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.

Co-winner in the Graduate Category of the 2022 Excellence in Podcasting CompetitionIn an increasingly digital world, where Zoom meetings are now commonplace, the importance of transcripts–as a written record of audio and for accessibility–cannot be understated. In this episode, Steven Rodriguez, along with his cohosts discusses how transcripts have shaped the humanities and what can often be lost in the process.“Overall with academic-type of communication, I feel like the key is always to anecdotalize; to talk about moments, to talk about cases, to tell stories that you can then build your academic ideas around” - Jad AbumradThis episode features half of the full episode produced by Steven. To listen to the full episode, click here.What was your process for structuring this episode?“The episode came together over the course of a week as part of the National Humanities Center's “Podcasting the Humanities Workshop.” My co-producers and I brainstormed episode topics together and quickly decided that transcription would be a fruitful topic to explore.”What was it like to collaborate with other producers on this episode?“It was really rewarding to work with scholars from so many different fields. I felt that I was able to benefit from the different disciplinary perspectives.”How long did it take for you to produce this episode?“One week.”What advice would you have for graduate students that are interested in producing something similar?“Make sure you spend enough time on audio. Obviously, the content needs to be really high quality, but you can risk turning off listeners if you don't give enough attention to making something that sounds professional, or close to it.”Read more about Steven's work here:Podcasting the Humanitieshttps://as.vanderbilt.edu/robert-penn-warren-center/2022/03/21/podcasting-the-humanities/

Created for CSET 2100: Science Communication Tools and TechniquesHave you ever looked up at the night sky and wondered if there is another life in the universe? Lukas Berglund has and in his episode on the Fermi Paradox, he takes the audience on an engaging audio journey that tactfully discusses the existence of extraterrestrial life. He weaves a UN speech, audio from the Voyager probes, and electronic music to set the mood and immerse the audience in a succinct story.Here's what Jad Abumrad has to say about the Fermi Paradox and other podcasts about abstract academic concepts:“Overall with academic-type communications, I feel like the key is always to anecdotal; to talk about moments, to talk about cases, to tell stories that you can build your academic ideas around”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 started with the plan to make an episode about the Fermi Paradox. I was thinking about a hook and I remembered this disk that Carl Sagan sent out to space at some point so I took a look at that. It starts with this recording from the UN representative that I put at the start of my podcast. It really blew me away the first time I listened to it. It had this old-school, peace-and-love, the-world-is-holding-hands energy that I found to be an illuminating look into the way people thought back then. Once I knew how to start it I structured the rest of the podcast around best explaining the Fermi Paradox. I was particularly interested in proposed solutions to the Fermi Paradox so I read through a lot of them on the Wikipedia page. I also think the great filter is a pretty important idea so I decided to include that too. In the end, I think I packed a lot of stuff into the episode, maybe a bit too much, which made it feel kind of hectic, but it is what it is.”How long did it take for you to produce this episode?“I'm guessing I put about 7 hours of work into this episode including edits I made after the first draft.”Could you explain your thought process behind designing the door knocking and "hello" in different languages?“To be honest, this is the weirdest part of the episode. These recordings are also part of the voyager record that I featured in the beginning of the episode, so I thought it would be a nice touch to include them in that part of the episode. But that part ended up sounding kind of awkward and obviously people didn't know that it's from the voyager record, so that fun detail is lost on the listener. It also didn't help that the recordings were pretty low-quality.”What advice would you have for students that are interested in producing something similar?“I have a couple of miscellaneous pieces of advice: Think about what you are trying to explain and try to do it in the most natural way possible. Also, when you are writing the script, say it out loud to see what does and doesn't sound natural. The number one thing here is that the things that read nicely do not always sound nice. Don't be afraid to experiment. The best way to tell if something works is by making it and listening to how it sounds. Producing a podcast is usually a loop of making a change, listening to it, readjusting, listening again, etc until I find something that sounds nice. Steal stuff from people you admire. Especially at the start, I think you can learn a lot by just taking things that you like from other podcasts and trying to do the same.”

A special message from VandyVox's founder, Derek Bruff about the future of VandyVox!

