About The Podcast
Unrefined is a collection of stories told at dinner tables, around campfires, over drinks, and at social gatherings. This podcast isn’t about polish or perfection. It’s about the social glue that is a good story told among friends.
Camille and Shannon grew up together in a small town in South Carolina, sharing their most angsty, emotional, boy-crazy years. Over the last 20+ years, they have been entrenched in their geographically separate lives, but unemployment and COVID boredom have brought them back together. These two love a good story and believe that a shared childhood is the great equalizer. When you take two people who figured out sex by piecing together what they could glean from USA Up All Night, Pretty Woman, campy horror movies, an older sibling, sex-ed class, and stories from more experienced classmates, there is nothing left to hide and no shame too great to share.
Shannon Ruanto
Shannon really loves a good story. When she was in elementary school, she received an awesome, red Walkman for her birthday. She was super excited to take it on an upcoming school field trip. Cloaked in the innocence of youth, she didn’t give much thought to what was cool, so she packed her family’s favorite road trip tape, The News from Lake Wobegon by Garrison Keillor. The field trip did require a two-hour bus ride after all.
That day she learned the hard way that Garrison Keillor was not cool among her peer group. She probably should have opted to bring her Wilson Phillips tape instead. Being inherently stubborn, she dug her heels in and listened to her nerd tapes anyway. This story just goes to show the depth of her love for a good story, even if Garrison Keillor turned out to be a creep.
Shannon, the unemployed half of this dynamic duo, decided to launch this podcast after getting her hopes up about a marketing job with another podcast. Her disappointment in not getting the job hasn’t dampened her love of podcasts, and she decided to use her background in communication and marketing to start her own show. She also figures it’s a good way to parlay a copious amount of podcast consumption into something productive.
Camille Lowman
Camille loves a good story too. So much in fact that after she graduated with a degree in Spanish, she instantly forgot about it and moved to Chicago to study comedy and essentially the telling of stories. Craving more skill and let’s be honest, attention, she moved to New York City where she attended Atlantic Acting School and continued to gain experience and training as an actor, improv comedian, and of course waitress, yeah I said it, waitress.