Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Three Minutes, Three Questions Lisa Corrigan & Laura Weiderhaft
Podcasting — the digital equivalent of the family huddled around the radio, listening to the latest episode of a detective drama in the 1940s — has never been more popular. A 2018 Edison Research report found that 44 percent of Americans have listened to a podcast — 124 million people per year, a 12 million increase from last year — and more than a quarter of Americans listen to podcasts monthly. With a medium that popular, it’s no wonder that Arkansas has its fair share of homegrown podcast talent. UA Professor Lisa Corrigan and comedian Laura Weiderhaft’s “Lean Back” podcast is a standout and was named one of Paste Magazine’s favorite podcasts of 2017. The duo recently answered three questions for What’s Up! about launching “Lean Back”.
Q. Tell me a little bit about how you decided to do a podcast.
A.
We were having conversations regularly about how pop-feminism was hiding behind the term feminism without advancing a progressive agenda. We thought “Lean In,” in particular, was failing women because it offered no transformative potential; it was basically a reiteration of patriarchal corporate norms. Lisa understands the transformative potential of feminism, and Laura saw so many people who wanted to hear what she was saying, so we wanted to publish the kinds of conversations we were having around town for a broader audience.
Q. Did either of you know anything about podcasting before launching?
A.
Laura had been a podcast listener, and I was aware of the fact that podcasting was an affordable form of DIY publishing. There is a broad range of audio production that can go into making a podcast, but our approach is having authentic conversations, and we think adding a lot of advanced production techniques to our recordings would actually detract from our conversations. The hardest part of this project was just getting it started and putting everything in place to continue to record. It’s really easy to record and edit after the initial setup, and we love that we’re doing this ourselves.
Q. Were you surprised by how quickly you gained followers?
A.
We saw how many people were engaged with Lisa’s idea generation and Laura knew a lot of folks who would enjoy having access to her perspective about a broad range of social and political issues. It’s exciting that we have listeners across the country that don’t know either of us personally, and that we even have listeners in dozens of other countries!