Transom Podcast

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. W...

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 res...

 

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 thin...

*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 ...

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 ha...

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...

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 cons...

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 ...

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 ...

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 rib...