Angel Gonzalez jumped at an opportunity not many UF students have: interviewing UF President Kent Fuchs on his podcast’s pilot episode.
The 22-year-old UF political science senior sent an email to Fuchs in October but didn’t expect a response.
That is until Fuchs agreed to guest star on the first episode of “The Educational Espresso,” that Gonzalez and his friends released Saturday.
“You know guys, since this is your inaugural episode, if it fails, it’s due to me,” Fuchs joked in the pilot.
The first episode of the free, student-run podcast was about a half-hour discussion with Fuchs ranging in topics from religion to the arts to the president’s career.
”The Educational Espresso” aims to discuss serious topics in a casual manner, Gonzalez said.
“It’s cool to have such high-level people on the podcast because you can ask them questions they’re not used to being asked,” Gonzalez said. “Exploring President Fuchs’ faith, I think was something he doesn’t get to talk about a lot.”
Recorded at Pascal’s Coffeehouse, at 112 NW 16th St., the show was created by Gonzalez; Lucas Zhou, a 21-year-old UF business administration senior; and Jess Smith, a UF computer science senior, Gonzalez said.
The idea for the series came about when the three friends, who hung out together at Pascal’s every Friday, thought it would be fun to memorialize their conversations, Gonzalez said.
“It’s a cool resource for students to be able to look back and say, either for a really good reason or really bad reason, ‘Man, I can’t believe I thought that stuff in college,”’ Gonzalez said.
The trio rented the podcast equipment for free from the Marston Science Library and will try to record future episodes at Pascal’s, Zhou said. Gonzalez and Zhou set up the equipment on the day of the podcast with the help of friends and video tutorials.
“I’m just thankful that it worked out,” Zhou said.
The students will try to release episodes for the new podcast series monthly and will attempt to have guests from the Gainesville community and across Florida, Zhou said. But for now, they are grateful for having hosted the president.
“I was very encouraged by it. Having someone of his stature, it kind of legitimizes what we’re doing,” Zhou said. “I really appreciate him taking time to spend with us.”
Contact Kelly Hayes at khayes@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @kellyrhayes.
Lucas Zhou, a 21-year-old UF business senior, Angel Gonzalez, 22-year-old UF political science senior sit down in a room at Paschal’s Coffeehouse to record the student-run podcast “The Educational Espresso” with UF President Kent Fuchs.
