Today I ask for feedback from viewers and listeners.
If you have any questions for me, please leave them on my Curious Cat account. If you have found these videos helpful, please tell your friends. If you would like to support my continued production of them, you can do so on my Patreon account. You can also get the audio of these videos on Soundcloud or iTunes.
Alastair's Adversaria 
Alastair,
I already provided my feedback, but I thought I would give more particulars. I think that regular content and regular(ish) length are both valuable in a podcast. My recommendations would be to do 2 podcasts per week and to keep them between 45 minutes and 1.5 hours. You would still be able to get to a large number of questions as you could answer 3 or 4 “easier” questions or 1-2 questions which required more detail in a given video/podcast. The longest offerings could be reserved for book reviews, or possibly tackling a issue by way of a magazine article or thoughtful blog post (I think it would be fun to hear you speak for an hour on the cosmopolitans vs. provincials and the way those viewpoints inflect political and social debates, or on radical decondensation in the modern world).
Taking a little more time and putting out less content may allow you to do more preparation and tighten up your delivery, which could help you get through more questions without sacrificing quality or depth.
I really enjoy your content and I am very thankful for it. God Bless you and yours!
P.S. I hope that your new work situation and question answering format won’t completely prevent you from doing longer think pieces – The Strangeness of the Modern Mind and Social Media and Subsidiarity and similar posts have been extraordinarily helpful for me in trying to live an examined life. Thanks!
Thanks for the feedback!
I came here from reading older articles that you had written. I really enjoy your indepth analysis of theological analysis. However, with taking care of three small children, I don’t have time to listen to or watch long videos. I hope you will continue to write some of these thoughts out so they can be more easily referenced.
At some point, I hope to start getting my videos transcribed. Until such a time, however, I’ll probably be posting less in the way of articles over here. Most of my writing will be for books, or for other websites. I’ll still be writing a lot, though.
Hi Alastair!
My feedback is late but I hope it would still be useful. By the way, for three weeks I have had difficulty accessing your site. It always showed an error message, I tried different browsers only one worked and then it showed me a version of your site with a terrible interface. Some of my friends in Nigeria had the same issue and actually three weeks ago wasn’t the first time but it was the longest period of having it happen.
I really enjoy your podcasts. I haven’t finished listening to anyone above 45 mins except the one of the Social Justice Statement but I still hope you continue them because I plan to get into them once I am on holidays. I tried your review on the “End of Work” but I got lost, it felt really dense. On an aside, I haven’t had any of my questions answered but I was wondering if you could invite questions for let’s say a week or two from only a particular book of the Scripture that would really be encouraging and give you time to explore a lot of things.
Also, have you ever explored the opportunity to host something like a ‘webinar’ on a really interesting topic even if people have to pay to sign up, I still think it is a great idea. Perhaps having a live recording on youtube too would be great especially one where you can try (and how hard it will be for you) to answer questions as they are being typed in the comments. You might not get to all and you might even streamline the questions to a particular topic. But, I think It would be great.
Thirdly, going forward I would love to see some sort of a routine; perhaps three days a week may be allocated to Biblical theology, a day to ethics and culture and of course another to book reviews. I am also hoping you could also do more (way more) packed podcasts where you answer ten (10) questions.
Lastly, please do feel free to share more how we can pray for you; writing projects, health issues, ministry opportunities, requests for loved ones and friends. I guess it might be awkward but that might be only at first.
I feel terrible that I follow your podcast so closely but haven’t been able to support on patreon but I do pray for you and speak of you a lot to my friends sometimes when I sound so brilliant to them I have to add; “that was all Alastair Roberts”. Lol. May it never happen I plagiarize you. Amen.
I do hope your ministry would thrive and can’t wait to join your support club.
P.S: Around the Bret Kavanaugh and Ford case, you made a slight comment in your video on I think masculinity but you said something like: “Even in this issue with Bret Kavanaugh, the contexts that young people grew up especially boys was devoid of authority and in such contexts abuse happen”. I am sure I don’t quote you exactly but your point was to identify how the society has a blame often on the kind of contexts it offers for masculinity to thrive and only leaves room for ‘feral’ masculinity. I absolutely agree with this but I am afraid that given the politicized nature of the whole Kavanaugh confirmation such a comment could easily have been misconstrued.