In this shocking audio, Rishabh Gharekhan debunks the myths and reinforces the facts surrounding Edward Snowden's data leak, then draws the fine line the United States government walks between privacy and protection with the National Security Agency's Planning tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization, and Management, otherwise known as PRISM.  In his undergraduate runner-up audio, follow Rishabh's chronological tale from the view of a modern bipartisan lens and uncover the secrets stored in your data. Turn off your other devices and focus in on Rishabh Gharekhan's “PRISM: NSA's Information Net.”

Our featured audio this episode is titled Cancer Epidemiology, created by graduate student Pranoti Pradhan. This audio is a subset of a larger production called Going Viral, Basics of Epidemiology, produced by Saimrunali Dadigala. Discover how the field of cancer epidemiology sprung to life with three notable observations as Pranoti takes us back to ancient Egypt, walks us through history, and directs our gaze towards the future. Side effects of listening to this audio may include blasts from the past, increased knowledge, and desires to learn more. Here's a dose of Cancer Epidemiology by Pranoti Pradhan.

Clones, mutations, genetic modifications, and diseases eliminations… while those may sound magically fantastical, the secrets of all those topics and more are revealed in Olivia Pembridge's undergraduate runner-up audio “Gene Drives.”   Olivia will captivate you as she paints interconnected visuals that ease the listener into complex scientific topics and uses supplementary audio to drive home her main points. She debunks ethical concerns by interviewing experts in the field, namely Kathy Freedman, a Vanderbilt University geneticist, Thomas Clemens, a Vanderbilt University crisper researcher, and Leah Buckman, a Texas A&M entomology PhD Candidate who answers the question, “How bad is the bad?” 

Sometimes small voices make the biggest impact. In VandyVox Season 4, Episode 4, doctoral student Marta Eugenia Zavaleta Lemus demonstrates the anthropologic importance of children's voices in the face to loss, fear, and hardship related to human mobilities. Discover how two influential books shaped her childhood experience growing up in El Salvador, launching her into an academic career as a cultural anthropologist. Envision yourself sitting down crisscross applesauce, story time has arrived. This is “My Humanities Moment: Children's experiences and voices in social research and literature” by Marta Eugenia Zavaleta Lemus. 

This featured audio was produced by Abhinav Krishnan, an undergraduate runner-up for the “Excellence in Podcasting” award and it's a part of a larger podcast titled “College Voices” in collaboration with the Vanderbilt Hustler. Tune your ears to Abhinav's use of background music and pay attention to how his on-campus interviews reveal the disconnect between intention and impact. Before I burn you out, please anchor down for “Anchor Down, Burn Out,” by Abhinav Krishnan.

When the line between science and fiction becomes blurred, Natalie Wallace and Nicole Kendrick, graduate students in biological science and biochemistry, respectively, are here to sort through the haze.  Their research-based segment, “How Real is Silicon-based Life?” tackles tv show “The X-files,” to filter out the falsehoods and test the truths behind a silicon-based parasitic fungus and volcano traversing robots. The featured audio is a component of their broader podcast, “How Real is that Science?,” where, in an effort to improve science communication and watch movies, the dynamic duo dives deep to debunk more popular science-fiction. Fasten your thinking cap and prepare to get spooked listening to “How Real is Silicon-based Life?” by Natalie Wallace and Nicole Kendrick.

Emma Fagan is bringing the conversation back to science in her research-based,prize-winning audio “Noise Pollution, COVID-19, and Your Health.” Taking home 1st place in the “Excellence in Podcasting” undergraduate audio category, her sounds are anything but noise. Listen for how Emma dexterously links industrialized noise pollution, a silver lining to COVID-19, and how noise pollution affects your mood, sleep, and health. This is Emma Fagan's “Noise Pollution, COVID-19, and Your Health.”

Season 4 of VandyVox is coming to connect you with the winners of Vanderbilt's inaugural Excellence in Podcasting competition, sponsored by the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities in collaboration with the Center for Teaching and the Office of Immersion Resources.Prize winners include undergraduate, graduate, and professional students who use audio storytelling to communicate ideas, share perspectives, make arguments, and persuade otherswith exemplary care.  

