2020-12-22 If only there was some magical equation for figuring out if the story idea you have equals a podcast series. Something like: Characters + Tension + Surprise + Date Peg + Narrative + Social Issue = 7-part series Wouldn’t that be handy? Unfortunately i …›
2020-12-08 Sometimes I’ll slap myself on the forehead and say, “Oh right! Don’t forget to do that when I write!” It’s for that very reason we’re dusting off this old episode of HowSound from 2012 with Brian Reed about the writing maxim “Show, don’ …›
2020-12-01 2020’s holiday season, like the rest of the year, is certainly unlike any other in memory. Economic hardships, and changes in work processes due to safety concerns will make many people’s year-end purchasing plans dramatically different. …›
2020-11-26 David Greenberger The process for working on Everybody’s Home was similar to what Tyson and I had been doing over the course of about a hundred pieces that we co-wrote for three CDs with the ensemble Prime Lens (My Thoughts Approximately (2017), It H …›
2020-11-24 I went to high school in the 1970s at a time when the queer community was marginalized — to say the least. In fact, I won’t say the least. It was dangerous for gays and lesbians and trans people then. I grew up on Cape Cod a culturally con …›
2020-11-17 The Fall 2020 Transom Story Mentorship students on Zoom with Rob Rosenthal and special guest Shereen Marisol Meraji. About Rob Rosenthal, Lead Instructor Rob Rosenthal is an independent producer and a teacher. He’s the host for the HowSound podcast o …›
2020-11-10 If you were to ask me, “Do you have a copy of Thoreau’s book Cape Cod?” I’d say yes, and immediately find it among my pile of books in the Cape Cod section of my collection. Or, if you were to ask, “Can we listen to that Rahsaan Kirk record y …›
2020-10-27 The longer I do this, the more I think the best audio storytelling is about the writing. Yes, of course, there has to be a story there in the first place. Yes, you have to interview well. Yes, you have to record well. Yes, a lot relies on the character …›
2020-10-22 Story Mentorship Applications This online training will take place from January 24 – March 6, 2021. Instructor Rob Rosenthal will run the 6-week program. We have intentionally capped the class size at six so that participants are guaranteed indiv …›
2020-10-20 The Weight of a Story Untold From the moment I entered the criminal legal system as a 15-year-old boy, I was told, “Don’t tell anyone anything about your case.” I translated that to mean: Don’t tell my story. It then was reinforced by the first …›
2020-10-13 There’s not a lot that’s funny in the recently published compendium of writing on climate change by the New Yorker called The Fragile Earth. It’s not a funny topic. In his book Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Out?, about the same subject …›
2020-10-06 Discovering Transom I had bought the graphic novel Out on the Wire, by Jessica Abel, and felt so privileged to be reading it and to be behind the scenes with such amazing radio makers. I would so recommend this book for any radio lovers. It offers such …›
2020-09-29 For decades, one of the downsides to radio was that it ephemeral. Something is broadcast and then it’s gone — lost to the ether. The internet changed that, of course. Now, a great program or live public event can be archived after it’s ai …›
2020-09-22 Guess I Gotta Write This Goddamn Diversity Article Again I’m writing this article for the third goddamn time. The first time was ten years ago, when I first entered an overwhelmingly old and white field. So I wrote an article for the Associatio …›
2020-09-15 Rebecca Nolan arrived at the Transom Story Workshop in the spring of 2019 as a folklorist. “A quasi-folklorist,” she demurs. Regardless, Rebecca earned a degree in folklore from Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada in 2017, but she …›
2020-09-04 Confronting Privilege and Power in Storytelling I host a podcast about the history of “objectivity” in U.S. journalism, which begins with the story of my experience being fired from public radio for purportedly violating standards of “impartialit …›
2020-08-31 Some years ago, while I was working on an audio tour about rural Maine, I interviewed a beaver trapper who lived alone in the western part of the state. Inside his house there were dead beavers on the floor, dead beavers hanging on the wall heading dow …›
2020-08-18 Ben Naddaff-Hafrey and I were nerding out about all things radio and podcasting when I interviewed him recently. As we talked, he bowled me over with a lovely quote he remembered about the power of audio written in the 1930’s: “The ear is half poet …›
