The Backstory to Great Audio Storytelling, hosted by Rob Rosenthal, for Transom and PRX.
Studs Terkel is considered by many to be a patron saint of documentary radio journalism. It's been 15 years since his death. On this archive episode of Sound School from 2012, Rob talks to Syd Lewis who worked with Studs for 25 years. The show also includes a lengthy excerpt from "Working With Studs," a Transom Radio Special produced by Syd, Jay Allison, and Viki Merrick.
Rob acts as a story DJ on this episode, featuring excerpts from stories he’s recently found pleasing to the ear. His "playlist" includes work from "More Perfect," the BBC Radio 4 podcast "Seriously," "The Shortwave Radio Archive," and "That Intimate Feeling." Drop a needle on the episode and press play.
What do radio producers Phoebe Judge (Criminal) , Zoe Chase (This American Life) , Greg Warner (Rough Translation) , Matt Kielty (Radiolab) , Emily Kwong (NPR) and dozens if not hundreds of others you've heard on your favorite podcasts and radio shows have in common? Salt. They're all graduates of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine. Salt turns fifty this year! Isaac Kestenbaum, the director of the program, joins Rob to celebrate the occasion and talk about what makes t...
This year's Third Coast Festival winners and finalists produced incredible work. It got us thinking about winners from previous years. So, we dug up this fantastic interview with Rachel Matlow who won a "Best New Producer" award in 2016 for their thoughtful and creative story "Dead Mom Talking."
It's unusual for a producer to share a work in progress. It's rarer still to do it twice. Nina Porzucki updates Rob on the progress of Bird Talk , her comedy podcast in-the-making and the steps it took to make her second pilot funnier and more engaging.
Rebecca Hersher, a climate science reporter at NPR, offers excellent tips on reporting on climate change. But, at the heart of Rob's interview with her is something more philosophical: the role of hope in climate change reporting.
Summer means cicadas. Those crackly, buzzy bugs that drone and drone in the heat like a live electrical wire spewing sparks. Mair Bosworth and Fiona Benson took that sound and crafted "Magicicada," a stunning "sound poem," as they called it, marrying Mair's stellar recordings and sound design and Fiona's nuanced poetry.
Get your headphones on for this episode! Rob dives into three remarkable examples of scoring. He features examples from the Serial/NYT series "The Retrievals," scored by Phoebe Wang, "My Mother Made Me" from PRX's Radiotopia Presents scored by Ian Coss, and The Atlantic's "Holy Week," scored by David Herman.
Rob's a fan of the "radio art" style of audio storytelling from Europe but often, after listening, he finds himself scratching his head. "What was that about?!" He wonders if the problem isn't the storytelling but his American ears and the way he listens. Alan Hall, of Falling Tree, the English production company, helps him listen in a new way.
No matter how good you are recording in the field, you're going to encounter challenges. Rob Byers does an incredible job explaining how to avoid and fix those problems on this archive episode of Sound School from 2017. At the time, Rob worked at NPR. He's now the Technical Director at Criminal . His recording tips are invaluable. And so are the resources we used on the episode from NPR's "Ear Training Guide for Audio Producers.” You'll make better recordings after listening to this episode....
Pushkin Industries released a "Best Of Audio Storytelling: 2022" but instead of putting it out as a podcast series, it's an audiobook. Does it matter? Julia Barton at Pushkin says no. On the latest Sound School , Julia talks about tearing down audio silos, and discusses a handful of stories from the collection, including selections from Radiotopia, NPR, Rumble Strip , and more.
The Sound School Podcast launched 15 years ago this month. But it was called Saltcast back then. And for the first episode, Rob featured once of his absolute favorite student-produced stories - one that he played in classes for years as an excellent example of documentary audio storytelling. To celebrate the show's 15th anniversary, Rob dusted off the very first Saltcast and this incredible story about a motivational speaker who can't talk.
Antonia Cereijido has her ear to the ground. It's her job as Executive Producer at LAist to listen to what everyone is putting out. Rob asks her what grabbed her ears lately? She tells us about two recent series: the second season of LaBrega , the Puerto Rican experience in eight songs, and Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong .
A light went out recently. The bright light of Chris Brookes — a sorcerer of audio documentary and sound art. When Rob heard the news, he immediately started work on this remembrance featuring excerpts from several of Chris' distinctive productions — stories where Chris' clear, authorial voice, his fingerprint, is evident and inspiring.
What's the value of a non-narrated story for the listener? "It's direct," says NPR's Quil Lawrence. The characters in the story are "talking straight to the listener." He says this is especially important in an audio obituary. So, in a recent remembrance he produced, he made sure to get out of the way of the tape.