In this episode VandyVox is featuring audio from a podcast titled “Black Tea”, that is produced by two Vanderbilt undergraduate students, JoHannah Valentin and Shay Milner, in collaboration with Vanderbilt Student Communications. In their episode, “Women, Religion, and Enslavement”, the women interview Vanderbilt Professor Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh from the Department of Religious Studies. While this podcast was not produced in response to a direct classroom assignment, JoHannah and Shay frequently introduce and expand on knowledge they cultivated from Professor Wells-Oghoghomeh’s course teachings. Shay and JoHannah produced this podcast because they wanted to address the discrepancy they saw between the campus demographics and the content produced by Student Media. The pair draws on knowledge from Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh’s course teachings and her written articles to ask open-ended questions that create an informed dialogue between themselves and the Vanderbilt faculty member. The research and planning involved in the creation of this podcast is evident and is a beautiful representation of how learning can be extended through podcasting, and, in particular, the podcast-interview format. Links to the editing and distribution software Shay and JoHannah use, their podcast Black Tea, and a link to Professor Wells-Oghoghomeh’s discussed article, can be found in the episode show notes.

Today, we’re featuring audio from a podcast called Novel Hand that was produced by Vanderbilt Alumna Alexa Bussman. Alexa studied Political Science, Economics, and Spanish while at Vanderbilt and interned at non-profits like International Justice Mission. Alexa is the founder and editor of Novel Hand, a project that aims to explore the best solutions to global humanitarian issues, and the podcast is an extension of this project. She created Novel Hand to address a disconnect she noticed between her generation’s passion for social issues and innovative solutions that exist to solve these problems. We are featuring episode 2 of the Novel Hand podcast titled Ethical Fashion with Connie Tsai. Connie is an executive assistant at Nisolo, a Nashville company that desires to push the fashion industry in a more sustainable direction through intentionally designed, ethically made, fairly priced clothing. Alexa’s podcast is just one aspect of how Novel Hand uses their values to move towards their goal, and this multi-level scaffolding can be applied to academia. Rather than entirely replacing an existing assignment or essay with a podcasting project, consider using a podcast in place of a traditional PowerPoint presentation with a podcasting assignment.

This episode features an independently produced piece of audio by Vanderbilt undergraduate Zoe Rankin. Zoe produces a podcast called Your VU: Beyond the Classroom, where she highlights the passions and experiences of Vanderbilt students outside the classroom and brings light to social justice issues through education and storytelling. In Your VU Episode 6: Vanderbilt Prison Project, Zoe interviews Jenny Pigge, a Vanderbilt undergraduate who is the President of the Vanderbilt Prison Project. Because this is independently produced audio, Zoe told us she had to come up with her own goals, outline, and rubric. As you listen to this episode, take note of the three questions Zoe asks on each of her podcasts, “What is the issue?”, “What is your story or connection to the issue”, and “how can people get involved or take next steps to learn more?” Zoe started podcasting when she was the student host on the Dean of the Commons podcast titled Commons Cast. Through Commons Cast, she got to interview the commons Faculty Heads of House and RAs, amongst others. This opportunity ignited a spark to learn more about Vanderbilt students outside the classroom and the desire to use podcasting as a medium to educate. Then, with the help of Vanderbilt Student Media, Zoe created Your VU: Beyond the Classroom.

In “The Peril of the Sonoran Desert” undergraduate Rebecca Dubin talks us through the changes happening in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. This audio was produced for the Anthropology first-year writing seminar on Culture and Climate Change, taught by Professor Sophie Bjork-James. Rebecca incorporates the interview-style podcasting we’ve seen featured in previous episodes this season. In this format, she artificially conducts interviews with experts on this topic using real-life interviews she found online. The responses of her interviewees are the actual answers of each respective expert; however, these responses are voice acted by some of Rebecca’s friends. Professor Bjork-James said she chose to assign a podcast instead of a regular essay so that the students could experiment with both form and voice in a productive way. She indicated that, in particular, first-year students often stick to the five-paragraph essay format when tasked with a writing assignment. Shifting away from a general essay and into a new medium of expression encourages the student to think outside the box, experimenting with new ways of presenting information and discovering their own voice along the way. Further details on Professor Bjork-James’s intentions and Rebecca’s experience can be found in the episode show notes, along with helpful links for creating an interview-style podcast.

