Keeping it 101 is the podcast that helps our nerdy listeners make sense of religion. Why religion? Well, if you read the news, have a body, exist in public, or think about race, gender, class, ability, or sexuality, you likely also think about religion — even if you don’t know it yet. Let us show you why religion is both a lot more important and a little easier to understand than you might think. Each 40-ish minute episode has a topic: a core idea we’re trying to get y’all to think through—topics you need to know to think about religion, of course, but more importantly, the world around you. We’ve got critique on critique, gender, race, sexuality, and imperial theory. Also jokes. Many jokes. Each episode has a homework assignment because we can always learn more. All episodes have show notes that include: bibliographic information (because citations are politics), complementary media, and accessible transcripts. Keeping it 101 is hosted by two lady professors—Megan Goodwin and Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst—whose research & teaching expertises overlap, but who think about very different spaces, topics, and time periods. It is recorded on the ancestral, traditional, and unceded territories of the Abenaki, Wabenaki, and Aucocisco Peoples, where Megan & Ilyse are grateful to live, work, and kill joy professionally and professorially. As of July 2020, we have grants from the New England Humanities Consortium and the UVM Humanities Center to support this public humanities project.Put us in your earholes and let us show you why religion isn’t done with you — even if you’re done with religion.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst and Megan Goodwin
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The Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion podcast is an exceptional resource for anyone interested in religious studies. This podcast provides clear explanations of complex dynamics within religion, all while maintaining an entertaining and engaging atmosphere. The hosts, Professor Goodwin and Professor Morgenstein Fuerst, bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to each episode, making it accessible for both beginners and those more familiar with the subject matter. The podcast delves into various topics related to religion, covering everything from historical context to contemporary issues. It also offers additional resources such as lesson plans and primary sources, which make it an invaluable tool for educators.
One of the best aspects of this podcast is its ability to provide deep insights without sacrificing accessibility. The hosts never dumb down the content but instead deliver it in a way that is easy to understand and engaging to listen to. They have a talent for taking complex concepts and breaking them down into relatable examples and anecdotes. Additionally, their infectious laughter adds a lightheartedness to the discussions, making it enjoyable to listen to even when tackling challenging subjects.
Furthermore, the podcast covers a wide range of religious topics, allowing listeners to explore different faiths and their impact on society. Whether you are new to religious studies or already well-versed in the field, this podcast offers something for everyone. The episodes serve as excellent resources for students studying religious studies or individuals seeking to expand their knowledge on various religions.
While it is difficult to find any significant flaws with this podcast, one minor critique is that sometimes certain topics could benefit from more in-depth exploration. Given the time constraints of each episode, there are instances where certain aspects may be glossed over or not fully addressed. However, this can be expected with any podcast format that aims to cover a wide range of subjects within limited timeframes.
In conclusion, The Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion podcast is a standout resource for anyone interested in religious studies. Its ability to provide clear explanations of complex dynamics, combined with its entertaining and engaging approach, sets it apart from other podcasts in the field. Whether you are a student, educator, or simply someone interested in learning more about religion, this podcast is a must-listen.
In which we reflect on five years and 100+ episodes, and then we say goodbye.As always, check out keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
In which we announce, with sorrow and excitement, that we are wrapping this here pod — and we encourage you to revisit our VERY FIRST EPISODE, to reflect on what we've learned and how our thinking about religion has changed over this very, very long semester.As always, check out keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
In which we chat about the pod and the book with the host of Ten on Religion, Dr. Mark Banas.As always, check out keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
In which we (mostly Ilyse) go all in on religion & tattoos. Special interest: ACTIVATE.As always, check out keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
In which we discuss all things RINDWY with the fabulous Jenn Jordan for the Syosset Public Library's official podcast, Turn the Page. The library is OPEN, y'all!As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
In which Megan chats with a handful of folks who are also part of the Amplify Podcast Network's first Sustain stream--Sally Chivers (Wrinkle Radio), Charisse L'Pree (Critical and Curious), and M.E. Luke (Critical Technology Podcast)--plus pod bestie Hannah McGregor.As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
In which we review our very depressing and important miniseries discussion on religion and adoption AND play ridiculous orphan games as a reward for having done the hard thingsAs always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
In which Megan tries not to spend the whole hour screaming about Dobbs whilst we discuss what adoption has to do with religious freedom. As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
Welcome to our very first movie discussion, nerds! In which we chat about the Ramayana with no Ram, why Hanuman is the Best Beast, Hijra superheroes, and also that Dev Patel should call us. As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
In which we reflect on what it was like to find our collective voice. (Spoilers: it was really hard! But also really awesome!) As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
