Considering the dearth of interaction possible in the last three years, it is impossible to ignore the paucity of quality connections between academics. Our podcast project attempted to fill this gap in two ways: a) by using our academically-oriented podcast series to contact and interview leading academics in their disciple; b) by directly addressing the contents of previous interviews to ask for the experts’ reactions. We uncovered a ‘narrative’ in our work, encouraging other experts to join our discourse. We will present this narrative from experts in the field of English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) and how the differences in opinion led to fruitful and engaging discussions that would have been impossible without our efforts during the time of COVID lockdowns. We will demonstrate the opportunities for qualitative analysis of long-form academic interviews to bring state-of-the-art academic conversations to a broad audience.