In this episode of VandyVox, we feature a stellar piece of audio, produced by Audrey Scudder for the History of Cryptography in the department of mathematics, taught by Professor Derek Bruff. Professor Bruff is the creator of VandyVox and hosted seasons 1 and 2 of the podcast. Three years ago, he replaced a paper assignment in his first-year writing seminar with an audio assignment and has been refining the art of assigning podcasts ever since. Professor Bruff asked students to take a code or cipher from history and describe its origin, use, influence, and mechanics. Audrey fully delivered with a captivating piece the bridges the worlds of mathematics and music. Audrey told us at VandyVox that she’s always had a passion for music theory, and in particular, how music intersects with math, science and linguistics, and I think that passion shines through in this audio. She provides historical context, explains cryptography nuances, and uses music itself to augment and support the content of the podcast, and if you listen closely, you’ll hear a couple Easter eggs she hides in her audio. This is such strong, high quality student-audio because of Audrey’s research and passion for the subject matter combined with Professor Bruff’s thoughtfulness and intentionality behind the assignment. For the past three years he’s been assigning a podcast, and each year produces another iteration of project goals, rubric, and expectations. Professor Bruff said he noticed that as he built more scaffolding into the assignment, the quality of the student podcasts became stronger. Each year, he updates a blog he writes titled “Building a Better Podcast Assignment”, where he breaks down the expectations, timeline, and process of building a podcast assignment. A link to this blog, his rubric, and the project description, along with a detailed summary of his iterative process, can be found in the show notes.

Transport yourself back to the 1960s and rediscover what it means to be a “beautiful woman” by Hollywood’s standards and meet the woman who contested those ideals. In “Pretty Funny: How Barbra Streisand Challenged Hollywood Conventions”, undergraduate student Erica Simpson analyzes the beauty and gender roles prevalent in Hollywood in this time period through a modern lens for a class in Cinema and Media Studies taught by Professor Megan Minarich. Professor Minarich supplied a plethora of information on how she structures and grades podcasting assignments, which are explored more thoroughly in the show notes. Approaching the assignment through the lens of podcasting allowed Erica to take a more personal and fluid approach to discover the content she wanted to discuss, and she provided VandyVox some helpful insight into the world of podcast creation, which raise the questions, where can one find royalty free audio? How do I use GarageBand or iMovie to edit my podcast? What software is available for PCs? Luckily, VandyVox has looked into it, and the answers can be found in the show notes.

In this week’s episode, VandyVox veteran Tanya Tejani unpacks the complexity of personal agency within 15th century female concubines under Islam, focusing on the Kano Empire in West Africa. The audio for Historical Feminism was developed for the course History of Sub-Saharan Africa taught by Professor Tasha Rijke-Epstein. Tanya uses an interview format to discuss this niche topic with Dr. Solano, a fictional scholar who embodies the semester-long research Tanya conducted. Her unique approach to this assignment gives a taste for the wide range of opportunities that podcasting can provide.

Student athletes are a huge part of campus life at any university, but especially here at Vanderbilt. On this episode of VandyVox, Max Schneider tackles the implications of the NCAA Fair Pay to Play Act in California by interviewing USC defensive tackle, Trevor Trout, through his sports podcast Flag on the Play. Max dives right in, allowing Trevor to immerse the audience in the day-to-day life of a college athlete and the double-standards that accompany that contract. Not afraid to address controversy head-on, Max creates a space that allows Trevor to speak freely about his experience with the NCAA that brings a sense of gravitas, frustration, and authenticity to the topic. Max, who is also involved with Hustler Sports 30 and 615 Sports Drive on VandyRadio, used Flag on the Play for a course in Communication Studies taught by professor Claire Sisco King. Professor King highlights the interconnectivity of what we communicate and how we communicate and encourages her students to focus on human-centered design while “creating their own public-facing communicative artifacts.” To read the full excerpt from Professor King’s Syllabus, or if you want to be directed to more of Max’s audio work, please refer to the show notes.

For some of us, climate change is something we worry about for our kids or grandkids, that global warming will make this planet a hard place to live 50 or 100 years from now. But for some people around world, climate change is having an impact on their lives right now. On this episode of VandyVox, we feature a short audio documentary by Vanderbilt undergraduate Tanya Tejani that takes the abstract threat of climate change and makes it relevant and personal. She uses Bangladesh as a case study, a country where two-thirds of the land has an elevation of 5m above sea level or less, a country where people are already being displaced from their homes due to rising oceans. Tanya uses the stories of climate refugees in Bangladesh to shed light on the impact climate change is having right now around the world. Tanya produced this piece as a class assignment in a course on culture and climate change taught by Vanderbilt anthropology professor Sophie Bjork-James. We featured another piece of student audio created by one of Sophie’s students back on Episode 1 of VandyVox. In this episode, we feature the audio documentary “Local Impacts” by Tanya Tejani. Links Sophie Bjork-James on Leading Lines Episode 56: http://leadinglinespod.com/uncategorized/episode-56sophie-bjork-james/

