Sound School Podcast

History podcasts face a serious problem: sound. So much documentation from the past lacks audio. The Last Archive solved the problem in a very unique way: Produce the podcast like it's a radio drama from the 1930s. But, how do you do that? Producers Ben Naddaff-Hafrey and Sophie McKibben have the answer on this episode of HowSound.

There needs to be a radio and podcasting merit badge: reporters and producers earn one when they stretch above and beyond for a story. If there was one, I would present it to Lauren Chooljian of New Hampshire Public Radio for a pandemic diary she produced.

Rob's secret hope with every HowSound is that you'll hear creative storytelling and production and think "Oh wait! I wanna do that!" He has no doubt that Fiona Benson's and Mair Bosworth's sound poem about 17-year cicadas will do just that.

Emily Green says she "walked in the margins" of journalism ethics to report a story on kidnapping at the US/Mexico border for This American Life. Emily and producer Lina Misitzis join me on this episode of HowSound to parse out how they navigated the reporting and how TAL addressed it in the story. This story was part of a Pulitzer Prize winning episode -- the first for audio journalism.

This American Life's Sean Cole is the guest on this episode of HowSound. Rob dug this one out of the HowSound archive from 2010. It features a fantastic story Sean produced in '05 as well as a discussion about the value of including a reporter's question in a story.

This episode is aptly named: “A Feast For Your Ears”. Rob features a handful of ear-catching clips. From a psychedelic road trip in Australia in the 1970s to a crowd-sourced poem produced by NPR to.... well, you'll have to listen!

You may know Jay Allison for his work on the Moth Radio Hour and in his role as the founder and executive editor of Transom. But, back in the day, Jay produced a trove of strange and ear-catching pieces about dog's dreams, talking horses, and freaky neighbors. Headphones on, people.

Selly Thiam says producing an LGBTQ podcast in Kenya is incredibly challenging. There's homophobia, government censorship, and a potential audience that still doesn't quite know what a podcast is. And, yet, AfroQueer, the podcast Selly hosts and produces, is winning major awards for the reporting.

Why do you report a story or produce a podcast and send it out into the world? What gives you purpose? What do you stand for? Rob finds meaning from the original NPR mission statement. He talks to Bill Siemering about writing the statement in 1970, the first broadcast of All Things Considered, and what inspires Bill to work in radio for several decades -- the power of the human voice.

Because of COVID 19, Reporters are scrambling to figure out how to report from home given social distancing guidelines and shelter in place orders. In response, reporters are devising clever ways to record and keep their stories sound-rich and engaging even though they're reporting from a closet at home.

This historic moment may be a good time to reconnect to the sonic environment. The latest episode of HowSound provides inspiration to do just that.

Narration in stories is usually just that - narration. Someone in a booth reading or ad-libing a script. But, "Borders Between Us" is different. Producer, Saidu Tejan-Thomas, uses poetry to tell the story. HowSound's Rob Rosenthal can't think of another piece like it.

Two stories, produced in a week by Transom Traveling Workshop students. The first, by Georgia Walker at our workshop at WPLN in Nashville. And the second, by Maribeth Romslo at our workshop in Seattle at KUOW. Both about music. Both impressive for first-time radio producers.

The first time Rob listened to "A Cow a Day" he thought "What the??!" But then he listened again and was hooked. Rob talks to Pejk Malinovsky, the producer of the doc, about his two wildly different interpretations.

Got your ears on? You'll want them as Rob threads his way through a wide variety of clips that caught his attention over the last few months. A man injects Fentenyl into his neck... Toni Morrison speaks about beauty... Jad Abamrad waxes about the power of radio... and more.

Shereen Marisol Meraji of Code Switch told me she's sick of her voice -- the authoritative narrator. In response, Shereen recently experimented getting out of the way and letting the tape do the talking for a shocking documentary about a lynching in the 1930s. "A Strange and Bitter Crop" was her first non-narrated story in fifteen years and she can't wait to make more.

Let's face it: Use of the pronoun "I" has gotten out of hand. There's much too much navel gazing and self-indulgence in so many podcasts. And yet, sometimes using the first person as a reporter is the best approach for a story. Leila Day of The Stoop podcast relates how she and her co-host Hana Baba navigate those waters.

Two treats for your ears. Stories produced by graduates of the Transom Story Workshop -- Ruby Schwartz and Cariad Harmon. They're well worth a listen if for no other reason than their stories are about octopuses and homing pigeons.

The backstory to WGBH's Gabrielle Emanuel's reporting on a hidden past is fascinating. How she found people connected to the Reverse Freedom Riders… How she communicated with them by hand-written note… the discussion in the newsroom about connecting the story of the Reverse Freedom Rider’s to President Donald Trump’s plan to send undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities… all that on this episode of HowSound.

When you're yelled at. Called a prostitute. Told you're a liar and shameless and malicious... How do you stay the course and keep interviewing? Brazilian journalist Leticia Duarte explains her approach on this episode of HowSound.

