• Our full festival program is coming soon, but la carte tickets are available for a few Transom 25 events! If you’re in the area but not attending the full festival, you can grab a ticket at the link below to come see shows with Ira Glass and Tobin Low, Nichole Hill, Al Letson, and/or our Science Story Slam!

A la carte tickets here

• Transom’s fantastic intern, Hussain Khan, leaves us at the end of this month. He has been great and we will miss him!

What’s new

Grass Fellows Science Slam

Trust in science is more important than ever, and getting to know the people behind the microscope is one great way to build it. That’s the aim of Transom’s Science Storytelling Workshops. The 2026 Grass Foundation Fellows recently left the lab and took the stage to share the stories that drive their research after a three day Transom workshop. Led by Viki Merrick, Meg Bowles, and Sophie Crane, these early-career neuroscientists pictured above told tales of discovery, self-doubt, curiosity, and belonging. It was hosted by Steve Junker and Matt McFarlane, with live music by Mariel Baumgarten. There were stories about needle phobias, octopus tattoos, and even a story about scallops descending from the heavens. And also — what happens when you get stuck in India because of the COVID travel ban the week before you need to defend your master’s thesis? Listen to what find out what happened in this story from Shubham Yadav:

We’ve made the hour-long show available to public radio stations — for free — over on the PRX Exchange. Listen to all the stories and read more from workshop instructor Meg Bowles at the link below:

Listen here

More to explore on Transom.org:

• The latest episode of Sound School is about something important that seems utterly small and insignificant: breaths.

Listen here

• Check out the August edition of , featuring tons of audio opportunities including The Moth’s Education Program School Year Workshops - free workshop programs for U.S. based high school students.

Read All Hear

Tip of the week: next level scoring

Scoring audio stories, Rob Rosenthal says, is like adding a paragraph indent to a written essay. It’s meant to underscore, mark a transition, highlight a thought, and focus the listener’s attention. Most of the time, the role of music in an audio story is to lend it “neutral propulsion” — meaning that the emotion and the tone should come from the words being said, and the music should simply help this along but not be the source of it. But then there are the people who break all those rules — and with stunning results. For this 2023 episode of Sound School, Rosenthal highlights the scoring in the first season of the podcast The Retrievals. Listen for tips on how to think outside the box when thinking about the score.

Here’s what happens in the episode. As listeners hear from woman after woman about the severe pain and confusion they suffered, the music builds in intensity. After the post where [host] Susan [Burton] states the name of the series, the producers, and the episode title, the music bursts out. And there are singing voices for the first time… It sounds like a small chorus of women. They sound simultaneously angelic and in pain. I got goosebumps. As far as I can remember, I’ve never experienced goosebumps from scoring.

Listen and read more here

From the archives

Mothers Never Die by Miri Berlin

This story begins with sounds of setting the table. Pouring a glass of water and audiophonically inviting you, the listener, to take a seat. “I can tell you a story about the last days of my mother,” Laurence, the subject of the piece, says. Miri Berlin wanted to make a story about the unspeakable — the things that are impossible to describe or convey. This piece, about the death of Berlin’s friend’s mother, manages to do it largely by utilizing the silence.

In this piece, alongside the spoken words, silence also prevails, expressing the unspoken.

Silence in radio or audio storytelling in general can be irritating; one wonders if there is a disruption, when it will continue. Silence can make us uncomfortable. Silence is often accompanied by music. Silence seems hard to bear.

When the silence unexpectedly gripped both of us during the recording, I was deeply moved and at the same time it was evident to me that the silence is a part of the story, and just as we give space to words, we must also give space to silence.

Read more here

Community corner

This week: Be brave! Ask us a question in the comments!

Leave a comment

• We’ve teamed up with Audio Flux for their latest circuit! The theme is Confection, and we want bite-sized audio stories about unexpected conversations, close-to-home discoveries, and the people who quietly shape our lives. And dessert! Check out the prompt and more details at the link below.

Read more and submit here

What’s new

The Transom Traveling Workshop in Amherst, MA wrapped last week! 11 students hailing from as far and wide as New Zealand and Oregon spent the week at the Cherry Hill Cohousing Community. Led by David Weinberg, they learned the audio ropes and made their workshop pieces about local stuff like witches, birthday cakes, and a road named after a massacre. Listen to this one from Diane Kelly, pictured above, about a 69-year-old female scientist who specializes in the super complicated devices that make research possible. It’s called “Burning Woman”:

More to explore on Transom.org:

• We’re six weeks away from Transom 25! Take a look at the schedule of events and speaker information for the weekend here.

Transom 25 details

• Listen to the latest episode of Sound School — a playlist of audio that Sounds Cool!

Listen here

Tip of the week: let the sound do the talking

The archives of Alice Wilder’s “Starting Out” column for Transom are chock full of great advice for producers, both old and new. In 2023, Wilder interviewed James Kim, host and creator of the fiction podcast Moonface and producer of nonfiction audio documentaries at NPR and Spotify. They talked about coming to audio from other mediums, making fiction pieces, and how to find your voice by letting the sound do the talking.

Alice: How did you find your creative voice? Or figure out what a James Kim story sounds like?

James: Like I said, I didn’t grow up on NPR. I didn’t grow up on any of that stuff, so the things that I was attracted to weren’t language based. It was music based and sound based. It’s really because I’ve always, my entire life, felt that I wasn’t good at speaking or at writing. I’d turn in essays and they’d just be marked up.

Even in my first pieces of radio, my scripts were all redlined with so many edits. I felt so insecure about my writing abilities and my language abilities. I grew up not knowing Korean well or English well, so I rotated. My communication and my language was sound.

When I was making my own pieces, I kind of realized that I don’t like putting so much writing on the page. Even when I was making documentary pieces, I wanted to always let the sound do the talking, and make people feel emotion, not through the words, but through what they’re hearing. So that, I think, at its kernel was like… it was because of my fear of not being grammatically correct that pushed me further into using a lot more space, or using different techniques, to tell a story other than language. That to me is what I gravitate towards. I know that in Moonface, the number one comment was about the amount of silence that’s there. I was just drawn to things that weren’t language.

Read more here

From the archives

Oh Brother by Annie McEwen

Sometimes a story becomes like “a blood clot you can’t ignore,” as producer Annie McEwen wrote. For the 2013 Transom Story Workshop, McEwen found that the story she couldn’t ignore was the one about her brother, Ted, and his place in her family. So she told it — but not without risk. “Finally I’m prepared to risk the sibling game we play,” McEwen says, “in order to gain something better.”

I knew how it would start, but I had no idea how my brother would react to what I had to say to him. This made making the piece scary as hell, but also kind of interesting — I don’t know what’s going to happen next and neither does the listener. I think you can hear this in my voice and you can hear the change in my brother’s voice as we begin to talk about something we’ve never talked about before.

Listen and read more here

Community corner

This week’s question: what ideas come to mind when you hear the “confection” theme for Audio Flux Circuit 08? Brainstorm in the comments!

Leave a comment

• We’re two months out from Transom 25! And we now have our full roster of speakers announced. Check them out, along with an updated schedule of events here. We can’t wait to see you in Woods Hole!

• We had a great time last month at the Two Truths and a Lie event lead by Transom’s first ever artist in residence, Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr. He was joined by poet and storyteller Joel Francois and musician Carla Kihlstedt for an evening of live storytelling about the lies we sometimes tell and the truths they reveal. Watch a recording of the event here:

What’s new on Transom

Elizabeth Arnold — Have Mic, Will Travel by Rob Rosenthal

Listening to this story, Jay Allison says, “might be better than if you saw it.” That was the power of producer Elizabeth Arnold, who recently passed away at 66 from cancer. In her obituary, she’s described as an “unstoppable, one of a kind reporter.” Arnold took reporting trips everywhere from Sri Lanka to the North Pole, bringing listeners into the environment there with her. On the most recent episode of Sound School, Rob Rosenthal replays Arnold’s story from the North Pole, where she stood on thin ice and marveled at being in a place not many get to, saying, “Nature doesn't want you here... Maybe that's part of the pull. You come to defy it.”

