VandyVox VandyVox

Runner-up in the Undergraduate Category of the Excellence in Podcasting CompetitionThe industrial revolution defined the 1800s and the green revolution defined the 1900s. Some experts believe that the genetic revolution will be the defining feature of the 2000s. So what does that mean for us? In this episode, Maya Reddy explores the technical possibilities and ethical dilemmas of human bioenhancement.What was your process for structuring this episode? Did you plan out the entire episode first or did you just experiment with audio until you found something that you liked?“I tend to plan out the entire episode, at least the gist of it, before I start recording. Sometimes interviewees say things that are unexpected that change my plans, but for the most part, I have a direction before I go about gathering audio”How much research did you do and how did you decide what information to include?“I did a LOT of research. I typically do about 5-6 hours of research prior to conducting interviews and then more if needed after that. I had a difficult time deciding what information to include! I was submitting this piece to a competition that required it to be under 8 minutes, which made it difficult. I ended up cutting some stuff that wasn’t exactly relevant to the topic and will likely use it for another episode some other time.”How long did it take for you to produce this episode?“This episode took me a long time, especially because it had two large interviews and little voice notes at the beginning. I would say it took upwards of 20 hours total when you factor in interviews, research, audio work, etc.”What were you most proud of?“I was very proud of the voice notes at the beginning and the end. I thought that audio engineering was some of my best work so far.”What advice would you have for students that are interested in producing something similar?“I think you just have to take your time. It isn’t something that comes quickly, and it is obvious when people rush podcasts. Just pick a topic that interests you, and take your time! You’ll produce something wonderful.”

Created for the Exploring Disinformation in Media and Society Buchanan FellowshipIf you’ve ever used WhatsApp you’ve probably been added to a group chat with dozens of distant relatives and what seemed like a great way to reconnect with the family often becomes a tool to spread misinformation. In this episode, Sophia Yan and Shaun Karakkattu address this global phenomenon and what you can do about it.What was your process for structuring this episode? Did you plan out the entire episode first or did you just experiment with audio until you found something that you liked?“During the Buchanan Fellowship, the cohort had discussions about misinformation in different historical and cultural contexts, including the AIDs epidemic, Japanese incarceration camp during WWII, and anti-blackness media. At some point, the group brought up the fact that non-English-speaking immigrants in America tend to be more vulnerable to misinformation on social media due to the limited content monitoring and lack of credible news sources in their home language. I think that topic really clicked with me and Shaun due to our shared immigration and multicultural backgrounds. So we decided to produce this episode together on immigrants' experience of misinformation in the US.” - Sophia YanHow much research did you do and how did you decide what information to include?“Because of the knowledge we accumulated during the Buchanan Fellowship, we did not spend a lot of additional time researching for this episode beyond identifying personal anecdotes. We spent some time watching the Last Week Tonight with John Oliver episode on immigrants and misinformation in the recording studio together, and we ultimately decided to include our favorite clip in our episode.” - Sophia YanHow long did it take for you to produce this episode?“We took about a semester to develop our idea using the lessons we learned from the different weeks of the Buchanan fellowship, but once the idea was developed we filmed and produced the podcast in about two weeks. We spent the first-week planning and refining the script. Then, we proceeded to record the podcast at the Curb center which took about two days.” - Shaun KarakkattuWhat advice would you have for students that are interested in producing something similar?“For students who want to produce something similar, I would recommend finding an idea that they are passionate about or just something different they notice in their day-to-day lives. Sometimes the most interesting conversations are about how the little things people do that impact our system as a whole.” - Shaun Karakkattu

Created for CSET 2100: Scientific Communication Tools and TechniquesDid you know that whale feces are an important part of the marine iron cycle? No? Neither did we until we listened to this incredibly well-researched episode about exactly that by Karan Mirpuri. This piece is a great example of how you can use audio to explain a scientific concept!What was your process for structuring this episode? Did you plan out the entire episode first or did you just experiment with audio until you found something that you liked?“I created this podcast for CSET 2100: Scientific Communication Tools and Techniques with Prof. Stephen Ornes (highly recommend)! While we did not have a specific structure we had to follow, he required that we conduct three interviews with individuals related to the topic we were pursuing. For this reason, I conducted my interviews first, looked through the audio for anecdotes and comments that I liked, and created a narrative structure around these segments that felt cohesive and was able to cover the content I felt would be the most informative and engaging.”How much research did you do and how did you decide what information to include?“So I actually learned about this topic first while attending the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. I had the opportunity to spend a week in Glasgow through an honors seminar in the College Scholars Program about global responses to climate change through an interdisciplinary lens. During a lecture hosted by the WWF Chile, I became interested in the topic and brought it to my final project for CSET 2100. To further research the topic, I interviewed three specialists (two from the US and one from Germany) who were specifically interested in whale research. Beyond that, I read some research articles in the field and climate-oriented resources that were targeted towards the general public. In doing so, I tried to include specific stories and interesting findings from the researchers, while also including knowledge that I felt was important but missing from the more public-oriented resources. “How long did it take for you to produce this episode?“Each interview was about 20-30 minutes (sometimes a little longer), but it took me about a week to schedule interviews, review the articles, and then go into actually recording myself and editing the audio.”What advice would you have for students that are interested in producing something similar?“I would highly recommend going out of your comfort zone and tackling topics that you are genuinely interested in, even if you don't know much about them already. I genuinely knew nothing about this topic until I started this topic and I think when you approach hosting a podcast from a place of learning, it makes your content more relatable and easier to engage with. Also if you want to interview people, be persistent and open-minded! Sometimes people will not respond or say no, and that's okay, but you'd be surprised at how excited people get to talk about their passions as well, even if just to a curious undergrad.”

