2023-01-05 Live In The Evening When I first got obsessed with radio around age six or seven, it was because I would listen at night. After it was time for bed, I could turn on the radio and hear a live person on the other end. Someone who was speaking to me. A fr …›
2023-01-03 Maybe the most heartbreaking scene in Q&A, the first season of the fiction podcast Mumbai Crime from Radiotopia, is the moment Thomas, the lead character, holds a good friend in his arms as he dies from rabies. There’s nothing Thomas can do to sa …›
2022-12-20 Erika Beras and Sarah Gonzalez had a secret they kept from Earnest Jackson, a character in a story they recently reported for Planet Money. Here’s the secret: Back in the 1970s Earnest wrote and recorded a song with Sugar Daddy and The Gumbo Ro …›
2022-12-06 Introduction Hi y’all I bet many of you reading this are preparing for final exams, writing papers, or otherwise trying to stagger through the finish line of this year. Years ago, when I was making a weekly version of this newsletter, I w …›
2022-12-06 In 2010, Matej Praprotnik had his ears pried open. Matej traveled all the way from his home country of Slovenia to San Francisco to be an intern at public radio station KQED. As cosmopolitan as San Francisco might be, it’s not central Europe. Much wa …›
2022-12-01 The Making of The Civic Standard The Civic Standard is the second hardest show I’ve ever made. The first was called Finn and the Bell, which is a story about a young man called Finn Rooney, who took his own life, and the profound impact this had on h …›
2022-11-28 Happy Cyber Monday! The annual timetable of holiday shopping has increasingly smeared in the last few years, with sales offered by various retailers appearing before and after the traditional “Black Friday” and newer “Cyber MondayR …›
2022-11-22 Every day, reporters ask interviewees to go deep, to reveal profoundly personal information. Stories about all manner of difficult subject matter: divorce, illness, fraud, war, domestic violence, poverty… And it’s not just the reporter who’ll hea …›
2022-11-15 Introduction Hey y’all, I can’t lie, I’m especially excited about this month’s interview. It’s with the podcast that I’ve listened to more than any other. As in: when I refresh my podcast feed and see a new episode of Who? Weekly I hi …›
2022-11-08 For the first time in a long time, I pulled into my driveway, sat there, finished listening to an episode of a podcast, went inside my home, and listened to the next episode. I was that drawn in. What podcast? Power Trip, the first season of Cover Stor …›
2022-11-01 Making Time (Re)Introduction I actually remember, precisely, when I came to understand the importance of daydreaming and, more broadly, of Slowness. This lesson came to me through a children’s book. Leo Leonni’s Frederick is a story about a family …›
2022-10-24 According to Music Genre List, there are 54 different types of jazz. From Acid Jazz to West Coast Jazz. Apparently, there are 41 styles of Country music. Bluegrass is listed under Country with two subgenres — Progressive Bluegrass and Reactionary …›
2022-10-20 We’re living through an era of social and political tumult, when civic discourse is breaking down and the founding notions of democracy are being challenged. In times like these, it’s more important than ever that citizens have access to a rich med …›
2022-10-18 Introduction Hi y’all! Welcome back to Starting Out from me and Transom. We took September off for some much needed rest, and so that I could prep a new season of interviews and resources for y’all. One of the questions I’ve hea …›
2022-10-11 There’s the anecdote about the trampoline. It goes like this: Phoenix Jones, a real-life superhero who wears a Batman-type outfit, chases a bad guy down a street in Seattle. The bad guy tries to get away by climbing over a fence. As Phoenix approache …›
2022-10-04 It’s not often that we experience fundamental shifts in the technology we use to record audio. In the portable-recorder world, there have been a couple of leaps in the last three decades: the shift from analog recording to digital, and then the s …›
2022-09-27 On this archive episode of the Sound School Podcast, a gift. A gift from producer Will Coley and editor Viki Merrick. Frequently, what takes place between a producer and an editor during production is private, behind closed doors. As is true in many fi …›
2022-09-13 There’s a rule for interviewers: shut up. Interviewers are not supposed to talk while an interviewee gives an answer. In particular, don’t say “mm-hm” or “oh!” or “Hunh”… keep all the little utterances of normal conversation to yourse …›
