If you’ve ever drained your phone battery listening to hours of Beyoncé or playing endless games of Candy Crush, you may need to put your phone down. But before you take a break from your phone, hear me out, and listen to a podcast. Podcasts are becoming very popular in the entertainment industry, and they have definitely made their way onto Mercer's campus.
If you’re unfamiliar with podcasts, they are the new way to express yourself in today’s day and age of media. Podcasts are audio-only recordings of a conversation, detailing various topics from lifestyle, music, politics and more. Because of their versatility, this makes them a great alternative to music.
Podcasts have become a trend here on Mercer’s campus. In the spring of this year, many students developed their own podcasts to share with the world. These podcasts include “The Kings Cast,” created by juniors Juwan Owens, Vincent Wyche and Jaydon Taylor and “Polyonymous Podcast,” created by Austin Sanders and Palesa Molapo. These are just a few of the podcasts on campus, but there are many more.
“The Kings Cast” co-host Jaydon Taylor said open spaces for free expression are especially important to him.
“I wanted a space where I felt like I could express myself fully, but also let people who don’t know me personally have a chance to get to hear the ‘real me,’” Taylor said.
One of Taylor’s co-hosts, Vincent Wyche, said their podcast is about documenting their personal growth.
“Our podcast is about having fun while still growing into the person that you want to become,” Wyche said. “It has funny moments, serious life lessons and everything in between.”
In the future, Taylor, Wyche and Owens all plan on furthering their podcast for their listeners to enjoy the stories they tell.
“Polyonymous Podcast” co-hosts Molapo and Sanders got the idea to start a podcast through a conversation that started as an argument amongst their friends, which later turned into a fruitful discussion.
“I think what spurred the idea was the fact that we are college students with a bunch of amazing ideas who just want to talk,” Molapo said.
Podcast culture on campus has made the media a safe space for open, honest discussion. Molapo said this is a good thing, “a creative outlet for quality time and different perspectives from various students is healthy for expression and creating important conversation in a world that revolves around social media and surface-level interactions.”
Zelda Tabe, co-host of “The Real Deal Podcast,” said college students are the perfect podcast audience.
“I definitely feel like there should be more podcasts in college, because this is such a tedious moment in our lives, and every story is different for college students,” Tabe said.
You can listen to “Polyonymous Podcast,” “The Kings Cast” and “The Real Deal Podcast” on major platforms such as iTunes, Spotify and SoundCloud.
Chance Allen ‘22 is a journalism student at Mercer who has been working for The Cluster under various roles for the past three years. Allen is a multi-hyphenate but works primarily with photo and writing. He has been working with NBC Entertainment for the entirety of this year and since becoming a journalism student he has received multiple honors and awards from the Georgia Collegiate Press Association as well as DASHBOARD. Allen spends his free time writing, creating, and being.
