Chapters

• 0:43 Who is Ryan Ziaks?

• 1:05 How Ziaks got involved with film & communications programs at Quinnipiac

• 2:05 Ziaks' journey to becoming a podcaster

• 4:38 Ziaks' semester and internship in Los Angeles

• 7:12 Gaining experience at the Sundance Film Festival

• 8:19 Opportunity to go to the Cannes Film Festival

• 9:12 How Quinnipiac prepared Ziaks for his future career

• 10:31 Ziaks' advice for prospective students 

Transcript

Joel Vanner: Welcome to the first episode of ”Who Are You?,“ the podcast for I am joined by college students who are up to some seriously cool stuff. My name is Joel Vanner. And I am inside the podcast studio at Quinnipiac University, and I am joined by my first guest on the program, Ryan Ziaks, Ryan, welcome in.  

Ryan Ziaks: Thank you so much, Joel. I've been blessed with a lot of incredible experiences and opportunities here at Quinnipiac, and I'm excited to talk about them. 

Joel Vanner: And I forgot to say in your introduction, you are no stranger to podcasting, which we'll get into later in the show. It's Ryan Ziaks from the Zicast.  

Ryan Ziaks: I appreciate the plug. 

Joel Vanner: So my first question to you, though, so we can get started, is who are you? Let's figure that out.  

Ryan Ziaks: So I'm Ryan Ziak. I'm a fourth-year student here at Quinnipiac University. I'm an English major in a film, television, media arts minor. But interestingly enough, I actually transferred in here as a junior, so I've had two years here at Quinnipiac, and my main goal was just to make the most of them. 

Joel Vanner: And in those two years, what has your experience at Quinnipiac been like? 

Ryan Ziaks: It's been incredible, and a lot of I really wanted to hit the ground running when I first got here at Quinnipiac. And what really drew me to the school was their incredible communications and film programs. And something that really, really stood out to me was the QU in LA program, which is a program where after students apply and get an internship, they're able to go out to Los Angeles with other students and live there over the course of a semester. And funnily enough, the first professor I ever contacted at the school is the director of the program, Andres Fresende who's pretty famous on the Internet fans of the very popular podcast Bad Friends may know as Fancy. And him and I have been in contact. And then when I was able to go to Los Angeles, he became a great guide and mentor for me. 

Joel Vanner: Wow, that's awesome. Sounds like you've had a lot of great experiences over your two years here at Quinnipiac. What else have you been able to be a part of so far? 

Ryan Ziaks: Yeah and one of the things I really wanted to do was just be involved in everything Quinnipiac has to offer in regards to things like communication and film. So I joined Q30, the television station here at the school. 

Joel Vanner: Fully student-run. Awesome organization to be a part of. 

Exactly. It was a great, great way to explain it. And I was able to be a part of shows like Quinnipiac Tonight, it’s a sketch comedy show, and I was able to become a producer for them. So I was able to help write and then film sketches, and that helped me a lot as a filmmaker. I also became involved in the Quinnipiac Film Society, which is a giant film organization here on campus, was just a great way to build a film community and get to know other kids who are interested in the things like I am, which has brought of incredible opportunities like getting to go to the Sundance Film Festival, which is the biggest film festival in the United States, big for independent filmmakers. And that's been a great way to kind of network in that space. But also, you mentioned podcasting, as well. One of the things I really was drawn to was this studio here and knowing that students could create their own content and be able to create and produce their own content. And then once I figured it out, it was like a light bulb opened in my head, and I can create this special thing, that's been running almost ever since I got. 

Joel Vanner: So take us back to the first episode to getting started. What was that like just getting the Zicast off the ground here in this podcast studio? 

Ryan Ziaks: Yeah, it's hilarious to look back on it now, with how much I've been able to learn. But the Zicast really began, I podcast. It began just to talk to my friends and be able to archive and log experiences with them. But over time, as I grew more of a passion for this and then was able to go to QU in LA and intern at a podcasting company, we'll get into later. I was able to learn more about podcasting as a business and content creation as a business, and that's really furthering me in my professional career. 

Joel Vanner: You're on the other side of the table today as a guest, not as a host, so that must be interesting. It's a full circle. It's like a full circle moment. And you also had your brother on an episode of this  Zicast, too, that must have been cool, too. 

Ryan Ziaks: Yeah, yeah. He actually went to Quinnipiac so Quinnipiac. So I'm from North Haven, which is close by to Quinnipiac, so it's always kind of been on my horizon. Then he was a physical therapy student, he's a graduate student has his white coat and all that. So very different paths, medical professional and then artist. But I've always known Quinnipiac. 

 Joel Vanner: You mentioned you were able to take the Zicast out to LA and you had some experiences with QU in LA. Tell me a little bit about what you did out there. 

 Ryan Ziaks: Yeah, it was like a lot of things I've been able to do here. I just very unbelievable to be able to be out there in the city and get to do incredible things like hiking the Hollywood sign, you know, going to Warner Brothers studios, etc., and going out there, I was able to, of course, be with Andre, be with other students. And I interned at 7EQUIS, which is a podcast studio out there in Los Angeles. They produce bad friends, like I mentioned before, they produce a lot of Bobby Lee's podcast, a famous comedian, and being one of my better experiences or most interesting was I was able to actually be on Bad Friends.  

Joel Vanner: Oh, wow. That's really cool. 

Ryan Ziaks: I was able to go up there, and then host Bobby Lee and Andrew Santino, famous comedians. They were riffing on me, and I was able to be at the episode where rapper Machine Gun Kelly was on. So I was able to talk to Machine Gun Kelly about John Cena, which is  

Joel Vanner: Do you ever get nervous talking to people like that?  