Episode 15 – “Language Learning through Digital Games” by Meghan McGinley How can games help someone learn a second language? Vanderbilt graduate student Meghan McGinley was interested in exploring that question this past spring. Meghan, who is pursuing a PhD in French with a certificate in Second Language Studies, was a student in a course on second language acquisition taught by my Center for Teaching colleague Stacey Margarita Johnson. Stacey regularly asks the students in her graduate courses to conduct interviews with language teachers or language learning experts. Meghan was planning to do her semester project on that question – How can games help someone learn a second language? – so for her interview, she reached out to University of Arizona linguistics professor Jonathan Reinhardt, who had recently published a scholarly book on games and language learning. Meghan’s interview with Professor Reinhardt covers a lot of ground, from his path into game studies, to the problems when we think of work and play as two separate things, to the connection between Harry Potter and a 1961 book on games by a French sociologist. Stacey Johnson found the interview so interesting that she featured it on her podcast, We Teach Languages, and we’re excited to feature it here on VandyVox, too. Links Meghan McGinley’s website: https://my.vanderbilt.edu/meghanmcginley/ @MeghanKMcGinley on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MeghanKMcGinley We Teach Languages podcast: https://weteachlang.com/ Stacey Johnson’s blog post on her podcast and her teaching: https://staceymargarita.wordpress.com/2019/08/05/my-podcast-my-students-interviews-and-public-scholarship/ Jonathan Reinhardt’s website: https://english.arizona.edu/users/jonathon-s-reinhardt    

José Cossa taught in Vanderbilt’s leadership, policy, and organization department the last few years. José regularly gives his students the option to produce a podcast in lieu of a traditional research paper, and his students often take him up on the opportunity. This past spring, José was teaching in Vanderbilt’s international education policy and management program, or IEPM, and four of the students in his graduate-level course on Africa and education put together a seven-episode podcast as their final project. The four students—Kelley Lach, Kenta Nagasawa, Sabirah Oniyangi, and Shashank Poudel— drew on course readings and class discussions to plan their podcast and identify guests to interview. They spoke with several African students on campus, as well as Vanderbilt faculty with relevant expertise, to explore such topics as the history of education in Africa, early childhood education, technical and vocational training, and more. The students’ podcast, which they called IEPM African Education, stuck to an interview format for most episodes. Choosing the right interview subjects is critical to this format, and the IEPM students selected some really lively subjects for Episode 6 of their podcast, which we’re sharing here on VandyVox. This episode features three African students currently studying at Vanderbilt, including one of the podcast hosts, reflecting on their educational experiences in Africa and elsewhere. Their stories connect with many of the themes explored on earlier podcast episodes and in José Cossa’s course. Links IEPM African Education podcast: https://soundcloud.com/user-468245252/tracks José Cossa’s website: http://mozambicanscholar.blogspot.com/ José Cossa on Twitter: https://twitter.com/zeca72  

Robert Lee is a recent graduate of Vanderbilt with a degree in human and organizational development. During his junior year, he realized he was constantly having fascinating conversations with a diverse set of friends on campus. He had a vision for sharing some of those stories with people outside the Vanderbilt bubble. The result was Blackademics, a podcast Robert launched in the spring of 2019. Robert is black, and that has certainly shaped his experience as a student here. He’s brought that lens to his podcast, which features relaxed and engaging interviews with friends as they navigate their last semester of college. They talk about relationships, finding their passions, figuring out life after college, and more. Here on VandyVox, we’re happy to share a recent episode of Blackademics. In this episode, Robert interviews Lucy DK, a Vanderbilt student from the UK who has launched a music career while living here in Nashville. Lucy DK performs R&B and hip-hop, and her story about finding and growing her passion for music in this town on this campus is compelling. Links BlacKademics: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blackademics-podcast/id1460759696 Robert Lee on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-lee-3819b7126/ Robert Lee on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tyrone16_96/ Lucy DK on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lucyydk/ Lucy DK on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1LPED1l7rNF5AAORbY6UyI Lucy DK’s Tiny Dorm Concert, via the Vanderbilt Hustler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo29IQx-Bq0&list=PL6c8MZj2AXnkfKlZgAQcWIIY09T7ylf1V&index=2&t=0s

