The Next Generation

When Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Ghassan Abou-Zeineddine started teaching at Oberlin, he attended a meet-and-greet with students interested in creative writing. “I said, ‘My interests are in fiction, then a bit of creative nonfiction … and I’m also really interested in podcasting,’” he recalls, noting this admission sparked quite a bit of interest. “As soon as the introductions were done and we were informally talking to students, a crowd came up to me, and all they wanted to know about was podcasts.”

This interest wasn’t surprising, as Oberlin already boasts an impressive network of alumni in audio journalism. But by embracing experimentation over convention and emphasizing craft, the college is creating a sound foundation for the next generation of podcasters and podcast lovers. 

While podcasting is a relatively new medium in academia—and unlike artistic forms like film or the novel, audio storytelling doesn’t have an institutionalized field of study—multiple Oberlin faculty are contributing to the burgeoning field of podcast pedagogy. Courses emphasize the art of the podcast via histories of audio storytelling, production skills, and the specificity of writing for the ear—the latter of which is the subject of a course taught by David Gutherz ’09, a visiting assistant professor of cinema and media. 

Gutherz also taught a class in the spring 2025 semester called Intro to Audio Documentary and Drama, which covered over a century’s worth of media and theory. “One of my principles as a pedagogue is that we have to estrange ourselves from the subject of our study in order to be able to see or hear it,” says Gutherz, who has worked for NPR’s podcast Invisibilia, which was co-founded by Alix Spiegel ’94. “Looking back is a useful way to create that estrangement—and remind us that [there is] a history to the way people listen and the way people create audio works.”

Above all, Gutherz wants to cultivate a capacity for listening—something echoed by Joe Richman ’87, a Peabody Award-winning producer and reporter and the founder of Radio Diaries. Richman’s spring 2025 class Journalistic Skills as Life Skills emphasized that public radio is inherently made with love and care.

“For audio storytelling, the best thing to do is go out there and do it: Talk to people, edit tape, try to write, have people edit your writing,” Richman says. In fact, he refutes the idea that kids shouldn’t talk to strangers. “What terrible, terrible advice. Maybe we’re living in a world right now where we’re afraid of strangers and afraid of our neighbors, but there’s something really profound and important about getting better about talking to people we don’t know.”

Oberlin also generates an idyllic climate for the world of audio storytelling by prioritizing interdisciplinary study—like cross-listed courses—and by taking a holistic approach to audio storytelling. Podcasting has been used as an alternative to traditional written midterms and final projects in the environmental studies and cinema and media departments, mimicking the dynamic exchange of ideas during in-class discussions. During this semester, my midterm for a course on French documentary involved recording a 20-minute podcast in which I spoke as a film critic sitting on a festival panel.

Abou-Zeineddine also approaches audio storytelling in a uniquely Oberlin fashion. His fall 2024 class The Art of Podcasting was designed to explore narrative form in audio storytelling, both fiction and nonfiction. “What really sets Oberlin apart from other institutions is how I see in our students, in faculty, and in departments how interdisciplinary it is,” he says. “We really kind of preach, ‘Don’t just take courses in creative writing; take courses in film, in dance, in art, because these different art forms can actually complement your writing.’ There’s that spirit of collaboration I see in our students, and that really sets the groundwork for audio storytelling.”

This story originally appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of the Oberlin Alumni Magazine as part of the feature "A Pipeline to Podcasts."