Co-Winner in the Graduate Category of the Excellence in Podcasting CompetitionAt the outset of the COVID pandemic, we all became acutely aware of the vulnerability of our own ability to breathe. In this episode of the Ministry of Arts podcast, Sebastian Spivey and their team produce a vivid story of a nurse’s relationship with the relentless rhythm of the breath. This is an episode you don’t want to miss.What was your process for structuring this episode?  “All of our episodes followed a format of host intro → produced story/interview → host outro. We chose this because of its familiarity to most audiences. The structure of the stories themselves was organic in response to what developed from the interview.”Did you plan out the entire episode first or did you just experiment with audio until you found something that you liked? “Our production team kicked around ideas for stories based on the theme of 'breathe'. There are two segments in this episode, the first of which I produced from start to finish. I knew what I wanted to be able to get at in the interview, but I wasn't sure what my interviewee's actual experience as a COVID nurse was or how she felt about it, so the sound design was decided on after editing for content. The second segment (the person with asthma) was scripted by that person, so I can't speak to their creative decisions in terms of structure. I did the sound design for it though and I was just trying to convey the experience a little bit more viscerally without being too literal about it.”Which did you conceptualize first: the stories you were telling or the audio you wanted to use? The stories.How long did it take for you to produce this episode? “Oof, this is really reaching into my memory archive of a very hectic time. I'd say ten hours?”What advice would you have for students that are interested in producing something with a similar complexity in sound design? “Experiment. Listen to people who are making the kind of work you want to make -- the podcast field is saturated with lots of trite design and canned scripting, but there is still excellent work out there. I recommend Love + Radio and most of the stuff coming out of Radiotopia and Mermaid Palace. Gimlet's scripted shows are also usually well done in terms of design. I have a pantheon of producers that live in my head and when I am making work I imagine that they are part of my audience even when they aren't. Very practical resources: Free Music Archive has lots of CC0 (and other CC) music. Freedsound.org has tons of high quality rando sounds (also CC, and you can filter by license). You can also filter YouTube vids for their license and extract the audio. Transom and AIR Media are good resources. Start with low stakes stuff and set challenges for yourself -- record your friends rambling about whatever and then edit it into something with a lot of layers. Use good headphones.”Is there anything else we should know about your episode? “It's so peculiar to reflect on the circumstances of production. It was late 2020, pre-vaccine, and we were all trying to process this reality that the things that had heretofore brought life and thriving -- the act of breathing in, the presence of people we loved  -- were now the things that were capable of bringing anxiety, sickness, death. And yet we still craved them. This episode was an attempt to get at that reality and also to create the connection and the space for deep restful breathe which we so deeply desired.”

Runner Up in the Undergraduate Category of the 2022 Excellence in Podcasting CompetitionMiami, Florida is at the epicenter of many discussions about rising sea levels caused by climate change, but we rarely get to hear from the individuals displaced by it. In this short episode, Emily Irigoyen paints a vivid picture of a city inundated by floods and the state’s continued denial of the grim reality faced by thousands of citizens.“Using very short pull quotes is very much a thing that could work well in print but in podcasting, which privileges the human voice, it doesn’t work quite as well.” - Jad Abumrad on the limitations of using short interview clips in podcasting“One of the big debates you have in a story meeting is, ‘is this a topic or a story?’ and this particular piece is very much a topic [that] has story-shaped elements…There’s an opportunity here to go a little bit deeper into any one of the chapter-lets to let me see and feel and hear and taste and smell the experiences being described rather than to keep hopping around.”- Jad Abumrad on how to turn a topic into a storyVandyVox was created by Derek Bruff and is managed by Jad Abumrad. The fifth season is hosted by Abhinav Krishnan and produced in collaboration with Vanderbilt Student Communications and the Center for Excellence in Teaching.

Winner in the Undergraduate Category of the 2022 Excellence in Podcasting CompetitionOver the last few years, the fossil fuel divestment movement has taken the country by storm, and at Vanderbilt activists made their big debut by interrupting Chancellor Diermeier’s speech at Founders Walk in 2021. In this episode Abhinav (and a special guest) listen to College Voices’ reporting about this movement and discuss how students can create similar audio stories.“The music knows something. I think it’s always interesting to ask, what does the music know that the listener doesn’t know yet? ‘Cause the music is the thing that can exist outside of the time of the story. It knows the past, it knows the present, it knows the future…I would say use it thoughtfully, use it as a knowing entity, use it as a punctuational entity.” - Jad Abumrad about using music in podcastsHow long did it take for you to produce this episode?“This episode took dozens of hours of research, interviews, scripting, and production to complete. A lot of this work, however, also laid the groundwork for the second and third part of this divestment series”What was your thought process behind the audio design for this episode?“The biggest priority in creating this piece was to report accurately and ethically the scope and challenges of this movement. This topic, though, is not one that may naturally interest students, so we decided to create an introduction that tries to catch the audience’s attention. Listen closely and you’ll hear that we’ve used a lot of sound directly from the protests we attended!”What advice would you have for students that are interested in producing something similar?“A lot of podcasts just clip voiceovers together with some interview audio and music - this might serve your purpose but you can be a lot more creative with this medium! Try layering multiple clips over one another to create interesting effects that truly immerse the listener in your story.Also, podcasting doesn’t need a fancy microphone or advanced editing software - you can and should get started with your phone, a headset, and Garageband! That’s still how I make my episodes!”VandyVox was created by Derek Bruff and is managed by Jad Abumrad. The fifth season is hosted by Abhinav Krishnan and produced in collaboration with Vanderbilt Student Communications and the Center for Excellence in Teaching.