Transom Podcast

Kate O'Connell is a radio producer and a registered nurse who lives and works in New York City, where the coronavirus hit with force. In addition to working in an ER in Queens, Kate has also been chronicling her experiences with the overwhelming reality of this pandemic. We've been featuring Kate’s audio letters on Transom and in our podcast all along, and have just compiled them into an hour, produced with Samantha Broun. We can't say this is an easy listen, but it's an important one. We're grateful to Kate for doing this so that the rest of us might hear and know what we otherwise wouldn't be able to.

Erica Heilman is the producer of the neighborly podcast, Rumble Strip, and when COVID-19 struck, she looked for a way to be useful. She wasn't needed to make school lunches or volunteer at the hospital, so she asked her podcast listeners if they wanted to make something together. Word spread. Around the world. "Our Show" is a gathering of voices, a voluntary oral history of this moment on the planet, a global vox pop. We've been featuring "Our Show" episodes all along on Transom, and have just compiled them into a lovely poetic hour, quite unlike the daily fare. We highly recommend this for the fellowship and the surprise. We may be in it together, but it's not all the same.

Saidu Tejan-Thomas is a young poet. For a long time, he had a story he needed to tell: an homage and apology to his mother. It's a tragic love story driven by the tangled search for a better life. It's personal for sure, but set against the universal perils of immigration--in Saidu's case, from Sierra Leone in West Africa--but by extension, from anywhere. It uses Saidu's poems as narrative drivers, reveals, and resolutions. These are not easy tasks for poems. When Saidu and Jay identified moments in the story that needed these bridges, Saidu would say something like, "I'll go to the Poem Factory and see what I can do." He always made something perfect. Saidu's words are grounded and elevated, his voice is strong and vulnerable, his outlook is youthful and wise. We can’t understand how he pulls that off. Maybe you can. This was produced with Jay Allison and with support from the NEA. Read more here.

This is a story of art & love, of madness & beauty, of youth & age & death. It took Bianca Giaever 2 years of listening to 546 tapes of Pulitzer-winning Franz Wright to make. Jay Allison guided her. Listen.

The story of Kempis Songster, who was given a mandatory life sentence without parole for a crime he committed at 15 years old. He is forty-five now, still incarcerated, but recent Supreme Court rulings are giving him a chance at parole. Produced by Samantha Broun and Jay Allison in collaboration with the Frontline Dispatch.

  Editor’s Note: This speech was delivered as a “provocation” on the opening night of the Third Coast International Audio Festival in Chicago, November, 2016. (photo by Jay Allison) I confess I like preaching, but don’t want you to feel preached to, so I claim that these sermons are for me, and they are . . . even when I don’t heed them. They’re heretical in that they’re the opposite of a lot of advice, but they’re some of the things I tell myself when I stray from what feels most abidingly important. Maybe they’re exhortations to stay true to my younger self — not to be as foolish maybe, but to be brave and good-hearted — something that feels more critical than ever in these days.   Sermon 1: Don’t Ask Permission You want to get on the air, be on a show, have your story out there — but as you make your pitches, keep something precious in reserve and don’t pitch it. Just make it. Don’t even really plan it or predict what the narrative or sound will be. Just follow it and see what happens. Be dogged in the expedition. The joy of this work is the exploration and discovery — both of which are antithetical to pitching, which even for the best of us, can inadvertently cripple the imagination by determining your trip before you walk it. Walk in the dark, microphone extended, and don’t ask permission.   Sermon 2: Be Odd Here’s the convention: Listen to the work you like or shows you want to be on, and then work in that style. Okay. But also: Don’t produce in someone else’s mold; don’t subscribe to someone else’s existing theory of narrative, musical tone, structural traditions, in a voice we’ve already heard. Find a new one. Make something we’ve never heard before. Sure you can copy, and learn from the exercise, but sometimes: Be a poet. Be odd. Stick out. I miss the whacko fringe in public media. It’s important, because the edges can move the center. So, nourish the Fringe in yourself. And, while you’re at it, as useful as group edits can be, choose not to submit to them sometimes. Groups can make things that sound like groups made them. The edges are worn off, the individual fingerprint gone. How fine it is to see someone out on a limb by themselves. That’s how new things happen — by following a seemingly crazy impulse. You will fall and fail sometimes, but it can be important, for yourself and for others who witness your risk. Once in a while, fail nobly, on your own.   Sermon 3: Stay Home Don’t just connect with like-minded strangers far away. Radio producers are fundamentally dysfunctional. We want disembodied intimacy, which is a bit weird. We create detached connection, blind one-way communication. Remember to counter that. Do something on the ground with people who share the spot where you live, including the ones you disagree with and that don’t look like you. Build something from place. The Internet promised to connect us, but it has us hunkering in our chosen silos. Interview your neighbors, and look them in the eye. Maybe, where you live, you can introduce people to one another, calm one person’s fear, enlarge the civic space by inviting everyone to participate. Don’t necessarily move to Brooklyn. Find a place you love and dig in. Make it better.   Sermon 4: Don’t Try To Be Cool Don’t be afraid to be sincere. It’s a snarky world; we all want to be in on the joke and we don’t want to be the butt of it. When you’re sincere, you are close to earnestness and open to mockery. It’s much, much riskier to be sincere than to be ironic. The heartfelt is rare,

*Editor’s Note: This conversation was recorded on October 25, 2016. Jenna: So let’s start with who are you and what do you do? Laura: I’m Laura Walker, I’m the President and CEO of New York Public Radio. Jenna: And how long have you been here? Laura: Very long. [Laughter] I’ve been here for twenty years. Jenna: Really? Laura: Really. Jenna: What job did you start out doing here? Laura: President and CEO. [Laughter] I came when the board had made a deal with Mayor Guiliani to buy the stations for twenty million dollars. And there were two radio stations and, I think, two reporters. And we, over time, bought the stations and created much stronger radio stations.   The Road to WNYC Jenna: And what were you doing before WNYC? Laura: I started out as a print journalist and then I did radio. I worked at NPR for a little bit. I loved editing tape and I loved creating. It is so fun. And then I went to business school, and then did a little consulting, and then I was at Sesame Workshop for eight years where I worked on Ghostwriter, which was a mystery adventure. Jenna: It was my very favorite show, probably of all time. It was such a great show. [Laughter] Laura: Thank you. Jenna: No, it was the best show ever. I still sing the song from it all the time. Laura: Oh wow. Jenna: And what drew you to public media initially? Laura: I love the combination of mission and really great journalism and storytelling. But also competing in the real world for both attention and, you know, having to get out there and make some revenue and kind of build a business. Jenna: Yeah, that’s interesting. [Laughter] Laura: It’s a great combination.   Public Media’s Mission Jenna: Just how has public media changed since you started working in it? And how do you think it still needs to change? Laura: I think the fundamental kind of goals of public media are still very much the same. You read that wonderful speech that Lyndon Johnson gave almost fifty years ago, you know, when he set up CBP, and he quoted E.B. White and he talked about the theater of the imagination and the mission to tell the stories of America. So I think it’s still very much a fundamental mission to do great news, to tell great stories and to lift the voices of those that are not heard. When I first worked in public media, I was an intern at WGBH, and then I went to NPR and it reminds me actually of what podcasting feels like now. I mean, NPR in 1980, which is when, you know, nobody was over the age of thirty. There was this kind of like we’re changing the world thing, we’re doing something that’s really important, we’re going to be the best journalists. But we have this medium of radio that we’re redefining, and I think in some ways that’s come back. I think it’s very hard economically for a lot of the stations to actually have a mission in their communities that’s more of a news mission. They do a lot of outreach and other things. I think the journalism of radio and the deep roots in the community, and the fact that so many newspapers are, you know, like you look at what’s happened to the Bergen Record where they’re laying off half their reporters. Who’s gonna fill the void? I think it’s gonna be public radio to a large extent, and so all eyes are on us in a way that feels like we have a huge responsibility.   Podcasting at (especially small) Public Radio Stations Jenna: Definitely. Podcasting has taken on a big role in public radio and it’s taken on kind of a controversial role. There are some people in public media who seem afraid of podcasting, there are some people who think that podcasting and radio are at war, which I don’t agree with that at all. [Laughs] I think that everything can work really well together, and that it doesn’t have to be this competition between podcasting and radio.

The moment I heard about Jim Salestrom, I knew. Not only was this the story I wanted to do for the Transom Traveling Workshop, but I knew in my gut the story was also about me. I came to the Transom Traveling Workshop with all sorts of notions as to what Good and Bad in audio storytelling means. I’ve been hanging out around these parts for quite a while now. My love affair with, and frankly my need for, this medium as a listener has also opened up something that has grown in me alongside: I want to make stories, too. And I want them to be good. I started to pay attention: Reading about the thing, talking about the thing, gathering equipment for the thing, trying my hand at the thing, taking $15 online classes in the thing, even going so far as to land a fantastic job in the thing…getting to work directly with people who actually DO the thing! I applied for the Transom Traveling Workshop knowing it’s like the Ivy League School of audio storytelling training camp without actually being a school. Not only did I want to learn to make something, but to learn the proper way to make something: what the best equipment is and how to use it, writing, recording, editing, levels, what’s the perfect length. . . essentially The Rules. And of course I had lots of assumptions and beliefs as to what those rules are. Rule #1: Real Journalists Make Serious Stuff (and keep themselves out of the story). Reality: I worked myself up to the point of tears with my entire class admitting the truth of this story as it came to me, and that I was in it as a subject. To my amazement, no one had an issue with this — they even encouraged it! Rule #2: Use The Right Gear. (Something like the TASCAM 1776, or the ZOOM H1N1…right??) Reality: Doesn’t matter. Use your iPhone. Get something decent that you can afford and just start recording. Rule #3: This one is more like an assumption: Collaborating on stories, and reading and editing each other’s scripts, will expose all of my weaknesses as a writer and my shallow ideas. It will be torture, it will be humiliating, but it will be good for me. Like broccoli. Reality: The latter was true, the former was not. In fact, it actually made me feel better about my writing. Collaborating with a supportive peer group and leaders not only made the story better, it focused it and gave me ideas which I willingly used, and invested me deeply in other people’s stories and processes, and gave me a new community. I also happen to like broccoli. Rule #4: The right length for this piece, for a “real” radio piece, is about 4.5 minutes. Reality: I panicked when mine came in at 10+ minutes, only after brutal slashing (torture!) and rewriting. “They are going to send me packing!” You know what they said? The best story length is as long as the story needs to be. This story is 10+ minutes. I also got some things right. An enormous amount of work goes into making good audio stories. All of the writing and rewriting, collaborating, shaping, editing, leveling. . .it takes hours. Days. All of that logging of tape and transcribing that I was really hoping to find out one doesn’t actually have to do? It was an essential resource as I tried to find the story I was trying to structure again and again. There’s a method to the madness. It’s worth learning the process. Most of what I’ve been assuming in this realm turns out to be true. Dang. Amazingly, the piece I wound up making paralleled this exact journey. In its essence, the story is about just being who you are. Real Journalists DO make serious stuff, and they do keep themselves out of the story. I am enormously indebted to, and in awe of, the people who do this. The thing is. . . I’m not a journalist. I don’t need to try to pretend to be or try to be in order to make stuff. The stuff I want to make is the stuff that comes...

