If comfort could be packed, sealed and shipped straight to the place you call home, inside would be a podcast featuring Gael Aitor and Kayla Suarez.
Most well-known for their podcast Teenager Therapy, which most recently featured hosts Gael Aitor, 20, Kayla Suarez, 20, and Thomas Pham, 20, these three have been on a mission to spread a message of hope: you don’t have to go through life alone.
On Spotify, Teenager Therapy describes itself as “Five stressed, sleep-deprived, yet energetic teens sit down and talk about the struggles that come with being a teenager…A culmination of mistakes and growth and a reminder you’re not alone.”
Listening to the episodes, it is impossible to miss the authenticity and vulnerability the hosts have continued to bring to the podcast over the course of five years. The group has always been transparent with the fact that they are not experts on the topics they discuss, but still hope to be of help, and support their listeners as they face the different challenges that come with growing up.
As a listener of the podcast myself, I have always found it unique that the podcast was hosted by teenagers and continued, each week for such a long time. Additionally, I appreciate how the hosts have consistently shown up as themselves-even if that version of themselves changes each year, or even each episode. Who isn’t always changing, after all?
How Teenager Therapy Came to Be
Aitor came up with the idea of Teenager Therapy, a podcast for teenagers and by teenagers, during the summer of 2018 after listening to the podcast “Couples Therapy,” hosted by Casey Neistat and his wife.
Other than listening to Couples Therapy, Aitor said he mostly listened to podcasts discussing tech startups and podcasts by Gimlet Studios. When he told his friends and soon to be co-hosts about his idea for Teenager Therapy, it was a quick turnover to them recording the first episode.
“We were all hanging out individually. Every once in a while, I’d tell everyone about it. And it wasn’t until like the first week of school that I think we started recording the podcast….I think we redid it twice before we actually published it,” Aitor said.
Aitor’s idea for Teenager Therapy was far different from what was present and popular in the podcasting industry at the time. He assumed that if he wanted a podcast of that nature, others must also desire it.
“I was very confident. Naively, but thankfully very confident that it was gonna do well and be successful just because I thought it was a good concept. I thought it was something that was needed and valuable and that would provide a lot of good for people,” Aitor said.
At the time, Suarez did not know much about podcasts, but was willing to take a chance because she thought the process could be fun.
“I remember Gael and Thomas bringing up the idea and I didn’t know what podcasts were… I said yes because I didn’t have anything to lose, it’s not like I was doing anything super remarkable as a sophomore in high school,” Suarez said.
Due to how naturally the conversations flow during episodes, it makes sense for listeners to believe the hosts were already the best of friends when they started. However, their friendships actually were built to be as strong as they are now with time.
“I wasn’t close to anybody in the podcast initially…I think the support grew through the episodes and getting to know each other more,” Suarez said.
Starting a podcast that involves publicly talking about your feelings, struggles, and interests involves a great amount of willingness to be vulnerable and perceived by an audience. Aitor and Suarez, with little insight into what the future would hold, were brave enough to do it anyway.
“Even from a technical point of view, there wasn’t much. I kind of just figured out how to create a podcast and then gathered everyone in a room and they trusted me to publish it and actually help it go live. But we really did not know what we were doing. Over the next two or three weeks, it all came together,” Aitor said.
In hindsight, Aitor said not thinking too far into what the podcast would look like in the future helped relieve pressure off what the future would look like.
“The fact that I didn’t really think too far ahead as a young kid really played to my advantage because, if you asked me now to select a group of five people that I’m gonna spend five years of my life with, that is a lot more daunting. But back then…I honestly didn’t think how long this was gonna go on for. I just thought, ‘who are the immediate people that I like at the moment?’” Aitor said.
Over time, Aitor, Suarez, and Pham became known as mental health advocates in the podcasting space. However, because the podcast was more so something Aitor and Suarez felt they took a chance on, this was unexpected.
“I wasn’t quite looking at it from an activism advocate point of view. I really just thought like, as a human, as a teenager, this is good and this will do a lot of good. And we kind of evolved into our mental health advocacy as we understood the impact of it over time,” Aitor said.
Suarez said because she also was not thinking of the bigger message behind the podcast in the beginning, she did not anticipate listeners would begin to see them as mental health advocates.