In which Dr. Courtney Lewis shares her expertise and personal experience with the writing of the Indian Child Welfare Act. Dr. Lewis is Crandall Family Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology and the Inaugural Director of the Native American Studies Initiative at Duke University, as well as an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation.If you want to follow and boost more Native creators, Dr. Lewis recommends: Red House Project, IllumiNative, A Tribe Called Geek, Mocs and Comics, Indigenous Food Lab, NDN Girls Book Club, NDN Collective, and several more! As always, check out keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
In which we nerd out about how we chose which weirdass historical case studies to support our killjoy theories of religion.As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
Because--to borrow from Anne Lamott--one of the two best prayers we know is "thank you, thank you, thank you."____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
What does adoption have to do with religious freedom? Quite a bit, actually.Tune in to learn more about the ways religion--and especially, you guessed it, white Christian nationalism--shapes the adoption industry. CN/TW: This episode discusses adoption, foster care, child abuse, and child removal.As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
Because books is what we do, nerds! Tune in to hear us geek out about why we decided to pivot to v̶i̶d̶e̶o̶ text in our almost-here new title, Religion Is Not Done With You. As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
Welcome to the first of our four episode miniseries on religion and adoption, which actually turned out to have five episodes because, well, there were just too many horrors to be neatly contained in an outline. We're starting off with some basics on adoption, including how different religious traditions do (or do not) engage in the practice. Plus a very special, very dark return of Primary Sources!As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
Welcome to our first ever book club episode, nerds! This one has it all: misandry, murder, and...martial religions? Join us for a very wide-ranging chat about Lyndsay Faye's Jane Steele (and also our own research, because you know academics just can't help themselves). As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
Did you miss us? We missed you! Life, as y'all know, uh... finds a way. But we have beaten life back long enough to bring you this update on the pod and what we have scheduled for this, our SEVENTH season!!Look out for our first-ever book club (Jane Steele, by Lyndsay Faye), two miniseries (one on religion and adoption, one on how we wrote our forthcoming book, Religion Is Not Done With You), plus some one-off So Glad You Asked-style responses to listener questions about things like religion & tattoos AND a sneak peek into Megan's research on #CultsInc and the MOVE bombing. As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.It's all happening, nerds. Welcome back!____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
In which we are delighted to talk to the wonderful humans of Miami University Ohio about the ways calendars smuggle white christian supremacy into our everyday lives. Recorded 2 April 2024____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
In which we chat with our new bestie at the Amplify Podcast Network, Stacey Copeland, about podcasting, public scholarship, and why killing joy is the best way to have joy come back bigger, stronger, and more vibrant than ever. Be sure to check out all the other cool conversations Stacey is having with our fellow nerds for the audio blog series Amplified!____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
WHAT A PREDICAMENT this year has been, nerds! 2023 was in many ways, uh, not our fave.But we thought it would be good to end this chronological rollercoaster on a high note, so: You are cordially invited to join us for a cozy winter Gothic misandrist queer murder book club moment! We're reading Lyndsay Faye's delightfully dark Jane Steele, and we think you should, too. We'll be back at the end of January to chat about the novel. In the meantime, hit us up on social media with comments or questions so we can feature y'all on the pod! Pick up a copy at your local library or independent bookstore, as Levar Burton intended.And as always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.____Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
**THIS IS A RE-RELEASE, NERDS!!!***hat's right -- there's STILL more to know about the world's second largest religion! Dr. Debra Majeed lends us her insight into Islam, gender, and agency.As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more!
It is November, RELI nerds! And too many of you know what that means.That's right: the American Academy of Religion's annual national meeting is once again upon us, just in time for price-gouging airfare and pre-Thanksgiving travel mayhem. But it also means Megan and Ilyse are going to be at AAR together for the first time since 2019!!! And we're celebrating this momentous occasion by convening our first ever Keeping It 101 OFFICE HOURS.Last season's awesome interns made us awesome stickers and other awesome swag, and all of it is yours for the showing up and asking. Let's all gaze upon one another's weary, beautiful faces and be glad we're still here. We'll be on the patio of the Marriott San Antonio Rivercenter from 3-4pm CST on Saturday, 18 November. Come through!
**THIS IS A RE-RELEASE, NERDS!!!***Let's see what the World Religions Paradigm looks like when we talk curating religion with Dr. Andrew Aghapour.As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more!
**THIS IS A RE-RELEASE, NERDS!!!***In which we (mostly Megan) walk you through three things you maybe don't know about early Christianity:Christianity was kind of a mistakeThe New Testament is a messy bitchChristianity = imperialismKeywords: BCE/CE, gospels, apocrypha, canon, epistlesStorytime: Becket, Waiting for Godot As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more!
**THIS IS A RE-RELEASE, NERDS!!!***In which Ilyse yells about nationalism and religion and why religion and politics are never really separate, whilst Megan agrees emphatically and consumes a bubbly beverageKeywords: nationalism (especially religious nationalism); electionStorytime: we skipped it! it's summerHomework: Ramaswamy's The Goddess and the Nation; Baker's The Gospel According to the Klan; and a bunch of other stuff -- come on, you know how we are.Go to the show notes page at Keepingit101.com for our very, very long list of resources.
**THIS IS A RE-RELEASE, NERDS!!!***In which we build upon the work of Prof. Kimberlé Crenshaw to think about how race-, gender-, and sexuality-based oppressions overlap and inform how our understandings of religionKeywords: intersectionality, womanism, discrimination, oppressionStorytime: Audre Lorde, "An Open Letter to Mary Daly"As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more!