Last fall at the very end of the semester I saw a poster in the hallway of the art school at Virginia Commonwealth University for one of my favorite podcasts, Love and Radio by Nick van der Kolk. It turns out that it wasn’t a poster for the podcast (Do podcasts have posters? They really should!) but rather for a graduate level documentary radio class that van der Kolk was teaching at VCUarts this spring in the Department of Kinetic Imaging. I wished that I was a student again so that I could take his class. It turns out that one of the benefits of working at VCUarts is the ability to take up to two classes per semester tuition free. This January I registered for Nick’s class and took my seat in the classroom as a student rather than as an instructor. I hadn’t been on the student side of a classroom in more than ten years and I worried that I wouldn’t be able to shed the “let me show you how to do that” mentality that comes with ten years of teaching experience. Old Dog, New Tricks I teach film and video production courses and even have an audio podcast assignment built into my syllabus. So I wasn’t sure what I was going to learn in Nick’s seminar. The first day of class let me know that I would be learning a lot. For one, Nick’s favored form of audio capture is with the onboard mics of an H4N Zoom recorder. Having taught the Zooms for the last five years, I would normally bring out a host of cardioid, shotgun and lavalier microphones with boom poles, long runs of xlr cable and windscreens and show my students how to use them rather than the onboard mics, anything but the onboard mics. I quickly relearned that radio production is not film production, and that microphone proximity is the key factor in audio quality, not expensive Sennheiser shotguns (although they are amazing). Without having to worry about seeing audio equipment in the shot, I was instructed to get the Zoom as close to my subjects as I could (a fists length away) and to record in stereo using one of the X/Y mics for my subject and the other one to record my questions. Nick also taught us about how to avoid plosives when working so close to your subject. My favorite production trick that Nick shared was one he uses to get people comfortable with the unfamiliar equipment that we use with its giant foam or furry windscreens — he scratches his face while holding his equipment in his hand. It works! The End is Usually the Beginning This audio piece was recorded as part the Vox Populi assignment in Nick van der Kolk’s seminar. We were instructed to go out and conduct interviews with strangers in public. I chose to look for interview subjects at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) on Super Bowl Sunday. I asked people the question: “If the VMFA were the NFL and the works of art on the wall were the teams in the Super Bowl of Art, which piece of art would you root for?” My first interview was with Vixi Jill Glenn who was visiting from Boone, North Carolina. Nick instructed us to always leave the tape rolling and equipment in recording position even after the interview questions were answered. After Vixi finished telling me about her favorite Rodin sculpture at the VMFA, she revealed that she was a “Keeper” of the Appalachian Jack tales, which include a series of more than a hundred stories about the Jack of Jack and the Beanstalk fame. In this piece Vixi Jill Glenn tells the Hicks’ family version of “Jack and the Bag of Death.” Listening and Learning I learned to listen again this semester. Both in the field and more importantly in the classroom as a student. It was such a gift to be on the student side of the classroom, to be reminded of what it is like for my students in my own classes. Face to face,

Revisiting Difficult Things The story of the violent crime my mother survived in the fall of 1994 has never been something I share easily. It’s more something I offer after I’ve really gotten to know someone and feel that there’s something important they need to know about me, about my family. I’m acutely aware of the impact this crime has had on my mother’s life, on our family’s life, and I’ve always had a sense of its larger consequences. I thought if I could tell the story of both the intimate and the public impact, it might be worthwhile. There were a lot of people who warned me this would be hard. And it was. Hardest of all was hearing again the details of what happened to my mother that night. And then hearing them repeatedly as I transcribed our interviews, assembled the script, cut tape, and listened to mixes. I spent many days horizontal on my couch, literally knocked over and out again (nearly 20 years later) by what happened to her. Revisiting difficult topics isn’t for everyone. When I interviewed my brother for this piece he said he doesn’t like to talk about it. I’ve come to respect that point of view. Over the past two plus years, I’ve had stomach aches and nightmares, I’ve locked my doors more than before, and one day was even sure I saw Reginald McFadden (the man who attacked my mother) walking down the street in the small town where I live. Still, I know myself well enough to know what I can tolerate and that ultimately, for me, it’s always better to stare hard stuff straight in the eye than to turn away from it. Here are a few things I learned from producing this documentary. Willingness To Talk My mother started talking about what happened to her the night she landed in the emergency room and hasn’t stopped since. She says that talking about it has saved her life. Going into this, I knew she would be willing to talk with me about what happened to her. But I had no idea about how others — family members and strangers — would feel about me, out of the blue two decades later, asking them to talk on tape about their connection to events before and after the attack. To my surprise, most people I reached out to said yes. Yes. Immediately yes. There was a sense that they had been waiting to talk to someone else who also carried this event around with them. And that’s often the way the interviews would go. After introductory awkwardness and pleasantries, we would jump right into what for some of the interviewees was one of the most difficult times in their lives. And our conversations would go deep. I always left the interviews exhausted. I’m sure the people I interviewed did too. I think Mark Singel (who I talked with for three hours) summed it up best. Producer Me And Me Me I have never done a personal piece before. While working on it, I became keenly aware of Producer Me (head) and Me Me (heart and belly). Producer Me would think about what was good for the piece, would handle details, would think about the story. Me Me was on a personal journey, was feeling lots of feelings. Me Me was seeking answers and resolution. The beauty of this, it turns out, is that despite the fact that I was on my own in the field conducting these interviews, I never felt alone — these two parts of me worked together and helped each other through the rough patches. For example, it was Me Me that convinced me to go to McFadden’s sister’s house in Philadelphia and it was Me Me who got me out of the car to approach her. Meeting Charlotte was something I had thought about for 20 years; I knew if I left the city and didn’t at least try to find her, I would regret it. It was Producer Me, though, who thought to turn on my iPhone and record the whole thing. On the other hand, Producer Me knew going to meet McFadden himself — or even trying to — would probably make great tape.

What Miranda July Can Teach (& Remind) Us About Making Media for the Public Admittedly, I over prepared for this interview. Beyond spending many evenings researching and thinking, I also hijacked every one of my hangouts with friends for months, turning brunches and walks into tactical conversations about July’s work and what makes it so compelling and unique. Along the way, it became clear that Miranda July’s work shares much in common with public media’s work. Here’s just a short list of the overlap. Both July and public media makers: * Produce audio / radio / video / films * Publish a newsletter * Make apps * Perform live shows * Sell branded bags for the super fans (July’s is not a tote bag for the farmer’s market, but it has quite a few compelling uses) * Toggle between nonfiction and fiction storytelling * Have a distinct sensibility, so much so that The Onion has had their fun with both July and public radio * Create deep intimacy and empathy with audiences All things were considered, which meant I had far too many questions for an hour’s worth of time. (Here’s what I had prepped for the interview, if you’re curious.) This also meant I surely missed a lot of opportunities to follow interesting threads that emerged, and go deep where my antenna sensed more to plumb, because there was just too much ground to cover. So rather than present a straight Q&A, here’s a distillation and expansion on some highlights of the conversation … a quasi-interview turned “classy listicle” (if that’s not an oxymoron). The accompanying audio is fairly different from what’s below, so feel free to give both your time. OK. On with it. Here are 9 key takeaways from my conversation with July — many of which I can’t help but think hold lessons and creative challenges and opportunities for public media. * Audio work teaches rigor * Make people feel the news * Lena Dunham is coming for your job * Comfort with vulnerability is a super power * Not taking risks? Red flag * Generosity over genius * The audience = wild cards, and that’s great * Audience engagement is an iterative process * What some of you asked her       Though Miranda July may be most well known as a filmmaker and author, her earliest work was in audio, creating radio plays in her early twenties. One early piece was called WSNO Radio Sno: Broadcasting From the Coldness of Your Heart in which she played the host and all of the callers. I wondered how she decided on audio as one of her earliest forms of expression. She explained that the term “radio plays” wasn’t intentional — it came about as a kind of shorthand way to explain the work. MJ: Really I wanted to be making movies and for some reason, it never occurred to me to just get as close to Hollywood or a professional filmmaker as possible. Instead, I would do things like what I called a “live movie,” which was aka a play, or a performance.

Rob Rosenthal, Lead Instructor Rob Rosenthal …one of the things I love most about my job as lead instructor [is] I have no idea what’s going to happen. From day-to-day, from workshop to workshop… every class is different. The stories are different. Even the style of storytelling is different… Read more. TSW: Class of Fall 2015 “No Flush, No Fuss” by Devika Bakshi Devika Bakshi Follow the good tape. Like a besotted stalker. Like you followed Teju Cole on Twitter. With utter devotion. Read more and listen. “Good Intentions: A Story of Cross-Racial Adoption” by Brenna Daldorph Brenna Daldorph Someone once told me that if you are comfortable during discussions about race, then nothing important is actually being said. I held that close to heart as I worked on this piece… Read more and listen. “An Act Relative To Sex Offenders” by Ciara Gillan Ciara Gillan You’re prepped from the outset that your story may not unfold the way you thought it would. But sometimes, at that very last minute, your story can grab you by the ears and spin you right upside down. Read more and listen. “More Than A Game” by Jimmy Gutierrez Jimmy Gutierrez It took me a long, long, long time before I understood the ingredients to make this story work. In the editing process I relied heavily on all eight classmates, along with Rob and Catie. Read more and listen. “Ears Underwater” by Bethel Habte Bethel Habte …go out and drink beers with scientists. More generally, always be on the hunt for stories. Read more and listen. “Trigger Warning” by Jacqui Helbert Jacqui Helbert It was extremely difficult to share so much about myself and make myself vulnerable while working on the piece. But both Paige and I are happy with the end result and hope that our story will help someone who has suffered at the hands of a family member. Read more and listen. “Secession’s the Answer” by Sally Helm Sally Helm On my way to gather tape at the karaoke bar, I wondered if I was crazy to think that this might work. At first it was awkward to record people on their night out. By the end of the night, though, I’d started to enjoy the rush that comes from talking to strangers and going out on a limb. Read more and listen. “Driving In Circles” by Martine Powers Martine Powers Coming from the world of print journalism, I always believed in the adage, “Everyone needs an editor.” Here’s what I learned at Transom: Everyone needs eight editors. Or nine. Or ten. Read more and listen.

A “Code Blue” You’ve seen it on TV. The line on the heart monitor goes flat. Reassuring beeps are overtaken by the ominous, solid tone of death. Doctors come running, throw electric paddles on the chest and yell, “Clear!” The patient springs back to life — most of the time, at least on TV. Yet a “code blue” can also be traumatic. A large nurse throws his entire weight onto the chest of a frail ninety-year old, cracking multiple ribs. A doctor tears off the patient’s gown. Each chest compression launches blood from the patient’s mouth showering his naked body. Drugs upon drugs squeeze blood to vital organs, but when his heart starts again most of his brain may have already died from lack of oxygen. A “code blue” is hospital-speak for advanced cardiopulmonary resuscitation. It is an attempt to restart the heart when it has stopped. On television codes are successful 75% of the time. In reality about 20% of patients live to leave the hospital. Whether a code is a magnificent life-saving feat or a brutal exercise in futility depends entirely on the overall condition and context of the patient’s life. In many cases the outcome is very difficult to predict. In weaving together the narrative of a code, my goal was not to answer the incredibly complex question of when or whether we should attempt to resuscitate. Rather, I wanted to explore what happens to hospital staff when grappling with acute uncertainty around our ability to combat death. Confronting Death I envisioned a story that was part medical documentary and part collective memory piece, drawing on many people’s experiences of working on the wards over many years. Paradoxically, I found my most powerful inspiration in the narrative form of the radio documentary Witness to an Execution by Stacy Abramson and David Isay. Witness tells the story of how lethal injections are carried out in Texas by weaving together the experiences of the full range of “death house” staff — the warden, the chaplain, the media correspondent, the “tie-down crew.” For me, the power of Witness comes largely from what it does not do. By not focusing on a single execution, not including recordings from any live event and not editorializing, it brings us deeper into the multi-layered experiences of those who live these events on a regular basis. I don’t think it was simply coincidental and ironic that my narrative about resuscitation found its inspiration in a piece about executions. Both moments of confronting death evoke emotions that cut through the more comfortably defined parameters of one’s “role” or “job.” Why Audio I originally turned to audio because of its power to immerse listeners in subjective experience. While video presents a reality seen through the camera’s lens, audio compels the listener to construct a mental and emotional image from the words and voices of those who have lived it. Audio also enabled me to capture a greater range of experience. By recording staff whose voices, accents and languages evoke their diverse backgrounds, I hoped to create a virtual conversation that might never occur due to the divisions within the hospital heirarchy. Indeed, nearly half of my subjects said they would not have talked with me if this were video. Before coming to their interviews many wanted to confirm, “No camera, right?” Logistics, Technical Aspects and Gear It took almost eight months of conversations with various hospitals to obtain permission to start recording. Privacy and legal concerns make this an extremely sensitive subject. I ultimately connected with leaders who shared a love for public radio in an institution that is actively working towards providing medical care with greater transparency. In addition, recording in the hospital turned out to be a technical challenge.

