Podcast aims to make politics more accessible
Politics and Policy, a new podcast, is being created by Minnesota State University, Mankato students with the intention of helping people navigate the contentious and potentially confusing world of politics.
“A lot of discussions on politics expect a sort of baseline knowledge going in. They expect you to one, know where you fall on the political spectrum. They expect you to know how a lot of these systems work, know how to vote, know how to watch news, know how to watch debates, any of that stuff,” said Taylor Tambornino, president of Politics and Policy.
To help make the podcast itself more accessible, the tone is expected to be lighter to help bring in those who might avoid discussing politics due to the more negative aspects people associate with politics.
“The idea is that it would be more on the light-hearted side because it’s real easy to get into the deep dark aspects of politics, that kind of get people to react in really negative ways,” said political science professor Scott Granberg-Rademacker.
The podcast is run by students and was started by Granberg-Rademacker, who pitched the idea to his students at first.
“One of the things that you do or at least that I do at this stage in my career, I’m looking for things that are interesting, that I can get students involved in and get them excited about and that I’m excited about as well,” said Granberg-Rademacker.
The group is new and thus does not have a meeting time. However, the group does have a large variety of ideas for topics they hope to address.
“We have all sorts of topics that we plan to talk about, anything from just how to watch the news and understanding it, to misconceptions on lobbying and how political parties got the branding that they did. Why are Democrats blue and Republicans red? What are the donkey and elephant all about,” said Tambornino.
Other issues that those behind the podcast intend to address include voter registration, the Riverfront Drive construction project and the war in Ukraine.
Given that politics can infuse every aspect of modern life, one of the main goals of the podcast is to help individuals develop lifelong knowledge of political systems they can actually use.
“This is for helping people develop that baseline knowledge that they can either use to get further into these things or just take with them throughout the rest of their life. Because being part of a political system is important. You’re part of it whether you want to be or not,” said Tambornino.
Caption: Members of the Recognized Sudent Organization, who works on Politics and Policy podcast, which aims to make poltical topics more accessible, (TROY YANG/The Reporter).
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