Ryan Ziaks: Not really. It was a surreal experience because they're all so famous and all so accomplished in this medium. But yeah, being able to be up there, it's just something you can tell people you did. That's just like, Wow. And then I was also able to shadow on the production of Bobby Lee's podcast Tiger Belly when Rob Lowe was a guest.  

Joel Vanner: I love Rob Lowe.  

Ryan Ziaks: Yeah, really, really legend. And what I was able to do there is basically in these instances, I was able to just shadow Andre and Carlos, who are the producers of Bad Friends and see what they do like operating the switcher or how they set up the cameras, and then how they prepare the show. So I was able to see that firsthand. And then when I would be in the Savana Key’s office, was be able to research on clients and things in that regard and be able to see how they set up their studio and be able to see how the business of podcasting works because like I mentioned before, I always thought of it as more of a passion project, but really, there's so much goes into it in that it's truly like film. It's truly like television. Like 7EQUISE they would consider themselves in a lot of ways, like a television network. And then that's kind of how I think of podcasting now. 

Joel Vanner: That's great experience, too, that you were able to probably influence the Zicast now and grow that into your over 50 episodes now, which congratulations. 

Ryan Ziaks: And I was able to record some out there as well, with Andres. Like I asked him so many times to go on the show, and then to be able to do it there in 7EQUISEstudio, which they were very gracious to allow me to do was, like, just a dream come true. 

Joel Vanner: So, QU in LA sounds like it was a really awesome experience. And you mentioned Sundance. Tell me a little bit more about that. 

Ryan Ziaks: Yeah, so something that's really, really cool. And it's a program that only Quinnipiac offers. So a select number of members of the Quinnipiac Film Society are able to go out to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah for,  

Joel Vanner: You're getting your miles in, huh?  

Ryan Ziaks: Oh, yeah, it's just so beautiful there, and being able to kind of be there in Park City, which is all the beautiful mountains, this little town, and you're able to go see these films with the people who make them. And this year, actually, I was able to go last year 2024, and I'm able to go now in 2025. And this year, I'm being able to do press work for Q30. So I can interview some of the directors, producers, actors involved in these films and be able to kind of get that experience of talking to them in this way, getting to learn from them, and then get to go see the movies with them when they premiere. So getting to go to Sundance is definitely I feel like it's like a must do for a lot of film students because you could just be walking around town and meet all these, like, notable, famous people. It's a really, really incredible experience. 

Joel Vanner: Right, and some of them may end up on the Zicast, too, after that.  

Ryan Ziaks: Fingers crossed fingers crossed fingers crossed. 

Joel Vanner: What other experiences have you been able to be a part of so far during your time here at Quinnipiac  

Ryan Ziaks: there's also a program here at School of Communications to go to the Canne Film Festival, which is the biggest film festival in the world in France. And there's a course here where you can take that and it'll lead you naturally into an internship where you could go out there and then work on and cover some of the films that will be there at Canne. So I'm hoping to do that literally right after I graduate, I'll be flying out to France. And that's something that I also think is like, I must do for film students because Canne is different from Sundance because Sundance is more for independent filmmakers and showing off that what it's more there's just so much more money involved, and it's for bigger film production, so you can kind of see film from two different perspective from the smaller perspectives that a lot of students would know versus a bigger perspective where there's a lot more finances and a lot more studio involvement. 

Joel Vanner: All these experiences, you know, one day, you will graduate from Quinnipiac University. You're going to graduate this coming May. How do you think all these experiences are preparing you for a career in what do you want to do when you leave here? 

Ryan Ziaks: Yeah, and that really helped me to figure that out, which is, I would like to begin my career in podcasting just because I see how much of a growing medium it is and how much you can do in it. And, of course, just how easily producible it can be. It really showed me Like a lot of my coworkers started in film and then went to podcasting. I think it would be interesting to start in podcasting and I'm sure a couple of QU Alumn that also do podcasts as well. Who were my co workers there Richie Tobin and Emma Hoffer, who taught me a lot in regards to what I do with Zicast in terms of making short film content for it. So like, little things you'd see on YouTube use reels on Instagram Reels, and a lot of things like editing film and just being, like, great contacts and great models because they went out to Los Angeles right after graduating. So that definitely taught me. It really gave me a direction, which I didn't have when I left my original school. What I've been able to do here, Quinnipiac gave me a sense of direction and even a lot of confidence in the things I could do because I always thought I could be doing more, and Quinnipiac gave me all the opportunities to do just that. 

Joel Vanner: So all of your experiences, being a transfer student, traveling, Sundance, Canne, QU in LA, the Zicast what advice would you give other students who maybe want to get started in the podcasting world or just want to find the place for them? 

Ryan Ziaks: Actually for transfer students, I would say it's never too late, and to follow your heart and to try to find the spaces and people that you want to interact with, you know, people say, Your network is your networth, I would say, and being able to connect with people about the things you're passionate about. That's what I did, and I was able to know so many different people from so many different places, who I could bring on the Zicasts and more importantly, have them as resources. Professionally and just in general in life. Like, I brought up on Andres Fresende. Like he's a great mentor for me in life just as much as he was professionally. So it's really just finding the right people, the right things that you want to do and just prioritizing your time because one of my big goals is just to make use of every day and not waste one. And that's something that I'm always going to do, whether I'm here, whether I'm beyond in my professional career. It's just to always prioritize the time you have and the people you have. 

Joel Vanner: And I hope I lived up to your expectations as a host of this podcast. Thank you for joining me today. 

Ryan Ziaks: Of course, of course. You surpassed them, Joel. Thank you. 

Joel Vanner: If you like today's episode, be sure to like and subscribe and find our other episodes on Apple and YouTube or wherever else you find your favorite podcasts until next time, when I ask my next guest, who are you? Goodbye.