haunting field recording of historian Ian Bassalone singing a song about the legacy of ivory, colonialism, and violence embedded in piano keys—a moment only possible in audio:
- “I've heard the path to the Congo coast is deep and far from the pachyderm's ghost... for piano keys this great beast died oh weep for the loss with me.” (Ian Bassalone, 21:21)
- Sensory Testimony:
- “Ivory almost exudes a warmth, you know, you can almost... It just kind of talks to you?... It just says, I'm something special.” (Historical Society President, 24:22)
- Worker Testimony & Silences:
- "During all those key polishings, did you ever think about the elephants? — Yes, I did." (Elda Godenzi, 30:45)
- “I want to find that out one day. I mean, we just found this yesterday, so we're still kind of not sure what to make of it.” (Benjamin Walker, 31:19)
The Transformational Effect of Podcasting on Academic Practice
- Spillover Value:
- “The podcast offers a great home for this sort of spillover of the research.” (Fanny Grabinski, 18:01)
- “Trying to produce compelling audio is changing the book.” (Fanny Grabinski, 23:35)
- Democratization of Voices:
- “Adopting a more journalistic approach has ended up changing the way I've been working... turning some of our characters into what I would call lay theorists.” (Fanny Grabinski, 25:44)
- On Collaborative Approach:
- “I give credit to Benjamin for pursuing, you know, meeting a stranger on the street and convincing him to talk about something on the spot that's not things I normally do, and yet it is something that is changing the way I think about the project.” (Fanny Grabinski, 25:09)
- Scholarly Learning:
- “Working with someone where every word counts... we can learn a lot from the scholars as much as they can learn from us.” (Benjamin Walker, 50:01)
Thematic Segments by Timestamp
- [01:16] - Robert Boynton lays out the day’s theme: podcasting as a scholarly method, not just a medium.
- [06:03] - Benjamin Walker introduces himself, his background, and the collaborative pilot at NYU.
- [10:11] - Mara Mills describes research for "Tuning Time," listening through archival tapes with Jonathan Stern.
- [13:02] - Fanny Grabinski presents the materiality-focused project on the piano; starts to frame the research as a narrative.
- [16:16] - Clip: Mike Moore (Steinway) on Adirondack spruce’s relevance for pianos—technical yet poetic description.
- [20:59] - Clip: Ian Bassalone sings the Ivorytown ballad, bringing affect, memory, and history into a single moment.
- [23:07] - Grabinski expands on why podcasting reaches places books cannot—capturing voice, tone, and emotion.
- [24:18] - Interview: Sensory description of ivory, "it just kind of talks to you."
- [26:35] - Interview: Alison Sloan on local activism, the re-purposed Ivorytown piano key factory, and repairing historical harm.
- [30:42] - Archival tape: Elda Godenzi, former key polisher; direct reflections on the elephants—personalizes global violence.
- [32:42] - Discussion: Difference between story- and argument-driven scholarship in audio and print.
- [35:57] - On access, archiving, and audience: how to return oral histories to communities and future-proof the scholarship.
- [38:50] - Speculation: Why we haven’t yet fused book and podcast into an integrated, interactive scholarly artifact.
- [41:21] - Reflection: Podcasting as essayistic, immersive, rather than purely argumentative (“essay film” analogy).
- [43:57] - The case for aesthetics in scholarly podcasting—why story and sound design matter beyond audiobooks.
- [44:17] - The problem of citation, searchability, and scholarly referencing in audio formats.
- [50:01] - Closing reflections on how scholarly/podcast collaboration transforms both partners’ practice.
Reflections on Podcast/Book Interplay
- On Making With and About Archives:
The responsibility of creating a new archive of oral history, and sharing it with communities, comes up repeatedly (35:57, 44:17).
- Podcast Changing the Book and Vice Versa:
- “Trying to produce compelling audio is changing the book… adopting a more journalistic approach...turning some of our characters into what I would call lay theorists.” (Fanny Grabinski, 25:44)
- “We're doing a lot of recordings now… some kind of revisiting grounds. We're doing that more for the audios. But I can't pretend that I have a big narrative arch in my head yet.” (Fanny Grabinski, 33:05)
- On Imperfect Answers and Process:
- “That's a very important tension to have in mind for sure...the results, the clips we're going to have to work with. We are on the moment. We don't have all of the answers.” (Fanny Grabinski, 48:16)
Conclusion
This panel offered an in-depth look at the potential of podcasting for original scholarly production—exploring not just new research subjects but fundamentally new forms of research output, storytelling, and community-building. The relationship between academic rigor and narrative pleasure, between archival documentation and oral/aural immediacy, is at the heart of both pilot projects.
The panelists are frank about ongoing uncertainties: how to archive, cite, and credit podcasts in academic life; how to balance theoretical precision with narrative flow; how to return knowledge to communities; and how the process of collaboration is reshaping definitions of scholarship itself.
"[Podcasting] offers a great home for the sort of spillover of the research."
— Fanny Grabinski (18:01)
For listeners and non-listeners alike, this episode is an engaging, idea-rich exploration of the present and future of scholarly narrative audio.