By Josh Rhodes
Podcasting provides an important public platform for people to learn about contemporary Black life, says Adam McNeil, a 2025–26 postdoctoral fellow at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.
Adam McNeil, a 2025-26 postdoctoral fellow at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia gave a talk on the importance of podcasting for the study of Black life earlier this month, hosted by UCSB’s History Department.
“[Podcasting] offers me a chance to contribute to our understanding of the Black past and frame how scholars and members of the public understand history, culture and the politics of Black life,” McNeil told a UC Santa Barbara audience earlier this month on Zoom.
McNeil spoke about how podcasting has altered his understanding of Black life in a talk titled, “The Importance of Podcasting for the Study of Black Life,” hosted on Zoom by the UCSB’s History Department.
In it, he described his work as a host of the “African-American Studies podcast,” a series featured on the New Books Network — an author-interview podcast platform that aims to increase the level of public conversation through its educational content.
McNeil did his graduate work in history at Rutgers University. He has conducted over 110 interviews with some of the most prominent scholars in African-American Studies and Black history such as with Vincent Brown about his book, Tactics of Empire, and Dawn Durante about her role as an editorial director on the Black Women’s History Series at the University of North Carolina Press.
McNeil says there are unique benefits to conversing with scholars about their work on a podcast, rather than through other forms of media, which prompted him to join the New Book’s show.
“Our [scholars’] ideas, frameworks, theories and other important aspects of our work will likely not be downloaded or purchased with the same volume or speed as podcasts,” McNeil said. “Episodes can be automatically downloaded.”
Rutgers postdoctoral historian Adam McNeil described his work as the host of a podcast in which he interviews Black studies scholars. He says podcasting helps the wider community understand the study of Black life.
McNeil’s goal for each episode is for his listeners to walk away with a better understanding of an interviewed-scholar’s work by having that scholar highlight the most important information in their own words.
McNeil believes that he is providing listeners not only with ideas that can truly change the world, one person at a time, but also improving their ability to discuss contemporary Black life with others.
“The hope is that the interviews I conduct [and episodes I produce] are engaging, informative and effective to the person on the other side of the microphone,” McNeil said.
McNeil says that interviewing people over the past three years has forced him to not only read and digest a book, but to make connections to other works. “Without knowing it at the time, I developed as a thinker, conversationalist and a convener,” he noted. “It influenced how I understood the practice of history.”
Podcasting has also helped McNeil develop a wide network of professional connections which he believes will benefit his aspiring career as a Black history professor.
“An arm of that [podcasting] is the connections that we make with publishers and people,” McNeil noted. “These relationships become really important when you are trying to talk about writing your own book.”
Josh Rhodes is a third-year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in Political Science. He wrote this article for his Digital Journalism class in the Writing Program.