High school boys create podcast based on their conversations

Sitting on the space gray couch that wraps around the entirety of sophomore Toby Rodriguez’s basement, he and freshman Fritz Sullivan pull a narrow slip of construction paper out of a jar with the name of next week’s special guest on their podcast, “A Conversation With My Friend.” 

Sullivan and Rodriguez have been co-hosts of their podcast since releasing the first episode on Spotify, Apple Music and several other streaming platforms in December 2019.

“Fritz and I’s podcast is basically what you would think: a conversation with my friend,” Rodriguez said. “That’s how it started. We were on a boat in New York getting ready to depart for a boat tour, saw a seagull and started talking about the seagull.”

Sullivan and Rodriguez ended up having a 15-minute conversation about that seagull — and the depth of it led them to debut their day-to-day conversations to the public eye, or ear.

At first, Sullivan and Rodriguez recorded their conversations merely for their own enjoyment, still calling it their podcast. But after nearly a year of keeping the recordings to themselves, Sullivan threw out the idea of publishing them. Rodriguez was in.

Sullivan and Rodriguez record and release a new episode of their podcast each week, featuring a randomly chosen guest who is the grabber of their show. Whenever someone asks Sullivan or Rodriguez to be on featured on the podcast, they place their name in a jar and from there it’s luck. Conversation is their forte.

The episodes have a baseline structure and topical conversations, but Rodriguez says they never know what’s in store for each episode. The first episode touched on what unique animal coat they would each want to serve as a pillowcase, while last week the boys and their guest discussed which they would prefer: Hinge or Tinder. 

Some guests take the comedic route to answer the first ‘Random Q’ of the day Sullivan throws at them, or the rapid yes-or-no questions that both hosts ask. Rodriguez, Sullivan, and the guest of the week answer each question in all of the podcast segments. 

“If grass on the world was hair, what color and texture of hair would it be?” Sullivan asked his guest. 

“Straight and strawberry blonde,” sophomore Macy Cherra, their Feb. 23 guest, answered.

Closing the podcast, some guests take a more serious route on what the boys call guest space: a time for the guests to freely express anything they want, without Sullivan and Rodriguez drilling them with questions.  

Sophomore Lillian Williams had the opportunity to be a guest on “A Conversation With My Friend,” and admired the structure of the podcast, along with the questions asked. 

“We talked about what you would do if your tongue was the only thing you could use, we talked about lunchroom anxiety, our first days of middle school, our favorite things, cheer…,” Williams said. It’s literally just a conversation — it just kind of goes on. And it’s really really  fun. Toby and Fritz are a lot of fun to be with.”

From in-depth conversations about what color the grass on earth would be if it were hair to the topic of anxiety, Sullivan admires each of his guests for the unique stance they bring to each episode. And for each of his guests, he finds out a handful of interesting facts he wouldn’t have otherwise known about.

“It’s always one of our friends that we have on [our podcast] which is why it’s called ‘A Conversation With My Friend,’” Sullivan said. “They’re all good in different ways. [Rodriguez] and I also have episodes where it’s just me and him. Those are also really fun because we get to divert back to our ways before publishing them.” 

Rodriguez still remembers the time before their podcast was offical when he and Fritz were 15 minutes into the recording and the two boys fell asleep — waking up to a five-hour voice memo full of snores and noises throughout the night. 

Sullivan and Rodriguez value the casualness of their podcast.

“The sound quality of our podcast episodes isn’t the greatest, but it works,” Sullivan said. “We think that’s kind of the beauty of it. It’s a DIY type situation.”

It’s the nonchalance of “A Conversation With My Friend” that brings a sense of gratitude to both Sullivan and Rodriguez for their friendship.

Although Sullivan and Rodriguez have only known each other for a couple of years through StageRight Performing Arts, the two are inseparable. Their continual sarcasm, podcast meetings during 3rd lunch and references to “The Office” are what makes this friendship and podcast congeal. 

“If I like one thing you can be damn sure that Toby likes the same thing,” Sullivan said. “We have a similar sense of humor. It’s actually kind of scary how similar we are.”

Sullivan is convinced he and Rodriguez have a sixth sense. In the midst of recording an episode they’ll fill in the blanks when one person doesn’t know what to say. 

“[When Rodriguez and I are] in the middle of the podcast and don’t want to communicate to each other out loud, but we’re thinking of what to ask next, we can look at each other and be like ‘yeah, yeah’ and know exactly what to do next,” Sullivan said. “I’ve learned that we know each other so well and we’ve spent so much time together that we know how each other works and we can go off of the vibe we give each other.”

Their friends and podcast guests notice it, too. Sometimes while they’re recording, their guests will question how the boys know what each other is thinking. 

Sullivan believes that having a podcast has made him a better conversationalist and a pro-small talker, along with brining him and Rodriguez’s friendship one step further.

While Sullivan handles the technical side of the podcast team, including uploading and editing the episodes to a podcast platform called Anchor (a distributor), Rodriguez handles the social media and promotional aspects of the team.

From their Instagram, @aconvowithmyfriend, to Rodriguez posting announcements about their episodes on his Google Classroom’s, the boys promote their podcast in any way they can.

The Instagram account features Rodriguez putting up a daily post of what they call “A Conversation With My Friend Vocabulary,” featuring words the boys use in the episodes such as ‘der’ — or their go-to podcast beverage, hot apple cider — so their audience can always be up-to-date on their inside jokes used frequently throughout the podcast.

“We’re trying to steer away from this being just a thing for me and Toby, like just for us to think is funny and go more towards a thing for people to enjoy,” Sullivan said. 

The two boys don’t see an end in sight for “A Conversation With My Friend.”

“As long as people listen, we will keep producing,” Rodriguez said. “And as long as people keep wanting to be our guests, we’ll take ‘em.”