Students’ podcast draws laughs, big names

Posted on by
Declan Brown (right) and Andrew Inserra (left) record an episode of The Backpocket Podcast with a guest in June. (Photo courtesy of The Backpocket Facebook page)

St. Thomas seniors Declan Brown and Andrew Inserra have been making noise around campus this semester with their satirical podcast, The Backpocket.

The podcast, which started out as a time-passing hobby last February, has evolved in quantity and quality. Brown and Inserra have now produced 28 podcasts, and while the underlying theme of the show depicts its hosts as being “wildly average,” they find themselves becoming a bit less average each week.

“We’re fine-tuning our craft in a way that’s direct, and it makes sense, and it’s good to listen to,” Brown said.

Constructive criticism from listeners has helped shape the evolution of the show.

“When we first started people would tell us ‘what even was that? You’re making us cringe,’” Inserra said. “Now we’re having people on the show that are interesting and have a message to deliver.”

Some of these interesting guests include St. Thomas president Julie Sullivan, former St. Thomas president Fr. Dennis Dease and NFL player Jace Amaro.

“It was the most unique interview I’ve ever experienced. (Brown and Inserra) come at it with lightheartedness and humor, and their questions are somewhat unorthodox,” Fr. Dease said in an email. “I found, however, that their unusual questions provoked some serious pondering on my part. They are definitely good at what they do.”

Both Brown and Inserra maintain full schedules.

“I’m an engineering major and (Inserra) is a business major, we both play football and we both have girlfriends, we’re busy people… subtle brag,” Brown said.

So where do they find the time to generate ideas and create weekly content? They explain that it’s a 24/7 process that involves documenting their daily stream of consciousness and bizarre thoughts into a Google doc that has now exceeded 33 pages.

This content-creating process has given birth to a variety of popular segments, ranging from reading professor’s fake ratemyprofessor.com reviews to going over proper “library etiquette” during finals week.

The creation of The Backpocket has been a trial-and-error process. Initially, Brown and Inserra would record multiple hours of content. Andrew would then pour through the hours of recordings and edit out over half of it. They said that did not work.

“I originally thought, this is taking so much time out of my day, I absolutely despise doing this and I don’t want to do the podcast anymore,” Inserra said.

They now record all their content in one take, greatly reducing the editing process and giving the pod a smoother delivery. Recording in one take could feasibly bring a lot of pressure to nail each segment, but the Backpocket boys don’t see it that way.

“We keep everything super conversational, so there’s really no pressure if we do screw up. There are certain things we’ll say that reinforce our average quality theme of the podcast. That almost encourages screw-ups,” Inserra said. “That just adds to the satire.”

With graduation on the near horizon, many of The Backpocket’s avid listeners are hoping Brown and Inserra will continue their work with the podcast after leaving St. Thomas.

“I love their one-liners; their humor is hilarious. I’ll listen to it at the gym and just bust out laughing. It certainly makes the workout go by fast and I hope they stick with it,” Backpocket fan and St. Thomas junior Ali Sauer said.
For now, the hosts of The Backpocket aren’t concerned with what the future holds. Brown and Inserra are focused on the present and following their passion.

“The idea is to go forward with it and keep expanding because we love to do it,” Brown said. “Now that we’ve been doing it for eight months and have developed a passion for it, it doesn’t matter if we have one listener or 1,000 listeners, we love what we do and that’s not going to change.”

The Backpocket has ambitious plans for its future, including developing a new logo, creating branded T-shirts and formulating a formal business plan.

Kyle Manderfeld can be reached at mand4052@stthomas.edu.