Emily Kwong had never been to Mongolia. She doesn't speak the language. She didn't know her way around. It was winter and very cold. She was in-country alone -- no fellow producer. The only way she was able to successfully report on climate change and migration was to hire incredible fixers.

Rob talks specifically about how to bring music in and out of a story. And, then, he takes a stab at the impossible: explaining one aspect of how to select music to use for scoring.

How do you score a story with music is one of the most frequent questions, HowSound's Rob Rosenthal is asked. Up now, the first of two episodes on the fundamentals of using music in stories.

HowSound listeners always seem to want tips on interviewing. Liz Mak of Snap Judgement delivers on this episode with her approach to interviewing for emotions.

Get your ears on for this episode. Rob presents clips from podcasts that made his jaw drop including Love + Radio, The Ballad of Billy Balls, and Have You Heard George's Podcast.

Reporting in the field can be chaos. Anything can happen. NPR host Noel King says that's the best part of being a journalist -- chasing a story that's ever-shifting.

In 2017, producer Sam Greenspan took a leap. He left his producing job at 99% Invisible for... well, he wasn't exactly sure at the time. Now, two years later, Sam's launched Bellwether, a podcast employing speculative journalism to tell stories about the future. The show is a unique mix of reporting, science fiction, and radio drama.

In an effort to try something new, Rob offers another podcast review. This time, "Song Exploder" from Radiotopia.

Despite hours of great material, there are a couple things about Spotify's "Stay Free: The Story of the Clash" that really make Rob cranky.

Who are all those people at the end of an episode of Reply All, given credit for putting it together? One of them is Jessica Yung. She's an Associate Producer. On this episode of HowSound we shine a light on Jessica's hidden work as an AP.

When you have guests as famous and interesting at Tan France, Ramy Youseff, Wazina Zondon, Ryan Harris, and Alia Shawkat, why does the host of Tell Them I Am start each episode talking about herself? Misha Euceph has the answer.

NPR reporter Uri Berliner breaks from his usual approach to storytelling and finds interviewing his dad about growing up in Berlin in the 1930s to be incredibly difficult and rewarding.

Sewage pipes, a radio crime, and sound designing inner thoughts.... Must be another episode of Rob's fav sounds but this time with a twist -- a sound that annoyed Rob to no end. Clips from BBC 3 and Nathanial Mann, Bodies by KCRW, and No Feeling Is Final from ABC Radio.

Every once in a while, I think HowSound should focus solely on interviewing. To heck with sound design, writing, ethics, tracking, and the like. Just focus on “the backstory to great radio interviewing.” Why? Because interviewing is how radio producers mine. It’s how we collect the raw material for our work. The better the interviewing, the better the tape. The better the tape, the better the story. I mean, sure sloppy writing can kill stellar interview tape. Same with bad production. Conversely a bad interview can be saved by rock solid writing. But really, if you nail your interview, the rest will come easy. Okay. Not easy, but easier. And the story the tape is based on will likely be more satisfying. Put another way, interviewing is the keystone of audio storytelling. That’s why it’s important to examine the work of the best practitioners and Cathy FitzGerald is just that — one of the best. She possesses an uncanny ability to capture “humans being” in her interviews. And she approaches it in unusual ways with her penchant for recording interviews in scene; her use of participant observation, which is a fancy way of saying she doesn’t just ask questions, she gets involved; and her use of props to prompt conversation. On this episode of HowSound, Cathy chats about those approaches and we hear extended examples of her work. As a bonus, during our chat, Cathy turned the tables and asked me questions about interviewing. And that led us to talk about our weaknesses and what we both would like to improve and to this positively lovely analogy for interviewing — weeping with one eye.

On this episode, the convention-busting production choices of "10 Things That Scare Me."

Sometimes, there's just too much good work to feature on HowSound. To solve the problem, from time to time I feature a slew of ear-catching clips on one episode. On this episode, work from Believed, 99% Invisible, This American Life, and Threshold.

At a school where I taught radio, in the mic booth, there was a photo of Studs Terkel hanging on the wall. Under it, someone wrote “Talk to Studs.” The picture was there to help with tracking. Narration will sound more conversational if you pretend you’re talking to Studs, the thinking went. After all, that’s the goal, right? To track like you’re just talking to someone. Hanging up a picture and talking to it may be a good (and slightly weird) first step toward tracking naturally, Sruthi Pinnemaneniof Reply Alltakes things a whole lot further because she’s driven to avoid sounding like she’s reading something written. She very much wants listeners to fall into a story because her voice sounds unaffected and genuine. “(At Reply All) we try to track in a way that is closer to ‘I’m telling a story to somebody,'” she says. “When we’re tracking, we almost always have a producer or someone in the room where we’re trying to recreate that feeling of ‘I’m here and I’m feeling the excitement and joy that I know exists in this story.'” She says it’s not just a matter of talking to that person in the room. They help, too. They offer feedback, of course. But, they also play tape. Sruthi listens to a quote in her story then, right as it finishes, she narrates. “The tape always carries a certain kind of emotion,” she explained to me. “Either you’re surprised by what the person is saying or what the person is saying makes you laugh. And so you want the tracking, the line that you’re saying out of it, to carry that emotion.” What else does she do? Sruthi lays it out in this episode of HowSound.

