About this Podcast
How many books have you read in the past year? If your answer falls within the range of 0 to 2, welcome to the club. The Burnt-out Book Club, if you will. If you’re like me, the term “burnout” is relatively new, but the feeling is far from new. In this podcast, we’ll explore the feeling of burnout, how it affects us, and how we can push past it––as well as live with it.
Podcaster Bio
Stella Barretto is a student at Los Altos High School and Freestyle Academy. When she’s not pondering her stack of unread books, she enjoys watching movies, playing guitar, listening to music, making greeting cards, and obsessively checking her email. As she journeys through pandemic-era high school, she has been no stranger to feeling burnt out. She’s discovered that one of the most helpful aids in this journey has been talking (or venting) with her friends. She’s also discovered that it’s a wonderful feeling to know that others go through the same things as you. And so, a podcast with a goal to speak candidly about burnout was born.
Introduction
My favorite part about podcasts is how accessible they are. You can be doing any mundane thing, put on a podcast, and learn something whether you’re walking, driving, or doing the dishes. You don’t even have to learn something. You could listen to a story or even feel like you’re having a conversation with a close friend. Although my podcast does not investigate a crime, some of my biggest inspiration comes from crime podcasts—namely, Your Own Backyard by Chris Lambert. The structure is vastly different from my own podcast but the amount of sources and research was what inspired me. Beyond this, I was inspired by podcasts from NPR as well as Spotify’s Every Little Thing podcast. My podcast was originally meant to be a book review podcast serving the dual purpose of discussing a book and forcing me to read it. Did this work out? No. But I ended up coming up with a topic that I think is important to talk about.
Reflection
I’ll admit that many parts of this podcast were thrown together at the last minute. It took me a while to decide what I wanted to talk about—and when I did decide, it didn’t work out. This podcast took a lot of improvising which I didn’t anticipate. My hope for the podcast process was that it would be more planned and structured, but I discovered that podcasting is hard. Based on how easy podcasts are to listen to, I thought they would be equally easy to produce. I was very wrong, but I ended up with a more casual and candid podcast about something personal and also universal that was easier for me to talk about. Advice for future podcasters: pick a topic that you could talk about for quite a while and then go from there. Also, trust that it’s not easy to throw it all together at the last minute.