Why you should start a podcast
I get it. No one wants to be that annoying friend who promotes their podcast on Instagram. But maybe that annoying friend is onto something. A few friends of mine started a podcast awhile back. I confess that I didn’t listen to it. Story after story, conversational reference after conversational reference—I didn’t care. I don’t know what it was that compelled me to finally click on it. Quarantine boredom, maybe, or possibly the desire to support my friends’ misguided passions. To my surprise I found myself loving it. It felt like I was just spending time with the homies. And I couldn’t help but wonder. Are all our conversations just potential podcast episodes? Should we, in this age of late-stage capitalism, be trying to profit off this? Answer: probably, yes. Why not? You and your friends are hilarious and adorable. Everyone would be lucky to hear your conversations. And what’s more COM than getting involved in the latest trend of information exchange? My roommate and I had this thought in the fall of 2019 when we decided we
1) were bored and
2) needed something a little eyebrow-raising to add to our resume.
We looked into WTBU’s podcast situation and applied with our concept: we planned to do weekly wellness challenges—drink 8 glasses of water, walk 10,000 steps a day, meditate regularly—and discuss them together on the airwaves. We decided to call it Just Another Manic Monday, after the Bangles song, and aimed to release episodes on Mondays. While it’s been a bit of a mess of pauses and sometimes poor audio editing as we figure out Adobe (BU gives its students subscriptions for free!), we’ve put together a fun show that my boss, her high school history teacher, and our parents listen to. We didn’t think anyone listened. Anchor showed us that we had a couple of random listens in Kazakhstan and Bolivia, but we knew those were spam of some kind. But then we got a message on our very sparse Instagram. It was from a random account with a hundred or so followers. It was a Canadian girl telling us that throughout Ontario’s intensive lockdown, our podcast made her feel like she was hanging out with the gals. All of a sudden, it felt like something bigger than just a cute weekend activity. We’ve been riding that high ever since. One piece of advice, before you start: Pick a concept. Don’t just do the “we talk for an hour and hope someone listens” shtick. As adorable as you are, you’ll want something to guide the conversation. Now get going! We’re ready to hang with the gals.
