Humans of Harvard College Podcast

“I remember watching this guy (at the T) playing the guitar and…this guy was doing more to help every single person in that station than anyone else, just by singing his heart out. I was actually tearing up, just listening to him. He is just raising, elevating, the vibration of this whole place, the vibration of love. Just because he was being authentic, I was amazed. He’s doing more work to heal everyone in this place than the doctors that think they’re better than everyone going from station to station. That was so powerful to see. I think all this comes from being present in the moment. If I was on my phone, I wouldn’t have noticed that.  I wouldn’t have been there to experience it and gain the information that it carried. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, it matters how you’re doing it.”

Join our host David Chen as we sit down with Claudia Cabral, a senior at Harvard College, for another episode in A NEW SEASON of the Humans of Harvard College Podcast.

Hosted by David Chen
Produced by Mira Becker and Chelsea Guo
Design by Meiyi Yan
Music by Alex Youn

“Creativity is something I value to the highest degree. Music was always something, in my family, that was super big. Like I said, I grew up in church, black church, music is the thing. So I was always doing music, I love music, I listen to music all the time. I love art, too. I can’t draw, I can’t paint, but I appreciate it. What I want to be able to do is give kids the opportunity to cultivate that. For me, what I notice…especially even going here and observing certain things is that even though…nobody is necessarily making anybody do anything. But because of the social norms that we have a lot of people are in mental cages and I feel like I was in a mental cage for awhile, thinking I had to live a certain way. ”Join our host David Chen as we sit down with Trevor Barrant, a senior at Harvard College, for another episode of the Humans of Harvard College Podcast.Hosted by David Chen
Produced by Mira Becker and Chelsea Guo
Design by Meiyi Yan
Music by Alex Youn

“I would speak up and speak out about things that I did not mess with. And people were not used to that. People were used to experiencing things, seeing things on Harvard’s campus and just shutting up about it. And that’s not how I was raised. That’s not what New Orleans taught me. If I saw a problem I would call it out. At the same time, I also value discussions about things. I value having diversity of opinions.”

Join our host David Chen as we sit down with Samyra Miller, a senior at Harvard College, for another episode of the Humans of Harvard College Podcast.

Hosted by David Chen

Produced by Mira Becker and Chelsea Guo

Design by Meiyi Yan

Music by Alex Youn

“I had a professor here at Harvard teaching the history of energy. Unrelated, one class he shows up and he like ‘today, each of you around this table are going to tell the group what your core problem is.’ And until that moment I never realized what mine was, but when I was forced to say it I was like, yeah mine is inequality. How can anything be found as a basis for saying that two people are not on the same level. How can we justify attributing different values for different people. Of course, there are so many reasons to want to do that, in legal terms, in philosophical terms, in morality, in religion, in health. But in the end I always have the same question, why is different important? Why does difference matter? Well, at least I know now that that’s my problem.”

Join our host David Chen as we sit down with Ana Luiza Nicolae, a junior at Harvard College, for another episode of the Humans of Harvard College Podcast.

Check out Ana's work here: https://harvardindependent.com/author/ana-luiza-nicolae/

Hosted by David Chen
Produced by Mira Becker and Chelsea Guo
Design by Meiyi Yan
Music by Alex Youn

"If you know any ethnic grandparents…sometimes they talk to themselves, but sometimes you sit down to actually have a conversation with them and they tell you these amazing stories about how they grew up. And for [my grandmother], a large part of her experience was growing up during the Vietnam War: what it was like to raise my father, her stories of how she became vegetarian. All these things…I was just blown away the way I was able to live through her, through her stories, and feel this sense of empathy and compassion towards her."

Join our host David Chen as we sit down with Tram Nguyen, a junior at Harvard College, for another episode of the Humans of Harvard College Podcast.

If you want to see more of Tram's work, check out her project, Converse Together: https://www.facebook.com/conversetogether

Hosted by David Chen
Produced by Mira Becker and Chelsea Guo
Design by Meiyi Yan
Music by Alex Youn

“The really funny part is that I came to Harvard and I was shot by a CIA agent. I came to Harvard and remember looking at the OCS website that posts a lot of job postings. I remember seeing an internship position for the CIA. I was like ‘how funny is this that I got shot by a CIA agent and one of my friends might intern at the CIA.’”

Join our host David Chen as we sit down with Ece Hakim, a Senior at Harvard College, for another episode of the Humans of Harvard College Podcast.

