Started a shared doc with Darius and Benjamin with podcast notes. I continue to be slow to adapt to this brave new world of shared docs and such, but I’ll get there. It just makes me anxious — what if someone deletes something important? There seems to be a lot of trust involved in working collaboratively in the cloud. I need to figure this out for fall semester, though — there’s a good chance my classes will be online, and students can do great work with shared document note taking, I know.
(We’ll know more about who’s teaching online and who’s teaching live in a few weeks, but right now, I think the priority at UIC is looking like the classes that need to be live will be live (such as science lab classes), some that are being designated as core to the ‘freshman experience,’ will also be live, and very few others will be.)
That said, the podcast development is fun and exciting. In case you’re curious, here’s what’s in there so far:
Mohanraj and Rosenbaum are Humans
**1) Show Ideas**
– how people manage risk
– how we’re handling all this personally
– how you and Esther and the kids are doing (if you’re comfortable talking about Esther as therapist and your relationship stuff and your synagogue work, all of that would be interesting, I think, and I’d do the same from my end with Kevin and Jed and the kids and teaching)
– how Switzerland and the U.S. are handling coronavirus differently (I have no idea what’s happening there, actually)
– maintaining SF community during a year-without-conventions
– writing during all this
– motivational structures
– the frustration and grief of a delayed book launch; plans and strategies for handling it (Liz Gorinsky)
– Swiss and American educational systems during the pandemic
– international guests (Yudhanjaya, Aliette — fold in pandemic check-ins — New Zealand (Toni, Jed’s friend, etc.))
– domestic labor during the pandemic (the big chart)
**2) Show Ideas with Potential Guests**
(*confirmed interest)
– Yudhanjaya Wijeratne and Cadwell Turnbull on post-colonial island SF
– Charlie Stross and Alex Gurevich (*) on economics in a pandemic world
– Charlie Jane Anders, Annalee Newitz (*), Eileen Gunn, Ellen Datlow, Susan Groppi, Neil Harrison, and Jed Hartman (*) on history of online magazines / Strange Horizons (break out SH separately?)
– Ellen Datlow, Sheila Williams, Neil Clarke, Vanessa Rose Phin, on magazines in a pandemic world
– Mary Robinette Kowal on virtual convention culture and practices
– I’d like to talk to John Scalzi about something. Not sure what. 
And then there’s even a table where I’ve started logging episode notes. It is very sketchy right now, but it will get filled out!