Lyrics Black Bach – Lyrics by Billy Dean Start Now – Lyrics by Billy Dean Purchase Click here to purchase songs Artists’ Notes Ben Verdery: My daughter Mitsuko asked me during the holidays if I’d heard her friend Billy Dean’s new music. I hadn’t, but immediately started listening and was captivated by the tone of Billy’s voice and the varied textures she was using in her music. I loved it! I’ve known Billy since she was eight. I remember her improvising on our little upright piano; I remember eavesdropping, thinking: This girl is a musician. Like me, she has to create music. It is not an option. Billy Dean: Since I was eight years old I have been living by the quote “There are no mistakes in art.” I began playing piano at Ben’s house. I was constantly exploring beyond my artistic boundaries. He would yell, “Keep practicing girlfriend! It’s sounding good in there!” encouraging my passion and creative exploration. Ben’s house became my creative safe haven. He’d never heard any of my songs until, behind my back, Mitsuko played one for him. Immediately after, I received an email from Ben stating that he appreciated the musicianship of my cadences, content and instrumentation. He said, “I am attaching ‘Allegro’ by Bach and I was thinking it might be perfect for you to rap to.” Ben: Why did I think Billy and I should rap over this Bach work? Because musicians from all cultures can relate in some manner to Bach’s music; it is truly music without borders. Given the rhythmic nature of the Allegro as well as the harmonic and melodic structure it seemed a natural for Billy. Billy: I was super excited to mesh hip-hop with classical, two genres I love. I was also thrilled that Ben, a professional musician, thought that I was worthy of an innovative partnership. I must have listened to the song ten times on my own and thought it wasn’t possible. However, I remember thinking: If I can write verses for a Bach arrangement with no drums or bass I can write to absolutely anything. I had to structure my brain around what I needed. A pulse. A beat. I decided to beatbox over the tune to give myself guidelines for arranging the lyrics to work with the movements. I began to memorize the melodic ups and downs, the retards, the refrains, everything. All I needed was some great content. Ben: When she asked me what she should rap about, I suggested her love of music. She did this and more. Her lyrics are moving and honest. Billy: I thought: Allegro means happy, so I should write about what makes me happy. Of course the one thing that keeps me in a healthy state of mind and spirit is my music. I wanted this piece to be a tribute to music. It was also an opportunity for me to showcase my knowledge of different musical styles and genres; many people assume that hip-hop artists only listen to hip-hop. Ben: What brings Billy and me together is music itself, just like she says so movingly at the end of “Black Bach.” What makes it work is our mutual respect and the fact that we trust each other. We are not judging what the other is doing musically. I like to think this is one of the reasons the music sounds sincere and breathes. “Start Now” was originally a solo guitar piece, part of a set of 11 Etudes I wrote in the late 90’s. It is rhythmically dominated by two different rhythms. Because of the groove and general upbeat feel of the piece it seemed a natural for Billy to rap to. Here I played it on my baritone guitar,

We’ve Never Been The Same: A War Story

“Maria, Lena and Me” on PRX About “Maria, Lena and Me” Lena in Russia So here’s the very roundabout way I ended up making my first radio documentary. I’ve worked in television for the last 15 years producing news documentaries mostly for PBS. Before that, I was a graphic designer. Before that, I studied Religion and Computer Science at Oberlin College. And before that, I was a classical pianist at the High School for Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, Texas. Back then, piano was a huge defining part of my life. Yet, even though I practiced six hours almost everyday, I always knew I wasn’t going to be a concert pianist. After the birth of my first son in 2009, I started thinking about the role music would play in his life. And I started to wonder about what role music played in my life. How did it shape who I am today? Was all the money and the hours spent in a practice room a waste? I don’t actually answer any of those questions in this radio documentary. But those questions led me to interviewing my friend Lena about why she is a classical pianist. And that question led me to Maria Yudina. So why radio? Why not make it a video documentary? First of all, I wanted people to really listen to Yudina’s music. And I didn’t want to spend my time digging around for archival photos and footage to use as wallpaper. It was hard enough just finding audio recordings of Yudina. Maria Yudina I also wanted a different experience from working in television, where there’s usually little time and money for exploring the unknown. That brings me to gear. I’m used to lugging around heavy lights, cameras and tripods, and taking an hour to set up for one interview. But with radio, I can do a tape sync, and record in my pajamas with the baby napping in the next room?!! Wha?! It was totally liberating. Still, it’s taken me years to make this. I worked on Yudina between freelance gigs and around my kids’ nap times. It was a labor of love, literally. (I went into labor with my second son during a follow-up interview with Lena. Stupidly, I jumped on the subway home instead of going straight to the hospital. He was born three hours after that interview.) It probably took me longer to finish because I edited in Final Cut Pro. That’s what I know. Plus, working with just sound was a whole new world to me. The editing possibilities were daunting. But during this whole process, I think I may have answered some of my original questions — about what role music has played in my life. Although I’m very much a novice,, I love working with sound. I love editing and scoring. There’s a section with the Mozart concerto that might have taken me longer to cut if I didn’t have some musical training. I’ve also fallen in love with the piano again. The last piece Maria Yudina plays, the Bach Fugue in A minor, gives me chills ever time I hear it.

About Southern Flight 242 When I was seven years old, my father died in a commercial plane crash. It’s a fact I grew up knowing and something I never wanted to look into, until now. After I decided to make a radio story about the crash, I often wondered if it was the best choice as my first big project as a new radio producer. It took far longer than I ever expected, in part because it was so personal. But I realized that if I couldn’t answer tough personal questions, how could I expect others to do the same? The initial kernel of the story idea came back in 1997 when I stumbled on an article in the New York Times about the 20th anniversary of the Southern Flight 242 accident (my family somehow missed being invited). And then in 2012, fifteen years later, I happened to be in Georgia for a conference that was 70 miles from the crash site. The key event in those intervening years was participating in the Transom Story Workshop. In Woods Hole, I learned much of what I needed to tell the story. I learned even more along the way. Be vulnerable in your interviewing. Researcher Brene Brown argues that vulnerability is vital for true human connection. Looking back on the project, I see now that I connected with my interview subjects out of weakness. In practice, this meant that my interview subjects knew that I was the child of a crash victim. We empathized with each other. Faith Thomas, the stranger I met in the airport, was scheduled to fly on the same delayed flight; we were equally powerless. Connecting with her was as simple as shaking my head and asking if she’d heard a recent update. Knowing about the power of vulnerability makes me wonder how I’d approach other interview subjects in the future. I’ve heard that oft-told story about Studs Terkel fiddling with his recording equipment and asking his interview subjects for help. Also useful, things like asking interview subjects for directions or advice on where to park even though those could be Googled. It also helps to be introduced by someone. I was fortunate to connect with Cherry Waddell of the New Hope Memorial Flight 242 Committee who was integral to my meeting with survivors and family members. Get the best sound for the type of story. I used an Audiotechnica 8010 omnidirectional mic throughout (mostly I paired it with a Sony PCM M-10 but I also had a Zoom H4N as backup). This was important for this project, since I knew that I’d need to be part of it and I also wanted to get location sounds. Unlike non-narrated radio stories where the interviewer needs to become a mime, I loosened up on reacting to the interview subjects and often pointed the mic at myself. It’s still funny to hear my reactions like affirming mmm’s and incomplete sentences. But that’s what happened! I tried to record interviews in quiet spaces but there were still noisy toddlers and determined dishwashers that wouldn’t be silent. In the end, I think all those extraneous sounds help tell the story. Recording on airplanes was a challenge, especially with flight attendants enforcing the no-electronics-during-takeoff rule, but I still managed to secretly record. I had a great foundation on this issue (and lots more) from my radio guru Rob Rosenthal at the Transom Story Workshop. Gordon and Will Coley Listen to yourself tell the story. I once heard

“Of Kith and Kids” on PRX About “Of Kith and Kids” It started with a pledge to my local public radio station… yes! As a sustaining member of WNYC I receive a New Yorker subscription and read the piece: State Of Play: How Tot Lots Became Places to Build Children’s Brains by Rebecca Mead. The article covers the 2010 opening of a high profile playspace in Manhattan called the Imagination Playground. The writer likened it to something much grittier, darker and, well, European: something called an adventure playground. Intrigued, I did a little Googling, read a little more and quite simply fell down the rabbit hole. Turns out, adventure playgrounds have quietly flourished since the second World War in the UK, Denmark and Germany. They’re usually tucked into neighborhoods without much fanfare and take many forms, from chaotic junkyards to whimsical shantytowns. Yet they all embrace something that unsettles the American sensibility, a necessary and positive relationship between risk and play. Staffed by adults trained in “playwork,” adventure playgrounds have been described as, “a complete artwork. A space and time where all one’s senses are engaged.” I began reaching out to people in the “play” world, and soon began to hear about a new playground called The Land, in North Wales. The Land was breathing new life into some of the movement’s oldest “junk” philosophies. So, I booked a short visit to see it for myself and was kindly welcomed by the staff and children in November 2012. I remember walking onto The Land for the first time and feeling dwarfed by color and chaos and scale — a shining marble here, a towering tree there! I spent a few days taking photos and filming, returned to the US itching for a proper documentary shoot. Thanks to the support of about 150 generous Kickstarter backers (you know who you are!) I returned to The Land in April 2013 for three weeks to shoot a film, which I’m now editing. (Teaser for Erin’s new film about The Land.) Audio for the Transom piece was recorded during the two visits. The title comes from the expression, “kith and kin.” In its original meaning, “kith” refers to one’s home country, the bit of earth where we build our homes, grow our food and raise our children — our Land. Interview with Dave the playworker, film still Challenges Making a radio story out of film material I had to decide early on how to handle interviews, knowing I would be producing both a radio piece and a short film. As an experiment, I did do one audio-only interview in a good quiet space and it sounds terrific. But I don’t have that shot to cut to, which is a disadvantage. If I had to do it again, I would have stuck with the field setup, simply for consistency in the edit. However, it was definitely a tough call and I’d love to speak with other producers creating multi-format work and how they approach this. Fun Fact – GoPro Audio Most of Paige’s audio is from a GoPro headcam she’s wearing. I certainly did not plan to use the GoPro for audio recording, just thought it would be fun to see the kid’s POV. So I nearly fell out of my chair when I pulled it up weeks later and heard Paige narrating her own private adventure through the space. The GoPro comes with 2 “backs”, one waterproof and one that is “open”. This setup utilized the “open” back. The waterproof/closed back significantly muffles the audio.

“Diary of a Bad Year: A War Correspondent’s Dilemma” on PRX About Diary of a Bad Year: A War Correspondent’s Dilemma This project was born in the place where so many good ideas come to life — Woods Hole. I was visiting Jay and the Transom Story Workshop to talk about making radio. Like good reporters, Jay and Melissa Allison, Viki Merrick, Samantha Broun, Sydney Lewis, and Rob Rosenthal asked me a lot of tough questions. As I answered, I realized the tables had been turned on me, that by confronting me with the curiosity I usually apply to the people I interview, they were getting me to say and realize things I didn’t even know were true. I had deep concerns about my job, but I never would have examined them this fully had it not been for the welcoming, open, supportive, loving hearts in Woods Hole — and, later, for conversations I had with my dear friend, the great radio producer, Sean Cole. At one point I remember writing an email to Jay that said something like, “If I really go through with this project, I will end up quitting my job.” We’ll see about that. What I do know is that making this story has totally altered the way I look at what I and most of my friends do for a living. It has made me more aware and ultimately more safe in the field. It was hard, it was personal, but I think it was worth it. What I learned One of the biggest lessons for me was that it’s all about perspective. It’s one thing to talk about this stuff casually with friends (and with yourself), but it’s another thing to really dig deep and try to prosecute the ideas, especially when it’s your own life that’s on the stand. Doing this kind of work is hard, and it takes time. When Jay and I started this back in 2011, he suggested I record diaries as I went along. No expectations — just record what comes to mind as it’s happening. It sounds easy, but for me it was hard. Just that simple act of stepping back, removing myself from the moment, was a struggle. Some of the diaries were unusable, mainly because I wasn’t able to step back far enough, or because they were just too sad. Here’s diary I recorded at like 3:00 a.m., in Yemen, the week that Anthony Shadid (the award-winning journalist for the The New York Times) died. I had just heard that another member of the tribe, Marie Colvin (the award-winning journalist for the British paper The Sunday Times), died. Listening back to this clip, it’s clear I didn’t have much perspective. I talk about how I’m NOT a war correspondent like Marie and others, and yet only a few months later, I was basically embedded with Syrian rebels. Months after that I was at the front line. Also, I talk about how Marie’s stories had some bearing on the international community’s policy in Syria, clearly because that’s what I wanted to believe. It’s only now that I can painfully admit her stories had little impact. The killing in Homs, the place where she was reporting when she died, continued after her death. More than one year later, it continues today. Still, keeping a diary was really, really cool. So cool that I still do it, as a matter of course. One great help is that I can do it on my iPhone. I just tap Hindenburg and start talking. That way if I’m in public, I don’t look like a crazy cat lady — I look like I’m talking on the phone. At the risk of repeating myself, I have to say that I think the key here was knowing that someone would be *listening* to these diaries, that someone actually cared to know what I had to say.