Hosted by David Chen
Produced by Mira Becker and Chelsea Guo
Design by Meiyi Yan
Music by Alex Youn

“I think I stopped being a Youtuber years ago. I think I stopped when I took a gap year. Up to that point, I was trying to…not “live an influencer life”…but I was really doing this that were career-oriented for social media. I realize over the year off that a function YouTube can play in my life is a secondary function where I’d be doing and thinking the same things if it weren’t for YouTube. That’s how I want it to be. I want to be reading a lot anyways. If I make a video about it, cool, but that’s auxiliary. I’m reading because it’s valuable, I’m not reading to make a video.

Join our host David Chen as we sit down with John Fish, a Junior at Harvard College, for another episode of the Humans of Harvard College Podcast.

Check out John's Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/MrFish235

Hosted by David Chen
Produced by Mira Becker and Chelsea Guo
Design by Meiyi Yan
Music by Alex Youn

Check out more of Simar's work here: https://doctorinprogress.com/

Check out Simar's Podcast! http://thatmedicnetwork.com/podcast

Here's the link for feedback :) https://forms.gle/aopTPrAHwq7Hfk8J9

“It was just remarkable what [my uncle] told me. Medicine doesn’t care who’s good or who’s bad. It treats anyone and everyone because they’re human. That’s sort of what the essence of medicine is founded upon. It’s do no harm, not do no harm to some and harm to others…you don’t get to choose. It was this paragon of equality that really inspired towards medicine. I was like ‘oh my gosh I want to be just like my uncle,’ I want to contribute to this equal view of the world.”

Join our host David Chen as we sit down with Simar Bajaj, a first-year student at Harvard College, for another episode of the Humans of Harvard College Podcast. We talk about therapeutic blogging, satisfying feelings, and mind games.

Hosted by David Chen
Produced by Mira Becker and Chelsea Guo
Design by Meiyi Yan

Check out more of Brandon's work here: https://linktr.ee/BrandonKingdollar

Here's the link for feedback :) https://forms.gle/aopTPrAHwq7Hfk8J9

“It’s just hard to make these kind of relationships when everyone is trying to put a value on you. I want to make deep intimate friendships. I don’t want these surface-level acquaintanceships, they’re okay I guess.  I want someone I can spill my soul to. I want someone I can talk to at 3 in the morning and they’ll listen—and I’ll do the same for them. And I feel like it’s hard to get those at Harvard especially just because of how concerned with status and clout everyone is.”

Join our host David Chen as we sit down with Brandon Kingdollar, a first-year student at Harvard College, for another episode of the Humans of Harvard College Podcast. We talk about genuine friendships, introversion, and balancing a life that doesn’t want to be balanced.

Hosted by David Chen
Produced by Mira Becker and Chelsea Guo
Design by Meiyi Yan

“The reason why I love the Avatar the Last Airbender so much is because it’s so deeply tied to my childhood…I tie it a lot to my relationship with my brother. Avatar the Last Airbender is what we watched everyday…as presents for moving up a new belt in Taekwondo he and I would get the new ATLA book and share it. It teaches so many life lessons, but in a way that is understandable to a young audience.”

Join our host David Chen as we sit down with Hannah Kim, a first-year student at Harvard College, for another episode of the Humans of Harvard College Podcast. We talk about ATLA, fashion tips, first impressions, and more.

Hosted by David Chen
Produced by Mira Becker and Chelsea Guo
Design by Meiyi Yan

“I want to foster and adopt kids, it’s something I’ve wanted to do for awhile now. I absolutely adore children…they view the world in the way it should be viewed. But there are so many kids without a proper support system in the world. I want to help make a kid’s life better that’s already on this earth."

Join our host David Chen as we sit down with Ina Bhoopalam, a first-year student at Harvard College, for another episode of the Humans of Harvard College Podcast. We talk about how to speedrun forming friendships, our thoughts on having children, confronting surprises, and chasing dreams.

Hosted by David Chen
Produced by Mira Becker and Chelsea Guo
Design by Meiyi Yan

Everyone has a story—a story worth sharing.

Tune into the first episode of the Humans of Harvard College Podcast, where host David Chen speaks to Alex Youn, the president of Humans of Harvard College. They talk about the culture of "busy" at Harvard, some of their regrets, and how Humans of Harvard speaks to an important value to both of them: empathy.

Produced by Mira Becker and Chelsea Guo

Design by Meiyi Yan

Everyone has a story to tell. This podcast is here to highlight the stories of the Humans of Harvard College.

Hosted by David Chen

Graphic Design by Meiyi Yan and Molly Wendel

Executive Producers Mira Becker and Chelsea Guo