Munira Kaoneka first started as a blogger in Tanzania. But she says sometimes you need to shout so she started a podcast, “The Kaya Sessions." A couple of years later, after taking a workshop on narrative audio storytelling and reporting, she's at a crossroads: continue her path to engineering ("the sensible choice for a proper African child," she says) or make the leap into podcasting. Hear Munira's story, and the piece she produced at the workshop, in this episode of The Sound School Podcast....
Rob takes a hard listen to three podcasts -- You Didn't See Nothin' , Lights Out , and Noble Champions . He then tosses out darts for work that caused him to ask "Why'd you do that?!" and laurels for work that's just plain crushing it. Rob opens this episode with a note about Transom.org. Transom is dreaming up a new project and could really use your input. If you have a minute, head on over to the Transom homepage and click the link to take a short survey....
Steve Junker says he thinks of a radio station as a musical instrument -- a pipe organ, to be specific. It's capable of making all kinds kinds of sounds. But, he thinks public radio stations tend to only play a couple of notes - including WCAI in Falmouth, Massachusetts where he's the Managing Editor for News. In an effort to play a couple of other notes, he produced "Falmouth to Falmouth" a collaboration with another radio station in Falmouth -- Falmouth, England that is.
In this episode, Rob turns the mic on himself to mark the 10th anniversary of meeting his birth mother for the first time. He also features the positively stunning portrait of an adopting mom in "Dear Birth Mother," a Third Coast award-winning doc from Dan Collison and Elizabeth Meister at Long Haul Productions.
It's good to look beyond your borders for inspiration. That's what this episode is about. Brian Harnetty is a sound ethnographer. And quite a bit of what he does resembles the work of radio and podcast producers. But he departs from us with his unique approach to audio storytelling. A meld of composition, fieldwork, oral history, and archive recordings coupled with listening events -- in the woods.
Three great new podcasts raised production questions for Rob. Why use sound effects in All There Is With Anderson Cooper? Why were the interviews for Bjork’s Sonic Symbolism podcast recorded so poorly? Those questions and more on the latest Sound School Podcast .
John Scott Dryden takes a very unique approach to sound design for the fiction podcasts he produces -- he records on location. For "Q&A," the first season of Mumbai Crime from Radiotopia, everything was recorded in Mumbai. The result is a podcast that sounds more organic, less manufactured in a studio. John explains why on this episode of Sound School .
The vast majority of stories are told by one narrator. But not at NPR's Planet Money . They regularly have co-narrators. Why? Why have two narrators when one will suffice? Reporters Erika Beras and Sarah Gonzalez have the answer.
What's the best way for reporters to break out of their boxes and think creatively? Give them an unusual assignment and send them out into the world with microphones. That's just what happened during a week-long workshop Rob taught with 10 reporters in Slovenia. Hear the results on this episode of Sound School .
Rarely do reporters turn the mic on themselves to divulge the challenges in their own lives. So, when they do, it’s surprising — and refreshing. Stephanie Foo's personal essay, "The Favorite" is an excellent example. In this archive episode, Stephanie provides sage advice for anyone thinking of turning a mic toward themselves.
The opening to a story, especially a long series, requires a dance. How much do you give away? How much do you hold on to? On this episode of the Sound School Podcast, I offer two examples: one that didn't hook me because it gave away too much, another that made me eager to hear the whole story. Find out what I think works and what doesn't.
When you limit language, you limit thinking. When you limit thinking, you limit creativity. When you limit creativity, audio storytellers wind up making the same thing over and over and over again and that's not good. That's why producer James T. Green says we need new language to describe our work. And we can start by borrowing from art and architecture.
Reporter David Weinberg knows the rule: don't pay sources. For fifteen years, he never did – until he reported on Phoenix Jones for the podcast “The Superhero Complex.” What impact did that have on his reporting? David lays it out.
Typically, what happens between an editor and a producer is private. In this archive episode of the Sound School Podcast from 2014, editor Viki Merrick and producer Will Coley offer listeners a gift taking us behind the scenes for the production of Will's first-person documentary "Southern Flight 242: Bringing My Father Home." As Viki put it, she had to coach Will through "the emotional ditch" to fully tell the story.
In another installment of Sound School’s occasional episodes offering darts and laurels for exceptional and not-so-exceptional work, Rob is offering nothing but laurels. Two for This American Life's episode "Name. Age. Detail." Another for a piece reported in Poland by NPR's Ari Shapiro which used translation to great effect.
