Student Influencers Release ‘ok, anyway’ Podcast

GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION BY TAYLOR KIRSCHENHEITER

By BRIELLE CAYER

Tori Pante, Fordham College at Lincoln Center ’21, and YouTuber Georgia Bridgers are not your average duo. With 127,000 Instagram followers between them, Bridgers’ popular YouTube presence and combined digital media experience, the power couple understand the ins and outs of being content creators in the public eye. As their latest creative endeavor, Bridgers and Pante debuted their new podcast “ok, anyway” on March 6 via Spotify; the pilot episode “trusting tinder” featured a hilarious, touching retelling of the women’s initial meeting and how it led to their romance.

After being approached by Spotify’s podcast company, Anchor, Bridgers suggested the idea of collaborating with Pante. “It seemed like the next step in my career as a content creator,” she said. “We wanted to open our lives a little bit more to the public, in a relaxed manner.”

Already having garnered nearly 15 million views on her YouTube channel, Bridgers felt that a podcast with Pante might provide a different, unique experience. “We chose to do this project on a podcast form because it gave us the opportunity to be more relaxed and have longer content,” she said.

The couple elaborated in an email, “YouTube being a visual medium has to be very visually pleasing, edited perfectly and honestly not much longer than 15 minutes. We’re a little more unfiltered on the podcast and felt it was the perfect medium to share more about us.”

COURTESY OF GEORGIA BRIDGERS
Georgia Bridgers (left) and Tori Pante’S podcast focuses on the ordinary, and often humorous, happenings in their lives.

Though Bridgers and Pante were podcast listeners prior to “ok, anyway,” the pair admitted to being new to the recording process. Both praised Spotify’s involvement in the studio and said, “We don’t really have to do much with recording. The Anchor lab has professional mics and a mixer that we use. All we bring is an SD card to save our audio.” 

The couple agreed they have “no true blueprint” when it comes to recording a podcast episode, adding, “We just like to have fun! We were so scared that we weren’t going to be able to talk for an hour straight – to which we were definitely mistaken.” Still, they are honest about their adjustment to the preparation requirements, saying, “We begrudgingly say this – but we are definitely procrastinators. We tend to come up with that week’s topic the night before or morning of. We have quickly learned this is not always the best way to prepare.”

Yet, the lack of rigid structure supports the two creators’ hopes for the podcast and seems to evoke the signature charm found in their relationship. “We want people to just feel comfortable while listening,” they said. “The listeners can expect to feel like they are sitting around with their friends on a Friday night just hanging out, laughing and talking about personal things going on in our lives.”

“Tori and I always are laughing together and have a unique experience as two women dating at the age of 21,” Bridgers said. Of the podcast’s purpose, she said, “We just wanted to share with the world our laugh out loud lives.”

For a pair that laughs so often, it seems fitting that the project title came about during a tipsy giggle-fest on the subway, which Pante humorously describes in epic detail during the podcast’s pilot episode. Bridgers recounted the reasoning behind Pante’s title idea: “We seem to always be going in a million different directions with our stories and need to bring it back to ‘ok, anyway.’”

For now, Bridgers and Pante are embracing this new adventure and enjoying the process in creating their podcast together. While they hope that the project finds success, that’s not what drives them. “We are more in it in the sense where we love each other,” Bridgers said. “We love talking to each other, we love how supportive people are of us and that makes us want to share more deeply with people. Our goal is to touch lives, make people laugh and just have fun!”