2020-08-11 It’s a little hard to put your finger on exactly what the RØDECaster is: It’s an audio mixer, allowing you to combine four microphones and a few other sources in real time. It’s a stand-alone recorder that can save audio to an internal S …›
2020-08-03 Look up Lauren Chooljian’s work for New Hampshire Public Radio; you’ll see stories like: • Sununu Tasks Panel With Offering Ideas On Police Accountability, Transparency • N.H. Supreme Court Rules Public Has Right to More Government Records …›
2020-07-20 The other day, I dropped off some computer speakers at a friend’s house. She came to the door and I thought to myself right there, in the moment, “I’m a little nervous but I’ll do it.” The “it” was to share the seed of an idea. So, I told …›
2020-07-07 La estructura de un podcast Acabas de grabar y mezclar tu primer episodio de podcast (quizás con la ayuda de nuestros artículos anteriores) y ahora necesitas compartirlo con el mundo. Este es el aspecto realmente revolucionario del podcasting: desde …›
2020-07-07 There’s a presentation at the Third Coast Festival from back in 2005 that has stayed with me for years. It shocked me. I thought “Wait, what??! Reporters can’t help people?” Anne Hull, a reporter for the Washington Post, was talking about how t …›
2020-07-02 Our Reluctance Here at Transom, we’ve been reluctant to focus too much on recording phone conversations because we generally prefer the results of an in-person interview. The warmer, more vivid sound of someone speaking into a good microphone paints …›
2020-06-23 There are a handful of things about recording interviews that I always get asked by students in a Transom Workshop. “Do I have to mic my questions?” is a classic. The answer is “yes.” But the reasoning may not be obvious at first since a …›
2020-06-16 Empieza con una base sólida Has grabado una gran conversación o quizás estás mezclando tu voz con música o efectos de sonido, pero lo que escuchas no termina de convencerte. No es algo inusual. Obtener la mezcla correcta involucra muchas cosas: es …›
2020-06-09 One of my favorite episodes of Code Switch is about the explanatory comma. In short, the hosts explore this question: When should cultural context be given when talking about race and culture. (As they put it in the episode, how long is NPR going to sa …›
2020-06-03 Your Equipment Matters I have a confession to make: even though I love sound, I don’t really like sound equipment. It’s expensive, for one. Also, the names are either a charmless mess of letters and numbers that I can never keep straight, o …›
2020-05-26 I’m keenly aware that HowSound is a fairly mainstream podcast in the way it’s written and produced. Sure, I’ve featured a lot of experimental work on the show. But, the overall approach to how I produce HowSound is, I’d say, middle-of-the-road. …›
2020-05-19 Inadequate To The Moment Just as the spread of Covid-19 was escalating across the United States, Samantha Broun suggested I record my response to her concerned friendly email about what the heck I was witnessing as a nurse on the front lines here in Qu …›
2020-05-12 In the last episode of HowSound, I posed a question to producers: What do you stand for? When I interviewed Selly Thiam for this episode, I didn’t need to ask. The answer is right there. Front and center. “Being a part of the society that you&# …›
2020-05-01 Dealing With A Pandemic By Making Something When the lockdown started, I called my son’s school to see if they needed volunteers to prepare lunches. They didn’t. I called the local hospital and, not surprisingly, they didn’t need unskilled volunt …›
2020-04-28 My daughter and I were sitting in a Thai restaurant eating dinner and she was kind of freaked. Actually, a lot freaked. She told me this story . . . Her high school volleyball coach nominated her to attend a student leadership conference. She spent the …›
2020-04-14 Reporters and producers are scrambling. Because of social distancing and shelter-in-place orders due to COVID-19, they’re having to figure out how to report from home. The new circumstances raise lots of reporting questions: How do I record a phone i …›
2020-03-31 Just the other day, I walked a beach near my house in Woods Hole. A serious wind blew out of the north. The waves roared a dense, white noise. The sound was inescapable. It was so loud, I could barely hear my footsteps in the sand. After the beach stro …›
2020-03-29 From Transom’s Samantha Broun: Kate O’Connell is a radio producer who studied at our nine-week Story Workshop in Woods Hole. She’s also a nurse in an emergency room at a hospital in Queens, NY. When the coronavirus pandemic began to e …›
2020-03-23 Estamos enfrentando una crisis global sobre una enfermedad infecciosa, y —comprensiblemente— tanto a reporteros como a productores les preocupa cómo protegerse a sí mismos y a sus entrevistados. Es importante recalcar que aquí en Transom n …›