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“Psych Out,” the podcast hosted by psychology instructor Nathan Gandy and speech instructor Jason Edgar, celebrated its first year of podcasting on Feb. 12, 2014. Described by Gandy as being a “guide to psychology through the lens of pop culture,” the show discusses various topics concerning weird science and current events, such as zombies, glow-in-the-dark animals and other things they find of interest to talk about.
“Well, some of the topics are just things that I like to talk about; superheroes, zombies, video games … we talk about zombies a lot, it seems like,” said Edgar, mentioning how he comes up with some of the discussion topics. “And then there is just Google News. Google News has all the things we just talked about; it has pop culture, it has psychology, it has science. So if we’re looking for weird science, just go to Google News Science and there will be something new.”
While mostly being an audio podcast, with the exception of a few video episodes that can be found on Youtube, Gandy and Edgar plan to take the show in new direction in 2014.
“We’re currently working in conjunction with the Educational Technology Department upstairs, Mike Jernigan and Travis Christensen, and our goal is to do two things,” said Gandy, relating his hopes for this year. “One is to have a professional looking video podcast … But then we plan to do the branch off to where individual instructors will start creating five to 10 minute educational video segments, you know, again sort of pop-fun stuff that you’d see on Youtube. So kind of producing things that teachers could use in their classroom, as well, all under the ‘Psych Out’ banner.”
While they hope to branch out into video, they also have a goal to become more student oriented, as well.
“We want to start having more student interviews, more student content,” said Gandy. “So every week, we’re going to try to have students, for various reasons, depending on what we’re talking about. So, I would like to have some exchange students, some different age students, just whatever strikes us.”
Aaron Kocurek, a general studies major who made a guest appearance on episode 34, titled “Our Undead Romance,” said that he is an avid listener of the show and enjoyed being on it.
“It was pretty awesome,” Kocurek said. “They asked me about my music, and I did a little interview for them as well. We talked about ‘the Walking Dead,’ cause I’m kind of a comic book guy, and so it was really fun.”
To some listeners, the show is more than just a guide to psychology.
“I’d say it is a great place to get news and fun conversation topics that you can have with just about everybody,” Kocurek said.
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