“Walking Across America: Advice for a Young Man” on PRX People in the Piece (in order of appearance) “I don’t know why he’s doing it. He’s just crazy, I think.” Bill Guy, Shady Grove, Alabama. “Like it or not, it is about breaking this hold that death has on us.” Therese Jornlin, Andrew’s mom, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. “You’ll know who you are. Because that’s what you’re looking for anyway.” Woody Curry, Baltimore, Maryland. “You’ve got a lot to learn. You’ve got an education and a degree, but you’ve still got a lot to learn.” Nettie Harlow, Arrington, Virginia. “My love will be with you…” Paul, Brightwood, Virginia. “I wouldn’t be the nice little southern girl. I’d be a bitch.” Hacky Pitts (not shown), High Point, North Carolina. “Did you know that ice sings? Ice sings. It has a song and a voice.” Marian (and Herb) Furman, Camden, Alabama. “Alright, y’all wanna do ‘Johnny Peut-Pas Danser?’” Mitch and Jen Reed (not shown), Scott, Louisiana. “You’ll see. You’ll see. You will see.” Frances and Vincent Bosarge, Coden, Alabama. “After you done walked this whole way…at the end, it’s going to make you a different person.” Ollie Ware, Franklin, Louisiana. “If you care about someone, tell them.” Karie Fugett (on right), Foley, Alabama. “They call me Banjo Bill….” Banjo Bill, Washington, DC. “I’m looking for a great day, when I see my Jesus face to face.” The late Emma Lou Dailey, Beatrice, Alabama. “Everyone has something divine to share.

About A Code To Live By In Appalachia “Mysterious” is probably the first word most people associate with the Melungeons. They were a mixed race group that settled in southern Appalachia in the late 1700s. They lived in their own communities, separate from their white neighbors. Some stayed in those communities as late as the mid-20th century. Jack Goins The oldest generations of Melungeons had a striking look: dark skin, straight black hair, blue eyes. Nobody knew where they had come from or how, exactly, they ended up in the mountains along the Tennessee-Virginia border. Melungeons themselves often explained their distinct looks by claiming Native American or Portuguese ancestry. But their white neighbors would sometimes claim they had African heritage. The mystery of the Melungeon people drew me in, just like it’s drawn in so many others. Growing up in Tennessee, I remember my mom occasionally mentioning the Melungeons. Whatever remarks she made always seemed to end with: “… and nobody knows where they’re from. Isn’t that something?” Recently, a little googling led me to Jack Goins, the force behind the Melungeon DNA Project. Jack is a retired TV salesman in Hawkins County, Tennessee, who is descended from Melungeons. He’s been gathering DNA samples from other descendants to try to get some answers about Melungeon ancestry. So Who Are the Melungeons, Really? Jack’s DNA project is ongoing, but so far, he’s found that, for the most part, Melungeons have sub-Saharan African and European roots. These findings have surprised some Melungeon descendants who had assumed they were Native American or Portuguese. The study only found a single instance of Native American heritage in the group, and no Portuguese markers. Jack himself was surprised to find out his paternal line was African, because his great, great grandparents had been marked as Portuguese on the 1880 census. He theorizes that their predecessors had immigrated from an African country, such as Angola, that had been under Portuguese rule. Vardy school Jack co-authored a study on Melungeon DNA in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy. It was published shortly after I met him last year. The Associated Press ran an article on the study with headlines like, “Melungeons aren’t who they thought they were,” and “Melengeon DNA study reveals ancestry, upsets ‘a whole lot of people.’” A whole lot of people were upset. But from what I could tell, they were upset more by the way Jack conducted the study than the results he found. People had to be descended from a very specific “core group” of Melungeons to be included in the study. Plus, it was a Y-line test, so it only included men. So, a lot of people who identified as Melungeon descendants couldn’t be in the study. And when the article came out and stated definitively where the Melungeons had come from, it ruffled some feathers. Telling a story without answers Lots of people still claim Melungeon heritage. The hardest part about this project was getting a grasp on who the Melungeons actually were, and who counts as Melungeon now. When I began the story, I was expecting to find hard answers. I thought my timing with the story was impeccable. At the time I was starting my research, Jack happened to be finishing up his study. A published paper on the Melungeons promised numbers and facts—a tantalizing prospect. I was going to be able to tell a story of a group of people who had never know where they were from, until they turned to Science. My story would start with a mystery, and end with a solution. Bam! If only. Johnnie at church The more people I met, the more opinions I heard about who the Melungeons were. I realized that Jack’s study only encompassed a fraction of all the people who claim Melungeon ancestry today. I went to a Melungeon reunion in Virginia last summer, and practically everyone there told a slightly different versio...

“Forgiveness” on PRX About Forgiveness I stumbled upon this story on a long distance bike trip, while I was doing a radio project on veterans’ experiences at war. As you can see, this story has nothing to do with veterans or war. It just goes to show that sometimes you just need an excuse to be out there looking for stories and something wonderful will eventually pop up. We were staying the night at a gay and queer commune in rural Tennessee when someone pointed out Hector to me. They explained that Hector had forgiven the man who murdered his daughter. As a radio producer armed with that enormous factoid, I wasn’t sure how to proceed. I’ve been living in civil society long enough to know it isn’t acceptable to approach a stranger and blurt out “Hey, I heard you forgave the man who murdered your daughter can I interview you about that?” I ended up chatting with Hector and asking him if he had a couple of hours to sit down and tell me all about his life. He was also a veteran, so I could interview him for my project as well. He’s told his story of forgiveness many times, so we transitioned into it easily. I liked Hector’s narrative because it subtly challenged my beliefs and raised larger questions on forgiveness. I knew forgiveness was a good thing, but how far could you really take it? Weren’t some things just unforgiveable? And of course, I wondered if I would be able to do the same thing if I were in his shoes. I also love the moments in the piece when you can hear him continuing to wrestle with these questions, even after so much time has passed. I was inspired by his refusal to accept stagnancy even in old age. Gear I’ll blame it on my young age and the bicycle I was living on, but this story wasn’t recorded as well as I wish it had been. First of all, there were hardly any quiet indoor places on the commune I could go into, so we had to do the interview outside. This meant that while Hector was contemplating the meaning of forgiveness people were talking in the background, birds were squawking, and a guy pushing a lawn mower was circling us. Because of these horrible background noises I put noise reduction on the audio while editing, a questionable decision that I’m still considering reversing in the future. Lastly, my most embarrassing tech mistake is that the audio was recorded in mp3, because the trip was long and SD card space was limited. For this interview I used an Olympus LS-10 recorder with a built in microphone. Again, I wish it had been recorded with an external mic, though at the time I probably wasn’t even aware that I should own one. Sonic IDs Editor’s Note: Bianca interned with us at Atlantic Public Media this summer and she produced a whole bunch of sonic IDs. Turns out she has a knack for it. We thought we’d share a few of her sonics here.

About An Open Letter to a Fussy Woman at a Toll Booth Toll collection is the second oldest profession. In Greek mythology, Charon the ferryman (one of the oldest service workers) required that a toll be paid to carry souls across the rivers between here and Hades. Souls unable to pay were left to wander around for eternity searching for the damn place. This is the story of a nightmarish customer who felt entitled to a free ride across the river Styx. What it is like to work in a tollbooth (That, above, was hyperbole.) In 2005 I was in school and working at the parking ramps. I bugged them for weeks to hire me because the idea of being paid to sit alone in a booth seemed absurd and amazing. Up until then all my income was made through doing magic shows for birthdays and banquets, and I was ready for something that felt a little less exposed. Parking seemed to accommodate the level of introversion I was seeking and provided some spare time to work on a few media projects. Here is a video from that time. Personally, I feel that paying for parking is a fool’s errand, but I am also a cheapskate and have burned whole tanks of fuel hunting for a free place to ditch my car. I did not blame any of my customers for valuing convenience, however. I produced this piece in 2006 through a course in the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. The group was led by Jeff Porter, who helped me to focus in on the specifics of my fascination with the tantrum I had witnessed. This was not intended to be a strong commentary on socioeconomic separation. At the time, my perception was that the low wage working class was rather small, and that we, the members of it, were simply biding our time until becoming doctors and professors, or wealthy and imbued with clout by some other means. This was simply the affect of the times in a liberal arts town like Iowa City, and the basis on which many of us were funneled into school. Dedication I have always felt a bit of sympathy for the woman in this story. I have to assume that this was not one of her proudest moments. Perhaps she went on sabbatical to Tibet following this experience, and is a much calmer person now. Who knows? While the story is about her, it is certainly not for her. Instead it is a love letter to my friends in the service industry: the overeducated under employed, and the undereducated over employed. It is dedicated to anyone who can state, without looking, how many dollars and cents are in their wallet and bank account. To people who accept work in stations vulnerable to deprecation and demoralizing treatment. It is to any barista who has made me a beautiful design in my latte as thanks for a tip. It is to the bussing crews at buffets who turn tips over to lost and found. To the messengers and foot soldiers who show up, stand all day, and then walk to job number two. Mainly, it is to the ones who share themselves with the world, rather than assuming the world will be privileged to receive them.

“Blind Parenting” on PRX About Blind Parenting In my previous, and now current podcast, I spend a lot of time satirizing this and that aspect of other people’s lives. So I found the task of doing an actual story about my own life daunting. But only once I tried to do it. When we started, I figured Maura and I would just crap out something in a few days, and then I’d get back to my other less interesting projects. I was so excited at the chance to do something for Transom, and felt lucky to have the topic I was producing a story about be personal, as opposed to factual or journalistic. Talking about ourselves will be a piece of cake! Nope. It turns out to be a lot harder to tell a compelling story than to just make fun of everything. I’m not sure we accomplished that, but we at least got to turn our sarcastic ray gun on ourselves for a change. By the time we finished, the breezy feeling I had about the process was gone. The whole thing was humbling, and a total departure from my normal projects. I do think we came up with something worth listening to though, which certainly makes sense in this medium. “My normal projects”, include talkies for various “helpful white people” centers here in Buffalo. Those folks while very helpful, typically have no idea what they want in their videos. So, my partner and I just interview all the directors of whosits and assistant liaisons to the whatever, and then hunker down with lots of coffee to put together the jigsaw. When we present the final cut, the client is usually so amazed to see themselves on a screen that context and consistency don’t really matter. Even worse is the fact that the praise we receive leaves us feeling all arrogant. “Man, we totally floored those non-profit outreach consultants. We must be awesome!” So this story, as one of the first things I’ve ever done with any professional scrutiny attached, forced me to think very closely about what I was trying to say. That’s great for the end result of course, but also a bit like hanging out with a drunk version of yourself who keeps telling you exactly why you totally suck. The other thing that I kept having to tell myself was to stop rambling and get to the point! We had so many ideas of how to go about it that we both found it hard to keep the narrative at times. It’s hard to remember that your listeners may not know anything about your topic, so you need to stay clear and concise. This of course constantly led me to editing down our crazy stream of consciousness to something more closely resembling sentences. It really could’ve been an hour-long without much effort. It has made me rethink the way I record. Better outlines are in my future. It also really made me want to try my hand at producing other people’s stories, because I had things pointed out to me that I think would’ve been obvious were I not both writing and recording the story myself. And this was just a silly little story about ourselves. I now have a much deeper respect for those radio producers who interview people as they’re strapped into the electric chair, or file reports live from directly under a mushroom cloud. It makes what I do seem easy. What we came up with is basically a snapshot of some of our thoughts and fears about raising children as blind people. Part audio diary, and part self reassurance session. I’m proud of the fact that our story is just the type of radio I enjoy most. I could care less about ultra-serious radio like political shouting matches and other miseries, so I’m glad our piece stayed light and conversational. About the Gear Technically speaking, I used an Audio Technica 2021 with a Zoom R16 for the recordings at our Mom’s house, and talked to my Dad on the phone while he rec...

