Thanks to our partnership with PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs, Shield reporters were not only able to attend SXSW EDU 2023 last March, but we were able to do some original reporting. Our PBS SRL colleagues gave co-news editor and co-online managing editor Ingrid Smith the assignment to interview U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo and illustrator Michaela Goade about their new children’s book, Remember.

Part of that interview was an essential part of the April 26 episode of On Our Minds, a PBS Student Reporting Labs podcast on mental health that is just wrapping up its third season. The Season 3 hosts of On Our Minds, Ashley He and Tyler Pullum, also attended SXSW and conducted interviews and recorded a live episode of their podcast, which was released to the public on Wednesday. The podcast features expert interviews and also student-created podcasts about mental health issues facing young people including depression, anxiety, the impact of the pandemic, trauma and social media.

McCallum journalists have been involved with On Our Minds since the first episode dropped. The very first episode of the podcast, “It’s OK not to be OK,” which received the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award last August, featured an audio story written, produced and starring McCallum student Ariana Mendez, who is now a senior.

Subsequent episodes of the podcast have featured audio stories written and produced by McCallum journalists Caroline Owen and Alice Scott, both of whom attended SXSW EDU this year.

The April 26 episode centers on the mental-health importance of being yourself. The first part of the episode centers on Pullum’s interview with Hank Green, a science content creator and co-host and co-creator of the YouTube Channel Crash Course.

The second part of the episode centers on Harjo. After Harjo reads her poem, “Remember,” the hosts introduce the portion of Smith’s interview with Harjo in which she discusses how the meaning of her poem has evolved over time and shares the advice she would give to young journalists or young Native Americans interested in pursuing the arts.

“I’ve come to realize that often what comes through in our arts and poetry and and all of our arts is it’s often beyond us,” Harjo said. “We grow into it. So I felt and I feel that that poem as it had a larger mission than me, and I just helped bring it in. I had to finesse it like you do, like the spirit of the poem came in and then I had to make a little place for it to live.”

To illustrate how the poem has enjoyed a life beyond her she pointed out that the poem is travelling on the Lucy Spacecraft heading towards Jupiter’s moons.

Harjo shared the advice she received as struggling teen: be yourself.

“It turned out to be the most profound found advice, because I remember being a teenager. I still have PTSD from being a teenager,” she said. “Just be yourself. Well, what does that mean? But that’s an incredible journey. But ultimately, you have to honor who you are. … Whatever happened, it’s part of the story. And it depends on what you do with the story. You can use the story to destroy yourself or you can use the story to to grow into the most magnificent person that you were meant to be. … Everybody is different. Every poet is different. And every artist, we all have, everybody has their gifts. So it’s important to honor that.”

To read a transcript of the entire episode, click here.

This episode of On Our Minds was produced and edited by Student Reporting Labs Lead Podcast Producer Briget Ganske.

You can subscribe to the On Our Minds YouTube channel, and you can follow Student Reporting Labs on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.