When you tune into a podcast, you probably don’t expect to hear the sack of Troy chanted in ancient Greek and accompanied by bass and guitar. But that’s “all in a day’s quirk,” says Paul Saint-Amour, Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Humanities, describing SideGig, his new project with Kevin Platt, Department Chair and Professor of Russian and East European Studies.
Debuting in August 2025, the podcast is exactly what its moniker implies: a side project. Each episode sees Saint-Amour and Platt interviewing guests who, at one point, sing a song or recite verse while the co-hosts accompany them on instruments. That premise gives Platt and Saint-Amour a chance to explore music, something they both love but don’t teach or study.
“This is a different kind of intellectual work, but it’s still intellectual work,” says Platt.
Recorded and edited at the Kelly Writers House with help from editors Zach Carduner, Magda Andrews-Hoke, and Makena Devereaux, SideGig hinges on the availability of its guests. For its inaugural episode—the one containing the Ancient Greek chanting—the co-hosts nabbed colleague Emily Wilson, College for Women Class of 1963 Term Professor in the Humanities. Other guests have been traveling through the Philadelphia area or were specifically invited by Platt and Saint-Amour. No matter how they wind up on an episode, they eventually partake in a musical trio.
We liked the idea that, in addition to having these lives as experts in a culture of expertise, we’d be tapping into things that people did on the side of that expert life.
“It’s really about the joy of amateur musicianship and doing something for the love of it,” says Saint-Amour. “That means being okay with the possibility of face-planting.”
‘A Leavening Agent’
As co-hosts, Saint-Amour and Platt bring different strengths. The former studied classical piano until he was 18, joined an a cappella group at Yale University, and played in a rock band during graduate school; the latter came to the podcast as a lifelong dabbler in guitar with some college glee club and a cappella experience.
“Paul is almost professional and can play any instrument,” says Platt, who has recently taken up bass. “My musical abilities are all kind of intuitive; my musical education was … a bit spotty.” But SideGig, he underscores, isn’t about being a virtuoso—it’s about friendship and a shared love of music. “SideGig is really intended to be a space for friendly conversation more so than anything hyper-technical,” Platt continues. “We want to tap into what people are interested in, while also keeping a focus on music.”
That approach starts with the duo, who have been fixtures in each other’s lives for years. Both attended Stanford University for graduate school, though they didn’t know one another at the time. Platt took a position at Pomona College, where Saint-Amour happened to follow three years later. As colleagues, they shared poetry and an interest in music, along with a deepening friendship.
“When we both started to have families, we hoped our kids would grow up together,” says Saint-Amour. “Then Kevin moved across the country to Penn, and I thought, ‘Oh, I’m not going to see him very much.’ But a few years on I was lucky enough to come here, too, and our kids did indeed grow up together.”
Those same kids contributed to SideGig’s origins. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Platt and Saint-Amour had begun toying with the idea of a podcast. “It was kind of natural that it would have music in it somehow,” says Platt. Their children, heavy users of YouTube, suggested a video format that would showcase Platt and Saint-Amour interviewing guests and then performing with them.
“We liked the idea that, in addition to having these lives as experts in a culture of expertise, we’d be tapping into things that people did on the side of that expert life,” says Saint-Amour. “‘Gig’ has other implications these days, but we were really thinking about musical lives and wanting to get into something playful and joyful.”
A more recent collaboration has been Kite, a pilot seminar for first-year students in the College of Arts & Sciences, which sees faculty teaching outside of their own disciplines. Both Platt and Saint-Amour say they’ve enjoyed that experience, calling it a means of “reconnecting to our own liberal arts educations” and moving beyond silos. It’s also been yet another opportunity for connection. “Friendship has been a leavening agent for me in both of those projects,” adds Saint-Amour, referencing both Kite and SideGig.
A ‘Seat-of-the-Pants’ Approach
SideGig is about having fun, but it also requires flexibility. When Platt and Saint-Amour first envisioned its format, the podcast’s co-hosts assumed each guest would sing a popular song they could easily accompany. They quickly learned that wouldn’t work for their first guest, Wilson of the Department of Classical Studies, who politely but firmly declined to sing.
Eventually, they settled on Wilson’s reciting from The Odyssey in both Homeric Greek and her own celebrated English translation. She chose a passage that invokes the infamous Trojan horse and the razing of an ancient, powerful city. “It seemed quite natural that we should use the Greek text,” says Wilson, adding that the piece she selected was meant to be delivered through chant accompanied by background instrumental music.
While creative, the setup proved tricky. “We had to invent backup music for Homeric recitation,” recalls Saint-Amour, laughing.
Abandoning the blueprint became a trend: SideGig’s second episode features New York University professor and poet Eugene Ostashevsky, who recited a poem referencing The Velvet Underground’s “Heroin”—a song Platt and Saint-Amour say was hard to synch to the poem. They encountered the same hurdle in the next episode with Charles Bernstein, Donald T. Regan Emeritus Professor, who read his poem “Shenandoah,” accompanied by—what else?—a strummed deconstruction of the folk song, “Shenandoah.”
“These were all pretty idiosyncratic takes on what we’d imagined we were getting into,” says Platt, adding that he and Saint-Amour “breathed a sigh of relief” when their fourth guest, Professor Jeanne-Marie Jackson of Johns Hopkins University, asked to sing a Whitney Houston power ballad.
Nonetheless, both enjoyed the twists in their first few interviews. And the experience can be as much fun for guests as for the co-hosts—Wilson called her cameo “a great joy” and a welcome chance to “collaborate with these two brilliant friends and colleagues.” Only a few SideGig episodes have been released so far, although Platt and Saint-Amour hope to eventually release two per semester. It’s up in the air who else might make an appearance; they have a few prospects in the pipeline.
Ultimately, Platt says, the podcast provides them a chance to hang out and do something they both love, all without taking themselves too seriously. They’re committed to the “seat-of-the-pants quality of it all,” adds Saint-Amour, whether that’s chanting in ancient Greek, delighting in Whitney Houston, or something else altogether.