Listen here

More to explore on Transom.org:

• Check out July’s All Hear newsletter, with tons of opportunities including the Arts Gowanus Fellowship Programme - a grant for low-income and upwardly mobile Brooklyn-based artists and makers.

Read All Hear

Tip of the week: treat an interview like a relationship

Anna Sale is the host of a podcast about things we don’t like talking about: death, sex, and money. She’s had quite possibly more practice than anyone at conducting difficult interviews. Her advice to others is: treat an interview like a relationship. Tend to it. Be curious. Be vigilant. Be open. In her 2021 Manifesto for Transom, Sale lays out nine tips for how to have these hard conversations with sources.

Notice how they talk and ask about that too.

As you talk, you need to pay attention to how you are relating to your conversation partner, even as you press on uncomfortable subjects. Notice their body language, or when their answers become short or clipped, and what makes them expand further. You are watching for cues about where you can push more, and what needs to be left for another time. This is the part of the conversation that is not about what you are hearing, but how you are hearing it. By paying close attention, you are tending to your relationship, the emotional dynamic between you, as you exchange words and ideas.

And you can learn a lot about acknowledging what you’re noticing about them in the conversation. I was reminded of this when I interviewed Tom Baker last year. He’s now a scholar of police violence, work he got into after he killed someone on the job while he was a police officer. By phone, we talked about that shooting, and about how the police force responded afterwards, and there were many times when he got emotional while we talked. When he needed a minute to compose himself, I noticed that he would mute his side of the phone line, something I’d never had a guest do before. So I asked him why.

Read more here

From the archives

Los Colores de Cape Cod by Barb Anguiano

For her 2017 Transom Workshop piece, producer Barb Anguiano tells the story of Betty, a woman who is shaking up the khaki and navy blue of the Cape Cod set with her store full of the bright colors of Latin America. “One of the most important lessons I learned at Transom,” Anguiano writes, “was to always aim to be yourself in your work.”

This piece helped me explore a completely new side of myself, and use skills I usually don’t think twice about, like speaking Spanish. Working on this piece also really reinforced my belief that audio storytelling is really the only way that stories should be told. Even if you don’t understand a language, you get a better sense of people, because of all the feeling in their voice.

Read more and listen here

Community corner

This week’s question: What speakers/events are you most excited to attend during Transom 25?

Leave a comment

• Hub & Spoke’s next deadline for the Sounds Like America project is next Wednesday, July 15th! Submit your work — selected pieces may also wind up on Transom!

Learn more here

What’s new on Transom

The Sound of a Red Car Passing by Annie Rosenthal

In the small town of Madrid, New Mexico, local kids ranging from 8 to 12 years old are becoming tiny radio documentarians. For the second year in a row, Signal Hill editor and correspondent for High Country News Annie Rosenthal is leading a summer camp with Madrid local Stella Linder Byrne, who started the community radio station KMRD-LP 96.9FM, and their friend Ian Lewis. The trio is handing the kids the microphones and teaching them to tune into the world around them. “Little activities helped us prep for the big project,” Rosenthal writes. “A sonic scavenger hunt got everybody out walking around Madrid with TASCAM recorders, hunting for something hard, something slow, something old — all to help the kids start thinking in sound. They wrote PSAs, did stand-ups on the porch, and practiced interviewing each other with open-ended questions.”

The goal was to make an audio postcard from Madrid. And today on Transom, as part of The Listeners, the 15 minute non-narrated tour of the town is available to listen to. You can also hear it in the latest issue of Signal Hill, along with other fantastic audio stories. Listen at the link below, and enjoy this Q&A with some of the tiny documentarians:

What advice do you have for other kids who might feel shy about doing interviews?

Zander, 10:  If you’re feeling nervous, kind of just try your best to just go for it instead of, like, waiting a long time and missing your opportunity.

Frances, 9:  You should just, like, know that you can do it and it’s all right to be scared.  Cuz, I mean, I think we all were a little bit nervous at the start of our documentary, but we just kinda got into it and, we just were, like, having fun. You should just have fun.

Charlie, 11:  You gotta gather what you know about the situation, and you gotta build off from that. Ask, like, “I know you do this, but how do you do something else?”  If you’re confused about something, add a follow-up, like, “How does that work?”

Listen and read more here

More to explore on Transom.org

• Listen to the latest from Rob Rosenthal annd Sound School, all about how to communicate awe in a radio story.

  Listen here

Tip of the week: celebrating slowness

Multimedia artist and sound designer Ariana Martinez is a master of rich soundscapes. One of the things they prioritize in the pieces they make is slowness — letting things breathe, easing the listener into a new world through the airwaves. Martinez writes in their manifesto for Transom that they are “trying to get audiences to access a state of being, a process of observing, rather than a complete and prescriptive narrative.” Slow down and read more from the manifesto below about how to celebrate slowness and incorporate it into your work.

Audio is a time-based medium, but how often are we actually invited to explore this dimension — either as creators or as listeners? Slow audio leaves room for audiences to witness the processes of observation, interpretation, and synthesis that went into making the work and, at its best, encourages audiences to engage in these processes themselves. As artists, as audio makers, as people, we can model Slowness for each other and guide each other to this state of being.

Read more here

From the archives

What Nice People Do by Andy Raskin

Chill Beefs is Andy Raskin’s podcast in which he records minor annoyances, small arguments, and petty complaints. Because sometimes, it’s fun to hear people complain. Listen to this conversation with his sister about how irritating it is when people are rude to service workers.

The best complainers, I’ve learned, give you lots of details, not only about their frustration, but about their lives: you get a sense of who they are through the complaint. A friend said to me, “Your sister comes across in this piece as the world’s most thoughtful, caring person. Is that who she really is?”

Yes, that’s who she really is.

Listen here

Community corner

This week’s question: what’s a petty complaint you’d talk about if you were featured on Chill Beefs?

Leave a comment

• We’re hiring for THREE positions here at Transom! A full-time Programs Director, a full-time Operations & Development Director, and a part-time Communications Manager. Join us! Apply by next Wednesday, July 1st.

Apply here

What’s new on Transom

The Birthday Party: America at 250 by Sophie Crane

After Transom launched The Listeners, the historian Jill Lepore came to Executive Director Sophie Crane with a documentary made by the National Park Service for the bicentennial in 1976. In it, Americans around the country were asked what the anniversary meant to them and how they planned to celebrate. Lepore said it reminded her of The Listeners — everyday people talking about what it feels like to live here.

Lepore was working on putting together an installment of The New Yorker Radio Hour for America’s 250th, and she wondered if Transom could create a piece that took inspiration from the NPS documentary. It was an easy yes.

Together with producers Erica Heilman, Yohance Lacour, Eve Abrams, Scott Carrier, Jenny Ament, and David Weinberg, this piece capturing the thoughts and opinions of Americans was born. Listen here:

Read more here

The Listeners is spreading, just like we hoped it would. As a result of our collaboration with Lepore and The New Yorker, The Prison Journalism Project made a piece of their own. They asked incarcerated folks around the country what being an American means to them. Here’s what Editorial Director Mason Bryan had to say about it:

When I heard the episode that Transom produced with The New Yorker Radio Hour, I knew in my bones that we needed to do something similar with our community of incarcerated writers. These Americans deserved to have their perspectives included in the larger mosaic of reflection that Transom and others have helped create this summer.

Listen to the piece they made here:

Listen to the PJP piece

More to explore on Transom.org:

• Listen to the latest episode of Sound School, where Rob Rosenthal lays out tricks to improve audio essays.

Listen here

Tip of the week: from written essay to audio story

Cloe Axelson is the editor of Cognoscenti, WBUR’s essay and opinions desk. “Cognoscenti” is an Italian that translates to “people in the know.” Most of what Axelson works on is written and for the web, but she also converts a lot of the Cognoscenti pieces into audio stories for Morning Edition and other shows. Her advice for this process of conversion? Think of it like juice:

When I was a kid, my parents never bought Tropicana in the half gallon container, instead, they’d get the frozen orange juice concentrate. We’d spoon out the frozen cylinder into the pitcher, add water, give it a stir and voila. I like to say that the radio edit of a Cog essay is the “orange juice” concentrate version. It’s in conversation with the original essay, but a little different – pared back and written for the ear (instead of the page). We add nat sound when it’s available and often score it, though sometimes the author’s voice carries the piece on its own.