[“Portrait of the Bully as a Young Man” on PRX](%20http://www.prx.org/pieces/75197-being-a-bully "PRX Piece") About Portrait of the Bully as a Young Man Sometime in the fall of 2010, after I had seen or heard or read another bullying story about terrible things happening to young people, I realized that the coverage of these terrible things was totally devoid of young people’s voices. I started thinking that Generation PRX – the youth radio project I direct for PRX – could do something to change this. The 60 or so youth radio groups in the network encompass hundreds of teen producers or, put another way, a huge pool of actual experts on bullying. How could we give their stories more of an audience? But sometimes, fields lay fallow a while. It took nearly a year before a grant came in to officially move the project forward (that project became Bullied: Teen Stories from Generation PRX, an hour-long special produced by Catie Talarski and Connecticut Public Radio). In the meanwhile, I put a call out to the GPRX network, I edited a story on bullying for Under the Sun in Miami, and I brought the idea of bullying to my students at the Long Creek Youth Development Center here in Maine. Which is when Jeff offered this: I’ve BEEN a bully. And not only have I been a bully, I’ve been a TERRIBLE bully. And the guy who expelled me? Works here now. I’ll talk about it. And so it began. Some Background or, Why this was all Terribly Uncomfortable For the past 5 years, I’ve been Blunt Youth Radio Project’s Senior Producer for their Incarcerated Youth Speak Out Program. Along with Founder and Director (and unstoppable force of nature) Claire Holman, we teach radio broadcasting twice a week to 16-20 year-olds locked up at the Long Creek Youth Development Center. We use iMacs (remember those?) and MiniDisc recorders (and those?), and the kids spend six weeks producing features, which are then broadcast during Blunt’s regular weekly slot on WMPG. Students who have earned facility clearance come to the station to live host the show. Watching the kids on air – proud, nervous and getting through it all – ranks as some of the most exhilarating and rewarding teaching I’ve done. For many of the students, it’s the first time they are performing in public as well as the first time they experience the power of being listened to. They own that show, in every sense. Long Creek Youth Development Center So when Jeff offered to do a story on being a bully, we always assumed that the students in the class would produce it. They took turns interviewing Jeff, the principal, and local bullying authorities. They started to write and record tracking. But then the story started to get more complicated. It took longer. One by one, each of the other students was released from the jail. And finally, it was up to me, Claire and Jeff to see it through. Transom provided just the right motivation. I should say off the bat: I’ve never tried this kind of collaboration before. I’ve been teaching radio to teens for nearly 10 years, but the roles have always been clear. The students produce, voice, imagine, create; I facilitate, guide, help where needed. Part of what I love about teaching radio is staying behind the scenes and witnessing my students arrive in themselves as storytellers. With this piece, I found myself acting as both reporter and teacher, and what I discovered was…palpable inner conflict. As a teacher, if there’s tension or danger, I step in right away. I take seriously my obligation to keep the environment sa...

“Bucky’s Dome” on PRX About “Bucky’s Dome” One of the biggest challenges I faced was condensing all of the information I had into a manageable story that makes sense. Buckminster Fuller was a philosopher, architect, inventor, author, dreamer – he was multi-faceted in a way that is rare these days. I needed to convey that without giving a long lecture. Jay Baldwin’s pithy quotes were immensely helpful for that section. Also, pardon the gory radio term, but I had to shoot some puppies.* The two men who worked at The Dome Restaurant for many years had a surprisingly sweet friendship that I expected would be a bigger part of the story. My classmates gave me many gentle nudges to cut this section, which I stubbornly ignored. Rob even said something like “maybe you don’t have time to talk a whole lot about these two guys in your story.” I thought: of course not. I talk about them exactly the right amount. There also used to be a section of the story where Bucky contemplated suicide. He was 32 and considered himself a failure and a disgrace to his family. I thought this made his accomplishments more interesting and weighty. I even had archival tape of him talking about this part of his life. Ultimately, I realized these tangents caused narrative whiplash. Suicide! Norwegian exchange student! Disco music! What?! You can’t cover 4,000 topics in a ten minute story. It’s too confusing, and the goal is clarity. *To shoot your puppies means to cut moments you love out of your story. It’s tough, but if something’s really not part of the story it often has to go. Listen to More Pieces from this Story Workshop Class

“The D-Word” on PRX About The D-Word What is the D-Word? – It’s a 30-minute documentary that attempts to explore our rather neurotic relationship with that five-letter word: death. It was produced as part of my thesis project for an MSc in Science Media Production at Imperial College London and so is my first try at producing a feature length documentary piece. It explores the subject through the voices of those who deal with death on a regular basis and is my attempt at making sense of a particularly complex human issue. Why Death? It’s a subject that resonates with me personally – just under two years ago a close friend of mine decided to take his own life. Being 23 at the time, death wasn’t really something I’d had much ‘experience’ with and I found it particularly difficult to make sense out of what had happened. I realized that I’d gone through most of my life not having to confront or even think about death. It was through this event that I was forced to finally pay attention. At the time there was a huge degree of emotional confusion and I often felt many different, conflicting things at the same time. Grief, anger, guilt and apathy were all things that I experienced and I never knew what it was that I was meant to be feeling. I had no point of reference. I also discovered that experiencing death in this way was quite isolating – people don’t like talking about death (it makes them nervous I think) and they treat you differently as a result – I believe that this stems from the fact that most people don’t really know how to talk about death anymore. Delving into Death Following all this, I really wanted to create something that delved into the subject of death and attempted to address some of the issues, which I myself had experienced. As such it became a very personal project, but I was keen to avoid focusing upon my own experiences. Instead I used them more as a guide to allow me to ask the right questions. A hospital mortuary Travelling to the north of England, I went to visit pathologist Dr Stuart Hamilton at the mortuary of the Sunderland Royal Infirmary. This was one of the most interesting interviews I recorded for the piece, but one I entered into with the greatest trepidation. I simply didn’t know what I was going to encounter, I’d never been to a hospital mortuary before. It obviously brought thoughts of my friend’s death to the forefront of my mind, but at the same time, there was no denying that I felt a sense of excitement. As a Biology graduate it’s hard to gross me out, so there was a real sense of fascination accompanying my visit to the mortuary. It felt like I was getting a rare opportunity to peer into a world which most people would not ordinarily see. There was some apprehension as I first entered the central refrigeration room. The temperature drops immediately as you step into it, causing the hairs on the back of your neck to stand up in the most cliché of ways. The mortuary was also a sonically rich environment, with the mechanical hum of the refrigeration units becoming one of the dominant characteristics of the room. When Stuart later came to open up the doors of the refrigeration units, it was as if he purposefully intended to ramp up the suspense, opening several of the doors before we eventually came to one with a body lying inside. It was strange looking in at that body, once belonging to a conscious being, but now covered by a white sheet. But it was strange not because of any fear or repulsion. It was because I didn’t really have any reaction to it. I think that surprised me. Death is what it is… What was obvious from this interview, and in fact all of the subsequent interviews, was that death was a very normal part of life. Those I interviewed demonstrated that death shouldn’t be something that we fe...

“Splash” on PRX Who did What to WHOM!? My memory’s not what it once was. But hearing a certain name made an instant connection with the past. A prominent Tampa lawyer was murdered by his ex-wife. She snapped, drove to his new home and shot him six times. I got a cold chill when the victim was ID’d. I’d known him as a neighborhood kid decades ago when we played kid games. But the part of the story I couldn’t shake was what his ex did after emptying her revolver. She drove to the nearby Sunshine Skyway Bridge and jumped nearly 200 feet into Tampa Bay. The cosmic joke was on her. Instead of evading an ugly trial and lifetime lockup, she survived. Now I’d heard about plenty of jumpers who’d used the Sunshine Skyway to exit life. But somebody who actually lived to tell about it? I’m no fan of gruesome movies or TV, but morbid curiosity took over. What thoughts do bridge jumpers have a second after their feet leave the wall? How does it feel to hit choppy water at 75 miles per hour? How do their broken bodies stay afloat until rescued? And would this make a good radio story? Thank goodness for a certain four-letter word. Luck. I had none of it while trying to set up an interview with the ex-wife in her new home at the state pen. We got a little correspondence going, but it ended abruptly when a letter bounced back “Return to Sender.” Either she decided not to participate or the prison system wouldn’t allow it. Hanns Jones I was hitting dead ends trying to contact a few other surviving jumpers. Then luck struck. A survivor named Hanns Jones actually returned my email. After a few phone calls convincing him I wasn’t out to exploit his story for ill-gotten gain (I explained it was for public radio), he agreed to an interview. Magic. I couldn’t have asked for a better storyteller. Or a jumper so willing to volunteer all the painful and emotional details of his ordeal. Or a voice that could paint the picture like a colorful character in a movie. Driving away from that first interview with Hanns, holding the tiny speaker on my flash recorder up to my ear, the cartoon light bulb flashed on overhead: “Holy crap! This guy can carry the piece. Who needs a detached narrator when you’ve got the glue to hold it all together, a strong story arc and a commanding voice, all in one.” All I had to do was take a zillion bits and pieces, assemble them into a coherent story, and orchestrate with other sonic ingredients. After I found Hanns (a gift from the radio gods?) everything fell into place like few things in life ever do. Even when I hit the occasional speed bump, a solution presented itself that made the piece better. You’ve heard that luck is some combination of preparation, perspiration and inspiration. I agree — up to a point. But there’s another kind that you can’t account for or prep for. The kind that comes out of the blue like lightning. You don’t need it to make great radio. But it’s a game changer when it happens. What’s with all the sound design you ask? Ever notice that the soundtracks of most film and video docs are more complex and better crafted than radio documentaries? Why be self-limiting, unless the piece is pure journalism? Why not use every tool available, including music, atmospheres and SFX? Strong sound design was always part of my plan, but it also served a practical purpose. I needed it to cover wind-damaged portions of Hanns’ dialogue (micro editing also helped). I wasn’t prepared for the 15-25 mph gusts off the bay in our first interview. My bad. We recorded in calmer locations after that. I might’ve gone lighter on sound design if the piece had traditional narration. But Hanns’ unflinching willingness to tell his personal story made it a good fit. Really, a perfect fit to elevate “Splash” to impressionist...

“The Memory Palace” on PRX A Favorite Episode of Nate DiMeo’s: Nee Weinberg I recently asked my, um, my Facebook group, to suggest which episode I should post for this thing. I guessed that opinion would coalesce around a few of the crowd pleasing-est. I was wrong. The suggestions were all over the place (even citing a couple that I can’t really even listen to anymore). It was nice. People like what they like. So, here’s one I like. One of the toughest things about doing a biography piece like this one is that people’s lives, even interesting lives, aren’t stories just because they naturally have a beginning and an end and some exciting incidents in between. Ethan Weinberg lived a hell of a life but it still took me a hair shy of forever to find the story. Felt like an accomplishment when it was done. Then there are a couple of writing things I like in there. A couple of music things that I doubt anyone would ever notice, but I enjoy. Not too many things that make me cringe. So: here you go. This one’ll do. Sounds like The Memory Palace. What it is. When I posted my first episode of The Memory Palace, the description on iTunes read like this: “From award winning public radio producer, Nate DiMeo, comes The Memory Palace. Short, surprising stories of the past, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hysterical, always super-great. For history buffs, fans of public radio shows like This American Life, RadioLab, and whatnot, and for all admirers of things that are super-great.” Two years later, it says pretty much the same thing (except I noticed that Radiolab doesn’t have a gratuitous second capital, however, note: my last name does). Though the awards that make “award-winning” technically true are further in the past, the description is still essentially accurate. The Memory Palace is a pretty simple thing: short history stories put to music. They’ve gotten a little longer since then but most still float around the 6-minute range. They’re much more often heartbreaking than hysterical (though “bittersweet” is a decent blanket descriptor). But it’s still the same, small show. Its audience has gotten pretty big, as podcasts go. Pieces from the series have aired on public radio shows like Here and Now, KUOW Presents, BackStory, (of the gratuitous second capital), REMIX (of the gratuitous four capitals), KCRW’s Unfictional, KUT’s O’ Dark 30, and others, largely thanks to PRX. In March it was a “guest podcast” on Slate.com. The folks at boingboing.net seem to post about nearly every new episode when it comes out (which may drive the most traffic and new subscribers of any of them). And it’s opened the door for other, weird things that I’ll get into in a bit. Each episode seems to take forever. I will often become queasy when an ending isn’t working as well as I think it should. I will sometimes lose sleep trying to find a piece of music that fits the description “the sound of a life-time of drudgery with moments of false hope that builds to defiant—edging toward transcendent—resolve.” But when the pieces are done I usually feel kind of elated for a good 11 to 27 hours. And then a gnawing dread sets in as I start thinking about the next one. It has earned me hundreds of dollars. “How did he achieve such incredible success?” you ask. A few years ago (no: several, now) I was working at Marketplace as an editor/producer and wanted out. Not that Marketplace wasn’t/isn’t great, it was/is, but I wanted to make something of my own. I was a good editor but I wanted to be a reporter. I was a good producer but wanted to produce my own show. So I left. On my way out the door, I pitched a concept for a weekly,

