The beginnings of this blog started with a recommendation by my professor to reach out to another student who started her own podcast. Her name is Jessica and she along with her friend, Teisha started the blog, Anxious Thoughts With Anxious Women to talk about all things mental health.
Jessica is a part-time student at SUNY Empire State College and works too, but over the pandemic, she and her friend had time to begin a series that was close to their heart. As everything has been returning to "some" kind of normal, the two continue to produce their show once a month.
I asked Jessica to send me a link to her podcast because I couldn't find it with only her name. She emailed the link to their show on Anchor.Fm, a platform that's trying to give Apple podcasts some competition.
The first thing I did was listen to the episode on "Losing Friends," which they recently released on October 2. I begin to listen and immediately feel like I've walked into a bedroom of two young girls talking about whatever's on their mind, 'Do you like my shirt? I put this on for you.' She goes on to explain why she can't wear high-waisted mom jeans - 'my boobs hang too low.' I think this might be too silly for me, but I'm intrigued and I keep listening. These girls are opening themselves up and setting up a welcoming environment. I giggle at their goofiness and genuineness.
As if the stage curtain is slowly going up, they recognize that losing friends at various stages in life is different, but start to reminisce about friends that have gone from their lives and what happened. As a listener, they've hooked me. I feel like I'm in their inner circle and I, too have lost friends - so I listen.
When I talk to Jessica over a zoom, I ask her various questions about equipment, content, and simply how they get everything done. And she's just as pleasant and easy to talk to as she is on the podcast.
Q. What equipment and software do you use?
A. We LastFM, so we can upload a podcast and it sends it to all the major distributors like Spotify, Apple. And I use GarageBand, which is an Apple product and made for digital audio editing. First, I was using my AirPods, and that was it. I would record the sound with my iPod, but after we started doing this a little bit more, I ended up getting a microphone from Amazon. It was pretty cheap, but excellent quality.
Q. Is editing difficult?
A. The trickiest thing is syncing the audio track because I might hit record 30 seconds before she presses record. And now I have to move the track around to match them just right, and when you have them matched, it’s pretty easy to go through and listen and cut out dead space that you don’t need. I also use noise-canceling headphones, so I can really hear everything.
Q. Does it happen when there is a lot of dead space and do you have to edit it out?
A. Sometimes we’ll have moments in the middle of an episode when we completely veer off of whatever topic, and we gotta come back. And there be a pause so that we can come back. So, we say 'let’s go back and focus on that.' I don’t cut too much, so it seems like we’re talking too fast. I like the pauses. There is one episode we did about grief, when my friend is talking about her experiences with grief, there were pauses in there that I kept because I felt like it worked towards that story and made it more powerful.
A. Is there a standard time for podcast length?
Q. When I think about it, I ask, ‘how long can I sit and listen to something?’ So I keep that in mind, is this something I can do when I am driving somewhere, or if I’m at the grocery store, can plug it in my ear. I typically go from half an hour to 45 minutes in length. I think there might have been an episode where we hit almost an hour. But usually, we’re in the 30-minute range. We get in to say what we have to say, we chat for a little bit, and then that’s it.
Q. There are a lot of podcasts out there. But, as I’m thinking of my podcast, I’m worried about not having an audience for the topic I pick. Is this something you thought about?
A. Yeah, we were definitely thinking about that too. There’s that stigma with mental health. If we start talking about this, are people going to relate to it? How is everyone going to feel about this? We're opening up ourselves up to people. And letting people know, ‘hey, we’re dealing with this too.’
We have to put the fear aside and say we can do this. It helps us better develop the podcast. Don’t’ worry so much about other people; just say what you want to say. And that’s what we do. If anyone relates to it, that’s awesome; if not, OK.
Q. Do you have a following?
A. Yeah! It’s not huge. It’s not like thousands and thousands of people listening; we get into the hundreds, which is cool because I don’t’ know 100 people on my own. There are people who I don’t know who are listening in to our show every time we host. People reach out on our Instagram and send us a message about how they really relate to something we talked about. 'Thank you for bringing that up.' And it's nice to know it reaches someone. It may not be super popular, but it’s at least reaching people who need it.
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