The Seed Field Podcast—a new platform for Antiochians to share knowledge, stories, and justice-related work—premiered this February with a fascinating interview with the prominent scholar of anti-racism Stephen Brookfield. It has since released almost twenty insightful, roughly half-hour conversations for a growing base of listeners from Antioch and beyond. And the show is only picking up speed.
With The Seed Field Podcast, Antioch shares the voices of faculty, students, and other Antiochians who are demonstrating that seeds of social justice sewn today will bear fruit in an uncertain future. The podcast’s title comes from a quote from Antioch’s first president, Horace Mann, who wrote, “Time is a seed field; in youth, we sow it with causes; in after life, we reap the harvest of effects.” The positivity and hope found in Horace Mann’s message defines Antioch’s march toward progress—a journey the podcast is intended to explore and document.
The Seed Field Podcast is hosted by Jasper Nighthawk ’19 (Antioch Los Angeles, MFA; pictured, above), who in his role as University Storyteller has been collecting, writing, and editing Antioch’s stories over the last two years. He is joined by the show’s editor, Lauren Instenes (below), an oral historian who recently graduated from Columbia University. She explains that working on the show gives her—and by extension the show’s listeners—the opportunity “to dive deep with members of the Antioch community and learn about their lives and what drives them in their work, which I find fascinating.”
The first season of The Seed Field Podcast ran from February to July of this year and included incredible guests such as Jean Kayira, the director of the PhD in Environmental Studies whose scholarship focuses on Indigenous knowledge and sustainability; Kirsten Grimstad, the scholar of Holocaust memory work; and Bill Groves, the Chancellor of Antioch, who discussed democracy in America and the role of higher education in promoting it.
Season Two launched in September, with new episodes being posted every other Wednesday throughout the fall. Already this season’s guests have included such key Antiochians as the prominent poet and literary citizen Victoria Chang, the psychologist and co-chair of the Anti-Racism Taskforce Monique Bowen, and the reforming leadership scholar Donna Ladkin.
If you want to hear these important conversations you can subscribe to The Seed Field Podcast by searching for it in the podcast app of your choice, or your can visit theseedfield.org to stream episodes, find full episode transcripts, and more.
