Students around campus developed their own podcasts which reflect the variety of interests that exist at the University.
Jillian Crain, a sophomore social and behavioral sciences major, has created her own podcast titled “Jillian’s Rant Box” and posts episodes every Tuesday and Saturday at 1 p.m. on Spotify.
“I have this tendency to talk for a long period of time,” Crain said. “I would rant for a long time until the conversation has passed on, and since I am into Greek mythology, I thought about Pandora’s Box and realized I could put podcast episodes into a rant box, but online.”
Crain’s podcast has a lot of focus on her own self interests. Her episode topics range from things such as love and relationships, fitness and music. Crain also speaks on more serious topics like the COVID-19 pandemic, systemic racism, feminism and gender.
Crain said that podcasts are easy to create, even for people who, like Crain herself, are not technology savvy. Crain said she started her podcast journey with only a microphone and informational YouTube videos.
“I asked one of my friends where to upload it, and he had told me about Anchor, so that’s where I uploaded the episodes and from there they uploaded them to Spotify,” Crain said.
Crain said the best part about having her own podcast is hearing other people's opinions about the topics she is passionate about, because she finds what she has to say about those topics unique.
Another podcast hosted by Seton Hall students is “Almost Friday Sports” which is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify and releases new episodes every Thursday.
The podcast is hosted by Christian “Chico” Dias, a sophomore diplomacy and philosophy major, and Michael “Mike” Stamm, a sophomore sports management major.
“When deciding on when to post our podcast, we decided to post on Thursdays,” Stamm said. “People on Thursdays are always like, ‘Ah, it’s almost Friday! Can’t wait!’ and so we turned that phrase into a podcast name.”
For Dias and Stamm’s podcast, their central focus is inviting guests to discuss their own sports opinions as well as current events dealing with that particular team.
For their first podcast episode, they invited Glenn Dietrich, residence coordinator, to talk about his favorite sports teams.
“He’s a big Minnesota Vikings fan, so we talked a lot about the Vikings,” Stamm said. “He also played some college baseball, so we were able to talk and learn a lot about that.”
“He was really easy to talk to, which helped us overall set the layout for what we could do better for future podcast episodes,” Dias said.
Dias said their podcast is different from others because they choose to shift focus on the guests.
“Ours is unique because of how we involve our guests,” Stamm said. “We don’t just spew what we want, we tell our guests to tell the audience whatever they want, and if we think they’re speaking nonsense, we will call them out.”
Dias said maintaining a podcast can be difficult, but he enjoys creating episodes for the listeners. He said his favorite part of the podcast is making people laugh.
“There are little jokes that we’ll both make at each other and that makes it fun for us and the listeners,” Dias said. “Our biggest problem is honestly having too much to say for our 45 minute time slot.”
For future podcasts, Dias and Stamm said they hope to be featured by minor league baseball players. Stamm said if the passion that goes into their episodes remains, they can reach their desired success.
“Passion is definitely our key element in making the podcast,” Stamm said. “I only want to ever do the podcast if I am 100% committed to it.”
Jessica Lameiras can be reached at jessica.lameiras@student.shu.edu
