Podcasts
During my summer internship with The Arizona Republic, I worked on the podcast desk with producers Kaely Monahan and Amanda Luberto. I helped produce the Valley 101 podcast, a weekly show featured on topics in the state of Arizona.
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Duties included recording natural sound and interviews on Zoom recorder, editing audio on Adobe Audition, using music from Universal Production and writing scripts. Down below are all of the podcasts that I helped with and produced.
Spicy: it's the flavor you see everywhere. Just take a look at your local convenience store. Spicy chips, spicy chicken sandwiches, spicy noodles. There's even a movie now about Flamin' Hot Cheetos.
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It's also culture-defining. What would Mexican, Thai or Indian food be without chili kicking up the heat?
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But before that spicy seasoning can be sprinkled onto your favorite foods, it starts in the ground as a chili pepper seed. One of the people producing those seeds is Ed Curry, who operates the Curry Seed and Chile Co. in Pearce, Arizona.
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Curry has been working on the genetics of peppers for almost his whole life. In the farming industry, most of the peppers grown commercially in the United States can be traced back to his farm.
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But how did chili peppers get to Arizona in the first place? And why are Arizona's chilis making such a huge impact nationwide?
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In this episode of Valley 101, in conjunction with The Lab, we find out these answers and more.
Anyone who knows pizza or even knows Arizona cuisine knows Chris Bianco.
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Bianco skyrocketed to fame when his pizza became world-renowned, making Phoenix an unexpected go-to destination for foodies worldwide.
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Back in 2003, he was the first pizza maker ever to win the James Beard Award for Best Chef Southwest. Bianco is often referred to as the father of the modern pizza movement.
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Twenty years later, he’s still winning awards. As recently as last year, Bianco collected a James Beard Award for Best Restaurateur.
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But what makes his pizzas so good?
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For this week's episode of Valley 101, a podcast by The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com, we traveled the state visiting the farmers who work with Chris Bianco and discovered just how rich Arizona’s agricultural industry is.
Nov. 4, 2001, is a day that many Arizona Diamondbacks fans remember fondly. It was, perhaps, the pinnacle of all of Arizona sports history as it was the first ― and only ― time that a men’s team in the Grand Canyon State has won a world championship in the modern era.
Luis Gonzalez's hit in Game 7 of the World Series lifted the Diamondbacks to a title over the New York Yankees.
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The Diamondbacks got off to a hot start in Arizona. They were world champs less than four years after joining Major League Baseball as an expansion team, putting together one of the quickest rises for a franchise in professional sports. They won 100 games in their second year of existence and racked up 98 wins the year after they were champs. There was promise in the air.
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Since then, the team has struggled. A lot. The Diamondbacks have won just under half of their games going back to 2002, compiling a .476 winning percentage in that time frame.
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This year though, the team, with star rookie Corbin Carroll, is enjoying one of its most successful seasons ever as it sits tied for first place at the All-Star break. But — can the Diamondbacks keep it up?
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For this week's episode of Valley 101, a podcast by The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com, we talked with fans at Chase Field to get a sense of how those who support the team are feeling this year.
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We also sat down with our own Diamondbacks beat reporter here at The Republic and azcentral.com. Nick Piecoro joins us for an in-depth conversation about what's working this year and whether the success can be maintained moving forward.
Movies used to be the driving force in pop culture.
Hollywood was the center of entertainment. Actors, producers, directors: Dreams being made. The Silver Screen was a fantasy come true for many.
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For generations, movie theaters were a cultural hot spot and a hub to hang out at. I spent many Friday evenings at the theaters growing up in northern California.
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But over the past decade, things have changed. That domination weakened as new players entered the game. Streaming apps gained more and more popularity, becoming the go-to spot to see a film.
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Netflix, of course, was a huge disruptor. In 2007, it singlehandedly changed our viewing habits forever when it allowed people to log into a vast collection of movies and television.
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Then, a real disruptor entered the ring. A worldwide pandemic happened, forcing many into their homes and leaving theaters empty for months. Box office totals decreased worldwide by $10 billion in 2020, which was an 82% drop from the year before.
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A once-thriving industry is not what it used to be.
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Numbers have jumped this year but still lag pre-COVID levels. The impact has the entire industry thinking about its future and how to move forward.
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Here in Arizona, Harkins Theatres has become a go-to destination.
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Harkins started as an independent theater on Mill Avenue in Tempe back in 1933 and is now up to 32 theaters. The company has even expanded out of state, with locations in California, Colorado and Oklahoma. Bucking industrywide trends, Harkins managed to keep all of its theaters open during the pandemic and just recently opened a new location.
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The incredible success of "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" at the box office has brought movies to the forefront. But the industry as a whole is also dealing with the actors' and writers’ strikes, combined with the streaming wars after the COVID-19 pandemic.
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This week on Valley 101, a podcast by The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com, we spoke with Arizona State University film and media professor Kevin Sandler about the industry, its current problems and its future.
A year ago, the Arizona State University football team was looking at a bleak road ahead.
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The Sun Devils, under the direction of then-coach Herm Edwards, had fallen behind in a crucial area: high school recruiting. Smaller schools like Northern Illinois and Western Kentucky were finishing ahead of ASU in the recruiting rankings.
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A number of reasons were behind this, most notably the ongoing NCAA investigation of ASU for alleged recruiting violations that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The Sun Devils got off to a sluggish start in the 2022 fall season. After a bad loss to Eastern Michigan in mid-September, ASU fired Edwards and named running backs coach Shaun Aguano as the interim head coach. At the same time, school officials began searching for a new leader for the program.
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Michael Crow, ASU president, and Ray Anderson, vice president of athletics, didn’t have to look far. The coach they wanted was right in their own backyard.
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A former ASU assistant and Phoenix native was waiting for this exact opportunity. Enter: Kenny Dillingham, the 33-year-old offensive coordinator from the University of Oregon who was hired to be the face of ASU football in November.
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Dillingham grew up in Scottsdale and attended Chaparral High School, where he played football until a knee injury changed the course of his life.
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While still in high school, Dillingham began a coaching career that would send him East to the SEC as the offensive coordinator for Auburn University at just 29 years old. Now, he's back home, leading the team he used to tailgate in the parking lot for as a child.
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There's a surge of energy building through the program, and Dillingham is the catalyst.
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Eight months into the job, we’re talking with one of the youngest coaches in college football as he hopes to usher in a new era of success.