With the campus shut down and everyone forced to stay home and continue classes online, many students are looking for ways to keep themselves entertained while still in isolation. For Cabrini students, some have found that entertainment in the form of podcasts.
Podcasts are similar to talk shows on the radio, except that they are typically recorded and can cover a variety of topics. “Podcasting started as mostly an independent way for individuals to get their message out there and build a community of people with similar interests,” Ross Winn, founder of Podcast Insights, said. Winn further explains in his article that podcasts are able to be sectioned off like seasons for TV shows and are simply audio episodes.
According to Podcast Insights, as of March 7 there are currently 900,000 podcasts and over 30 million episodes. In 2019, 51 percent of the US population listened to a podcast. 49 percent of podcast listeners listen to podcasts in their homes, while 22 percent listen to podcasts in their cars.
Though podcasts have a wide range of topics and themes, the question on everybody’s mind is which podcasts do Cabrini students like the most?
“I listen to only one [podcast] and it’s called ‘New Mindset, Who Dis?’” Mary Pawlicki, senior early education major, said. “It’s a guy named Casey Kenny and he talks about life experiences and how to become a better you.”
Pawlicki continued to say that she thought “New Mindset, Who Dis?” is a very inspirational podcast because she loves listening to Kenny’s life experiences and finding ways to relate his experiences to her own life. Though students seem interested in listening to podcasts about real-life experiences, other students have taken an interest in listening to true crime podcasts.
“I listen to Mile Higher podcast,” Mary Scafidi, junior criminology and sociology major, said.
Scafidi continued to say how true crime podcasts keep her “wrapped up” in the story for the entire duration of the podcast, especially “Mile Higher.”
“I like true crime and the cases that are looked at [are] ones that are not talked about a lot,” Scafidi said.
Scafidi isn’t the only student interested in true-crime podcasts. Katie Mae Sullivan, sophomore, considers herself to be a “crime junky” and has taken advantage of her extra free time to listen to a true crime podcast entitled “My Favorite Murder.”
“[It] is about these two people who love crime, who talk about their favorite, most intriguing crime stories along with talking about stories from their friends and fans too,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan was told by friends to listen to the podcast “My Favorite Murder” for about a year now and has now decided to start listening to it due to being forced into isolation.
Besides true-crime podcasts, many students listen to music podcasts. Jaclyn Ferrilli, freshman secondary education and mathematics major, discussed how the podcast “Music and the Brain” helps her with her ADHD.
“It talks about how music can help you concentrate,” Ferrilli said. “Because I have ADHD, it talks about how it helps to interrupt the regular flow so that music can calm me down.”
Overall, it seems that Cabrini students are most interested in true crime podcasts, followed by podcasts about life experiences and music.
According to Vulture, some podcast apps to consider using are Pocket Cast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Castro, BBC Sounds, Breaker and Stitcher.