“Because to me, we were just talking in Thomas’s [co-host] bedroom,” Suarez said. “I didn’t know how deep this could be, but I think, of course people found meaning in it and were able to resonate with what we were saying. I think it just gradually became something where people were coming back every week and were excited to hear what we were gonna say.”
Suarez said confidently that what gave the podcast meaning- was none other than the people who listened.
A New Phase of Teenager Therapy
As Aitor and Suarez entered a new stage of their lives, they were faced with different challenges and experiences, a transition that positively affected Teenager Therapy.
“The transition to college was difficult. Not so much more because of solely the podcast, but just coming from a small town to a bigger school where there’s a wide range of people,” Suarez said.
Suarez said the transition led to the members having more to both think and talk about on the podcast, such as discussing the experience of attending a predominantly white institution as a first generation student.
“I was able to express my thoughts and opinions on that through the podcast and a lot of people were able to relate to it which made me so, so happy. Because I think a lot of the time, I was just feeling isolated in the ways that I was thinking because I felt like nobody else was going through something similar,” Suarez said.
The transition from highschool to college can be difficult, as there are various factors that affect an individual’s experience. Aitor said in retrospect, they sometimes wondered if they were overhyping the transition to college.
“I was like, ‘are we being dramatic? Like, maybe this isn’t really that big of a deal,’ but now looking back on it, I’m glad we made it as dramatic as it was because I think now, it really was a big turning point in everyone’s lives. Isaac [past co-host] went off to college, I made a decision to not go to college…” Aitor said.
Aitor said that point in their lives laid the foundation of what the podcast would become, leading to the members eventually going down to four, then three (Aitor, Suarez, and Pham).
“In our coming of age, there was more nuance in the things that we talked about that had more perspective. That was something that I think was good for the podcast, for ourselves, and also interesting…hearing the different points of views,” Aitor said.
The podcast contains a multitude of perspectives, with one of the members attending a private institution, another attending community college, and another member not attending college at the moment. This allowed for a wider range of listeners to feel like they had someone to relate to and provided insight for listeners who were perhaps unsure which route they wanted to pursue.
“I think having the range of those different perspectives made for a really interesting time and the episodes really reflect that,” Aitor said.
As for the transition in the content covered on Teenager Therapy, Aitor said this came naturally.
“I think we never planned our episodes and it really just is about what was going on in our lives,” Aitor said. “It was just a lot of like [discussing] privilege and reflecting on our own upbringing. That was really like a main focus point is ‘what is our own upbringing? What do we wanna do with our future?’”
The Podcasting Space Then and Now
The podcasting space in 2018 compared to 2023 has seen a drastic change in formatting and content. Podcasts hosted by influencers, YouTubers, and TikTok creators have become more common, especially with the rise of podcasts taking on video format.
At the time Teenager Therapy began, the five members were as young as fifteen, much younger than other hosts in the podcasting space. Suarez said before she was put in settings that exposed her to other podcasters and the industry in general, she did not think much of her background.
“I didn’t think that I was at a disadvantage…I think a big part of that is because on the podcast, it’s very natural, very authentic,” Suarez said. “It’s not like we were actively trying to monetize it or make money off of it…I realized the different types of people that there are and how it affects me and the medium that I have through podcasting,” Suarez said.
In 2023, Aitor and Suarez attended an event that highlighted a different aspect of the podcasting industry they were less aware of.
“I think before we were sort of naive in the sense that we thought that people just wanted to help us, like they’re only looking out for our best intentions. And I think that is true to an extent, but a lot of the time it’s, it’s a lot of talk and there’s no performance behind it,” Suarez said.
Now, Suarez said with more experience in the industry, the members are more aware of their backgrounds and how that impacts them.
“It really put us on this accelerated path towards what the real world is like, and it really burst us outside of our own bubble that we existed in prior to it.When I look back on the show from 2018 through 2019, I really felt like we were still just this group of kids doing our own thing and in our own bubble somehow reaching lots of people. But we were within our own community,” Aitor said.
Aitor said it was not until 2020 that the group reached a level of national recognition that placed them in different rooms.
“People started wanting to talk to us, to reach out to us, and it really exposed us to different types of personalities out there and how the business world, industry, and professional world works,” Aitor said.
Handling the shift in popularity was a lot for Aitor at the time, as he was only a junior in high school.
