Wichita-based podcasts bring culture, conversation and movement to listeners
Dancer, choreographer and podcaster Mina Estrada is a longtime radio lover and “walking advertisement” for podcasts.
“I feel like the world is handed to me while I’m washing the dishes,” she said.
She and many other Wichita-area creators are sharing a piece of their world through the relatively new medium. Through interviews, panel discussions and experimental scripted approaches, here are three podcasts that are bringing new and established voices to audiences in Wichita and beyond.
Documenting Wichita art and culture
Lori Burress’s “Catch a Podcast Podcast” brings listeners interviews with local artists, musicians and civic leaders.
She got the name from an interview with Jay Z, who talks about “when you catch that pocket” — get into a flow, in other words. In that line, Burress recognized the kind of conversational rhythm she hoped to facilitate. And as a longtime observer of the Wichita arts community, she wanted to share stories of some of the people who have shaped it.
A small room in the basement of her Valley Center home functions as a podcast studio and her son’s gaming room. There she has conducted more than 40 interviews over the past three years, mostly in person but occasionally over Zoom. Burress learned most of what she knows about podcasting and audio production by watching YouTube videos, and she conducts interviews and edits her show around her full-time job as a purchasing agent.
Prominent members of the Wichita arts community have responded to Burress’ laid-back interview style by telling compelling stories from their lives. Cartoonist and musician Richard Crowson discussed his experience with the draft during the Vietnam War. Artist Patrick Dugeaw, a co-founder of the Fisch Haus, described how the arts collective began to incorporate food, music and performance into its art shows. Other guests include filmmaker Rod Pocowatchit, Sedgwick County Commissioner and singer-songwriter Lacey Cruse and Mayor Brandon Whipple.
Motivated by a desire to document Wichita’s arts and culture scene, Burress hopes to notch at least 100 episodes.
“It keeps me out of trouble,” she said. “And it’s just good to listen to people.”
A family-friendly roundtable
Allen Atha, Charity Harmon, Sara Harmon and Dan Spina met while working at KPTS. The foursome enjoyed an easy rapport that is evident on “The Double Stuffed Podcast,” which they launched in March 2020.
The Harmons are sisters who co-produced and co-directed “Who Scammed Rajah Rabbit?” which won the award for Best Kansas Documentary Short at the 2021 Tallgrass Film Festival. Atha and Spina also had producing experience, and everyone was curious to experiment with the podcast medium.
“For years, the four of us have been joking around and busting each others’ chops,” Atha said. When the group got together, they noticed their conversation often digressed to an amusing extent.
Eventually, Atha said, they decided “we should record these things because they’re entertaining to us.”
The result is a wholesome, lighthearted and often funny show. In each episode, the panel riffs on topics ranging from the mundane (lawn care) to the highbrow (philosophy). Sometimes they play a game or drop in a bit of scripted content, but they never take themselves too seriously.
“Double Stuffed” episodes occasionally center a local topic, such as when the panel read (or attempted to read) “Circe,” the 2021 Big Read Wichita selection.
The first episode dropped at the end of March, right as COVID-19 reached the U.S. Since then, “Double Stuffed” has released almost 90 episodes. The team has made it happen on a next-to-nothing budget with borrowed equipment and makeshift recording setups. Going into their third year, they hope to secure sponsorship and grow their audience.
Recipes for movement
In 2018, Mina Estrada and her friend and collaborator, fellow dance artist CoCo Loupe, began exchanging messages with directions for movement.
Though both are choreographers, these were more like “gentle, guided movement instruction,” as Estrada explains in the introduction to their podcast “Benevolent Instruction,” which began in November 2020. Each episode is composed of one to four series of directions that invite the listener to move their body in response to the recording. Estrada and Loupe also co-host an hourlong, biweekly “community Zoom” for listeners who want to follow the instructions in a virtual group.
Estrada moved to Wichita in February 2020 and has worked with the dance programs at Friends and Wichita State. Podcasting has been one way for her to maintain long-distance collaborations with Loupe, who is based in Orlando, as well as “Benevolent Instruction” contributors Noelle Chun and Nicole Garlando.
Though each contributor has a Master of Fine Arts in dance, the podcast is designed to be accessible to a wider audience. In the future, Estrada wants to consider how to adapt their instructions to participants who have disabilities. They also hope to further explore the connections between text and movement by collaborating with poets and creative writers.
Estrada acknowledges that some instructions might be challenging for listeners without a background in performance, but following along exactly isn’t the point.
“We want to remind people that they should do whatever they want to do, because these are just suggestions,” she said. The intent is to invite the audience to enter their “magical world.”