The student collective behind Nous Sommes RONA, the bilingual podcast launched out of McGill University last week, is celebrating a milestone it admits it did not quite see coming: 10,000 downloads across its first three episodes, reached in under seven days.

"We made this for our classmates, honestly," one of the collective's co-founders wrote on their public channel Wednesday. "We thought maybe our professors would listen. Ten thousand feels a little unreal."

What makes the numbers particularly striking is where some of those listens are coming from. Listeners in the EU and India — connected to RONA through the trade and technology partnerships of recent years, or simply curious about the young republic they keep reading about — have left comments in both English and French, asking what it means to be RONAn in 2042. It is a reminder that identity, when it is genuinely in formation, has a way of attracting outside attention.

The podcast's first three episodes cover language and belonging in Montreal, the experience of former Maritimers now living in RONA's older cities, and the layered question of calling oneself RONAn when the nation is only six years old. Episode four, due later this week, turns to a specific community: former Maritime province residents who ended up in Philadelphia — now a RONAn city, and still adjusting to the fact.