What is Closereads?
It's a new video/audio podcast by your most verbose PEL hosts, Mark Linsenmayer and Wes Alwan.
Is it replacing PEL?
No, PEL is alive and well and will continue to release episodes at our normal frequency. This is an additional thing we're recording weekly.
What is the format?
We read a text line by line, stopping frequently to help you understand what's being said and to put it into a wider perspective. Many PEL listeners enjoy our presentation but don't have the time or confidence to engage with these texts directly. We hope to demonstrate how we take on these texts and hopefully add some value in our musings and connections.
As usual, we are not experts on these readings, and these Closereads involve little to no prep, so don't expect us to be doing ancient Greek etymology telling you how this commentator or that commentator interprets the passage. Instead, you get a fresh, authentic encounter with the text, with you sitting there as our third (silent) participant.
And there's video?
Yes, we are recording every session of this. Is it better to watch two people talking than to just listen to us? You tell us! Also in line with this turn towards authenticity, we're not editing these (the videos or audio) in the way we do PEL episodes. So if you have to inch up your listening speed by a notch, feel free. (Note that you can do this on YouTube as well.)
How do I get access to these?
Most Closereads episodes will only be visible to those support Closereads through patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy (at $5/month). For this subscription price, you'll get at least four episodes per month. You can also choose to bundle your support for PEL and Closereads by subscribing to the $10/month Citizen Plus tier at patreon.com/partiallyexaminedlife. On both sites, there's a discount for signing up for a full year.
To avoid posting complications, we're not making these available through our website or through Apple Podcast purchases. Patreon not only hosts video (meaning that there will be no ads if you watch the videos we post there, unlike YouTube), but it's designed to have different levels of access to people who pay different amounts. Note that Patreon now has a partnership with Spotify, so you can link your accounts together and listen to your supporter episodes that way. You can also import your unique Patreon feed into any standard podcast app, including Apple Podcasts. Read directions from Patreon.
Isn't there a free version of this? Can I get scholarship access?
We'll make select episodes free on YouTube and in the public PEL feed. But for the most part, no. You can already listen to literally hundreds of hours of free content from PEL and the hosts' other podcasts. This is extra work, and we can't afford to just give it all away, nor do we in this case want to manage numerous scholarship accounts. On Patreon, you can generally listen to the first 5 minutes of anything as a preview, so you can certainly do that to just get the "headline" about a given work.
Do I have to read along with you in the text?
No, you certainly don't have to, but we're only going to pick texts where we can link you to an online version of the part we read (even if that means we have to post it ourselves). It might be easier to follow if you read along. You tell us!
What sorts of texts work best for a Closereads episode?
We're still figuring this out, but of course we want to pick texts that are somewhat difficult to read, yet not ones (like Derrida or Lacan) where there's a whole, esoteric realm of specialized knowledge required to understand any of it at all. Of course, in some cases, we've delved into these realms. In general, we'd like to stick to figures that we've already covered on PEL and want more information about. This could be a text that we actually covered specifically already but would like to go through more slowly, or it could be a text we haven't treated before, allowing us to get a better picture of the figure or their thoughts about a topic that we haven't focused on before for that figure.
Suggest a text by contacting us at closereads@partiallyexaminedlife.com.