Behind the Scenes of Keeping Up With the Taylorians, a TUSC Podcast | By Tiffany Chan
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| Official poster for Keeping Up With the Taylorians. Designed by Alicia Wee. |
Step aside, Kardashians and Joneses, there’s a new group of people that we wanna keep up with: the Taylorians!
Taylor’s University Student Council’s new podcast, titled Keeping Up With the Taylorians, consists of weekly episodes uploaded on TUSC’s YouTube channel. Led by Project Manager Nurqistina Batrisyia, Head of Public Relations Nagaraju Marimuthu and Designer Alicia Wee, this podcast aims to provide a platform for Taylorians to unite and have meaningful conversations despite the pandemic.
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| From top, left to right: Nagaraju Marimuthu, Tiffany Chan (writer), Nur Qistina Batrisyia, Alicia Wee. |
“It’s a Dream Come True.”
The recent years have seen a surge in the podcast format, and the team behind Keeping Up With the Taylorians recognised this perfectly. First year Mass Communication student Nurqistina, who’s better known as Tisya, said that she’d wanted to start a TUSC podcast since August last year.
“I did have second thoughts about doing this, because it’s hard to get guests from other clubs and societies every week. There is also the possibility of getting rejected, which was our main concern,” Tisya explained. “But now, I’m glad that we got to run a podcast, because it has been my dream ever since before I became the Assistant Director of Campus Integration,” she said excitedly.
When asked about their chosen format for Keeping Up With the Taylorians, Tisya mentioned, “We did think of doing normal videos at first, but since many universities have been doing that, we wanted to come up with something fresh. Besides, podcasts are a better format for sharing insightful conversations and a large amount of information.”
“I think that’s what makes our podcast stand out from regular videos,” agreed Alicia, who is a first year Business student. “Not only do we get people to know about the Student Council, we also help clubs and societies to grow.”
A Task Each Day Keeps the Chaos Away
When asked about how they manage a weekly podcast, second year Chemical Engineering student Nagaraju described a detailed yet efficient workflow.
“Every day we have one specific task—just one. Planning for an episode begins on Tuesdays, when Alicia will design a draft for the poster, YouTube thumbnails and video backgrounds. After that, Tisya and I would give some feedback, but most of the time we don’t have much to say, since Alicia is wonderful at designing,” he laughed.
“Wednesdays are when we have our dry runs, which are essential for building the chemistry between moderators and guests and to establish the conversation flow. The actual recordings take place on Fridays, and after that comes the most hectic period—editing.” This is where elements like background music, logos and posters are added into the video to make it uniquely TUSC-produced. The episodes are then published on TUSC’s YouTube channel every Monday at 2pm.
Clearly, running a podcast is far from easy. Alicia shared that their biggest hurdle was launching the first episode of Keeping Up With the Taylorians.
“We didn’t have much time to plan, and finding guests to be featured in our episodes was difficult. But we got through it, and without that, we wouldn’t be here today,” she smiled.
“Right now, we’ve got our whole workflow established, so it doesn’t get as hectic as it used to,” Alicia continued. “Everyone knows what to do. Though we’re also busy with schoolwork, we adjust our schedules to fit the deadlines so that we don’t hinder the podcast production.”
“I would say that the current challenge is getting people to know about our podcast, because we do realise that our views are decreasing,” she added. “But now that we’ve kind of gotten the hang of it, we can see that our podcast is improving. For example, the latest Brown and Bold episode was just so lively; it’s like you were in the discussion with them,” said Alicia, beaming with pride.
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| Official poster for the Brown and Bold episode. Designed by Alicia Wee. |
Edutainment at Its Finest
According to Nagaraju, Keeping Up With the Taylorians is perfect for those who wish to learn while being entertained. “I feel that our podcast educates listeners about Malaysian and Taylorian cultures from different perspectives,” he remarked. “Aside from that, this podcast is good for promoting clubs that are less well-known. I believe it can bring people together even though we’re going through this horrid, horrid pandemic.”
Despite the largely positive feedback, there are some who have commented that the one-hour episodes are much too lengthy. To this, Nagaraju responded,
“In my opinion, one hour is a good length for a podcast, even though I understand that some people have short attention spans. However, you can actually listen to the podcast while doing other things at the same time, and that’s one of the reasons why we believe this format is more convenient,” he said. “You can treat it as background music—except it’s not just entertaining but also educational. Especially now that we’re all staying at home and getting bored, podcasts are perfect to while away the time.”
“I hope these episodes bring Taylorians as much information and insight as possible,” Tisya added. “I also hope that through this podcast, we get to maintain the bond between Taylorians in spite of Covid-19.”
Indeed, we thank the team behind Keeping Up With the Taylorians for blessing our ears and minds with meaningful content, and we hope that they keep it up!
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