In a new piece for Transom, Axelson writes about what she and her colleagues do, how to pitch Cognoscenti, and ways to stay sane amid the slog.

Read more here

From the archives

Remembering Elizabeth Arnold

Intrepid public radio reporter Elizabeth Arnold passed away last week at her home in Alaska. Arnold’s reporting took her all over — from the halls of Congress to the world’s deepest wilderness. And we were lucky enough at Transom to feature some of it. We will miss her and we hope you’ll check out some of the work she made. Like Stories from the Heart of the Land, and her manifesto on Transom, where she talks about reporting from a remote village in northwestern Alaska:

In the Yupik language and culture, there are no questions. One does not ask a question. It’s rude. Very rude. As in, you will never get an answer out of anyone rude. So, you hang out, and maybe just maybe, in the course of hanging out and talking and listening, some answers to whatever you are wondering might be forthcoming. It’s like asking your kid how school was? “Fine.” You get nothing. End of conversation. But, instead if you start telling your kid how lousy or great YOUR day was, you won’t even get a chance to finish before he’ll want to jump in with some complaint or triumph of his own.

So, I cut my teeth as a reporter in a community where questions were prohibited. I learned patience. I learned how to listen and how to ask questions with my eyes. I learned the importance of letting the tape roll through the silences. More importantly, I left that village thinking that every interview is a gift, that when someone speaks into my microphone, they are giving me something that I should treat with respect, even if it’s just an opinion about farmed salmon. Oh I know you are groaning and rolling your eyes but I’m talking ordinary people here.

Read more here

Community corner

This week’s question(s): in the making of The Birthday Party: America at 250, Sophie Crane sent the producers the following questions.

• Do you have any plans for the Fourth of July this summer?

• What do you usually do on the Fourth of July?

• Does this one feel different to you, the 250th anniversary?

• Were you around for the Bicentennial? Do you remember what you did then?

• Do you think much about the country’s history? The American Revolution? Does that mean something to you? Do you think Americans ought to be celebrating its anniversary?

• The Declaration of Independence: ever read it? Got any thoughts about it?

• Do you feel as though your family’s history is tied up with the history of the United States?

• Ever go to history museums? Have thoughts about them? Or about how you learned American history, or what you wish you knew?

• What do you think the U.S. will be like in fifty years, in 2076? What do you want it to be like?

Leave a comment

• TONIGHT at the Woods Hole Community Hall, we’re hosting Two Truths and a Lie: a night of words and music about the stories we tell and what we leave out. Featuring stories from Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr., Carla Kihlstedt, and Joel Francois in partnership with Atlantic Public Media. Get your tickets here!

• And join us next month in Woods Hole for a night of live science storytelling, hosted by Steve Junker with live music from Mariel Baumgarten. 7:00 p.m. in the Clapp Auditorium of Marine Biological Laboratory’s Lillie Building. Tickets here!

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What’s new on Transom

Sounds Like America

We launched The Listeners with the intention of inspiring producers across the country to pick up their microphones and record stories of everyday grace. We hoped to start a movement of sorts and get a whole bunch of people to look around their communities and listen for the stories. Which is why we’re so thrilled to be partnering with Hub & Spoke Audio Collective’s Sounds Like America initiative — a kindred project to ours.

As America approaches its 250th birthday, Hub & Spoke is inviting producers from all 50 states (and DC!) to create sonic postcards from where they live (learn more about how to submit your own piece here). They’ll be accepting submissions on a rolling basis until the end of 2026. And we are very excited to debut two stories from the ongoing project on Transom.org.

Listen to this piece from Luke Green about an 80 year old woman learning to ride a motorcycle in New York, NY:

And spend some time with a woman named Barbara in Sparks, NV in this piece from Fil Corbett:

Read more here

More to explore on Transom.org:

• Check out ’s June edition! There are tons of opportunities featured, including The Audio Corpse Challenge – a challenge set by All The Best Radio in Australia, where participants write a 2-3 minute original story from scratch within 48 hours.

Read All Hear

• We’re hiring for THREE positions here at Transom! A full-time Programs Director, a full-time Operations & Development Director, and a part-time Communications Manager. Join us!

Apply here

Tip of the week: the art of the lede

Hooking your listener within the first few minutes of a story is crucial, especially a narrative series. The lede is an art form — good ones keep people from turning the radio off or pressing next in their queue. In this episode of Sound School from 2022, Rob Rosenthal dissects what works and what doesn’t in the lede approach taken on two different narrative series. By breaking them down, he reveals what’s needed for an open to thread that needle:

Without tension, a quandry, something puzzling, a promise of a deep dive into something — I’ve got nowhere to go as a listener. To be fair, ledes are hard. There’s a dnace that’s required. Provide enough information to tantalize a listener — Ira Glass calls it “bait” — but not so much information that a listener feels like they’ve heard most of the story.

Listen here

From the archives

The Living Fossil by Veronica Simmonds

Did you know that the bright blue blood of horseshoe crabs is one of the major components used to keep us alive? Listen to this story from producer Veronica Simmonds about the strange and serendipitous journey of the horseshoe crab. It all started with a walk on the beach, a dead crab, and some coagulated blood…

Read more here

Community corner

This week’s question: Have you attended a Transom Traveling Workshop this year? What was your favorite part? Let us know in the comments!

Leave a comment

• Today is the last day to apply for our Traveling Workshop in Interlochen, MI! You have until 11:59 p.m. EDT tonight to get in your application to spend a week in beautiful northwest Michigan, nestled between two lakes, learning all things audio.

Apply here

• Join us next month in Woods Hole for a night of live science storytelling, hosted by Steve Junker with live music from Mariel Baumgarten. 7:00 p.m. in the Clapp Auditorium of Marine Biological Laboratory’s Lillie Building.

Get your tickets here

What’s new on Transom

Jad and Fay Fay Talk “Fela Kuti: Fear No Man” from Rob Rosenthal and Sound School

In Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, Jad Abumrad asks: In a world that is on fire, what do we do with art? Over the course of this sound rich, impressively sprawling 12-episode series, Abumrad and his team tell the story of Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, and how his music changed the world. On the latest episode of Sound School, Rob Rosenthal spotlights a conversation about the making of Fela Kuti: Fear No Man between the host, Abumrad, and one of his producers FayFay Odudu. The two spoke on a panel hosted by Lesedi Mogoatlhe and the crew at Radio Workshop about the reporting, producing, and crafting of the story of this giant of a man.

ABUMRAD: FayFay you’ll remember this, one of the first things we did, we were trying to map out the series and we drew a river, right? We were like, this series needs to feel like you’re going down a river and each episode is an eddy in the stream. So you’re like, the music is the river that’s carrying you and then you get stuck in an eddy for a minute and that’s one episode and then you’re back on and then another episode. And so that was our visual metaphor.

And so in building this particular episode, could we make it so that the voices flow down the stream and each voice then gets stuck in an eddy and starts to loop? … Because the physics of this larger world, that’s what happens, right? The music is this all powerful force it then. Everyone gets stuck in the side of.

So we just had that idea, and then it was just trial and error forever. And it was playing it for FayFay and Ruby, and being like, does it, they’re giving you the thing? And they’re like, not really. So then you go back and you do it again.

And this particular episode worked for weeks on to try and like if at any point the dream gets broken, you’ve lost. Like it should feel like it’s just a constantly spinning dream that’s getting bigger and bigger and that was just like you pulling out every audio trick I could think of to, to reverbs upon reverbs and delays upon delays, anything to try and make that sort of world feel as big as it felt to these people when they were describing it to us.

Read more and listen here

Tip of the week: how to build your editorial muscles

When veteran editor Catherine Saint Louis made the jump from editing print stories at the New York Times to working on narrative podcasts, she knew one thing: there was a lot she did not know. Audio was a different beast entirely, and even though she’d been in media for almost two decades, she knew that she had to start at the beginning. Saint Louis is now the executive editor of podcasts at Sony Music Entertainment, and in 2021, she shared the tips that helped her build her audio editorial muscles.

