Our new Year 12 Geography Reps were keen to help people realise that Geography is so much more than just what you learn in school, so they decided to launch The Real World Podcast.

Available on Spotify shortly, the podcast will cover topics like the climate crisis, natural disasters, international relations/geopolitics, globalisation and development, biodiversity and conservation, NGOs and aid.  

 Ahead of the launch of the first episode, we went behind the scenes to interview our new podcast’s hosts, Anouska, Esmée and Sophie, to find out more.

Q: What made you want to do a podcast? Why a podcast and not a vlog or a blog or newsletter?

Firstly, we wanted to do a podcast to try and stretch our academic knowledge and deepen our understanding of the areas we are passionate about. It also allows us to learn how to independently grow a passion project from an idea to a reality. Secondly, we chose to do a podcast because they are becoming increasingly popular partially due to the ease of being able to listen to them while completing other tasks, unlike a blog, newsletter or vlog. We also felt that podcasts are something that has not really been fully explored by the school whereas many other people and subjects send out newsletters. 

Q: What’s the aim of the podcast?

Our aim is to share geography in the light that it should be portrayed in which is exciting, enriching and relevant, unlike the sometimes mundane academic subject it can often be perceived as. When people think about learning Geography at school, they often think of colouring maps or learning about river processes but we want to use The Real World Podcast to introduce the broad range of topics that make up Geography, as we believe that everyone can find something they enjoy within it. 

Q: What is the scope of the podcast series? Will you having any special guests?

We are hoping to interview some potential guests who specialise in different areas of Geography to bring the topic to life and talk to other people who are passionate about it. In regards to the scope, as a part of the aim of the podcast we genuinely want to cover any and all aspects of Geography to ensure that each listener will find something that inspires them. 

Q: What have the biggest learnings been so far in creating the first one?

One area that took us by surprise was how many parts need to be managed in order to pull everything together. For example, setting up an email and Spotify accounts for the podcast which involves speaking with the IT department at school as well as having to speak with the Music department and learn the complexities of the recording process. When we recorded our first episode we found that it took some time for us to become fluent and comfortable speaking in that environment and trying to make the recording not sound too structured, whilst also not speaking over each other and having it sound chaotic. We are obviously still learning how to do this but I do feel as though we are making progress considering it is a very new skill to us. 

 Q: Will you be looking at any issues affecting Ealing?

Although we are going to focus on more global issues and discussing the ‘Real World’ at large, many of these issues such as climate change and migration do affect Ealing and so we will probably be touching on these further on. ( e.g the environmental impacts of the LTN’s (Low Traffic Neighbourhoods) in Ealing). 

 Q: Have you had any feedback or any suggestions for topics to cover from the students? Which do they feel most passionately about? Eg environment, climate change, geopolitics, globalisation, conservation, NGOs. How about the three of you?

We are finalising everything in order to launch very soon, so many of the students are not yet aware of our podcast. Once we launch, we definitely want to incorporate the ideas and opinions of the listeners, and if they feel comfortable and particularly passionate, we may even be able to have them on the podcast. Each of us have varying interests within Geography, for example Sophie finds areas of Physical Geography particularly fascinating while Esmée is particularly interested in areas of Geopolitics and International Relations and Anouska is most interested in climate action and sustainability. We hope that our range of interests will shine through in the podcast and mean that it is diverse in the topics it covers. 

Q: Are you planning anything else as Geography Reps for next term?

We are planning on doing a joint collaboration with the Design and Technology department to make bird boxes during the summer term in efforts to help the wildlife in the area. We are also keen to organise events and competitions in line with national and international Geography related days such as Earth Day or Environment Day. Unfortunately, many of our initial ideas were unable to be executed in light of the current circumstances but we are working hard to make up for it. 

You can check out the first episode on Spotify here as hosts Esmée, Anouska and Sophie will be discussing space tourism and space debris in the main segment, Yellowstone volcano, astronaut Helen Sharman in their ‘Introducing’ segment and the recently launched LEAF Coalition in the climate change news story of the week.