2022-09-06 A Time-Based Medium Intro: An Invitation “But time is not what you do something with — time does something with you.”—Sheila Heti, Motherhood Do you remember the last time you surrendered to an experience? When you relinquished expectation or c …›
2022-08-30 A transformation of HowSound from Transom and PRX It’s magic, right? Download a podcast. Press play. Boom. There it is. A great story told in sound. Same with radio. Turn it on, and “Voila!” It all seems so simple. It’s not. I h …›
2022-08-30 Here’s a question: When you’re reporting on an incarcerated person, how many details do you provide in the story about the crime they committed? I was struck by that question listening to Elissa Nadworny’s two-part series on education in prison f …›
2022-08-12 There’s a haunting, high-pitched, dissonant sound that rises from the woods every spring in New England. Peepers. Incredibly small frogs about the size of a thumbnail. They’re so small it seems impossible they’re as loud as they are. One evening …›
2022-08-09 Introduction Welcome back to Starting Out from me and Transom! This month marks one year of Starting Out, and I kind of can’t believe it. Over the last year I’ve written this newsletter in my free time: on planes, trains and occas …›
2022-08-02 Not too long ago, a colleague and I interviewed someone for a story. I wouldn’t describe the interviewee as shy, per se, but they were definitely guarded, as though monitoring everything they said. To be sure, they were a good talker, they told stori …›
2022-07-26 Veteran Australian producer Mike Ladd gives his thoughts on making radio features, focusing on subject, sound, shape and script. What follows here are some personal ideas and practical tips gained from four decades of listening to, thinking about, and …›
2022-07-19 One of my favorite narrative journalism reporters is Ted Conover. Two books of his in particular stand out because he dives in and becomes a character in the story he’s reporting: Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America’s Hoboes and New Jack …›
2022-07-12 Introduction Hey y’all. Welcome back to Starting Out from me and Transom. What a few weeks it’s been. It’s unrelentingly hot here in North Carolina — rain shows up on the forecast every day but never materializes. I can feel t …›
2022-07-05 There are a few things it’s important to say to an interviewee at the start of an interview to make sure you’re both on the same page. Even if a reporter has talked to this person on the phone or by email, it’s always a good idea to remind people …›
2022-06-28 What Audio Does Best I’ve retired. After 45 years on radio (Pacifica, NPR, Radiolab) and television (CBS, ABC, PBS, HBO) I now have my days free, the nights too, to muse over what I’ve done and I think I may have discovered something surprising alo …›
2022-06-21 I was given a “writer’s block” as a gift, recently. It’s a little wooden cube. On each side there’s a Henry David Thoreau reference — his signature, a wood cut image of his shack at Walden, a reference to Civil Disobedience, and one of …›
2022-06-14 Introduction I’m a union girl. I was born into it. My dad is from Madison, Wisconsin, a union town. I remember cheering on Wisconsinites protesting former Governor Scott Walker’s union busting. We even sent pizza to them from our family …›
2022-06-13 "My own historically Republican mother told me she looked up her senators and called them for the first time in her life," Liz Hanks, who leads the Texas chapter of Moms Demand Action, told NPR.(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images) …›
2022-06-13 Five witnesses will testify Monday, including Bill Stepien, former President Donald Trump's campaign manager, and Ben Ginsberg, a GOP election lawyer and outspoken critic of Trump's election lies.(Image credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP) …›
2022-06-13 MRIs done early for uncomplicated low back pain and routine vitamin D tests "just to be thorough" are considered "low-value care" and can lead to further testing that can cost patients thousands.(Image credit: ER Productions Limited/Getty Images) …›
2022-06-13 Dozens of cases linked to a nightclub spurs officials to return to online schooling and indefinitely delay sports gatherings.(Image credit: Ng Han Guan/AP) …›
2022-06-12 A roundup of key developments and the latest in-depth coverage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (Image credit: Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images) …›