What comes to mind when you picture an anthropologist? Kellie Cavagnaro is a doctoral student in anthropology at Vanderbilt, and she’s preparing to launch a new public anthropology podcast called Dispatches from the Field. The podcast will explore intersections between Kellie’s fieldwork in an Andean highland community of Peru and a mysterious 70-year-old ethnography produced by a Harvard anthropologist who claimed to have been bewitched. In the 1940s, Harry Tschopik, Jr., studied shamanism among indigenous people 14,000 feet above sea level along the shores of Lake Titicaca in Peru. In her new podcast, Kellie will revisit Tschopik’s work and connect it to today through conversations with the grandchildren of community members who participated in his research. Kellie told me that these cross-generational conversations will explore the adventurous but also problematic past of anthropology, while also demonstrating contemporary approaches to navigating and understanding cultural differences. Here on VandyVox, we’re happy to share Kellie’s pilot episode, “What Pachamama Can Teach Us about #Feminism.” Links Kellie Cavagnaro’s website: https://kelliecavagnaro.com/ Kellie Cavagnaro on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KellieCavagnaro Dispatches from the Field: https://www.missinglink.studio/dispatches

How do you teach a child to read? Not a generic child, but a specific child with specific challenges. Belle Raim and Becky Marder are students in the reading education Master’s program at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development. As part of the program, each of them spent an academic year working with a student whose literacy behaviors were seen as a puzzle to their classroom teacher. In the fall they assessed their students to determine literacy strengths and areas for improvement, and in the spring they implemented a targeted instructional plan with the classroom teacher. And at the end of this “Puzzle Child Project,” they were asked by their instructor, Justine Bruyère, to reflect on the entire process in an audio project for Justine’s course, “Literacy for Diverse and Special Needs Learners.” On this episode of VandyVox, we’re sharing an excerpt from Belle and Becky’s “Puzzle Child Podcast.” The two students produced the audio by developing questions they wanted to address, then answering those questions and discussing their puzzle children on tape. 

This episode of VandyVox shares another podcast produced by a Vanderbilt student. Out Loud: LGBT Stories of Faith features interviews with Vanderbilt students about their experiences coming out to their church communities. The podcast, now in its second season, is the creation of Greg Thompson, a recent graduate of the Master of Theological Studies program at the Vanderbilt Divinity School.  Greg recently launched season 2 of Out Loud, featuring more thoughtful interviews exploring the intersection of faith, gender, and sexuality. 

Welcome to the second season of VandyVox!  Jacqueline Grogan is the host of Wandering Off, the Vanderbilt University Career Center professional development podcast. Through interviews with Vanderbilt faculty, staff, students, and alumni, Jacqueline explores the many unexpected turns people take along their paths from college to career. Jacqueline has talked to an English major turned photographer, an engineering science major who interned for a US senator, and a Career Center coach about imposter syndrome in the workplace. On this episode of VandyVox, we’re featuring Episode 15 of Wandering Off, an interview with Vanderbilt alumnus Wes Matelich, a philosophy major turned CPA turned cannabis entrepreneur. Jacqueline told me she was “surprised and delighted” by the reaction to this episode, which I believe is Wandering Off’s most-played episode to date. Jacqueline said that other students have recognized her around campus from this episode, and she had a friend send her screenshots of a group text that was discussing the interview. This was satisfying in part because Jacqueline was a bit hesitant about the episode, which discusses an industry that’s currently illegal in the state of Tennessee. But, as you’ll hear, Wes Matelich’s path from college to career is really interesting, and Jacqueline felt it would be encouraging to hear for students unsure about their post-college plans. If you’d like to hear more from Wandering Off, just search your favorite podcast app, or check the show notes for this episode of VandyVox for a link. You’ll also find a link to the Career Center website, if you’re interested in their approach to undergraduate student professional development. Thanks to Career Center coach Grace Foy for providing some background information on Wandering Off, and thanks to Jacqueline Grogan for sharing her work here on VandyVox.   Links Wandering Off podcast, https://soundcloud.com/wanderingoff/tracks Vanderbilt University Career Center, https://www.vanderbilt.edu/career/ Jacqueline Grogan on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquelinegrogan/  