Did you miss us? We missed you! Tell us everything you did on your summer vacation, right after we tell you what we're up to this, our SIXTH season(??!?!).As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more!
After another year-long season, we wrap it up, talk about what's next, & offer some highlights and reflections. Probably swears, too.As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more!
More nerds than we can count asked why Ilyse is obsessed with calendars, so we distilled that into: are calendars neutral? They aren't. End of episode?
This season, KI101 has had help from three—3!—incredible interns, Juliana Finch (sound design), Evie Wolfe (accessibility) and Rachel Zieff (social media). They're on the mics this episode, talking public humanities, religion, and teamwork.
Strictly speaking, none of you asked about the Easter Bunny. A lot of you did, however, ask how Pagan rituals got appropriated into Christian mainstream holidays and, in turn, became global secular phenomenon. We unpack all of that (and Ilyse loses her composure epically) in this very special episode.
We've talked yoga before but since it keeps coming up—on the news, in our classrooms, with our friends—we're talking about it again. Folks are still INCORRECT when we talk about yoga, when we talk about appropriation, and when we talk about how yoga is and is not appropriated.
Nerds, you've asked what we are consuming and what we are teaching, and we've got answers.
Lots of people do not care about sports, including Megan. But Ilyse is here to tell Megan that not-caring about sports is INCORRECT, since sports gives us a window into thinking about religion.
So many nerds wanted to know if religion was inherently bad, or inherently good, or the cause of wars, or the cause of abuse, or the cause of violence, or the cure to violence, or the reason for any number of problems, atrocities, and hardships. We decided to blend those into one question-smoothie and talk about whether or not religion is dangerous.
In which we (mostly Ilyse) yell about how it is possible to be so very INCORRECT about women choosing to get dressed in the morning. As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.___Happy Gregorian new year, nerds. We recorded this episode before the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran's so-called modesty police. There are, of course, more resources in the shownotes, but we want to especially encourage you to check out the work of journalist Hoda Katebi, the Collective for Black Iranians, and the five-part series on modern Iranian history Profs. Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi and Golnar Nikpour did for the Dig Podcast.If you are not yourself Iranian, we also encourage you to NOT make this uprising about your shit. Please don't cut your split ends on social media and call it solidarity, especially if you're not calling on your own country to end its targeting and oppression of Muslims. Iranian activists are leading. It is our duty to listen and learn from them, support them in whatever way they are asking us to support them, and otherwise get the fuck out of their way.
We're SO GLAD YOU ASKED us why we study religion, why we do this podcast, why we care so much, and why we have alienated a good deal of our family, friends, and pets because we just can't stop won't stop talking religion. Visit keepingit101.com for more!
Is this an episode that will live in infamy? Perhaps, because in it, Ilyse rails against the notion that fandoms can't possibly be religious by talking Star Wars. May the force be with you, nerds, because the anger in this INCORRECT is so very real.
Megan & Ilyse have talked about chronic illness and disability in passing and in the gone-but-always-in-our-hearts Primary Sources segment, and we're here to answer a question about how disability works with religion (and how disability studies fits within religious studies). Find more at keepingit101.com!
In which we (mostly Ilyse) yell about how it is possible lo these many years after 9/11/01 to still be so darn INCORRECT about jihad. Head over to keepingit101.com for show notes, transcripts, and more!
It's spooky season, nerds, and we're so glad you asked us about supposedly secular monsters, scary stories, ghouls and goblins. Shocking no one, we tell you that monsters are rarely just secular specters, and things that go bump in the night are often tied to religious imperialism.
Nerds, nerds, nerds. This is a doozy of an episode, in which we (mostly Megan) tell us why saying “drinking the kool-aid” is so totally not a funny popculture joke about being brainwashed but is instead utterly about race, religion, gender, and anti-Blackness. Saying it after you know more? Deeply INCORRECT.
This is the first SO GLAD YOU ASKED episode. We got a LOT of requests for this one! So today we can't cite just one nerd, but we're here to answer the question: “Religion and food: what's THAT all about?”Shownotes, transcripts, and more at keepingit101.com.
In which pod inspiration, icon, and aspirational bestie Dr. Hannah McGregor (that's Associate Professor Dr. Hannah McGregor to you, nerds) chats with us about her just published meditations on care, community, and learning: A Sentimental Education As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more!
This is our first INCORRECT episode, where we kindly but firmly insist that religion does more and different work than you might think that it does. In this one, we challenge some basic assumptions about religion and reproductive justice. Expanded show notes, transcripts and more at keepingit101.com.
We're back, dear nerds! New season, new funding, new formats. And we've got some explaining—and kicking off—to do.
100k downloads? what is HAPPENING?!?!!!?You are, nerds, and we appreciate you so much. Thanks for listening.
In which we chat with the hosts of EnGender Conversations about podcasting, public scholarship, and why academic friendship is magic As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more!
We've been around the world and boy are our arms tired. What did we learn this year, nerds?As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more!
Let's see what the World Religions Paradigm looks like when we talk curating religion with Dr. Andrew Aghapour. As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more!
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