Jenica Panicker and Maya Kalidindi, seniors at Westlake High School in Austin, had long been spending an English class engrossed in conversations with one another. From wellness to eating disorders and mental health, they covered an array of topics they knew mattered to their generation.
So, they thought, why not share these conversations with their peers around the world?
Their podcast “Our Generation,” about youth culture and wellness, just posted its 12th episode – one about every two weeks.
Panicker and Kalidindi joined the Standard to discuss their show and what their goals for it are. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
We’re in one of our big studios. There are like four microphones in here, an audio engineer. Maya, does this look different from how you record?
Maya Kalidindi: 1000% actually. We actually have our little setup on a tiny little table, wires everywhere, and got stuff from Amazon, that kind of stuff.
It’s pretty basic, but it works. It does the job. Hoping to grow from there, but it’s what got us off the ground. I love it. Yeah.
I mean, Jenica, there are lots of ways to share stories. Why did you guys decide to make a podcast?
Jenica Panicker: We love to talk. So we actually had an English class together last year and instead of doing a lot of the essays we probably should have been doing, Maya and I and another friend of ours would just have these amazing conversations about the deepest topics.
So we’d be talking about everything from youth wellness to eating disorders to mental health, just such a variety of topics, and Mya and I realized we loved the conversations we were having, from the deep to the not-so-deep, and we just thought it would be really fun to share that with others.
Well, I feel like Jenica just hit on this a little bit, Maya, but let’s talk about your purpose. How would you describe the “Our Generation” podcast?
Maya Kalidindi: Yeah, so one word I definitely use to describe our podcast in general would definitely be “imperfect,” but in the best way possible, mainly because we want to let our listeners know that we are going through things the first time as well and it’s okay to be confused.
Our whole kind of motto is “for youth, by youth.” So just to kind of relate to our audience, let them know that we are just going through things the first time, too, and we like to have these deep conversations. And the fact that it’s okay to talk about stigmatized topics is just something that we definitely want to put out there.
Jenica, what would you add? I mean, when you look at the media landscape, what’s not meeting the needs of your generation?
Jenica Panicker: I think what Maya kind of touched on was there’s not really a lot “from youth, by youth.” We are both big podcast listeners and I grew up listening to podcasts and I just never really heard other teenagers talking about these issues.
We’ve both gone through things – from mental health to physical health – that we felt that neither of us really had that guidance so we really wanted to be that sense of support for others. Maybe people that don’t have older siblings or other role models to look up to, we hope to provide that sense of support to others as well.
Maya, what’s been your favorite episode so far?
Maya Kalidindi: Honestly, our first one, the first one we ever did.
We were just figuring it out – we still are, but our first episode was just us just talking. We had a lot of great stories in there and it was right as we just started the podcast up.
Because of that, we were kind of talking a little bit informally, just us as friends telling a bunch of stories about things that we had done in the past and we feel like it really resonated with their audience – gave them something actionable to kind of look forward to, and also it was just really great to just talk and be on the mic and share these stories.
What do you think, Jenica? Besides the first episode, that one’s been taken now. What other?
Jenica Panicker: Well, she stole mine. I think some of the guests that we’ve gotten on have been really, really cool.
So actually, the last one we did, I got to have my brother on. And I think that’s one of the coolest parts about having our own podcast and being such a small business is getting on our friends and getting on our connections. So getting to see my brother come on the podcast and talk about his travels and his gap year was super cool to kind of connect that and show that to a larger audience now that we get to relate to.
Well, something that you mentioned, both of you, was sort of these undiscussed topics. Can you go a little more into that, Jenica? Like, what are the things that you think young people your age need to be more comfortable talking about?
Jenica Panicker: Oh, I think that goes for everything, honestly, from everything.
We just did an overthinking episode, and I have so many friends that are overthinkers. I’m an overthinker, but it’s such a sense of anxiety that you don’t want to talk to others about it, and in that way, you become so scared to tell others your fears, to tell others what you’re going through, and then it just comes all built up in your head, and then that leads to the problems in society today.
We want to discuss other things – like eating disorders that are not talked about, like physical health that’s not talked about. There’s so many things that youth just don’t hear from other youth or it’s their parents lecturing them about them. You don’t really hear youth supporting other youth in these topics.
That’s interesting because it kind of gets to my next question, Maya, which is your target audience, right? I assume people your age, right? It’s called “Our Generation,” but I mean, are there other groups that you hope kind of tune in and hear your voices?
Maya Kalidindi: So it’s mainly our generation, so Generation Z, but we also hope to reach out to parents of children in our generation as well, hoping to give them a little bit of insight into what their children are going through. Because I know, especially in these pivotal years of being a teenager, there’s a big lack of communication between the parents and the children.
So if parents of Gen Z kids listen to our podcast, we really hope to kind of give them some perspective into what their children are going through, what’s going through their minds without having to kind of get into arguments and things like that.
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What’s been the reaction from your peers? What do they think?
Maya Kalidindi: It’s actually been so fulfilling because people that I’ve never talked to before in school have come up to me in the hallways and told me that we’ve made an impact on them.
And even teachers, they’ve kind of come up and told us that we encourage them to think of the same topic in a new perspective, which has been really inspiring and kind of the whole point of us creating this podcast – to encourage people to think of something in a different way, or just give them certain ideas to kind of just go out of their comfort zone and pursue something or talk about something that they don’t normally talk about.
So it’s just been so great. We’ve been getting DMs on Instagram and everything saying, “oh my god, I listen to your podcast when I’m blow-drying my hair every morning.” It’s so nice to hear that and it’s so nice to see that we are actually doing something. We are putting stuff out there and it’s being received and it’s being taken into consideration, and we are making an impact.
Well, that’s amazing. I mean, Jenica, what else could you ask for? What are your hopes for this?
Jenica Panicker: I think, adding onto that, what I think is really fun is that Maya and I’s personalities are so different and so people relating to who we are as people has been really fun and seeing different parts of them in ourselves.
Maya and I have very different routines, very different lifestyles, and so it’s just been really fun to even have our friends be like, “oh my goodness, I love seeing your personalities come out” when we record a podcast episode. And we just hope that in the future we can grow to an even greater audience and an even greater impact.
