By Zoe Howard
Executive Features Editor
Manhattan Beach parent and sportscaster Dan Hellie sits down to talk with various experts in the community for a new podcast.
Hellie is a sportscaster for Fox Sports and the UFC Network. He also has his own podcast called Helliepod that he started in April 2020 where he sits down with people from the sports world. A few months ago, Hellie became the guest host for the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation (MBEF) podcast, “In The Know.” Since then, he’s been interviewing members of the community and addressing the students of Manhattan Beach Unified School District (MBUSD). “Since the pandemic, we certainly began to see a need for more information,” MBEF Executive Director Hilary Mahan said. “We use typical sources of email, letters through local newspapers and also letters directly to our constituents. We really felt there was a need on top of social
media and these traditional sources of information to go beyond, and that’s when we really started thinking of a podcast.”
According to MBEF, it started to mainly focus on developing “In The Know” once it wanted to begin to reach out beyond newspapers and email. MBEF felt that by spreading information in a podcast format, it could reach more people throughout the community.
“The whole concept of developing this podcast was to reach our community and provide them with the information that everyone has been seeking,” Mahan said.
MBEF board member Ellen Padnos connected Hellie with MBEF. Padnos felt that he would be the perfect partner for producing the podcast with MBEF. When Padnos and Mahan reached out to Hellie, he was willing to partner with MBEF and volunteer, according to Mahan. “I know Ellen and Hilary,” Hellie said. “I think initially it was just to help out, then I actually got to the point of doing the interviews, and I really learned about [and] enjoyed [meeting] the people I was able to talk to.”
The podcast launched on Nov. 10, and MBEF has released four episodes since. Hellie has interviewed the MBUSD Superintendent Dr. Mike Matthews; pediatric doctor Dr. Alice Kuo; licensed clinical social worker Leah Nihaus; and Ali Steward, the director of youth services at Beach Cities Health District.
“I think my favorite part of doing [the podcast] is talking to all these experts we’ve had on the show,” Hellie said. “We started with Dr. Matthews, and then we had on Dr. Alice Kuo, and then Leah Niehaus, then Ali Steward; they are all experts in different areas.”
In episode three of the show, Hellie sat down with Niehaus to talk about how the pandemic has affected MBUSD students. She gave advice on how to deal with anxiety, depression and the other aspects of social-emotional health.
“Niehaus was especially interesting to talk to because she talked about the social and emotional health of the students and kind of had me looking at it from [the students’] perspective as opposed [to looking at it] from the parents’ perspective, which is obviously very different,” Hellie said.
Unlike most of the interviews Hellie conducts, the questions are sent to him from Mahan and Padnos for “In The Know.” Normally, he would go into interviews with a majority of his own research done, according to Hellie.
“I learn information [from the guests] during the interview process,” Hellie said. “I just love what I’m able to learn about what’s going on and about what the kids are going through. It helps me with my own kids.”
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