This episode features a piece of audio produced by Anna Butrico, who graduated from Vanderbilt in 2018 with a degree in English and communication studies. Anna started podcasting her sophomore year at Vanderbilt, launching a podcast called This Vanderbilt Life with help from Vanderbilt Student Media. That experience led her to a summer internship at WPLN, Nashville’s public radio station, where she helped produced over two dozen stories. At the start of her senior year, Anna decided to write her honors thesis on podcasting, looking at how modern podcasts are inhabiting and extending classical Greek rhetorical forms. In this episode of VandyVox, we share the audio introduction to Anna’s honors thesis, “Aristotle Meets Apple: Rhetoric in the Podcast.” For more by Anna Butrico, check out her multimodal senior thesis, her podcast This Vanderbilt Life, and her stories for WPLN Nashville Public Radio.

This episode features an excerpt from an episode of Scholars at Play, a podcast focused on the critical discussion of video games and their place in society. The podcast is produced by three Vanderbilt graduate students: Derek Price (German Studies), Terrell Taylor (English), and Kyle Romero (History). They got together in 2016 around a shared interest in video game studies after Derek Price put up a few signs in the grad student carrels of a video game controller. Since the campus didn’t have a graduate seminar in game studies at the time, they decided to create their own, as a podcast. They launched Scholars at Play that year with some help from Vanderbilt’s Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy. This episode of VandyVox features the first segment of their second episode, “Borders and Rituals in ‘Papers, Please.’” For more Scholars at Play, listen to their podcast on SoundCloud or visit their website, scholarsatplay.net. And for more on the origin of the Scholars at Play podcast, listen to an interview with Derek, Terrell, and Kyle in Episode 34 of Vanderbilt’s edtech podcast, Leading Lines.  

In this episode, we feature a short audio documentary by Vanderbilt law student Joshua Minchin called “Well Founded Fear.” Joshua produced this piece for an assignment in a refugee law course taught by Vanderbilt professor Karla McKanders. The assignment called for students to take some challenging legal issued related to refugee and immigration law and to convey it to a non-specialist audience through audio stories. Joshua’s motivation for this piece came from his personal experience working as an employment specialist for a refugee resettlement agency before he started law school. In writing about this audio piece, Minchin said it’s important not to lose track of the people who are most affected by immigration law. Joshua’s piece first aired on the long-running podcast Life of the Law. For more information on Karla McKanders’ collaboration with Life of the Law, as well as other student pieces that aired on that podcast, listen to Episode 136, “New Voices Series: Law Students Take on Immigration.”

In this episode, we feature a short audio story by Vanderbilt undergraduate Sarah Eidson about Maurine Watkins, the American journalist who wrote the play Chicago in 1926. Sarah produced the audio story for an assignment in the provocatively titled course “Women Who Kill,” taught in the women’s and gender studies program by English lecturer Robbie Spivey. The course provided a critical look at classical and contemporary representations of women who kill. Maurine Watkins, the subject of Sarah’s audio story, wasn’t a woman who killed, but she covered the murder trials of two women as part of her work at the Chicago Tribune, then wrote her play Chicago about women accused of murder based on that experience. In Sarah’s audio piece “Writer’s Block Tango,” Sarah blends fact and speculation to explore Watkins’ motivations. For those interested in using audio assignments in their teaching, here’s a little background on Robbie Spivey’s podcast assignment for her course “Women Who Kill.” Robbie asked her students to make a podcast episode of 8 to 13 minutes in length, using the audio format to respond to the following prompt: “When we talk about women who kill, we need to talk about X because Y.” Before scripting and recording their audio pieces, students were asked to conduct preliminary research to identify a topic, then collect sources and write an annotated bibliography. Here’s how Robbie framed the audio production piece of the assignment: “Support your claims with good reasoning, valid evidence, and when appropriate, good story-telling. Take advantage of the podcast medium to convey your message in ways you would not be able to in a traditional research essay or classroom presentation. For example, strategically use pacing, music, sound effects, ambient noise, other voices, etc.” Robbie also helped shape her students’ expected audience: “Address an audience made up of both college students and professors at Vanderbilt and other universities like Vanderbilt interested in conversations about “women who kill.” Your audience is interested in the conversation, but has not participated in the conversation with the sustained attention that we have over the course of this semester, nor has your audience considered the significance of your chosen topic. They may not even be aware that your topic is relevant to conversations about women who kill… As you design your podcast, think about what you want your audience to know, believe, understand, ask, or do.”

