In this episode of Humans of Iowa State, A.J. Perron, a senior studying industrial engineering, discussed the successes and failures in his life that led him to become a well-known Iowa State podcaster.
“I grew up in Minnesota, and I had a high school friend that I would commute to and from Minnesota with when we’d go back for holidays,” Perron said. “In my freshman year, we did a lot of road trip questions in the car rides… one of them stood out in particular, and it was ‘Do you think aliens exist?’”
Perron’s story begins with the start of his podcast, “Pocket Science.” The idea for this podcast came from a road trip question that Perron asked a friend on a trip, inspiring the two to start a podcast.
“We kind of joked as we rolled into town like, ‘Oh, we should start a podcast about this,’ and that was before guys saying they were going to start a podcast took on a negative connotation,” Perron said. “We were both pretty enthusiastic people, so we knew that the resources existed on campus, and we started our show from there. I think we had already designed our cover art by the end of that day.”
The “Pocket Science” podcast taught Perron how to record, edit and reach out to big-name celebrities for a chance to appear on his podcast. After just a few months, Perron had a fairly large online presence, with some subscribers sending positive messages about how the podcast helped teach them new content. Though many celebrities declined to appear, Perron had Neil deGrasse Tyson join him for an episode, sparking his online presence to grow even faster.
“Flash forward a couple months, we had probably six or seven episodes in the bank,” Perron said. “That friend ended up moving back to Minnesota to study at the University of Minnesota, and so I had my roommate join me for a couple of episodes as well. The energy was still there, and the enthusiasm was still there, so we just kept going.”
Throughout his podcasting journey, Perron’s family never stopped providing unconditional support. His family would often call him to congratulate Perron on recent episodes of “Pocket Science” or even just to make sure he knew they hadn’t had a chance to listen to the most recent episode but would certainly make time for it. Even as collaborators came and went, Perron’s support system remained strong.
“Things really kicked off when I started sending emails to random celebrities that study space and do all that kind of stuff, honestly just to kill some time one afternoon,” Perron said. “Neil deGrasse Tyson actually ended up picking up on one of our emails, and responding, and asking if he could come on. That was kind of like a defining moment for us where things flipped, and we started really taking it seriously.”
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To view the rest of Perron’s story, click the watch link at the top of the article.
