By: Sydney Krane

Have you ever heard a podcast that you just couldn’t turn off?  Do you have a passion for the news but want a different way to share those fascinating stories? Have people told you that you have a nice radio voice? Well then, maybe podcasting is in your future.  In addition to Bellbrook High School’s newspaper, EagleView News, there is also a school run podcast called The Egg. The Egg is looking for a new set of podcasters for the 2019-2020 school year as we say goodbye to our senior podcasters.

The Egg began in the 2017-2018 school year with seniors Jack Long and Meghan Malas as its primary creators.  The idea started as a light hearted, joking conversation during a mentor period between the EagleView News staff members, but from there developed into a fully operational program.  With sound equipment gathered from the founder’s own collection and various other sources, such as the Bellbrook Marching Eagles’ soundboard, The Egg was born in an old locker room beneath the gym at Bell Creek Intermediate.

During The Egg’s first year, another podcasting opportunity was presented to the journalism students at BHS. WYSO, a local NPR sponsored public radio station sent its staff member, Basim Blunt, to Bellbrook High School to teach an eight week radio class as a part of their Dayton Youth Radio segment.  The class met each week to learn how to perform interviews, use recording equipment, and to work on the ultimate project: writing, recording, and producing our own personal stories to be aired on the radio. This opportunity resulted in the airing of six Bellbrook students’ stories on the radio to an audience of an estimated one million listeners.  It is because of this amazing opportunity that I as well as other journalism students were inspired to join The Egg.

The podcast recording studio is now located in Bellbrook High School, snuggled between the stairwell and Mr. Lambright’s physics classroom.  Upon entering The Carton, our recording studio/chemical storage closet, you will notice the hazardous chemical containment boxes to your left.  The location of the podcast studio is not the only thing that has changed in The Egg this year. During season two, we developed multiple recurring segments and created our own episode style while maintaining certain traditions from the original creators.  Junior Jackson Hoffer’s Music Minute segment features his latest song recommendations and news regarding the top musical artists of today. Senior Sara Wolf’s Administrative Advice has been a chance for individual BHS staff members to be featured in an interview that concludes with tips that range from academics to life in general.  In addition, seniors Abby Raison and Arden Lunay prepared feature segments that focus on the main theme for each episode. Each podcast member is responsible for writing, recording, and editing their own segment that complements the episode’s overall topic. It is then the job of the producers, senior Sydney Krane and junior Jackson Hoffer, to add musical transitions and edit the segments into a seamless episode.  One special aspect of the podcast we have chosen to keep in honor of Jack and Meghan’s original episodes is The Egg’s theme song. “Bongo Madness” has been the intro track for every episode so far and it will be up to the producers next year to either continue the tradition or find a song even more energizing than this delightful 15 second introduction melody.

My experience as a producer of The Egg has been an enormously rewarding and educational and I have benefited as a result of this opportunity.  Not only was I given the chance to create something that I am very proud of, but I was also able to use my microphone to gain access to interesting stories and events that otherwise would have been off limits.  My favorite experience as a member of The Egg staff was standing with the Marching Eagles during their warm up, while recording their halftime show for our first episode of season 2. I recommend that if you are interested in writing, recording, editing sound clips, or a combination of those, that you reach out to Ms. Bills-Tenney, the advisor for The Egg, and get involved!

If you are interested in listening to past podcast episodes, we have all episodes from season one and two posted on the EagleView News website under The Egg.