Since the majority of University students don’t have much to do except eat and do homework during the day, many have begun podcasting to entertain themselves. These brave, fashionable, hip “podcasters” entertain us by providing opinions on mundane topics that have a severe lack of likeability and tastes as cold as University lunches. Now, the podcast world is a complex one, and its explosion was helped in part by the state-wide quarantine. You need sound editors, proper microphone equipment and, above all else, a plan. University students have a microphone, a few friends and an opinion. 

The first student-run podcast is an audiobook-based one where, once a week, a student volunteer reads a book. The readings can vary, though. Sometimes books are completed in a single sitting (“The Cat in the Hat,” “Baby’s First Book,” and one masochist’s read-through of “Gravity’s Rainbow”), and longer, denser works are usually read in segments (“War and Peace,” “Green Eggs and Ham,” and “The String Representation of Standard Attribute Syntaxes”). This just happens to be one of the more popular podcasts on campus so far, so I’ll only type out the last few words of this week’s latest upload, “Moby Dick.”

“———————————Wait, should I have to read this out loud? Well anyways, we hope you enjoyed reading alongside us with Herman Melville’s ‘Moby Dick!’”

Other podcasts include “Opinions with Anthony,” which features Anthony and his various opinions on multiple things, such as gardens, doorstops, the letter “E,” font-size 96 and much, much more. I got to take a listen to the newest podcast excerpt a week ahead of time. Anthony himself sent this one to me, and this was what he had to say.

“Y’know what I don’t like? Satirists. Those self-righteous, smug, unassertive halfwits think they know everything, but you know what? They can go—”

Next thing I knew, the audio file mysteriously vanished from my computer, never to be heard or seen again. My lawyers are ready.

Podcasts are an important part of keeping everybody entertained while they’re doing homework, walking to class, drinking, playing ultimate frisbee or taking a test. They provide access to knowledge that would make neat conversation topics if there’s honestly nothing else to talk about at dinner. You can also bring it up to a person you want to entertain, but you can’t use it to impress them because University podcasts aren’t particularly innovative — they only spread loud opinions that other people think are new and true and completely without a counterpoint altogether. Nevertheless, that was just a taste of the students’ latest projects in the midst of school under COVID-martial law.