Schar School of Policy and Government sophomore Max Castner is helping give fellow students a new way to be heard. As the founding president of the Podcast Club at George Mason University, he is leading a campuswide effort to help students produce their own shows, learn audio storytelling, and connect through conversation—skills that blend perfectly with his studies as a government and international politics (GVIP) major and his future plans for law school.
Castner isn’t alone in helping launch a new media movement at George Mason, but he is showing members what can be accomplished with the resources available at the Fairfax Campus by launching his own podcast, the first of the Podcast Club. His State of …—the title is intentionally flexible depending on the topic and guest—debuted in October. The first episode, an interview with George Mason Undergraduate Student Body President and fellow GVIP student Isaiah Grays, is called “State of … Mason.”
Castner uploaded the interview to a Spotify platform and it can be heard at this page.
The idea, Castner said, “is to establish a good network and to create a space where members feel comfortable talking about podcasts, inspiring people to think about making their own podcasts—we have the resources to help you get it off the ground.”
The club will also collaborate to help find listeners to members’ podcasts and will work to find best practices for producing and distributing productions.
And for those who don’t want to make a podcast but enjoy discussing them, there’s opportunity in the community for that, said Castner, who grew up on the outskirts of Philadelphia in New Jersey. His hometown informs his own podcast preferences: “Philadelphia sports and a couple of political podcasts,” he said.
A membership page for the Podcast Club is available at this Mason360 site. The club’s Instagram site is at this page.
Podcasts abound at George Mason. Philip Wilkerson III, an employer engagement consultant at George Mason University Career Services and a PhD student, is co-advisor to the Podcast Club and has collected and formatted a podcast directory of university productions. Included, of course, is George Mason President Gregory Washington’s long-running podcast, Access to Excellence, which can be found at this web page.
The Schar School began a podcast series this semester. Policy and Governance Perspectives, coordinated and cohosted by Schar School Professor of Practice and former Virginia State Delegate David Ramadan, brings experts to the microphone to discuss today’s most important challenges and connects them to what is taught in classrooms. The program can be found at this web page.
A new episode of the Schar School’s Schar Conversations video podcast was posted last week. It features an interview conducted by Professor Bassam Haddad with Schar School AI expert Alan Shark. You can see and hear “Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities, Not Just Challenges” at this page.