A Favorite Episode of Roman’s: 99% Symbolic Although I have a hard time pulling out one episode to represent all of 99% Invisible, I chose this one about the design of city flags because I had the most fun making it. During production, I found I couldn’t say “vexillology” very well (that’s the proper name for the study of flags), and rather than practice it until I got it right, I incorporated that into the show. I even set up my wife (who provides the voice of the NAVA guidebook) to say it for the first time on tape, knowing she’d screw up, too. It was all a devious plan. This show also explored a topic that I had been wondering about for years and I think you can detect the excitement in my voice. About 99% Invisible I’m terrible at pitching stories and I’ve never felt particularly skilled at producing radio pieces for other people. I like making my own shows. Shows, not pieces. There’s something about the way a collection of stories in a show answers “the question” over time (usually over an hour), which makes it a more satisfying product than a single radio piece. However, I can’t produce a standard length, weekly radio show all by myself anymore. That’s why I love producing a thematic, ongoing series like 99% Invisible. It’s a tiny radio show (averaging 5 minutes) about all the thought that goes into things most people don’t even bother thinking about. I lucked into the job when KALW and the San Francisco Chapter of the American Institute of Architects decided to collaborate on an “architecture minute” series of modules to run during their local presentation of Morning Edition. I signed on to produce the pilot and found that this world of design and architecture was the perfect lens to view all kinds of stories that I loved. Because the show is short, it’s relatively cheap and manageable. With the help of AIA-SF and KALW, 99% Invisible got connected with a local design company called LUNAR that generously underwrites half of this year’s budget (we’re still figuring out how to get the rest). Because it’s ongoing, I get to produce stories about all kinds of things, creating a scatter diagram of sorts, and the resulting regression line is the thesis of the program. Week to week, I add one data point and the central idea of the show adjusts slightly. In this way, I get to actually finish and lock a story, but the narrative continues on as the program explores all aspects of design: big things little things things abstract things concrete The stories come to me in a variety of ways. The AIA-SF has assembled a couple of meetings with local architects, engineers and designers who serve as the show’s brain trust. Picking the right story is a lot about picking something I know I can address adequately in four minutes. The subject has to be a little surprising and open your eyes to something you may not have noticed before. The big pitfall of other design related journalism is that it tends to focus on glorifying objects. That doesn’t interest me. I’m only interested in the story of objects. Occasionally, I’ll violate this mandate and gush about the greatness of maps, but I try to keep that at a minimum. It’s story over glory. I usually only start a piece when I have some kind of hook that makes it fun to produce. This could be an audio sample I want to use, or a joke I think will be funny, or some clever use of music I envision. The need to scratch that itch moves that idea to the ...

“Scene of the Crime” on PRX About Scene of the Crime This summer I traveled to Colombia on a 10-day fact finding mission organized by Witness for Peace, a Washington-based social justice organization. Witness for Peace had scheduled ten long days of interviews with human rights activists, union leaders, displaced farmers, and witnesses and victims of paramilitary violence. I’m a private investigator and working on a graduate degree in Legal Studies focusing on human rights investigations, so the delegation to the Magdalena and Cesar regions of Colombia was right up my alley. The focus of the trip was Human Rights violations, corporate abuse, and internally displaced persons, specifically in relation to lawsuits against Dole, Chiquita and Drummond Mine Company. As a law student I was interested in the legal issues of bringing allegations of human rights abuses in U.S. courts. As an investigator I was interested in the difficulties of gathering evidence of crimes that occurred years ago and in another country. I’m also an avid NPR listener and I’ve always been interested in radio documentaries. At least once a week I come across a subject and think, “this would be a great radio piece”. It seemed like the Colombia trip had all the makings for a compelling radio documentary. So about a month before my trip I sent an email to Transom.org to see if they could suggest someone to produce a radio piece regarding the ties between these multi-national corporations operating in Colombia and paramilitary terrorists. The next thing I knew, recording equipment was arriving by FedEx. My intention was to produce an investigative piece, not a reflection on my experiences. But as Jay Allison told me, “You know you have a good story when it’s not the one you intended to tell.” I had read about similar lawsuits, where the plaintiff’s are trying to prove in U.S. courts that crimes were committed in another country, crimes that occurred years ago. As an investigator I’ve been involved in death-scene investigations, but the body was usually still warm…or at least there was a body. In the Chiquita lawsuit there are nearly 250 victims, and in the Dole lawsuit there are over 50 more. That’s 300 crime scenes, 300 bodies. Of course, in reality, there aren’t any crimes scenes; the crime scenes have been gone for years. And there aren’t any bodies, unless they’re dug up. How were the plaintiffs going to prove any of this? And I have seen cases were people that were thought to be dead were found to be very much alive. Could that be happening here? I was fascinated. I still am. The challenges in Colombia began right away. As an investigator I’m used to working on my own. But in Colombia I was in a group with nine others and two group leaders. The leaders of the group were terrific and had done a great job scheduling meetings and interviews, but working in a group is always difficult, especially when it comes to conducting interviews. The group interviews were less focused than I would have liked, and the background noise made effective recording impossible. So I ended up sitting through the incredibly long group meetings, and then asking for a private interview in a quiet environment where I could more intently probe. Because we were on a tight schedule I missed some good interview opportunities and the chance to record background noise and ambiance that would have come in handy during production. One of the first people we met was Edguardo Cabrara, a human rights activist. He became our guide to the plaintiffs and their stories. Edguardo took us to speak with a group of fishermen and their families who had been displaced by paramilitary violence and now lived in Boca de Aracataca, a mudflat next to the Magdalena River. As rain poured down on us,

“Inside the Adoption Circle” on PRX About Inside the Adoption Circle Adoption reveals some profound but basic aspects of the human story. It’s an act of caring, love and bravery. An emphatic and ancient statement about human nature, it is also rife with questions about identity. We wanted to get to the stories that live inside those questions. In the fall of 2007 Sam had been having long conversations with her friend Kira who had recently gone through the process of adopting a child. That experience got Kira wondering about the stories rarely heard outside the world of adoption – particularly those of birth parents. Kira’s adoption coordinator, Miriam Rand, introduced us (Sam and Viki) to the concept of the “silent triad” that exists in every adoption – birth parents, adoptee, and adoptive families. Suddenly adoption stories began cropping up everywhere. At the mention of the word, everyone around us seemed to have some connection to adoption – it was almost uncanny, like supressed memory resurfacing. A long-time friend revealed his aunt was actually his birth mother. Another suddenly recalled a family member who had been placed for adoption. Even we began to remember connections to adoption in our own lives. For some adoption still carried a stigma which made the subject even more compelling. Kira and Miriam, helped connect us to people willing to talk about their stories, and we began interviewing in the spring of 2008. Our objective was to speak with every possible player in adoption: birth parents, adoptive families, and adoptees including every configuration we could find: domestic, international, cross cultural, open and closed adoptions. We spoke to gay and heterosexual adoptive parents. We spoke with people who had reunited with their birth families, some who were still searching and others who were undecided. From the start of our interviews we were stunned by how eager everyone was to talk to us, as if they had been waiting for the chance to speak. We offered anonymity to encourage everyone to speak freely, yet in the end, many agreed to give their names. Some closed their eyes when they spoke, some started off with defensive body language but grew closer and closer to the mic, some got so quiet, and some couldn’t say enough. There were plenty of long pauses. Our time spent in each interview, even in production, was awash in vulnerability, doubt and denial, the conviction, the fantasies, the quiet revealment and for all of us, the unanswerable questions. Interviews in hand, logged and cut, we searched for an organizing principle. We wanted to avoid narration and rely on the voices and stories to shepherd the listener. At first we tried a collage of random voices speaking from all sides of adoption leading to a specific theme with a deeper story, but it was too confusing. Jay Allison suggested we keep voices together by role like orchestras do separating reeds from brass from strings. We sectioned adoptees, from birth families from adoptive families. Jay also felt some minimal narration would provide listeners with “signposts” along the way and help move the piece forward. Thanks, Jay and thanks to Kira Jones and Miriam Rand for help making it happen. Most especially, our thanks to all those who opened up and let us in. Additional Support for this work provided by

“Finding Miles” on PRX About Finding Miles from Sarah Reynolds I first knew Miles as Megan back in college. When he decided to transition from female to male, he gave me a call. He was slowly coming out to his friends as transgender — testing them, really — to see who he could still count on. The radio producer in me kicked in and I thought, this is quite a story about to unravel. I pitched him the idea and he agreed to do it: we would document his transition for radio. We began in November of 2008. I taught Miles how to use the gear and he used it for just over a year. In the beginning, he would mostly sit in his room and record at the end of the day very quietly. Miles is shy (as he’ll tell you himself) and when he took the recorder with him, he would often walk around with the mic under his arm or in his bag. But slowly he grew comfortable and more willing to take the gear with him. As he went, he would send me audio files through an FTP site. I downloaded them and listened along the way, jotting down questions and suggestions about what else I wanted to hear. We met up in person and checked in on the phone every few weeks and each time we did, I recorded him. One of the most challenging things for me was producing through his voice change. Miles began taking testosterone about five months after we began our recording. If I didn’t keep right up with the tape each week and get everything I thought I needed, I wouldn’t be able to get it again. But as we know, the story always shifts as you go along and it’s hard to get everything you need – especially when you’re not doing all the interviewing yourself. Miles’ voice deepened quickly and at a certain point, I only had a deeper voiced Miles to reflect on what had already happened. By the end of 2009, Miles had gone through surgery, was further into testosterone treatment, out at work, in life, at home and this chapter of his life came to a natural conclusion – always a good place to end a radio piece. I listened to every minute of tape and pulled together a story – only part of a story, really – but one that captures Megan to Miles and how he found a better space to fit into this crazy world of binaries. It was an amazing process to witness and one that still continues beyond this piece of radio. Miles is courageous for sharing it. About Finding Miles from Miles Taylor I can honestly say that today I am not the same person I was when I began recording my story during the winter of 2008. So much has happened over the past 18 months, I’m caught between feeling like it’s flown by in an incredibly profound blur and thinking it’s also been the longest, most hectic &#$% year and a half of my life! This piece was made from probably over a hundred hours of tape (a tip of the hat to my producer, though that’s probably the last time she’ll ever tell anyone “More is better than less!”). Frankly, I think I got the easy end of this deal; all I had to do was carry around a microphone. Transitioning is a once in a lifetime experience very few people get to have–although one which I would never want to go through again. As I got closer to starting hormones, I knew I wanted to document it in some way: journals, photos, videos. And it was right around that time when Sarah approached me about making an audio documentary. I’ve never been one for the spotlight so I surprised myself when I barely hesitated before saying yes; I also knew I would be putting myself into very trust worthy hands. One thing led to the next and we got the tape rolling. The more I recorded the easier it got. People generally wouldn’t describe me as a ‘talker’ so having to talk and talk and talk (and then talk some more, especially all about myself) was a learning experience all together. But once I got into it,