Since 2009, Julia Barton's edited a lot of radio and podcasts you probably listen to including Revisionist History. On this HowSound, Julia talks shop about her approach to editing.

Jeff Emtmen pulled an audio sleight of hand in an episode of Hear Be Monsters about Mexican free-tail bats. It's a delight to listen to. To understand Jeff's trick, Rob offers a primer on sound and hearing.

Why do students at Transom's Traveling Workshops produce such solid work on very little sleep? Because they're driven to learn? Yup. Because they want to leave the workshop with something they're proud of? Absolutely. But, it may also be because they want to do justice to the people they profile in their stories -- to get it right. You can definitely hear that effort on this HowSound.

On this episode, a fascinating minute of audio - the sound of war and peace reconstructed from the exact end of World War I. Even more fascinating, the producers - Will Worsley and Sam Britton - conjured the sound using audio shadows captured on film.

Back in September, Barrie Hardymon and Dana Cronin produced a short, sharp, shock of a story. One that featured tweets recorded by listeners including a tweet that had to be approved by NPR legal before broadcast. And they did it all in about eighteen hours.

Jim Briggs and Fernando Arruda compose music for stories at Reveal. HowSound's Rob Rosenthal talks with them about the way they think about music and scoring. We think you’ll find it instructive, even if your music comes from a library.

Up now on HowSound, a recent doc from BBC 3 called "Right Between the Ears" features ear-catching sound design and reveals how ears aren't the only part of the body involved in hearing.

A pile of tape just might be a treasure trove of radio gold. But how do you go manage it? Bianca Giaever has answers and a touching documentary called “Two Years with Franz” produced with Jay Allison here at Transom.

That feeling you have at the end of a serialized podcast where all you want to do is press play again -- what causes that? Rob talks to Leah Sottlile and Ryan Haas from Bundyville about episode endings that entice listeners to press play again.

A student once asked me “How do you find the stories you feature on HowSound?” I’m asked that a lot, actually. And, I’m sorry to say, I don’t have any secrets to reveal. I probably find stories and podcasts the same way everyone else does. Here’s my very quick and cursory list. * I listen to the radio. A lot. * I ask people “What are you listening to that was really interesting? Or that pissed you off?” * I pick the brains of my students. They often get out their phones and rifle through what they subscribe to. * I’m always scouring newsletters and emails on radio listserves I belong to: a. The list for the Association of Independents in Radio b. The Transom Story Workshop Alumni listserve c. The list for the Sonic Soiree, a local listening group in Boston (I bet there’s a group near you). d. The newsletter from the Bello Collective e. The newsletter from Hot Pod f. Sam Greenspan’s occasional newsletter YSLTF: You Should Listen to Fridays. * I’m a member of a couple of Facebook groups: a. The Podcasters Support Group b. The BEA Teaching Audio Production Group * I subscribe to podcasts that feature work from a lot of different producers: a. Short Cuts from the BBC b. Unfictional from KCRW c. The BBC’s Between the Ears podcast * I search for subject matter I’m personally interested in. For instance, I might search for “Arctic” and “podcasts.” Or, “podcasts on the environment.” I’m sure I’ve left something out. (What would you add?) Perhaps the short answer is: my ear radar is always on; I’m constantly on the hunt. I should mention, too, that as I’m listening, I look for a way into the story for a HowSound episode. Is there a “teachable moment” in the piece? Did the producer do something unusual and notable? Do I find myself wondering “How the heck did they do that?!” Sometimes it’s just a matter of being satisfied by the story or a production technique. That’s what this episode of HowSound is about. On a recent road trip, I listened to several hours of stories and made a mental list of segments from those stories that caught attention, that I found satisfying. This is a different way of producing HowSound. Typically, I find one story and interview the producer. But, today, I feature a slew of clips that caught my ear and I offer some thoughts about what worked and what didn’t. Stories from Earshot, The City, and Sound Africa. If you get a chance, let me know if this episode worked for you. And, tell me what I should be listening to next.

Jennifer Kingsley was so nervous when she started "Humans of the Arctic" she didn't eat for a week. But, she stepped off the boat in Svalbard with her mic and recording gear and learned a valuable lesson - you just won't know if you don't ask.

Producer Morgan Givens lays out his elaborate thinking behind a few sound effects he recorded for a historical fiction story he produced about an escaped slave.

It's a hackneyed idea, but it bears repeating: you can have all the right gear and marketing and everything else to make your podcast successful, but the most important asset is you. On this second episode of two, Vanessa Lowe of Nocturne lays out her podcast mindset.