Right now, Mentrimentres is a weekly podcast of interviews related to the publishing and literary world. We try not to let the latest publishing news dictate our content and to remain open to outside proposals, so our audience can collaborate in some way. Our content is not limited to talking about publishers; we really like to focus on the classics.

Mentrimentres is a product of the pandemic. There was a group of humanities students who had just been ordered to isolate at home and who needed an outlet for a lot of emotions. There was the distress caused by the situation itself, but also the need to share something, although we didn’t know exactly what. We ‘met up’ and decided to create this podcast for fun. Little by little it grew and went through a whole series of processes, until ending up with its current interview format.

Today, the rationale for the podcast has changed a lot. At first, it was just a group of humanities students getting together to talk about the content we enjoyed; we had no other aspirations. Today, though, we also want to address content that we see has not been dealt with well or that very few people are covering.

For example, no one was talking about Pasolini, so we decided to do an episode on him as a writer. We have also interviewed translators, authors and other little-known creators, in which they tell us what has and has not been dealt with about their work. I think that, because we take our time and go about things calmly, in the interviews, we engage in a dialectical battle over different topics and perspectives that are not generally taken into account. I’m thinking now about the episode we did on Adrià Pujol, the translator behind Les allaus de Sils Maria: geologia de Friedrich Nietzsche, the Catalan translation of Michel Onfray’s Les avalanches de Sils-Maria: Géologie de Frédéric Nietzsche. At one point, we were talking about video games, which is not a common prism through which to discuss that book. This is interesting, because, as Adrià Pujol said, critics have always read the work from very specific generational, experiential and social class perspectives, which has resulted in a biased reading of it.

 critics have always read the work from very specific generational, experiential and social class perspectives, which has resulted in a biased reading of it.

It was late 2020, and we were about to start the fourth year of the humanities programme. We realized that the project, as we understood it at the time, was pointless. We started mulling it over, and we moved into a more competitive sort of ‘marketplace’, i.e. that of platforms, interviews, booktubers and, above all, social media. So we went from targeting an audience closely linked to our degree programme to starting to broaden our perspective and move into the literary world, especially in Catalan.

That opened a lot of doors for us, in particular, with the contacts from the publishing world, where we were very well received. They were quick to propose very specific programmes, such as an episode linking certain authors and translators to new publications. That’s when the podcast took on an interview format, where we try to get at the driving force behind the works. In other words, our discussions are based on the concept or idea the author has pursued throughout their career, rather than focusing only on a name or single publication.

At first, our audience was generally connected in some way with the bachelor’s programme in Humanities. Two years on, it has diversified. But we have always had a young audience. That can be hard for us to admit sometimes, because we think the whole idea of who ‘young people’ are, where to find them and what mechanisms to use to attract them has been over-hyped. What type of audience do we have? Statistics, audience numbers and age brackets aside, at the end of the day, the people who listen to our programmes have close ties to the publishing world. This means we know their names and surnames, but also that they listen to our podcasts with a critical and educated ear. 

At Mentrimentres, we want to draw attention to issues that are not covered much or where the existing perspective is not the one we would like to give. In a way, our goal is to build a country, in the sense of identifying, from a humanistic perspective, what our organizing concepts should be as a Catalan culture. In that sense, we seek to understand the possible stories or narratives of Catalan culture and, also, to build them as a society.

I am increasingly convinced of the fundamental need to study humanities or related degrees. It gives you the insight you need to approach certain subjects, concepts or ideas from a highly cross-disciplinary perspective. We can debate whether or not the degree is practical later, but, in my view, this theoretical aspect is essential, because it awakens you, it opens your eyes and allows you to discover paths that would otherwise have been impossible. If nothing else, I think the Humanities programme taught us how to look and to know where to do so. 

I am increasingly convinced of the fundamental need to study humanities or related degrees. It gives you the insight you need to approach certain subjects, concepts or ideas from a highly cross-disciplinary perspective

I think it’s interesting to talk about concepts that may seem far removed from today’s society but are actually quite present. Ultimately, literature, philosophy and art always deal with eternal and timeless subjects. They are rich and awaken us to new horizons that we would otherwise be unable to discover. They afford us access to universal subjects from a different sensibility, which, as part of humanity, as human beings linked to the historical context and the other alterities that surround us, is fundamental.

Coming from an episode on Pasolini, I love this question. It is both highly apropos and highly problematic because everyone sees it in a very different way. In this case, the media have been seized by a much-theorized inertia, namely, that of the 2008 crisis, which means that not much has been done since then. In university terms, the crisis of 2008 is the Bologna Plan. In terms of publishing, it is the major crisis affecting how publishing is done and the emergence of so-called independent publishers. And in terms of literary dissemination, it is the utter precariousness, coupled with the emergence of new platforms, none of which have any money at all. What we once thought of as secure was not. Just look at our colleagues at Betevé, who were kicked to the curb by the board of trustees overnight. So, no, nothing is safe. There is no guarantee at all. But obviously, there is still a desire to explain and create this country, if you want to call it that, this city in forums for artistic expression, so it seems like there will always be space for resistance. Needless to say, I would like to think that this space aims to be combative, but it would be misguided, to a certain extent, to assume that all sorts of battles are being fought there.