IF YOU WANT TO BE A STORY EDITOR, DON’T JUST LISTEN TO PODCASTS, DECONSTRUCT THEM.

The thing that I did more than anything to set myself up well for being a story editor was to listen and deconstruct a lot of limited-run podcasts and well-reported narrative shows. It is time consuming and for me, it was all consuming. Eventually, I started to realize I was a story editor because I always had an opinion on how the podcast could have been improved with a structural change or by clearing up a confusing part or by making the stakes clearer. Listening widely strengthened my editorial judgment.

As I listened to narrative documentary podcasts, I was figuring out which characters stuck out to me as vivid and memorable, which cliffhangers didn’t work and why, which limited-run podcasts grabbed me from the first episode and which bored me. I quickly went from listening just for fun to critiquing what I heard. If a cold open was gripping, I would listen to it again and break down what worked and file it away in my brain. Like a lot of people, I listen when I’m running or on the subway. But if something strikes me, I open my notes mode on my phone and stop and write down something to help me remember that beat of the episode. Then when I get back to my desk, I might re-listen to that part of the episode, then write down the beats of the story to help me understand WHY it works.

Read more here

From the archives

Island Signs by Dylan Peers McCoy

How do you make a radio story about sign language? Dylan Peers McCoy discovered that deafness was unusually common on the earliest settlements of Martha’s Vineyard, so as a result, they developed their own unique sign language. In her piece for the 2013 Transom Story Workshop, Peers McCoy tells the story of that lost language and the devoted islanders working to preserve it.

Listen here

Community corner

This week’s question: what are your personal tips and tricks for building editorial muscles? Let us know in the comments!

Leave a comment

• Tickets are officially SOLD OUT for Transom 25! That was fast. We are so excited to see you all in September.

• For those of you who live locally, we do have a limited number of tickets available to some of the individual events at the festival. More details and a link to purchase here.

Subscribe now

What’s new on Transom

Announcing… more Transom 25 featured speakers!

The lineup for the festival keeps getting better and better, and today we’re thrilled to announce the latest additions: producer & poet Sean Cole, Post Reports founding host Martine Powers, Radio Diaries founder Joe Richman, as well as Jason Moon and Lauren Chooljian from NHPR’s Document team. We’ll be releasing more schedule details soon, so keep an eye out and don’t miss the chance to learn from the best in the biz throughout the weekend.

Transom 25 schedule & details

More to explore on Transom.org:

• May’s features tons of audio opportunities, including a pitch call for Good Tape Issue 04 — exploring the theme of “chemistry” in podcasting and audio culture.

Read All Hear

• Read all about our recent live storytelling show in Brattleboro, VT, and listen to the wonderful pieces community members made.

Read and listen here

• Were you as delighted as we were by the Artemis II moon mission? Revisit this episode of Sound School with Rob Rosenthal for more stories from outer space.

Listen to Sound School

Tip of the week: semi-efficient narrative production

You and I know the refrain: narrative podcasts are expensive to produce and they take a long time to make. This is true — there are some corners you just can’t cut, and we should devote the requisite time and money to making this stuff. But in the always-on world we live in today, it helps to get crafty. And there are ways to make really good stuff without a giant budget for travel and interns. Which is why Karen Given wrote this helpful how-to about how to be semi-efficient when it comes to narrative podcasting. As the longtime Executive Producer and Host of WBUR and NPR’s Only A Game, Given said she was most proud of being “able to produce a full hour of narrative programming, 52 weeks a year, with a staff of five.” Read Given’s Eight Axioms of Semi-Efficient Narrative Production and learn from this well-oiled machine.

Axiom #3: Embrace the One Voice Story

We’re taught to talk to everyone. Before Only A Game switched to narrative, the checklist for every sporting event was always the same: talk to the coach, the opposing coach, a bunch of players, fans of the winning team, fans of the losing team and maybe a sports journalist for some context. One time, I even interviewed a dog who was in the crowd at a human dogsled race. (Yep, that’s also a thing!)

But the longest story we ever aired on Only A Game happened after we made the switch to narrative. And it was built on a single interview. And it started as an idea that didn’t seem very promising.

A group of Denver Broncos fans were trying to get a man named Gene Mingo inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Under normal circumstances, I don’t give a hoot about Hall of Fame inductions. But as it turned out, Gene Mingo had lived a fascinating life. Better yet, he was able to remember and describe his experiences in vivid detail. He was open and honest — especially when it came to his own bad decisions.

In narrative, more voices do not make for a better story. The only thing guaranteed to make for a better story is… a better story. So if you luck into a subject who has something really compelling to say, go ahead. Let them say it.

From the archives

The Little Things by Sean Cole

If you want to take advantage of Karen Given’s excellent tip above and get that golden, full-episode-carrying interview, you’ll need to ask very good questions. Poet and longtime producer of This American Life Sean Cole had a great tip for getting tape that sings in this piece from 2010 on how to capture ‘the little things’:

I was interviewing (for the 13-thousanth time) a guy who had tried to set up a kind of homesteady outpost with his girlfriend and two of their pals in the desert in far west Texas. I had become really fond of them after documenting the lead up to departure. Next thing I knew, Gene and his girlfriend were in Chicago. They were too low on money. And I asked him if there was any sort of “Oh Jesus” moment when he realized this plan wasn’t going to work, at least not right now.

“There was a very significant ‘Oh Jesus’ moment,” he said.

And as he described it to me I found myself prompting him with questions I’d never ask otherwise. “Where did you guys have the conversation? Was it on the land or elsewhere? Was it day or night? Were you sitting or standing?”

This is something I should do all the time. I daresay it’s something we should ALL do all the time. It feels awkward. It’s not the way you’d converse with someone at a dinner party. Plus, most of it may not end up in your story at all. But some of it will. The word “slapped” can’t happen without “How did he give you the stop watch?” “Slapped” and “swaggered” are preferable to “gave” and “entered.”

To generalize, I think print reporters are a lot more detailed in their questioning. I’ve known radio reporters who compare. But as a body, I think we could stand to fixate on the little things a lot more. The little things are where the pigment is – the one blue folding chair at the funeral. The more specific synonym for “walked” is where the better writing is, the storytelling. Novelists can pluck any adjective out of the air. Us? We have to ask the question that makes the answerer’s face go all quizzical. Let’s do that more.

Read more here

Community corner

This week’s question: Are you coming to Transom 25? Do you have questions? Let us know in the comments!

Leave a comment

• Applications for the RESONATE Story Lab: Africa Otherwise in Cape Town, South Africa are open! It’s a a six-month, intensive audio documentary residency for storytellers ready to deepen their craft and to rethink how stories about the continent are told. The residency kicks off with a special Transom Traveling Workshop before begin their months long production journey. Applications close May 11, 2026 (6 pm SAST).

More info

• Come to the Transom Traveling Workshop in Interlochen, MI this fall! Applications are now open — don’t miss your chance to get a week of intensive training in northwest Michigan, nestled between two pristine lakes and surrounded by quiet pines.

Apply here

What’s new on Transom

Transom 25! A Gathering of Kindred Spirits in Radio and Podcasting

Last week, we announced some exciting details about what to expect at our big celebration in Woods Hole, MA this summer. Ira Glass! Nichole Hill! Tobin Low! Al Letson! Live music! Swimming, biking, strolling, beaching! It’s going to be a fabulous weekend to celebrate you — the makers, reporters, producers, independent creators that make Transom what it is. Tickets are on sale NOW!

Also, keep an eye on Transom’s socials, where we’ll be revealing more of our excellent festival workshop leaders. THIS JUST IN: The Kitchen Sisters — Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva — and Radiolab’s Annie McEwen.

Take a look at this overview of the weekend and then book your trip to join us:

• Thursday:

  • Afternoon: Arrive, check in, get settled.

  • Evening: Attend the kickoff show! Live music & storytelling.

