Burn Your Draft

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Burn Your Draft

Burn Your Draft is a podcast exploring the year-long senior thesis experience at Reed College. New episodes released every other week during the academic year.

“Burn Your Draft” is a podcast exploring the year-long senior thesis experience at Reed College, an independent liberal arts and sciences college in Portland, Oregon. Each episode showcases a senior or recent graduate and interviews them about their thesis: what is it, why did they do it, and what comes next. This podcast is a joint production of Reed students, staff, and alumni, and was made poss

ible by a gift from Seth Paskin '90. Episodes may contain swearing and may deal with sensitive topics. The views, information, or opinions expressed on this podcast are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Reed College.

16/10/2025

In this episode, we hear from Henry, an English major whose thesis journey took a few unexpected turns: from exploring Pacific Northwest regionalism to diving deep into the world of literary naturalism. Henry unpacks how authors Jack London and Frank Norris challenged historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s “frontier myth,” reimagining the American frontier not as a vanished landscape but as an evolving cultural, economic, and imaginative force.

Tune in to hear about survival narratives, Social Darwinist ideas, and what happens when you have to scrap half your thesis to start again (spoiler: it’s not fun, but it’s worth it). Henry reflects on the highs and frustrations of the Reed thesis process, the art of negotiating with an advisor, and the unexpected joy of discovering how to make seemingly unrelated ideas work together.

🎧 Hear from Henry on SoundCloud (or listen to Burn Your Draft anywhere you find podcasts): https://on.soundcloud.com/BnJfANv8Qiyh56a4BD

Listen to interviews with dozens of Reed alumni and learn about their thesis years on our website:
🔥📜🔥 reed.edu/burnyourdraft 🔥📜🔥

Reed College

03/10/2025

Arianna focused on the impacts of the closure of a Walmart in her hometown of Albuquerque for her thesis in the anthropology department. She also tells us about how Reed College’s Anthropology Student Fund helped to support her research, and how her thesis adviser helped her re-work her initial thesis ideas using a concept from environmental anthropology.

🎧 Hear from Arianna on SoundCloud (or listen to Burn Your Draft anywhere you find podcasts): https://on.soundcloud.com/63vbCJFDGZltaNcEhM

Listen to interviews with dozens of Reed alumni and learn about their thesis years on our website:
🔥📜🔥 reed.edu/burnyourdraft 🔥📜🔥

Reed College

18/09/2025

Amelie started out in the biology department at Reed because she wanted to study bacteria and living things, but then she got a chance to start learning from the biochemists on the faculty. They helped her build the bridge from chemistry to life, which led her to switch her major from biology to biochemistry and molecular biology.

Amelie was also the second student producer for Burn Your Draft, working with us from 2021–22, and it was a delight to get to talk to her.

🎧 Hear from Amelie on SoundCloud (or listen to Burn Your Draft anywhere you find podcasts): https://on.soundcloud.com/yac2NVVTJkwZqKF6rm

Listen to interviews with dozens of Reed alumni and learn about their thesis years on our website:
🔥📜🔥 reed.edu/burnyourdraft 🔥📜🔥

29/08/2025

Emma’s economics department thesis explored the effect that Tony awards have on consumer demand for Broadway shows.

🎧 Hear from Emma on SoundCloud (or listen to Burn Your Draft anywhere you find podcasts): https://on.soundcloud.com/yalAHvwpEulbWvYWTR

Listen to interviews with dozens of Reed alumni and learn about their thesis years on our website:
🔥📜🔥 reed.edu/burnyourdraft 🔥📜🔥

18/08/2025

We’re back for the 2025–26 school year after taking a hiatus last spring. Today, Ocean shares his thesis experience with us which was focused on studying writers from the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean, especially Édouard Glissant, and tells us why he thinks poetry and art is important.

Ace Lackey ’27, our new student producer, produced this episode for us. Welcome to the podcast Ace!

🎧 Hear from Ocean on SoundCloud (or listen to Burn Your Draft anywhere you find podcasts): https://on.soundcloud.com/TNcnjjAdjxNFAlCBPk

Listen to interviews with dozens of Reed alumni and learn about their thesis years on our website:
🔥📜🔥 reed.edu/burnyourdraft 🔥📜🔥

02/12/2024

Juno Kerelis ’24 was the third student podcast producer on Burn Your Draft, and we’re so happy to get to speak to them on the other side of their time at Reed. If you’ve been listening since Juno hosted the podcast, you may have noticed little musical interludes during some of the episodes. Most of those were composed by Juno! Thank you for your work on the podcast, and for coming to talk to us about your year studying Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.

🎧 Hear from Juno on SoundCloud (or listen to Burn Your Draft anywhere you find podcasts): https://on.soundcloud.com/LSWV9Qokwqg1uwXP8

Listen to interviews with dozens of Reed alumni and learn about their thesis years on our website:
🔥📜🔥 reed.edu/burnyourdraft 🔥📜🔥

19/11/2024

Josie Bicknell '24 wrote a pharmaceutical development thesis about looking for a new way to develop antibiotics. She also tells us about her interest in biology and chemistry and looking for bridges between the disciplines, and how chemistry can be used to do things like examine snake p**p to learn about snake evolution.

🎧 Hear from Josie on SoundCloud (or listen to Burn Your Draft anywhere you find podcasts): https://on.soundcloud.com/zMDsNZSoptLoLMYa9

Listen to interviews with dozens of Reed alumni and learn about their thesis years on our website:
🔥📜🔥 reed.edu/burnyourdraft 🔥📜🔥

30/10/2024

In honor of Halloween BYD is venturing into the dark halls of the female gothic with English grad, Jordan Kappler '24.

🎧 Hear from Jordan on SoundCloud (or listen to Burn Your Draft anywhere you find podcasts): https://on.soundcloud.com/dGR2drpWcGLygt7t8

Listen to interviews with dozens of Reed alumni and learn about their thesis years on our website:
🔥📜🔥 reed.edu/burnyourdraft 🔥📜🔥

14/10/2024

Aroon combined his interests in sustainability and aviation to examine the effects that a carbon tax might have on full service airline carriers and low cost airline carriers (it didn't look good for the low cost carriers).

🎧 Hear from Aroon on SoundCloud (or listen to Burn Your Draft anywhere you find podcasts): https://on.soundcloud.com/zoTDSNS7ECt3bexi8

Listen to interviews with dozens of Reed alumni and learn about their thesis years on our website:
🔥📜🔥 reed.edu/burnyourdraft 🔥📜🔥

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