Spark UP: Recent Episodes
Spark Initiative
Spark UP is a youth-run podcast that showcases different perspectives in a variety of topics. Ranging from fictional characters, art, relationships, and many more, join us every Saturday to gain another stance on a cool topic.
After our little hiatus, this week, we will be ending our mini recruitment series on the topic of interviews! Delving into what questions would be asked during an interview and how to answer such questions, we even talked about some of our embarrassing experiences. We hope this helps all of the applicants who have applied to non-profit organizations, jobs, or anything that requires an interview!
In this episode, we focused in on the first stage of recruitment in student organizations. Starting from things that make a written application stand out, our founders and chief executives share their tips and advises to becoming a successful applicant. By breaking down the common questions, we delve into what recruiters really expect from the applicants. Make sure to listen to the end for answers to some of the most common confusions and mistakes in the application process!
This week we are so excited to introduce our very first guest speaker on our podcast, Ivy Xu! Graduating from Queen’s Commerce, Ivy has been recruited as well as interviewed for multiple roles, worked for billion dollar startups in Silicon Valley, and is currently one of the co-founders of @beta.camp. With her experience and expertise in not only being a recruiter but also an interviewee, we talked about what recruiters look for in an applicant, how to answer certain questions and some tips and tricks to ace the interview during this episode!
This week, we wanted to take a break from our regular content. Therefore, we scoured Reddit to find some of the most interesting unpopular opinions and give our view on it! From talking about bugs to bringing kids to Disney World, this week’s episode was quite a fun time.
This week, we explore the possibility for children to have completely different world views as their biological parents! Puzzled by differences between some of our ideologies and what our parents believe, we want to discuss the influences from our environment vs. biological ties. Much of this talk was inspired yet expands beyond the famous Nature-Nurture debate. We are no psychology experts, but we use our experiences to try to find reasons to these wonders.
Happy Mothers’ Day!! This week, we wanted to take a break from our regular prompts and dedicate a special episode to mothers around the world! We talked about what a mother’s role looks like and shared some personal stories. We hope you all spent some time with the mother figure in your life and had a fantastic day!
In this episode, we discuss the effectiveness of body positive movements in the media. If you’re on social media, there’s a good chance you’ve came across body positive movements. But, are they as effective as they should? Are there any problems behind this seemingly great initiative? Why and what can we do?
“Mo·ral·i·ty” - principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior. Morals make up a huge part of our lives: making important decisions, creating relationships, all of our actions go hand in hand with our morals. It governs our daily lives and without it, it would be chaos. This week on Spark UP, we wanted to go into a different direction and delve into a deeper topic: where does morality come from? Is it based on religion, the environment we live in, or is it from the feeling of shame?
Art is a big part of our world today. From the buildings that we live in to the movies we watch, it’s a part of our everyday lives. An artist’s creation can be viewed however we choose but should the creations be ‘punished’ for their creator’s crimes/faults? In other words, can you really separate art from the artist? This week on Spark UP, we honed in on the art world and talked about controversies within the art realm as well as made connections between past and present, coming to an understanding between the artist and its creation.
Within each story, there will always be protagonists, antagonists, sidekicks and more. Each has their own set of personalities and each has their own set of values. There will always be certain characters that people are drawn to but why is that? Listen to our first episode and hear our perspective on whether or not you can judge a person based on their preference over fictional characters!