• Friday:

  • Morning: Choose your own adventure by selecting which workshop sessions you want to go to! Over the course of the weekend, you’ll get to go to six workshops of your choosing, taught by the best radio and podcast producers in the biz. Hone your skills on all aspects of craft — from sound design to interviewing to story structure.

  • Afternoon: Nichole Hill (Our Ancestors Were Messy)

  • Evening: Headliner talk with This American Life’s Ira Glass & Tobin Low!

• Saturday:

  • Morning: Al Letson (Reveal)

  • Afternoon: More workshops to choose from. Also, a chance to swim, explore, or hunt for the chicken bomb…

  • Evening: Dinner, fantastic live music, and dancing at the big sendoff party to celebrate the 25th!

More to explore on Transom.org:

• Listen to the latest episode of Sound School where Rob Rosenthal talks to Salman Khan about the making of his new show More Muslim.

Listen here

Tip of the week: how to “fix time”

Al Letson (one of our esteemed Transom25 presenters) is a man of many talents — including poet, playwright, comic book writer, and host of Reveal. In his 2015 manifesto, Letson wrote about the concept of “fixing time.” His mentor, the poet Sekou Sundiata, once told him that “one of the biggest issues in America is the country’s collective amnesia… Our selective memory in essence has broken time.” In other words, because of our inability face the sins and true stories of the past, we live in a skewed present. Letson wrote about how the poets, the producers, the writers, the storytellers, public media and other mediums can “fix time” by expanding the narrative:

The big bang America was born of is a lie we’ve held onto without realizing it. This untruth comes as natural as thinking that water is wet or the sun is hot. At the root of it, we engage in the world that has created a “default human being.” Our understanding of everything comes from the perspective of this mythical “default human,” a straight white male. This default is who we naturally tell stories to, for, and about. The truth is that there is no default human and there lies the crack in the space time continuum; the place where our context dissipates, where our history is lost and blind spots proliferate. Stories are told that are incomplete, cultures are discredited because it doesn’t conform, we are a symphony with one instrument playing all the parts. To make the symphony as dynamic as can be instruments must be given to other players. The experiences, background, and thought process that new people bring into the conversation can be subtle or can completely shift the organization’s trajectory. To a lot of people making decisions on content, that can be scary. But if you want to tell the story right, if you want to “fix time,” it’s fear that must be overcome.

Read Letson's manifesto

From the archives

The Children’s Radio Foundation in South Africa by Kaitlin Parker

Cape Town, South Africa is a city with a rich and complicated history, and a place bursting with sound and stories. In 2011, producer Kaitlin Parker wrote about her time with The Children’s Radio Foundation in Cape Town — an organization where radio is produced by, for, and about the youth of South Africa. Parker spent time as a facilitator, helping to train and grow youth reporter networks there. Listen to this piece from the archives about South African fathers from the perspective of daughters.

Read more and listen here

Community corner

This week’s question: What questions do you have for us about Transom 25? What event are you most excited to attend during the weekend? Let us know in the comments!

Leave a comment

Transom has been around for 25 years, and it’s always been a place where you — the makers, reporters, producers, independent creators — drive our mission. So that’s why we want to celebrate this milestone by taking over the village of Woods Hole for a few days and creating an audio paradise that’s all about the people. This weekend will be a space for you to connect with old friends and new, attend workshops and talks, hit the beach, dance, laugh, and remember that the audio world can be a really wonderful one. Let’s get into the details!

Transom 25 details

TRANSOM 25 DETAILS

WHEN IS IT?

Thursday, September 17 - Saturday, September 19.

WHAT IS THE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS?

You can find a detailed schedule at this link (we’ll be updating it continuously) but here is an overview:

• Thursday:

  • Afternoon: Arrive, check in, get settled.

  • Evening: Attend the kickoff show! Live music & storytelling.

• Friday:

  • Morning: Choose your own adventure by selecting which workshop sessions you want to go to! Over the course of the weekend, you’ll get to go to six workshops of your choosing, taught by the best radio and podcast producers in the biz. Hone your skills on all aspects of craft — from sound design to interviewing to story structure.

  • Afternoon: Nichole Hill (Our Ancestors Were Messy)

  • Evening: Headliner talk with This American Life’s Ira Glass & Tobin Low!

• Saturday:

  • Morning: Al Letson (Reveal)

  • Afternoon: More workshops to choose from. Also, a chance to swim, explore, or hunt for the chicken bomb…

  • Evening: Dinner, fantastic live music, and dancing at the big sendoff party to celebrate the 25th!

WHERE IS IT?

The venues are all within walking distance of each other, all spread out throughout the village of Woods Hole, MA. Check out this lovely festival map:

HOW MUCH DO TICKETS COST?

A general admission Festival Pass is $225; with discounts available for Transom alumni. There are a limited number of Volunteer Passes available, each for $75. If you can, consider buying a Pay-It-Forward pass to support the festival and keep ticket prices affordable.

Get tickets here

TRAVEL & LODGING

• How do I arrange travel to Woods Hole?

  • Attendees should book their own travel and lodging. See the Travel & Lodging page for more. And after you’ve bought a ticket, you’ll have the option to jump in a dedicated WhatsApp group where festival-goers can coordinate amongst themselves on travel and lodging.

• Where will I stay?

  • The Woods Hole Inn, Sands of Time Inn, and the Treehouse Lodge are all offering festival goers a 10% discount on rooms. Use the code “TRANSOM25” when booking.

  • Our friends at the Marine Biological Laboratory are making a bunch of cottages available to festival participants. Each cottage sleeps six people (3 bedrooms, each with two twin beds). You can learn more and book rooms (or full cottages) directly from MBL at this link. You can also sign up to be randomly paired with a roommate.

  • Parking is tight in the village, so we recommend parking where you stay, and then walking or biking to the venues!

• What should I bring?

  • Bathing suit.

  • Bike, if you have one.

  • There will be opportunities to make stuff, so you might want to bring a recorder and mic (we’ll also have a few you can borrow).

  • Dancing shoes!

We can’t wait to see you there! Visit our site for more information:

Transom 25

Questions? Hopes and dreams? Suggestions for things you really want to see/hear/learn? Let us know in the comments!

Leave a comment

• Join us in Woods Hole on May 6th at 7 pm for an evening of live storytelling in celebration of FOUND Magazine’s 25th anniversary. FOUND creator Davy Rothbart shares some of the funniest, strangest, and most unexpectedly moving discoveries from the archive, while his brother, the musician Peter Rothbart, performs songs inspired by the finds. Get your tickets here!

• Keep your eyes peeled next week for a special announcement from us with details for Transom 25!

  

  

• The first-ever Transom Traveling Workshop in Moab, UT was a success! The students learned the ropes from lead instructor David Weinberg, went out and interviewed locals all around this incredible little town, and made some fantastic audio stories.

  Terry Halbert took a “butt-clenching” trip on a hummer, exploring 190 million year old rocks with a man named George:

  Connor Estes spent time with an ecologist named Steph, talking about the restorative effects of the natural world and why you should learn about the tree right outside your door:

  And M.A. Russell did a story about how the solitude of a ghost town in Utah and the visible passing of time in Moab affect the work of one local artist.

  Here’s what one student had to say about the week:

  In the past, I have learned audio production/journalism in spaces that feel very dogmatic. So it was refreshing (and healing!) to step into a space that was the antithesis to that energy. My love for storytelling is feeling nourished and alive. THANK YOU THANK YOU!!

What’s new on Transom

Why (and How) to Hire a Blind Producer by Andrew Leland

In his new manifesto for Transom, producer Andrew Leland writes about the time he got a call from San Francisco’s public radio station, KALW, asking him for advice about how to support a blind fellow they were hoping to hire. Leland is a writer, producer, and editor, whose work has been featured on Radiolab and whose memoir, The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight, was a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Memoir. At a loss for where to begin to advise KALW, Leland says: “I found myself wishing there was a technical, reported-out webpage, perhaps on the great audio storytelling site Transom, festooned with resources and links, that methodically broke down what it took to be a successful blind radio reporter – and what it took to support one, in the classroom or the newsroom.” So he decided to write it.