“It’s like, you’re this kid and you gotta act more grown than you are. You gotta act like you know what you’re doing and how you’re managing all of it. It was certainly quite an interesting experience to be on this path of, ‘whoa, now you’re handling real responsibility.’You have a platform, you have partnerships, you have a team behind you and they all have certain expectations of you,” Aitor said.
As the members began attending more panels and meeting more professionals in the industry, Aitor said they had to sometimes deal with the dilemma of comparing the extent of individuals’ words compared to their actions.
“…That’s always something that’s been interesting to manage as someone that has made a career out of being so open and honest about our struggles…” Aitor said.
In 2020, national recognition included outlets such as The New York Times, CBS, Teen Vogue, raving about the (well deserved) success of Teenager Therapy. Additionally, in 2020, Teenager Therapy hosted the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and Meghan.
As the podcast gained more popularity, the members stuck to their roots and continued to prioritize being authentic, rather than making consistent attempts to monetize the platform.
“We kind of realized that’s not why we’re doing this, that’s not what we enjoy. And we really realized that what we enjoy doing is very authentic and it doesn’t require a performance… I think we stayed very true to ourselves…”Aitor said.
Additionally, Suarez highlighted the rise in popularity of podcasting in 2018 compared to present day.
“I feel like podcasting is just so big now…I think it’s a thing that people want to do and people enjoy hearing…It’s very personal, it seems more intimate and I think now it;s even taking on different forms…” Suarez said. “Now I think it’s divulged into something that is so much bigger with so much more attention, and it’s crazy to think that we were 15 and we had the podcast.”
In 2023, it is still relatively rare to find a consistent podcast hosted by teenagers.
“That’s something that I think will always be rare simply because, it takes a lot of either privilege or just a lot of luck and persistence to start a podcast when you’re so young, do it consistently and find a group of people that wanna do it,” Aitor said.
Gael Aitor and Kayla Suarez on Public Perception
With thousands of listeners keeping up with Teenager Therapy each week, the members are bound to be subject to countless perspectives of what people think they are like. As authentic as the podcast is, it can still be difficult for anyone to truly grasp what another individual is like in real life.
“I feel like my misconception that people would have about me based on the podcast is that I’m a very serious, collected, and calm individual. Because I think when I’m on the podcast it really activates that side of me where I’m really like, ‘okay, let’s talk, let’s be efficient with our time,” Aitor said. “…I think there’s a lot more unseriousness that you see once you start spending more time with me and you realize I am indeed not like that all the time.”
As for Suarez, she said a common misconception people may have about her is that she is very shy and introverted.
“I think I was definitely like that in the beginning episodes and I probably still am to an extent on the podcast. But I think I can be out there. I can be loud too. I’m very extroverted at times,” Suarez said.
Aitor and Suarez’s New Project: Astro Studios
Nearly five years after the first episode of Teenager Therapy launched in 2018, Aitor and Suarez launched the podcasting company Astro Studios in May of 2023. On the website, Astro Studios is described as a podcasting company that focuses “on capturing the conversations that comfort you and making them available when you need them the most.”
The format of Astro Studio works in a unique way to do just that for its listeners. The website includes a submission form for those based in Los Angeles or New York to fill out a form if they are interested in sharing a story, any story with the world. No experience is necessary, and there is a big emphasis on the site that “we [Astro Studios] believe we’re all interesting.”
In a time where society romanticizes hustle culture and there is an ever-present pressure to be interesting according to however society decides it looks like that month, this concept is so refreshing to see.
“I mean, on a more statistical level, there’s a youth mental health crisis. We’re in a loneliness epidemic. Who do you turn to when you don’t have friends? When your family members can’t help you? It’s gonna be the internet. So what exactly on the internet are you turning to? I think Teenager Therapy made me realize ‘wait, people actually want to and are turning to other teenagers for support,’” Aitor said.
According to Edison Research, both the genres of “society and culture” and “health” are in the top ten genres most people listen to in the U.S. as of March 2023.
“That’s why there’s such a surge in podcasts that are being created specifically around self-help because people like that comfort of having a relationship with someone on the internet that feels very similar to the way that you think and the way that you are,” Aitor said.
