Somehow, I have gone from appearing on no podcasts ever to appearing on four of them in the last 5 months.
It began with a party. I attended an event of the Anselm Society dedicated to chatting about detective stories, and got to chatting with Matt Mellema of the Anselm Society’s Believe to See podcast. He mentioned that he liked the novel The Princess Bride, and I said I was writing a paper about it. We got to exchanging emails, and Matt invited me to talk on Believe to See about the novel and movie.
The second podcast was a bit more involved. I had been thinking about C.S. Lewis’ friend, Dr. Robert Havard, who wrote the appendix to The Problem of Pain. If you’ve read it, you know that Havard talks a lot about pain as what theologians might call a soul-making exercise, how pain challenges us to develop character. Since over the last 3 years I have been reviewing a lot of books with titles like Disability and the Way of Jesus, I wondered how Christians today interesting in disability feel about this idea. In a time when we’re becoming very open about the idea that Christians can have many kinds of suffering, and some suffering never goes away, how do we feel about the idea that the suffering is a pathway to character formation?
I especially wondered since my brother-in-law, Levi Anderson, has been legally blind since his teens, and was completing a master’s in disability theology. I also knew Zackary D. Schmoll, a very talented scholar who had a medical disability and had written a book on Disability and the Problem of Evil.
I had met William O’Flaherty, host of the All About Jack podcast, through a virtual community called The Inkling Folk Fellowship. I asked William if he would be interested in hosting a discussion where we brought these two people together, read from the unedited appendix (which was published for the first time in 2019), and discussed it. Since it’s not easy to coordinate four people’s schedules, it took some doing. But we eventually came together and had a great chat, which you can listed to at the links below:
The discussion about William O’Flaherty led into some interesting new directions. Not long after we did our podcast, he began releasing content on autism. Zackary Schmoll had recommended I check out Stephen J. Bedard’s Disability Comes to Church podcast, so I asked Stephen about doing something with William. Stephen was nice enough to have both of us on his podcast, talking about autism from a faith-based perspective:
William also asked if I’d be willing to interview him about his autism diagnosis journey. We ended up doing the interview twice, once for the online publication Crosswalk.com and once as an audio discussion for his new YouTube channel Adult Autism in 60 Seconds:
Another connection paid off in surprising ways. I’ve done a lot of work on underdiscussed members of the Inklings (Neville Coghill and Lord David Cecil, for example) or people who intersected with the Inklings. Most readers who have been following my articles on Fellowship & Fairydust know that I’ve especially been exploring William Lindsay Gresham, ex-husband of Joy Davidman. Since it’s good to build bridges with other people who share research interests, I support Dr. Sørina Higgins’ work on underdiscussed Inkling Charles Williams. During a discussion with her patrons, I met Chris Pipkin, who runs the podcast Inklings Variety Hour. He asked if I would be interested in talking about Gresham’s novel Nightmare Alley. That podcast appeared last week:
https://inklingshour.podbean.com/e/nightmare-alley-and-bill-gresham/
Chris was kind enough to have me back on recently to discuss the upcoming season of Rings of Power.
Here is, my conversation with Chris, Jordan R. Key, and Sørina Higgins about the Season 2 trailer:
https://inklingshour.podbean.com/e/pop-up-episode-rings-of-power-season-2-trailer-reaction/
Here is Chris and I talking about the news that Tom Bombadil will appear in Season 2:
https://inklingshour.podbean.com/e/pop-up-episode-hey-tom-bombadil/
So, to put it mildly, it’s been a busy start to 2024. However, I am grateful. Grateful that I’m part of communities that lead to meeting people who suggest fun things to collaborate on. Grateful for diligent friends who will work to make things happen (it’s not easy to plan a podcast appearance, much less communicate with multiple people about whether they can make it). Grateful that in a time when “getting your name out there” so often seems to be just getting formulas rights, connecting with friends can surprise me and take me to new audiences.
G. Connor Salter 