The question of whether it’s ethical or even desirable to be treated as a diversity hire divides blind people. “I hate when people say, ‘I want to be recognized for my skillset,’” Byron Harden, the blind engineer who runs I See Music said. “You’re skillful as hell, navigating an interface that wasn’t built for you!” Harden thinks blind people shouldn’t think twice about letting themselves be included in promotional materials, whatever the motivations – lean into it, grab the attention. Jason Strother, by contrast, said that it does a disservice to hire a blind person just so an organization can virtue-signal that they have disabled people on staff. “I don’t think a radio station should hire someone just because they’re blind,” he said. “The candidate needs to be a good journalist.”

Thomas Reid also emphasized the skillset that the blind person needs to bring to the table: “I don’t think I would ever assume that someone else would be prepared to fill in the blank on all my access needs,” he said. Reid described a pragmatic approach: the blind person needs to figure out, as thoroughly and comprehensively as possible, what their access needs are: Word docs instead of PDFs, Reaper instead of Adobe Audition, a Zoom Essential series recorder instead of an inaccessible Marantz. And they have to learn how to use those tools. Once those access needs are met, ideally, the blind person can stand on an equal playing field, and learn the skills like anyone else.

Ironically, it’s only once you hit that place – knowing blindness skills, understanding your own access needs – that your value as a blind person, and the argument for DEIA and newsroom diversity, begin to pay off.

Read more here

More to explore on Transom.org:

• Dive into April’s newsletter, featuring tons of audio opportunities around the world, including the Gwen Ifill Mentorship Program — a professional development opportunity for U.S based women and nonbinary journalists from underrepresented backgrounds.

Read All Hear

• Silence can be risky, but it’s worth your time, says Rob Rosenthal on the latest episode of Sound School. He interviews Noam Hassenfeld, the host of Unexplainable, about the importance of allowing silence to just be.

Listen to Sound School

Tip of the week: take a closer listen

Julie Shapiro is a very good listener. She’s made a career out of it — starting wonderful containers for great audio like the Third Coast International Audio Festival and Audio Flux. And as she says in this 2021 piece for Transom, she is constantly thinking about, listening to, and seeking out new podcasts and audio stories. But the sheer volume of what is available these days can be daunting. It can sap the joy of things when you don’t know where to start or how to curate your queue. Julie’s solution? Take a closer listen, and compile a Horse Thread.

The Horse Thread is not about numbers, or notoriety. Rather, it brings some order to an otherwise chaotic and at times overwhelming listening regimen. And it scratches my constant itch to share audio with others. And it brings a distinct sense of accomplishment, and small pang of thrill, every time I add an episode to the thread. I may even be listening more closely and concentrating more carefully on what I’m hearing. I’m not just listening to tick boxes or chip away at my podcast pile — I’m listening for horses. The Horse Thread is completely inconsequential and nonessential, and yet it keeps me steady, navigating through the roiling ocean of podcast content we’re all swimming in. …

If you’re also feeling overwhelmed by the wealth of podcasting content out there beckoning, maybe a similar thread would offer some relief and reward? Yours could be about anything, no need to perk your ears for horse cameos (though let me know how you go, if you do.) Try listening for Star Wars or Breaking Bad or Serial references. Or mentions of citrus, or canoes. Or pick a country that catches your ear, or body part, or famous writer, or household appliance. Go at your own pace, manage your expectations, rejoice in coincidence and relish the steps — from discovering to tracking to sharing your findings and whatever singular object or topic resonates for you, especially.

You may find that you listen differently, and observe the podcast surplus around you with fresh ears, and renewed appreciation. You may find this helps you manage the crushing anxiety you feel upon waking up to so many new episodes in your queue. Or you may just find some simple enjoyment in being intentional, and generous about your discoveries with fellow (and potential future fellow) listeners — reason enough to give it a go.

Read more here

From the archives

Jack and the Bag of Death by John Freyer

If you live in a populous city, the chances of stranger sticking a tiny microphone in your face and asking you a question are very high these days. But the art of the “vox pop” has been a key part of audio journalism classes for a long time. Getting out there and talking to strangers can be intimidating, and despite his ambivalance, Nick van der Kolk of Love + Radio always gives vox pop assignments this students. More often than not, if you give it time, you’ll strike gold. Like in this vox pop interview that John Freyer did in 2016. Give it a listen, and wait for the end.

Listen here

Community corner

This week’s question: inspired by Julie’s “Horse Thread”, throw an idea in the comments for a thread of your own!

Leave a comment

• Come learn the ins and outs of audio storytelling in Amherst, MA! Applications for the Transom Traveling Workshop there this summer are now open. Learn more here and be sure to submit by April 17, 2026 (11:59 p.m. EDT).

• We have an exciting live show in Woods Hole, MA coming up! What can you learn about a person from the things they accidentally leave behind? Join us May 6th at 7 pm for an evening of live storytelling in celebration of FOUND Magazine's 25th anniversary. FOUND creator Davy Rothbart shares some of the funniest, strangest, and most unexpectedly moving discoveries from the archive, while his brother, the musician Peter Rothbart, performs songs inspired by the finds. Get your tickets here!

What’s new on Transom

Who tells the story? And whose story is it? Values and Practices when Reporting on ICE by Quincy Surasmith

Feet in 2 Worlds tells stories by, for, and about immigrants. Managing Editor Quincy Surasmith says: “I always insist that we cover immigrants from all sorts of angles, not just “capital-I Immigration” policy.” But with funding for ICE increasing exponentially under the current administration and intense raids happening across our communities, the team at Feet in 2 Worlds has had to spend more time focusing on the “capital-I Immigration” stories. In his new Transom manifesto, Surasmith shares some of the best practices and values to consider when reporting on ICE — what has worked for his team, what hasn’t, and how to meet the moment.

Whose story is it? Immigrants as subjects, not objects.

When reporting, ask yourself: who has agency in your story? To use a grammatical framework, I try to think of who is the subject, and who is the object? That is, who is the one doing the action, vs. who’s having action done to them?

Often, stories of ICE give the officers, government entities that hire them, and the politicians all the agency. They’re the ones who are taking action, while immigrants are just on the receiving end.

Go find and tell stories where immigrants are the ones with agency — where it’s through their experiences and perspectives that we understand what’s happening. How do they see the impact on their communities? How do they feel? What are they doing in response for themselves and for each other? It’s very possible to tell stories about the impact of ICE without letting them get to be the center of the story.

And by changing whose eyes we’re looking through and shifting who we center, we also get to shift who gets to define the verbiage we use.

When ICE and other law enforcement are the subjects of the story, it’s all too easy to just use their own accounts, statements, and terminology to frame events. They get to do “targeted enforcement” for “removal” using “administrative authorization” and if something goes awry, then they’re using “less-than-lethal munitions” until something becomes an “officer-involved shooting.”

As the reporter, you have the ability and obligation to forgo jargon in favor of wording that makes things clear, understandable, and accessible to your audiences.

Read more here

More to explore on Transom.org:

• Rob Rosenthal revisits a conversation with producer Pejk Malinovsky about the value of telling a story where nothing really happens on the latest episode of Sound School.

Listen here

Tip of the week: gaining access to sensitive spaces

In her work as a health policy reporter for NPR, Selena Simmons-Duffin often finds herself in sensitive spaces like doctor’s office waiting rooms. Simmons-Duffins joined Rob Rosenthal in a 2024 episode of Sound School to discuss her experience gaining access to medical facilities that provide abortions and the dance of reporting both on the facilities and on the people receiving care there. It can be intimidating, Simmons-Duffin says, to approach a story like this. Where do you begin? Step one, she says, is to simply ask.

Rob – What’s typically your approach? What do you say when you write or call and you want to report in person. In fact, you know what? Selena, why don’t we do this. I’m a physician. Convince me.

