Colorado College’s Anya Steinberg ’21 has been named one of 10 finalists in the NPR Student Podcast Competition: College Edition. Her podcast, “He's Just 23 Chromosomes,” is about “an immaculate conception”; not the Biblical one but the one that occurred on her mother’s lunch break, in a sterile room, years ago.

In a compelling 7 minutes, 58 seconds, Steinberg interviews her mother and younger brother about the artificial insemination that led to the birth of her and her sibling, her shock at learning her “donor dad” was not the Stanford medical student she had thought but a jazz musician, and her decision last year to launch a search for the donor.

NPR will announce the winners and honorable mentions next week, selected from the 10 finalist podcasts. The podcasts will be featured in upcoming segments of “Morning Edition” or “All Things Considered.”

Steinberg is an environmental science and race, ethnicity, and migration studies double major from Minneapolis, Minnesota, serves as co-chair of CC’s Multiracial Affinity Group, and hopes to someday have a career in radio journalism. She spent about two months working on the podcast, which includes original music by Danny Archibald ’21. 

The hardest part of producing the podcast was interviewing her little brother, Ari, says Steinberg. “We almost never talk about serious things together, much less our donor dad, and going into the conversation I was super nervous because I had no idea how he felt about it all.”

This is the third year NPR has held the Student Podcast Challenge, which has drawn more than 35,000 students around the country into the world of audio storytelling; however, it is the first year a collegiate category has been offered.