When Sheuli Chowdhury picked her topic for the podcast assignment in her health policy class, she didn’t take the easy way out. She decided to dive into the intersection of two very complex topics: healthcare and immigration. In this episode of Vandy Vox, we share her project, an audio exploration of recent research on undocumented immigrants and Medicaid enrollment. Her piece is titled “Unpacking Health Care Disparities.” The assignment, for an introduction to health services course taught by Vanderbilt health policy professor Gilbert Gonzales, asked students to take recent research in health policy and explain it for a lay audience. Sheuli reports learning a lot from the project, about both Medicaid and immigration policy. For more student-produced audio on health policy, listen to Health Policy Radio with Gilbert Gonzales on SoundCloud. And for those interested in teaching with podcasts, listen to Gilbert’s interview on Episode 27 of Vanderbilt’s edtech podcast, Leading Lines.

This episode features an audio peice called “The Panizzardi Telegram” produced by Vanderbilt undergraduate Charlie Overton. Charlie was a student in podcast host Derek Bruff’s first-year writing seminar last fall, a course on cryptography. The course is a busy one, with mathematics and codebreaking, history and current events, and, as of recent offerings, a podcast assignment. Derek asks his students to explore the history of codes and ciphers for a class podcast called One-Time Pod. Charlie’s contribution on the Panizzardi telegram deftly combines historical storytelling and technical explanations. It also communicates an enduring understanding about cryptography: If you don’t know how a message has been encrypted, it’s really easy to make up a decryption method that makes the message say what you want it to say. For more student-produced pieces on the history of cryptography, check out Derek’s class podcast, One-Time Pod. And for those interested in using audio assignments in their teaching, see Derek’s podcast assignment and rubric for ideas.

Last fall, Vanderbilt student Layla Shahmohammadi interned at Conexión Américas, a non-profit whose mission is to build community and opportunities for Latino families, particularly immigrant families, in Nashville. Layla’s internship was part of her capstone experience as a major in Human and Organizational Development (HOD). When Layla started working at Conexión, she noticed that staff members, who were mostly Hispanic, preferred others in the organization use the Spanish pronunciations of their names. She thought this was interesting, so she talked with her co-workers about their names and identities and produced a short audio documentary as part of her HOD capstone experience. This episode of VandyVox features that documentary, titled “The Name: Names, Identity, and Self-Perception at Conexión Américas.” For more audio from HOD students, check out the HOD Capstone Learning podcast, available on SoundCloud.

This episode of VandyVox features a short audio story by Vanderbilt undergraduate Sarah Saxton Strassberg called “Hagar Rising.” Sarah Saxton was a student in a fall 2018 anthropology course taught by Sophie Bjork-James on the politics of reproductive health in the United States. The final assignment in Sophie’s course asked students to research a contemporary reproductive health issue and produce a piece of video or audio that explores that issue. Sarah Saxton chose to look at gene editing, an emerging set of biotechnologies that have the potential to allow parents to pick and choose physical features of their children. Sarah Saxton used what she learned about gene editing and its potential effects on society to write and produce a piece of science fiction in audio form exploring the dangers of taking gene editing too far. For those interested in using audio assignments in their teaching, what follows is a little background on the assignment that led to “Hagar Rising”… Sophie Bjork-James, Sarah Saxton's professor, was a participant in the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching’s Course Design Institute in 2016. The theme of that institute was “Students as Producers,” with a focus on assignments and activities that engage students not only as consumers of information, but also as producers of knowledge. Sophie’s multimedia assignment leveraged some of the strategies discussed at the institute, including asking students for project proposals and storyboards to provide opportunities for feedback as they develop their projects. Sophie also asked students to submit a producer’s statement along with each project, one that included a literature review, a reflection on what the student learned through the project, and a discussion of the process used to create the final product. Producer’s statements like these are useful for evaluating student work on non-traditional assignments like podcasts. Sophie told VandyVox host Derek Bruff that the assignment turned out very well in her politics of reproductive health course, and she’s planning on making podcasts a regular part of the first-year writing seminars she teaches in the future.