“There’s so much media to consume through all types of platforms that you would think it would be easier to get answers to questions that you have, but it’s not as easy as you might think. Or at least, maybe you’ll be hearing it from an influencer or like somebody with millions of followers that you might feel disconnected from… I think having a place and a platform where you can [get] answers [for] most of the questions you have from real people that went through real experiences…I think it’s a valuable thing,” Suarez said.
Aitor and Suarez manage to juggle both the responsibility of knowing what their audience needs and showing up to the episodes genuinely, which is both admirable and appreciated by their listeners.
“With Astro [Astro Studios], I took what is essentially a passion for making people feel good, for helping people, for being able to give people these emotions. I think it’s very similar to the way a filmmaker might think about their work of ‘you’re creating this thing to make people feel a certain type [of way] and that’s the case with any type of art,” Aitor said.
For Aitor, he expresses this passion through creating audio..
“For me, I guess it really is just about podcasts and audio…that’s such an intimate format to make people feel comforted and be there in their ears, be their companion during their toughest times. That’s something that I’m very excited about,” Aitor said.
Exciting news listeners can look forward to is that Aitor hopes to eventually work to bring that feeling to the world in a physical way.
Aitor and Suarez’s Lessons Learned Over the Years of Being Vulnerable
Aitor and Suarez have been in the podcasting world for about five years now, but they are still just getting started in their mission to bring hope and comfort to those around the world.
Through having a podcast, Aitor said he learned how passionate he is about making people feel less alone, bringing young people together, and helping them make new connections.
“I know it’s a very big cliche, and I think even in recent years, it’s really like everyone seems to be like, ‘how do I help you feel less alone?’ But I think I really discovered that through the show. I found a lot of passion for audio as a medium and for the impact that you can have as a spokesperson or just by telling your story and sharing your voice,” Aitor said.
The experience, Suarez said, led her to learn more about emotional intelligence and gain a better understanding of both how she is feeling and what to do about it.
“I think before the podcast, I didn’t have an outlet to talk about how I felt. I didn’t know that it is okay to feel sad or to feel anxious…Being on the podcast gave me the outlet to reevaluate my thoughts and process my emotions,” Suarez said.
Additionally, Suarez said she recognized the importance of true friendship and how it positively affects a person.
“Having everybody else on there, like my closest friends, I think just highlighted the importance of true friendship and compassion, empathy…And of course I’m still learning, I have not unlocked all the answers. But I think it just helped me really grow and mature as a person,” Suarez said.
Aitor said that whatever his career looks like in the future, one aspect remains important to him: figuring out how to elevate his skills to bring people together and let people know someone is there to walk through their challenges with them.
Aitor and Suarez’s Future Aspirations and Hopes
With Teenager Therapy coming to an end, and new projects coming online, one of Aitor’s personal goals is to prioritize education.
“Learning on my own, reading more, thinking through things, and exploring those outlets in different ways, that’s been something I really wanna focus on,” Aitor said.
On a professional level, Aitor said he wants to work on building his confidence by reaffirming himself of his capabilities.
“Both the personal aspects of educating myself will transfer over and help my professional goals,” Aitor said.
Suarez’s personal goals include prioritizing getting to know herself better and further exploring her opinions and beliefs.
“I think a lot of the time, I myself don’t know what I think about certain things or I don’t have a strong perspective on certain topics or whatever it may be. So I really just wanna get to know myself and challenge my ways of thinking,” Suarez said. “Through that, you know, it’s education of course, reading and immersing myself in texts but also through experience as well.”
Professionally, Suarez said she plans to focus on Astro Studios and push content out in the mental health space through podcast form.
“I just want to focus on that and making content that makes other people feel good and comforted,” Suarez said.
For young adults navigating the transition to adulthood, it’s important to have a space that is inclusive, real, and values their community. Aitor and Suarez do an exceptional job at knowing who their audience is and what they could benefit from, because they are one of them. This is undoubtedly rare in the social media space today and it is a relief to know there are people who care as much as they do, just a play button away.
For now, listeners can keep up with Aitor, Suarez and Pham through their social media accounts and listen to weekly episodes from the podcast “Friendgroup” by Astro Studios.
Additionally, listeners should be on the lookout for posts on the Instagram account “Gaels_Secret_Podcast” and anticipate news from Suarez regarding a podcast of her own in the future.