Increasing access to technology has allowed for new worlds of possibilities that are available to everyone, even teenagers. Roswell junior April McBride has taken advantage of this opportunity, and kickstarted her very own podcast channel, Showerzzz Podcasts. The Sting sat down with April to get a better understanding of what inspired this idea, and how it contributes to the community. 

The first thing April wanted to explore was the name of the show itself.

“I host this podcast called Showerzzz Podcast. It’s based off my instagram name aprilshowerzzz, which is about the saying April showers brings May flowers,” said April.

 “Well I really like listening to podcasts. They’re really relaxing, it’s kind of cool to hear a conversation… and I also wanted to capture my home town because I’m leaving in two years and wanted to just get a full understanding of where I grew up before I leave,” said April, expanding upon the idea of why the podcast got started. 

April sees this as more of a passion project than anything, but says she wishes for her podcast to have encapsulated all of Roswell by her senior year next year.

 “I basically just see this as a regular suburban town, and it is,” she said. “But in every place there is a lot of ‘specialness’ and probably things I haven’t dug into because I spent a lot of my time hating living here.” She plans to talk to as many people as possible, and listen to all perspectives in the town and specific to the school. 

“I think I’m going [to do] deep dives on different types of people, everyone has a story they want to tell and a perspective to share. I think really listening to people, and not just arguing with them, we can have more compassion for other people and just fully understand them,” said April. 

In her journey to document and understand Roswell, April says she does have it in the back of her mind to touch on some of the tragedy the school has faced in the past few years, but she is extremely cautious to stay courteous. “I want to do it correctly,” she said, “and not cause any extra trauma, I want to capture things that are hurtful in a respectful way and I’m still working on that.”

For now, she is sticking to topics relevant to school and students, such as drugs, relationships and identity. For more information on April or her podcast, there are new episodes Tuesdays at 11:00 p.m., and an instagram account titled @showerzzzpodcast. April has big plans for the future.

 “I want to interview more people, more adults,” she said, “I think right now it’s a little bit of just me talking, because I’ve only done one full interview so far, but I think it’s going to grow and be something better and bigger.”