“Working With Studs – A Transom Radio Special” on PRX Bonus tracks from “Working With Studs” About Working With Studs Back in the 1980s, long before coming to work at Transom, I’d been working with Studs Terkel at WFMT Radio. Despite exiting ’FMT in ‘91, and leaving Chicago in 2001, I continued working as Studs’ transcriptionist and editorial helper for the rest of his life. Last year, during a planning meeting for a Transom radio special series, Jay Allison said, “OK, Syd, you have to produce an hour.” Until then, the extent of my audio work had been making Sonic IDs (WCAI’s 60-second station ID breaks). I’d never produced anything longer than 90-seconds, and I hadn’t even touched a Pro Tools session in 6 years. Knowing I had the creative and technical support of my Transom community kept me from being paralyzed with fear. My original idea, prompted by a conversation with Samantha Broun, was to use audio made during my work on his memoir Touch and Go. I had a box containing 30 cassette tapes of Studs talking about his life and work. Where to begin? Jay wisely urged me to focus the piece on working with Studs rather than on his work, and offered structural suggestions. Viki, knowing how self-conscious a writer and reader I am, made a great suggestion: instead of writing a formal narration, I should make notes and simply talk to her rather than read her the narration. Everyone at Transom gave great notes on early drafts — gratitude for all they contributed in the making of this hour. For the piece, I chose to interview others who had worked closely with or around Studs. From WFMT, three former colleagues: Lois Baum (Associate Program Director who’d worked with Studs for over 40 years), former WFMT sales manager Tony Judge, (who’d become a friend to Studs and accompanied him on long distance interview trips for the books), and George Drury. George started out as Assistant Librarian and became Spoken Arts Curator before becoming a teacher. His archival nature and memory were essential to this project, and he generously shared audio and ideas. Studs’ publisher André Schiffrin was the natural choice when discussing the oral history work. And I included Tom Engelhardt, an editor I’d bonded with when he worked on two of Studs’ later books. For me, the opportunity to talk with the others about our old friend close to a year after his death was a joyful experience. Of course, my original plans went kerflooey. For starters, much of my Terkel tape wasn’t usable. He was frail when we worked on Touch and Go, recovering from a lengthy hospitalization and a raft of ailments. He didn’t sound like himself. Fortunately, in 2001, Jay had asked me to interview Studs in Chicago for a Transom manifesto. That tape was perfect for my needs. George Drury suggested I get in touch with German documentarians Hans-Ulrich Warner and Uli Swidler who kindly shared audio from television and radio documentaries they’d done on Chicago and Studs years back. Jesse Hardman heard about the piece and volunteered tape from Studs’ 90th birthday celebration. Studs’ son, Dan Terkell, dug out and sent tapes I requested from the house. Russell Lewis of the Chicago History Museum and Steve Robinson of WFMT graciously gave me permission to use material under their respective purviews. But there’s only so much you can pack into an hour, and much of what I gluttonously requested was eventually put aside. Thanks to Sara Chapman and Tom Weinberg of Media Burn, Jyothi Natarajan of the New Press, David Krupp, and those interviewed for helping me get my hands on the photos. At first,

“Matthew” on PRX About Matthew I first met Matthew in the spring of 2008 when I was a visiting artist teaching printmaking workshops at Laguna Honda Hospital (LHH) in San Francisco. LHH is the city’s long term care facility. Many of the residents are elderly and suffering from some form of dementia. Matthew stood out both because of his youth and clarity of mind. He wore a face-mask, got around in in a wheelchair and was obviously in recovery from some kind of procedure. I never knew much more than that during our time in the workshops. He also stood out as a skilled artist. At the end our our six week long workshop Matthew was getting ready to be discharged from the hospital. He pulled me aside as people were leaving on the final day and asked me if I’d be interested in making some kind of art project based on the healing process he was going through. At this point he revealed what was behind the mask, a face undergoing dramatic transformation through a series of surgeries. When we first met he’d already undergone a couple of surgeries and as I write this he is recovering from his ninth. I was honored that he trusted me enough to show me his face – he had never taken his mask off during the workshops. I also felt daunted by the idea of making ‘art’ from this very heavy story. I had ethical concerns about what it would mean for me take his very personal experience and try to express it through my art practice. What I ended up proposing was that we make some kind of collaboration. It was obvious that he wanted to share his story and working together felt like the best way to approach it. At the very beginning of our collaboration I asked Matthew to articulate what his goals were for this project. His response made a lot of sense to me. He said that he wanted to use art as a way to come to terms with his new appearance. We began by making drawings – portraits of him before and after the incident. We also took lots of photos and continue to do so before and after every surgery. In addition, we recorded his story in the form of audio interviews. At the beginning of our work together Matthew and I were meeting once a week – making drawings, taking photos, etc. There were times when he was extremely depressed and struggling with illness and addiction. In addition to being his artistic collaborator I became a part of his support network in some small way, getting him out of the house for walks when he was too depressed to work and occasionally providing a shoulder to cry on. As time has passed I have seen him overcome incredible difficulty. He successfully completed a treatment program to help him kick meth addiction and is now comfortable enough with his appearance to have posted several of our photos on the web along with prolific blog postings about his progress through the surgeries. The more I get to know Matthew the more impressed I am by his resilience and his commitment to being a leader in AIDS and addiction advocacy in the face of his challenges. Tech Notes The interview was recorded at Matthew’s kitchen table with a Shure Beta 87A and a Marantz PMD 660. Editing was done in Logic Express. So far I have decided not to use music, mostly because I’m new to this form and overwhelmed at the thought of it! The subject matter is very sensitive and I’m nervous about overpowering the story with music, or choosing something that will feel trivializing. I am open to suggestions from the Transom community.   Additional Support for this work provided by

About Kidnap Radio I was 19 when my father was kidnapped in Colombia. It was 1999. My mother came to my college campus to deliver the news and I flew to Bogota to be with my family for a few weeks. (My mother is American, my father’s Colombian and they divorced when I was 5.) After that, except for brief trips for a wedding and a funeral, I didn’t go back to the country where I was born until I traveled there to report this piece in the spring of 2009. I was able to make the trip thanks to Jay Allison. I met Jay in Woods Hole through Ibby Caputo, a dear friend and a former intern at Atlantic Public Media. After hearing part of the story of my father’s kidnapping and rescue, Jay suggested I undertake this project and guided me along the way. I asked my father to meet me in Bogota for a long weekend in April so that I could interview him. I had heard bits and pieces about the kidnapping in the intervening years – when I would visit our family– but in the course of our interviews I realized I had known very little about what he’d endured: All I knew was our family’s side of the ordeal. My father’s kidnapping began on November 22, 1999 and ended August 13, 2000. He was kidnapped by the FARC and kept in 38 different places, spending the first months of his kidnapping alone, with only his guards and a radio, for company. After talking to my dad, I went on my own to the radio station in Bogota, Caracol Radio, that had sent out messages from my family to my father, and continues to send messages to hostages from their families every Saturday night from midnight to 6 a.m. The show is called Voces del Secuestro, or Voices of Kidnapping. (There are several other stations in Colombia that send messages out on other days of the week). The host, Herbin Hoyos, is a journalist who started this program in 1994, after he was briefly kidnapped and scolded by another hostage for not using the radio to reach out to hostages. Since then, Hoyos has broadcast messages from the family members of the kidnapped every weekend, despite threats from the FARC and assassination attempts (the most recent sent him into exile in Europe this fall). Today, around 50 messages go out on every show; at the height of the kidnapping craze, there were as many as 100, much shorter messages. As I sat in the radio station listening to the messages, which are somewhere between prayers and diary entries, I noticed that many of the people calling in to the station were talking to relatives who had been gone for several years, sometimes for as long as a decade. Like my dad, they were kidnapped because the FARC and other groups, including right-wing paramilitaries and gangs with no political agenda, had made kidnapping a major industry in Colombia. Unlike my dad, these people hadn’t come back. Some were almost certainly alive, like the soldiers and policemen held as political prisoners in the war between the FARC and the Colombian military. But others whose names were on the radio – civilians, by and large – were missing and unaccounted for. Their families became the focus of my piece. Thanks to Maria Isabel Campos, the producer of Voices of Kidnapping, I was able to reach more than a dozen of these families in Bogota, including Ismael and Amalia Marquez. This couple has been keeping track of all the kidnapped families since their son, Enrique, was kidnapped in 1999. When I asked Amalia for help reaching others, she took out a tattered address book and turned to a page with my own family’s name and phone number. It was chilling to uncover this corollary to my life – our life – this family of people who are bound only by the loss of a family member and a radio show. I dedicate this piece, Kidnap Radio, to them. They opened their doors to me, and taught me whatever it is that I have tried to convey with it. From Print to Radio This is not my first encounter with radio – in 2006 I took a radio ...

“Cat Lady” on PRX About Cat Lady I had struggled for a year, trying to write a piece about my mother, about myself, about what I observed to be an awkward, even incompatible relationship between the roles of artist and mother, about a child’s inheritance of his parents’ pain and desire. I had a long and unfocused essay, which I put aside. A few months later Holly Hughes invited me to participate in a night of readings that would all be pet-themed. Did I have anything that would fit? I, barely legal, was excited and intimidated by others she told me were on the bill– Eileen Myles, Kate Bornstein– artists who were much older and more accomplished than I. Yes, I said, I have something. I read over and threw out that previous manuscript and sat down to write a short poem about my mother… and cats! Three days later I had overstayed my welcome in various diners across New York City and had a twenty-minute short story. The piece went over quite well and Holly encouraged me to stage it, which I eventually did. As a theater piece it’s been performed, under Elizabeth Gimbel’s direction, in cities across the country and in Europe as well. While I began in the autobiographical, the characters and events in “Cat Lady” are decidedly abstracted and fictionalized. My actual mother speaks in more dulcet tones and, as she herself points out, would never feed the cats Whiskas. Tech Info This was recorded in a studio at The University of Michigan’s Duderstadt Center with Katherine Weider and Stephanie Rowden. I edited it with Garageband. Additional Support for this work provided by

This week we’re featuring the co-winner of our Self Portrait competition. It comes from the comedy collective “Mortified” who encourage people to read out loud the most embarrassing things they wrote as children. “I Hate Drake” is an hysterical and heartfelt entry from Will Nolan’s childhood diary about an archetypal bullying episode. Like most of the multi-media pieces on Transom, it’s story-driven and works fine without the images, but the animation deepens the story and makes it even funnier. Producer David Nadelberg says, “I had a specific visual aesthetic in mind for what a Mortified animation should look like. It should have the raggedy, moody, frenetic energy of a teen notebook. Innocent at the core but frayed on the surface. We called this aesthetic: punk meets Punky Brewster.” If you’re feeling a little battered by life today, take a few minutes to let “I Hate Drake” make you feel better. As ever, the producers will be at Transom to take your questions.

Jesse Hardman and Maura O'Connor recently drove around the southwestern United States visiting some of the 33 Native American reservations that have their own radio stations. They said it became clear that "radio, often dismissed as outdated for the Web 2.0 era, was the most essential medium of communication in Indian country." Airchecks from these stations sound alive and connected, peopled by a real range of characters. On Transom, Jesse and Maura put together a report, full of photos and audio, and we also created two radio pieces. One is an NPR-style news magazine piece. The other is a Transom-style collage. Listen to both. Tell us what you think. On our discussion board, we'll be joined by some of the staff of the tribal stations and they'd like to hear from you.

“Jennie’s Secret” on PRX About Jennie’s Secret I don’t remember how I first encountered the story of Civil War veteran Jennie Hodgers (aka Albert Cashier), but I was smitten from the start. I was amazed that hundreds of women had posed as men during the Civil War. I couldn’t imagine how she (or they) pulled it off. And I was positively gob-smacked when I found out that Hodgers went on to spend most of her adult life – as a man – in the tiny town of Saunemin, Illinois. That’s just 12 miles down the road from Pontiac in Livingston County. And Pontiac is where my family comes from. For me though, probably 
the most fascinating part of this project was trying to unpeel the onion to find a more nuanced portrait of Jennie Hodgers. I found a person who could be kind to children, offering them a treat whenever they came to her home. But there was also a hot-headed, disingenuous, petty and unquestionably eccentric Jennie Hodgers. She had her foibles, just like the rest of us. We hear about her darker side in the letters that Sammuel Pepper, a fellow soldier, wrote home to his wife. I got to those letters through the footnotes of an amazing book by Lauren Cook and Deanne Blanton. It’s called, “They fought like Demons – Women Soldiers of the Civil War” and I recommend it to everybody. When I met Frank and Velma Crawford (who are in possession of over 200 of Samuel Pepper’s letters) they read me a newly discovered letter about Cashier with even more explicit information about his/her wartime experience. So hopefully this radio story deepens the historical record about Jennie Hodgers. More nuanced information about Jennie Hodgers also came courtesy of Cathy Lannon. Today Cathy is a lawyer, but back in 1969 she wrote her master’s thesis about Hodgers’ life. Lannon was from Saunemin and interviewed older people in town who still remembered Hodgers. Here’s one story Cathy Lannon told me. You’ll see that she (and a lot of people in Saunemin) refer to Cashier as “he.” Lannon’s great grandparents lived across the street from Albert Cashier and often invited him (her) over for meals. But that overture wasn’t always met with the gratitude that you might expect: A few years before the rest of the world found out about Cashier’s true gender, Cathy Lannon’s great grandmother made the discovery. She had heard that Albert was sick one day and so she asked a nurse to go over to help him out. In short order the nurse came running back and spluttered,“ Mrs. Lannon, he’s a full fledged woman!“ The nurse was so upset that she packed up and left town and Lannon’s great-grandmother in a great act of empathy, didn’t tell anyone about it, including her husband. When I first approached Jay Allison about this story, the only tape I had was of 93 year-old Nina Chesebro. Her great-uncle is the one who first hired Albert Cashier (Jennie Hodgers) as a farmhand when (s)he got to town. I pretty much cornered Jay at a Third Coast Festival conference. He didn’t know me, but sat there anyway and listened to some tape. And then he said he bet we could make a story of it. I was obsessed with the history of Cashier’s life. Just such a wild story. But Jay wanted to know more about the people who objected to restoring the house. After all, it’s been moved at least nine times. One time it was almost burned down in a practice drill for the Saunemin fire department. I mean the town didn’t seem too invested in the thing. And Jay wanted to know more about that. That tack, I think, was fruitful. Because it turns out that there’s a long history of ambivalence in town about their most famous citizen. And bringing that angle together with the current effort to re-build the house gave us a frame to tell the history part. Gear I have almost no experience using music in stories.