Selena - Okay, well, usually I wouldn’t just go to you and start pitching you. Usually, I would interview you first. So we would develop a rapport and you would get an idea of the things I’m interested in and the things I want to explore. And then I would say, “Okay, Rob, we’ve just had this really interesting conversation. I am so interested in this practice that you’ve done that is different than anyone in the world. And I would love to be able to show people what that looks like. And to do that, I would need to come. And so I’m wondering if how you feel about me coming with my recorder, spending a day, you know, your patients would have the chance to say they don’t want me anywhere near their appointments or not so that I could really illustrate to people and it’s not just talking about it, but it’s really like seeing how it plays out. …

I think there’s probably a lot of access that people don’t get because they don’t try or ask.

I have experienced this a lot reporting on abortion. I remember a colleague of mine, Carrie Feibel, had done a lot of abortion reporting as a reporter in Texas… she said, don’t assume that patients don’t want to talk and that they want anonymity. And that was a really powerful reminder that patients feel like they have stories to tell sometimes.

Listen here

From the archives

Dark Night, Glass Eels by Kara Janeczko

Half the battle, as they say, is simply showing up. In her 2014 piece for the Transom Story Workshop, Kara Janeczko followed a game warden named Chuck Martinsen as he set out to catch poachers. Poaching is a hot button issue in a place like Cape Cod, and Janeczko got a lot of no’s until Martinsen gave her chance to seize.

I was trying to report the story, and it was difficult to find anyone who would talk to me on the record. When I called, I didn’t expect him to pick up. Chuck sort of threw down the gauntlet. If I wanted the story, I had to come and get it. And I had to go right then. He said if I could meet him in 15 minutes I could go with him to a secret fishway. I had just enough time to grab my muck boots, but not enough time to write questions.

When I made it to the parking lot, boots on, Chuck smiled. I had passed an unspoken test. The interview went fast and furious — and because I hadn’t yet prepped questions, I had to just follow my curiosity. It actually helped to ask the dumb questions — so he could better get to the root of a complex problem. After I gained his trust I was sort of “on call.” I got to go out with him two more times — once on his late night rounds in the height of the eel run/poaching season and once during a dramatic glass eel rescue. Each time I had to be ready to roll or miss the whole thing.

Read more and listen here

Community corner

Last week, we asked what spring sounded like where you are. Reader RW said:

Owls calling to each other across the canyon late at night, a single poorwill singing on its hidden hillside perch at sunset, and the cacophony of our glorious bird chorus proclaiming the new day as the sun peeks over the horizon. Beachwood Canyon, Los Angeles.

Continue this thread and leave a comment describing what it sounds like where you are!

Leave a comment

• Last week, ten brave Vermonters took the stage at Retreat Farm’s North Barn in Brattleboro. After an intense three-day workshop, they told their stories to a sold out crowd of their neighbors and friends. The show was hosted by Jill Lepore and Tom Bodett and featured music by Carla Kihlstedt and Matthias Bossi of Rabbit Rabbit Radio. The audience laughed, cried, and gave our storytellers enough love to fill a giant timber frame barn. One participant wrote afterward: “It felt like a small glowing miracle happening inside of me, spilling out for everyone to see.” The event was a huge success and we can’t wait to share the stories with you all on our website soon. They’ll also available to all public radio stations for free via PRX — stay tuned.

• Applications are now open for the Transom Traveling Workshop in Amherst, MA! Learn more here and be sure to submit by April 17, 2026 (11:59 p.m. EDT).

What’s new

From The Listeners: Hold On by Erica Heilman for Rumble Strip Vermont

In her first piece made in the name of The Listeners, Erica Heilman tells the story of a song.

Six years ago, seventeen-year-old Finn Rooney killed himself in his home in Walden, Vermont. A couple days later, his community held a bonfire in the parking lot of Hazen Union High school in Hardwick. Hundreds of people came. Tom Gilbert, who organized the bonfire, asked his friend Heidi Wilson to write a song for the occasion. The song was called Hold On. She made sure it was a song everyone could sing. And they did.

Now people are singing this song all over the world. People in Minneapolis have been singing it to ICE agents. They’re singing it for their neighbors who are afraid to leave their houses. They’re singing it in Wales and Australia and Ireland in solidarity with the people of Minneapolis. Peole are singing it all over, to give each other some comfort and some courage.

This is a story about where that song came from and where it’s gone.

Listen here

Erica is one of the key influences of The Listeners project — a model of steady, hyperlocal, poetic storytelling. She is excellent at capturing the magic of the people and place where she lives, and she’s written a gracious how-to do it.

Here at Transom and The Listeners, we want more stories like Erica’s. We recently teamed up with Hub & Spoke for their “Sounds Like America” initiative. Independent producers from all 50 states (and DC!) are invited to make and send a sonic postcard. What does it sound like where you are, right now? The team at Hub & Spoke wants to hear anything and everything that is hyperlocal to you, wherever you are, whatever your audio background, wherever your walk of life.

Select submissions to “Sounds Like America” will be forwarded to us here at Transom and The Listeners with the potential for increased exposure, possible broadcast, and a modest honorarium. You can also pitch us stories directly, via our website. We’d love to hear from you.

More to explore on Transom.org:

• Listen to the latest episode of Sound School where Rob Rosenthal talks Julie Shapiro and John Delore — “two enthusiastic audio wizards building a home for ear-catching, short-form audio stories” at Audio Flux.

  Listen here

• Check out the March edition of All Hear, featuring tons of audio opportunities across the globe, including The Austin Film Festival Fiction Podcast Award – an international competition for independent fiction podcast scripts.

Read All Hear

Tip of the week: how to talk to a politician for a radio story

Zoe Chace is exceptionally good at reporting on the wonkiest, messiest American political stories. She’s done a bunch of these over the years at This American Life, and also on The Improvement Association, a series about election fraud allegations in Bladen County, North Carolina. Time and time again, Chace manages to get interesting tape from the unlikeliest of sources: politicians. “Politicians are bad tape,” Chace writes in her 2017 manifesto. “They are guarded. They either do not want to make news or they only want to make the news they want to make. They do not want to be regular, flawed people.” So, how does she do it? Read the piece for tips and tricks.

In order to show how a politician is a person, you gotta wear them down with your presence. In my opinion, anyway. Because the best tape is gonna be the action-y, sometimes off-mic tape that demonstrates what they’re going through — moments you capture that reveal some tiny piece of honesty, of who they really are. It’s not gonna be much of the sit-down interview tape you have — they just have too much experience with that format to be revealing, usually. … My experience thus far is, you can’t get good tape without this deal. They will just be too guarded.

Also, what’s nice about following them over time is, they will relax around you and your microphone. They see you’re not betraying the deal, and they’ll uphold their end of the deal. They’ll get more frank with you. They’ll invite you along. Sometimes.

How do you make a deal? You meet with their people, off the record, a bunch of times. You outline what you’re going to need. I think the most helpful thing to my case was, saying to them, I want to be IN THE SHOWER WITH HIM. They found that a little forward, but it stuck. They got it. I could just say, “in the shower,” and remind them of our deal. What I was thinking about, when I said that, was this influential, intimate tape from Nancy Updike that takes place in the shower — I was like, I want to be as close as that sounded.

Read more here

From the archives

Secession’s The Answer by Sally Helm

In her 2015 piece for the Transom Story Workshop, Sally Helm tells the tale of the time the citizens of Martha’s Vineyard voted to secede from Massachusetts. Would they take up the offers to join Vermont, Hawaii, New Hampshire, or Tennessee? Listen to the piece to find out what became of the 1977 effort, and for a lovely rendition of the Martha’s Vineyard state anthem.

Listen here

Community corner

This week’s community question: What sound signals that spring is coming where you live? Tell us what your community sounds like right now in the comments!

Leave a comment

• There’s still time to get tickets for our live show in Brattleboro, VT next week! Join us for an evening of storytelling centered around what it means to be an American today Wednesday, March 11 at 7 pm. The event will be hosted by Jill Lepore and Tom Bodett, and will feature stories from Brattleboro-area community members.

  Get tickets here

• ICYMI: Transom is turning 25 and we want to celebrate with you! Join us this fall from September 17-19, 2026, for a very special homecoming in the radio center of the universe: Woods Hole, MA. We’ll have inspiring speakers, creative sessions, plenty of listening, and a lot of unstructured time to head to the beach. This will be a space to rest, reset, and connect – remembering why we do this work in the first place. We hope you’ll leave with new and rekindled friendships and new collaborators, more tools in your toolkit, and new inspiration to continue to do the good work you do. Keep an eye out for tickets and more details coming soon!

