Scholē IRL is a podcast that traces the stories of para-academic organizations creating space for people to gather and think together beyond conventional universities. These are spaces for reimagining scholē or the “leisurely,” slow work of study or thinking amid the ongoing collapse of university ecosystems strained by neoliberal policies and capitalistic productivity imperatives, not to mention funding system cuts, declining enrollment, job scarcity, and mounting student debt.

What remains for the possibility of thinking itself under such constraints?!

Through conversations with para-academic thinkers, educators, and activists who have long been or are newly building spaces of learning and reflection outside formal institutions, the podcast uncovers new forms of unlearning, knowledge-making, and communal study.

At its heart, Scholē IRL is a reflection on how thought survives precarity, and on how scholē may yet be renewed.