“Prostate Diaries” on PRX About The Prostate Diaries: From Jeff Metcalf A man walks into a doctor’s office for a physical and the doctor says, “You look good. Your heart sounds strong, lungs are clear, urine sample is clean but this next part will be a bit uncomfortable. You want to drop your pants and bend over the table so I can do a digital exam of your prostate? You might feel a slight discomfort.” And, honest to God, I start to laugh because I’m thinking why the hell would anybody stick a digital camera up my ass? All seriousness aside, in 2004 I had a physical that would change my life in ways I could not have expected. I walked out of the doctor’s office feeling very healthy. Four days later, in a phone call to the doctor, I was told my PSA levels were high, very high. Like millions of men all over the world, I had no idea what that meant. I knew this… it couldn’t be good. The doctor’s voice cracked. He suggested that I get a biopsy and talk to my wife. I asked him if I had cancer and he said that he didn’t know but the biopsy would be definitive. I was about to leave to teach a course in creative writing in Provence, France and then attend a theater conference in Croatia. I’d do the biopsy when I returned. Until then, I’d keep quiet. This was probably one of the most stupid things I’ve done in my entire married life. And there have been many. While I was traveling abroad, I kept a diary about my feelings. My notes were dark and angry. On my return to the states I was invited to do a reading with several other authors at a venue called City Art. I brought a short story I’d written in Provence and three days of my diary notes that I somehow felt should be read in front of an audience. I was uncertain and uncomfortable about reading from the diary. It was too revealing… too close to the bone. I almost backed out, but didn’t. The reading changed the course of my life. A director was in the audience and commissioned me to write a full-length play for a local theater. The play ran to sold out crowds every night. A Peabody Award winning journalist asked me to make a radio play about the experience and we did. And, a four-time Emmy award winning filmmaker who was also in the audience offered to make a DVD of the reading if I was interested. His father had died of prostate cancer. This meant something to him. We made the DVD. It is wild and crazy… unrehearsed… insulting to the medical community and almost every institution we hold sacred. It became, in a sense, the framework for the play. A play about cancer with a talking penis, my mother-in-law and Death (with beautifully capped teeth) is not the play I wanted to write. And yet… here it is doing something important. “A Slight Discomfort” is putting the second leading cause of death for men onstage and bullying it around. It has sharp edges and can cut. And my health? I’ll say this: I’m in trouble. I’m in a knife fight with this psychotic disease. It ain’t over yet and the fat lady hasn’t sung. But every once in a while I can hear her warming her vocals up. She’s got a nice voice. I am still above ground and this is good. I like it here. I pay attention. I don’t miss anything. From Scott Carrier I’m not a theater buff or goer. I admit that the theater experience can be perhaps the most amazing art form. I have been blown away. But I have also been in the room of failure. And I have been the object of said failure. So I don’t go, very much. I went to see Metcalf’s play because I think he writes about living in Salt Lake City as well as anyone ever has, and I thought it might be about living in Salt Lake City. I don’t think I even knew what it was about. I may not even have known he had cancer. I’d been kind of out of the loop for a few years. It was a premier, an experiment for Metcalf and the Salt Lake Acting Compa...

About Killer Whales I’m a scientist. Well, that used to be my fulltime job. Now I make radio and multimedia about science…mostly. Let me back up. While I was finishing my PhD in oceanography, I thought about what I would do when I graduated. I wanted a job where I’d continue to learn. And I wanted to have the chance to be creative. I considered academics, maybe science policy. And I also thought about doing radio. I met up with Samantha Broun at Atlantic Public Media and discovered they were making “science minutes” for WCAI, the local radio station in Woods Hole. More about those science minutes later. I began to see how I could blend my academic training with my burgeoning interest in radio. As a scientist, I studied marine mammals. Seals. Dolphins. Whales. But mostly killer whales. Last summer, I made plans to visit my friend Volker who was searching for killer whales off the Shetland Islands (north of Scotland). I decided to bring along some gear and make a radio piece about the trip. Before leaving, Jay Allison and Viki Merrick gave me a lot of advice: Record everything. Talk with the locals. Capture conversations. Remember that the characters I find charming will probably charm others who are listening to the piece. Use the microphone like a diary, a confessional, a cell phone. Capture the sights, tastes, smells, textures of Shetland. I went to the Shetland Islands hoping for at least one incredible encounter with the killer whales, which would allow me to capture the excitement of doing fieldwork, the joy of science in action. I had anticipated recording the adrenaline and eagerness in Volker’s voice as he coordinated the field effort aboard the small inflatable boat. The sounds of sea spray, killer whale exhalations, and shrieks of discovery each time an animal surfaced. But I learned that in radio, just like in field biology, you don’t always get what you want. I stayed in Shetland with Volker and his field team for almost 5 days. But each day passed without our seeing a single killer whale, an outcome that was not all that unexpected (as a scientist) though somewhat disappointing (as a radio producer). I recorded as many of the locals and tourists as I could and interviewed the field team at great length. I captured ambient sounds (the wind, the birds, the hum of a motor, cooking noises, an impromptu chorus of the field team blowing air over beer bottles one night in the cabin) and transition sounds. But no whales. Maybe I had forgotten to contact their agent. I came home with hours of tape and not a single killer whale encounter. Obviously, this changed the type of story that I could tell. I had to rethink my plan. When I returned to Woods Hole, I played the tape for Jay and Viki and they pushed me to rethink the piece through a more human lens, one that considered what motivates people to pursue their passions even if it means waiting around for days with no pay-off. That advice really helped. So I made this piece instead, which is more about the search than the reward. And I hope that kind of quest is something that lots of people – those that study killer whales and those that don’t – can relate to. [donation copy=”Killer whales, people, it’s not every day you get that”] Gear I used a Marantz 620 digital recorder and Beyer MCE 58 omni microphone. I liked the setup because all of my gear fit into the mic bag, which made it easy to transport in the field. Those Science Minutes I Mentioned Earlier Atlantic Public Media initiated the whole Sonic IDs idea that other local NPR stations have picked up. Like sonic IDs, science minutes (also produced by Atlantic Public Media) are brief (30 – 90 seconds), sound-rich portraits. But science minutes are portraits of scientists, their work and its relevance to everyday life.

“After The Forgetting” on PRX About After The Forgetting This story started in my living room. I was teaching a youth radio class for the Vermont Folklife Center, and Greg Sharrow, my colleague and friend from the Folklife Center had agreed to a marathon interview with three high schools kids. I’d given the kids a few choice details about Greg’s life—of which there are many—and they’d each prepared some questions. Greg is perfect for anyone’s first interview. He’s completely open. He’ll answer anything. And he speaks in complete sentences. One of the kids had elected to talk with Greg about his mother who has dementia. It was a phenomenal interview. The kid dropped out of the youth radio project and I fell in love with the tape and decided to start working on a story about Greg and his mother. I knew Marj. I’d met her at parties and eaten dinner with her at Greg and Bob’s. I’d sat in the backseat a few times when Greg drove her back to her assisted living place. I remember her exclaiming about the lights driving past Wendy’s, ‘Look at all that RED!’ Greg and I both did recordings at the dinner table, which was no easy proposition in a house with sixteen fish tanks and a cockatiel. Still, some nice stuff came of it. I started to think I’d frame the whole story around a single dinner. I spent a lot of hours making a cutlery track, which I thought I might run under the whole show…so when you were listening to an interview segment with Greg, for instance, you could still hear the dinner conversation in the background, and Greg would fade out and we’d come back to the conversation at dinner. Sort of like Glen Gould’s Idea of North. In the end it didn’t work. I didn’t have enough well-recorded dinner conversation to do it, and there wasn’t enough momentum in the story. I had to ditch the idea, and the cutlery track. Still, the dinner conversation is threaded through the story, and it starts and ends at the dinner table. My favorite audio segments came from the interviews that Greg did with his mother on the couch at his house. They are the most relaxed and intimate; Marj’s mind is at its clearest, and some of the best non sequiturs happen in these conversations. ‘What would you like to do? Would you like to go on and on?’ I edited these sections pretty heavily and slowed them down a lot. I wanted it to feel like they were floating above the rest of the story somehow. When the story was about an hour long, I sent it to SALT Institute’s Rob Rosenthal who had agreed to mentor me on this project as part of the AIR mentorship program. I had read about this mentoring program on the AIR website and jumped at the chance. Essentially, AIR offers its members four hours of advice time with a radio producer. I work alone and I don’t have any associates in radio. It was incredible to be able to talk with someone about this story at that uncomfortable stage of production when you’re wondering, ‘What is this? And who cares?’ Rob was incredible. He listened to the show and did two thorough paper edits, and his criticism helped me take a giant step back from the story and look at it fresh. He made excellent structural suggestions and I remember he pushed me hard to look for conflict. He was left wondering what was at stake for these people. I remember really studying the end of the show then, and noticing that it felt saccharin and bloated. In that initial version, Greg went on and on about all that his mother has taught him about being alive. At a certain time I really loved that tape. What he was saying seemed important and true. But I was also made uncomfortable by it somehow. It felt like a song that only I liked and that I was probably going to get sick of. So I went back and interviewed Greg again. I remember we had kind of a snippy interview. I was really pushing him to tell me where the cracks we...

Back to “A Trio of Podcasts” Read Curtis Fox’s Manifesto: “On Podcasting” A Favorite Episode of Nick’s: Aftermath From the company headquarters of Aftermath, Inc., amidst a strip of bland office buildings in Chicagoland, Tim Reifsteck makes his living cleaning up after the darkest side of human society. I chose this episode because it definitely illustrates a lot of my favorite editing tricks. Produced with Laura Kwerel. About Love & Radio A large part of Love & Radio’s style has been inspired by watching too much television and too many movies. In those visual mediums, the editor acts as a kind of character–every editing choice is right there on the screen. But in radio, we’re both blessed and cursed with an ability to hide the entire editing process: whole phrases are moved around, breaths are added and taken away, and the whole time our listeners are kept in the dark. These days, I’ve been primarily focused on figuring out how to translate some of those visual editing ideas into a non-visual medium. To that end, I try to make my edits obvious and sometimes rough and intrusive. I’ll intentionally cut out room tone, or add coughs, lip smacks, and other audible detritus to indicate when an edit has taken place. Another trick is to end a region by “fading up” instead of fading out–depending on your ambience, it creates a neat sort of reverse-cymbal crash sound and gives a nice subtle pop. It’s a lot like turning the seams inside out on a piece of apparel. Phil Dmochowski, who helped produce several episodes last year, once said public radio needed to take more cues from glitch hop. That statement has always stuck in my brain. I’m not where I’d like to be in that respect, but I always try to keep in mind what a radio interview would sound like if it were edited by Prefuse 73. Tech Info for Love & Radio I use an HHB Flashmic, but more recently have been using a Zoom H4. The Flashmic is undoubtedly better, but I love working in stereo. Most phone interviews are done with a Broadcast Host. Voicemails are recorded using simplevoicebox.com. Related Links Love & Radio