Senior Fellow at Elizabethtown College’s Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies Dr. Donald Kraybill put out a new book called “What the Amish Teach Us” on Wednesday, Oct. 26.

But before it hit shelves, Kraybill’s contact at his publisher Johns Hopkins University Press came to him with an idea.

“The editorial director at Johns Hopkins University Press said in January or February of [2021], ‘Don, you ought to do a podcast and just read each chapter in here,’” Kraybill said. “And his publicist said, ‘No, no, no. Why would anybody buy the book if you’re going to read the whole thing?’”

So, Kraybill decided to record his thoughts on just four of the 22 topics in his book in a tie-in podcast called “What I Learned from the Amish.” He had plenty of thoughts but needed some help on the technical aspects of podcasting. He found it in Etown history and political science major Eric Schubert. Kraybill calls him his “podcasting producer guru.”

“I want to underscore Eric Schubert’s contribution,” Kraybill said. “To be honest, I don’t know anything about this smart stuff. My granddaughter said, ‘Wow Grandpa, you’re on Spotify. That’s really cool.’ I don’t know what Spotify is but there I am.”

Schubert began working as an assistant in the Young Center at the beginning of his sophomore year. His main project has been to write a tour through a Center exhibit. During this project, he interviewed Young Center scholars including Kraybill. This, in part, led to their collaboration.

Schubert had some experience with podcasts but said he learned a lot from working on “What I Learned from the Amish.”

“I have produced podcasts in the past but definitely not as intensive as this,” said Schubert. “I relied on my previous experience and then I learned something new—which is always fun.”

That theme of learning drives both Schubert and Kraybill.

“It was really interesting to think I knew about a topic, then realize I understood one percent of it. It was great to learn the other 99 percent,” Schubert said of his time at the Young Center.

“Dr. Kraybill always said he learned a lot from how I was running the podcast, but I always told him I learned so much from just sitting there dead silent in the recording studio, listening to what he had to say,” Schubert said.

Part of what drew Kraybill to studying the Amish was a desire to understand the apparent inconsistencies regarding their use of technology.

“For instance, they wouldn’t let their members own a car or drive a car, but they can hire a ride,” Kraybill said. “I say in the book that they out-Uber-ed Uber by a hundred years.”

Or another one—why was Kraybill’s Amish friend Ben allowed to make a guest appearance in the podcast, but wouldn’t have been able to if it had been recorded on video?

These kinds of eccentricities led to Kraybill’s first book in 1989 called “The Riddle of Amish Culture.”

“I tried to explain those [riddles] and showed why they weren’t stupid or foolish or hypocritical but made a lot of sense inside the Amish community,” Kraybill said.

Kraybill spent decades continuing this search for knowledge and understanding and his new book “What the Amish Teach Us” lays down some of the insights Amish culture has given him into such diverse topics as community, parenting, death and (presumably metaphorical) hacking.

As of Friday, Oct. 15, just the first two episodes of “What I Learned from the Amish” had already been downloaded 412 times in 207 cities and towns.

In fact, the podcast has been such a success that Kraybill and Schubert are adding an additional five episodes to be released in November 2021.

“The response has been overwhelming,” Schubert said. “The Johns Hopkins editorial director loved the podcast, which was such a compliment coming from Johns Hopkins.”

Kraybill’s podcast can be listened to at amishteach.buzzsprout.com and other podcast sites, and the book on which it’s based can be purchased through Amazon.