The Professor Who Quit His Tenured Job to Make Podcasts and Lecture Videos
What’s life like after quitting a tenured job as a professor to become a freelance educator, making video courses and podcasts for a living?
That’s one question we had for Kevin deLaplante, who did just that when he left Iowa State University in 2015 to focus on running his Argument Ninja Podcast and teaching courses on his online Critical Thinker Academy, both aimed at bringing concepts from his scholarship to a popular audience.
One area he’s exploring these days is the rise of tribalism in U.S. politics and culture, and how that’s leading to polarization that is making it hard for us to talk to each other. He’s arguing for a new kind of “tribal literacy,” so we can better understand how humans are hard-wired to be drawn to certain tribal behaviors that, in too large a dose, can lead to trouble for societies. He says that, perhaps surprisingly, he has more time now and can explore the topic more broadly than when he was a traditional scholar.