It might have come off to some as giving your opinion that Kavanaugh is obviously guilty while to others it might sound as downplaying ‘his guilt’ to some by saying ‘the society’ has a hand. I doubt you aimed at communicating your opinion but once I heard Kavanaugh’s name and recalled the terrible news cycle. I held my breath and kept wishing you had just left it out at least around that time.
Hi Alastair!
My feedback is late but I hope it would still be useful. By the way, for three weeks I have had difficulty accessing your site. It always showed an error message, I tried different browsers only one worked and then it showed me a version of your site with a terrible interface. Some of my friends in Nigeria had the same issue and actually three weeks ago wasn’t the first time but it was the longest period of having it happen.
I really enjoy your podcasts. I haven’t finished listening to anyone above 45 mins except the one of the Social Justice Statement but I still hope you continue them because I plan to get into them once I am on holidays. I tried your review on the “End of Work” but I got lost, it felt really dense. On an aside, I haven’t had any of my questions answered but I was wondering if you could invite questions for let’s say a week or two from only a particular book of the Scripture that would really be encouraging and give you time to explore a lot of things.
Also, have you ever explored the opportunity to host something like a ‘webinar’ on a really interesting topic even if people have to pay to sign up, I still think it is a great idea. Perhaps having a live recording on youtube too would be great especially one where you can try (and how hard it will be for you) to answer questions as they are being typed in the comments. You might not get to all and you might even streamline the questions to a particular topic. But, I think It would be great.
Thirdly, going forward I would love to see some sort of a routine; perhaps three days a week may be allocated to Biblical theology, a day to ethics and culture and of course another to book reviews. I am also hoping you could also do more (way more) packed podcasts where you answer ten (10) questions.
Lastly, please do feel free to share more how we can pray for you; writing projects, health issues, ministry opportunities, requests for loved ones and friends. I guess it might be awkward but that might be only at first.
I feel terrible that I follow your podcast so closely but haven’t been able to support on patreon but I do pray for you and speak of you a lot to my friends sometimes when I sound so brilliant to them I have to add; “that was all Alastair Roberts”. Lol. May it never happen I plagiarize you. Amen.
I do hope your ministry would thrive and can’t wait to join your support club.
P.S: Around the Bret Kavanaugh and Ford case, you made a slight comment in your video on I think masculinity but you said something like: “Even in this issue with Bret Kavanaugh, the contexts that young people grew up especially boys was devoid of authority and in such contexts abuse happen”. I am sure I don’t quote you exactly but your point was to identify how the society has a blame often on the kind of contexts options it offers to males and how it usually only leaves room for ‘feral’ masculinity. I absolutely agree with this but I am afraid that given the politicized nature of the whole Kavanaugh confirmation such a comment could easily have been misconstrued.
It might have come off to some as giving your opinion that Kavanaugh is obviously guilty while to others it might sound as downplaying ‘his guilt’ or acquitting since ‘society is to blame’. And both views miss your point. I held my breath and kept wishing you had just left it out at least around that time. This is not to say that you aren’t free to give your political opinions but I have always appreciated you never throwing hostages to fortune. I might be wrong in my opinions tho.
Oops! forgive the repetition
Thanks for the feedback! A couple of the points that you make tie into ways that I am already planning to take things.
Please don’t worry about not being able to support me on Patreon! My goal has always been to produce something that is available to as wide an audience as possible, not to produce something merely for a clique of subscribers. If people can’t support me, that’s fine! The videos and podcasts are still for them.
On the Kavanaugh issue, I feel more at liberty to speak without constant qualification on podcasts and videos. One of the advantages of the medium is that is not so easy to locate things without listening all the way through (which people would probably only do if they are actually interested) and it is much harder to remove things from context. Consequently, I am much freer to say things knowing that my listeners are unlikely to put an uncharitable construction on it. And, if people want clarification, Curious Cat and the comments are open to them.