I have a long-standing debate with people who argue that after seeing certain plays they should go out and burn containers. I’m talking about plays, but it could just as well be a podcast, literature or anything else. If we want to make theatre that burns containers, then we should value it as such. Regardless, I think that a whole work of art that links us individually to the collective, and is thus provocative at the individual level, and, if it is going to change us, does so based on ideological and personal convictions, will always be far richer. I prefer the latter to everyone suddenly getting all whipped up after a show and setting out to save who knows what. That said, you obviously have to be very careful these days, which, as everyone knows, are not easy but rather quite hard.

 If we want to make theatre that burns containers, then we should value it as such.

There are many types of politics. One very obvious one is what is done in Parliament or at economic, political, etc., institutions. But I think Mentrimentres and experiences similar to this podcast are also part of a militancy. A cultural militancy, if you want to call it that, or an aesthetic or ethical one... From there, we have to see how we face the future and how we understand each other.

If it’s democratizing, then it is homogenizing. So, going back to Pasolini, he would argue that television has already done that, has created national models for us and imposed international ones on us. Homogenizing and creating a space where we all agree, where we vote and all that, is not and never has been anyone’s cultural or artistic vocation. At best, it has been the mass media’s, and we have never wanted to do that. In any case, we have gotten interested in the wheel that turns in a more individual sense, in the sense of individual resistance. That means advocating for variety and diversification, so to speak. And, in the end, there is a lot of ground to cover. It means fighting for Víctor Català and his language, not as something sterile and dead, but as something new and powerful. It also means giving a microphone to people who are doing things today, on a platform that will increase their visibility but, at the same time, will not homogenize or, sometimes, dismantle the meaning of their projects. I think that is a contradiction in itself; at the same time, though, it is a desire that drives us and will continue to do so in the future.

We have gotten interested in the wheel that turns in a more individual sense, in the sense of individual resistance (...). It means fighting for Víctor Català and his language, not as something sterile and dead, but as something new and powerful.

I’m not sure our goal has ever been to bring culture closer to young people. We started out creating content that, because of our affinities or milieu, initially drew a young audience that has since become established. So our support and listener network is very young, but that was not intentional. If we start looking at why we have ended up with this younger audience, maybe it’s because we have tried to talk about content that had previously remained in the shadows or that, to date, had been concentrated in or exclusively explained from a perspective that we were already tired of, not because it was necessarily outdated, but because there are other ways of talking about it. Maybe this other way of telling the stories is an incentive for young or nascent audiences to approach us out of curiosity or for very basic reasons.

I think social networks like Twitter or Instagram (the two we have used apart from Spotify) have helped us create the ‘non-alternative’ method. Sure, traditional media have begun to incorporate social media; but it was also our way of building our listener audience. So I think it has been key, that is, without social media, it would have been very difficult for us to get our project off the ground and get someone to listen to us. Beyond that, it is important to understand how you present it to the public. Our social media are the brand that, as Bernat and Berta, we have sought to convey and support.

If it weren’t in crisis, I don’t know what we would be doing. But that’s a job for anthropologists. Yes, there is a constant sense of threat, of being under siege; but there is also a sense that, if culture isn’t subsidized, what are you going to do? There is an obvious ethical dimension and debate here: if you don’t do it, they will. In other words, everything that you cannot create – even outside of the context of ‘independent’ spaces, i.e. ones that are eligible for subsidies – will be done by the major players. They are the ones with the resources. And that means they will be the ones to create the discourse, the narrative, everything.

I think this is, in some ways, the game that universities have been playing in recent years. To what extent do universities really want to create a country, a language, etc.? Does UPF have something to say on the subject or does it simply want higher enrolment rates? This is a major debate. We were talking about the 2008 crisis before. That’s what the Bologna Plan is: what do we come to do at university? What do we come to do in the classroom? A Kahoot, a virtual exhibition? We have degrees, but sometimes we don’t have the jobs these degrees prepared us for. Or, on the contrary, we have jobs that have become completely obsolete, because universities have chosen not to respond to these changes. I am thinking, especially, about philological work, which has become completely isolated. If you want to be a Catalan or Greek philologist today, you have fewer and fewer options... And let’s not even talk about the role of translation, especially literary translation, unlike technical translation, for which there has always been a huge niche, and which universities have promoted. Some shifts are dictated by the markets. But the university has to be able to protect itself in this regard; otherwise, what are we going to do, be just another company? In the long run, it will generate its own contradictions and problems.

To what extent do universities really want to create a country, a language, etc.? Does UPF have something to say on the subject or does it simply want higher enrolment rates? That’s what the Bologna Plan is: what do we come to do at university? What do we come to do in the classroom?