The Podvocate is the school’s new podcast – the brainchild of two students, Keira Hadlich ’23 and Scarlett Peterson ’23, with an encouraging hand from The Advocate’s faculty advisor, Danny Packer. The seniors, who have recorded four episodes so far, developed the idea together after Keira did some podcasting in English class her junior year.
The goal of their podcast is to provide community-building topics and to connect people by producing fun and relevant mid-length episodes – from 10 to 20 minutes long – on topics that are important to the community. In their first episode, “Questions at the Club Fair,” they used a man-on-the-street type of approach, asking several students a variety of questions, especially regarding the new path. For their second episode, “College Part I,” they interviewed Academy college guidance advisers, who provide advice about the college process and share some tips from their own college application experiences.
Keira and Scarlett have learned a lot about producing a podcast since their first recording in Spring 2022 when they interviewed history teachers about the war in Ukraine. The students said they were really happy with the end result but had technical difficulties pulling it off the platform. This prompted them to switch to an easy-to-use, free alternative. With the production issues resolved, they are now focusing on developing topics that interest the community. They have produced a survey to collect suggestions of topics for future podcasts.
They hope they have started a trend and that other students interested in producing their own podcast will follow. For now, their podcast is synonymous with The Podvocate, but down the road, as more podcasts are produced, theirs may become one of many under The Podvocate umbrella.
Listen here for their latest episode, “Wanna Play College Sports?” with Shaun Gehres.