  Come to Transom 25

• Applications for the Transom Traveling Workshop in Amherst, MA open next week! Join lead instructor David Weinberg in Amherst July 26 – August 2, 2026 for a week of intensive training at the charming and intentional Cherry Hill Co-housing Community.

Learn more here

• Hub & Spoke is inviting independent producers from all 50 states (and DC!) to send them a sonic postcard for their new “Sounds Like America” initiative. What does it sound like where you are, right now? They want to hear anything and everything that is hyperlocal to you, wherever you are, whatever your audio background, wherever your walk of life. Select submissions to “Sounds Like America” will be forwarded to us here at Transom and The Listeners with the potential for increased exposure, possible broadcast, and a modest honorarium.

Learn more here

What’s new at Transom

The inaugural Transom Traveling Workshop at Bombay Beach was a huge success! Lead instructor David Weinberg deemed it “spectacular.” If you’re somewhere that’s waiting for spring to spring and you’re craving a taste of the Salton Sea, take a listen to a few of the stories that students produced after their week in this beautiful place:

Start with Julie Wernau’s story about a woman who is helping elderly travelers live out their final days with dignity:

Listen to a story from Sandi Wheaton about a local man’s long life lived in Bombay Beach and why he loves it there:

Finally, listen this story from Zach Shivers about the various waterways of Bombay Beach — including its sewage ponds. (Thank goodness you can’t smell this story)

Keep an ear out for more stories from Bombay Beach on The Listeners!

More to explore on Transom.org:

• Looking to upgrade your portable field recording gear? Lucky for you, Transom’s Tools Editor Jeff Towne has written an extensive review of the latest model of the Zoom recorder — the H5studio.

  Read Jeff's review

• Read producer Will Coley’s extensive write up of tips for how to successfully pitch stories to existing shows as a freelancer.

  Read more here

• After you read his tips, listen to Coley on the latest episode of Sound School, where he and Rob Rosenthal discuss how Coley finally got someone to green light a story about public nudity.

  Listen here

Tip of the week: how to weave in wonder

Radio-makers and podcasters have a tendency to over explain. We’re writing for the ear, after all, and we need to be clear and concise and make sure our listeners understand the story we are telling. But this can crowd out space for wonder, which is a tragedy, because wonder is a life force. “When someone tells me an intriguing fact or a funny anecdote, I feel intellectual interest. I’m curious; I’m engaged,” documentarian Cathy FitzGerald writes in her 2017 Manifesto for Transom. “But when I experience wonder, I’m transported, awe-struck, deeply moved. Explaining is about bringing clarity; making sense of the complicated and the confusing. Wonder is about spell-bound incomprehension in the face of the strange.” FitzGerald wrote about ways to weave in wonder in your audio stories while also preserving the plot, from the obvious (being quiet enough to get moments of wonder on tape) to the less intuitive:

Pay Attention to the Subconscious of the Program

When we tell / explain we tend to talk directly to the listener. We’re rational, logical, up-front. But how about more subterranean forms of communication; meaning that’s partially sensed, rather than fully grasped? I like to bury patterns of metaphor and imagery in my documentaries: recurring ideas and themes that deepen and intensify the activity on the surface. Sounds too can work in the same way (for more on this see Alan Hall’s beautiful, coruscating essay, “Cigarettes and Dance Steps” in Reality Radio). The listener rarely processes this kind of stuff consciously — but that’s good. . . we want these subtleties to sink into the dark water of the deep mind almost without being noticed. They create a sense of wholeness in a work, a feeling of hidden depth and meaning.

Read more about wonder

From the archives

Anatomy of a Code Blue by Sam Slavin with Viki Merrick

One reason a show like “The Pitt” on HBO is so satisfying to watch (if you can stomach it) is that it’s comforting to see competent people handle a crisis. The crises on “The Pitt” are often sensational because it’s fiction, but a crisis that plays out nearly every day in real life at real hospitals is a “code blue” — the dramatic attempt to restart the heart when a patient flatlines. In this piece from 2015, Sam Slavin, a third year student at Harvard Medical School, conducted over 30 hours of interviews with every person at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston who is involved when a code blue happens. Nurses, doctors, interns, priests — Slavin talked to them all in an effort to understand how this fight against death affects the people who take it up.

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 ribs. A doctor tears off the patient’s gown. Each chest compression launches blood from the patient’s mouth showering his naked body. Drugs upon drugs squeeze blood to vital organs, but when his heart starts again most of his brain may have already died from lack of oxygen.

A “code blue” is hospital-speak for advanced cardiopulmonary resuscitation. It is an attempt to restart the heart when it has stopped. On television codes are successful 75% of the time. In reality about 20% of patients live to leave the hospital. Whether a code is a magnificent life-saving feat or a brutal exercise in futility depends entirely on the overall condition and context of the patient’s life. In many cases the outcome is very difficult to predict.

In weaving together the narrative of a code, my goal was not to answer the incredibly complex question of when or whether we should attempt to resuscitate. Rather, I wanted to explore what happens to hospital staff when grappling with acute uncertainty around our ability to combat death.

Read more and listen here

Community corner

This week’s question: how do you preserve moments of wonder in your audio stories? Let us know in the comments!

Leave a comment

• Transom is turning 25! And we want you to celebrate with you. Join us this fall from September 17-19, 2026, for a very special homecoming in the radio center of the universe: Woods Hole, MA. We’ll have inspiring speakers, creative sessions, plenty of listening, and a lot of unstructured time to head to the beach. This will be a space to rest, reset, and connect – remembering why we do this work in the first place. Speakers, ticket details, sessions, and more to come soon! Mark your calendars and keep an eye out.

What’s new on Transom

Pitching is a Portal by Will Coley

There are tons of podcasts. Some might say too many. But the upside? Tons of opportunities to pitch stories to existing shows. Which is why Will Coley, along with help from colleagues across the industry, compiled this spreadsheet of over 100 places that audio producers can pitch their stories to. In a new piece for Transom, Coley breaks down the process from top to tail — finding stories, writing successful pitches, negotiating payments, dealing with rejection, and more.

Writing a pitch

Keep it short: No more than 500 words or two paragraphs. If it’s via email (and not an online pitch form), write a subject line with “PITCH” and a compelling headline. Add “Timely” in the subject line if it’s a breaking or time-sensitive story.

• Start with a one-sentence bio that succinctly includes a few other shows you’ve produced for.

• Then write about your story in 2-3 sentences. Sally Herships sees this story summary like a compressed accordion that you can easily expand and fill in if/when the pitch is accepted.

• Include why you think the story is a good fit for their show, why it’s important now, and why you should produce it. Katie Thornton sometimes includes a sentence about how her story idea has a similar approach to a story that the show has already produced on a different topic.

Read more here

More to explore on Transom.org:

• February’s is here! Includes the usual roundup of opportunities and an exciting call out for audio works to feature at the 2026 HearSay festival in Kilfinane, Ireland.

Read All Hear

• Revisit an old favorite episode of Sound School in which Rob Rosenthal and Noel King dissect her radio writing technique: telling stories.

Listen to Sound School

Tip of the week: the art of the pre-interview

Calling up the subjects of your story and doing a quick pre-interview to make sure you’ll be able to get what you need is a crucial part of a successful pitch (and later, story). But as Sally Herships points out, this process can be very awkward. “It’s a tricky dance,” Herships writes in this piece about the art of the pre-interview. “You’ve told your subject that you want to find out all about them… They want to tell you. They are ready to talk. And you want them to — just not too much.”

Herships wrote this helpful guide to getting it right.

You may be worried about feeling pushy or rude. To me, it’s rude not to be transparent and let potential interviewees know exactly what’s in store. It’s rude not to ask questions. Ultimately, you’re going to be representing this person and telling their story. You need to get the facts straight.

You need to make sure they’ve got their facts straight too. It doesn’t matter if they’re supposed to be an expert. If you’re unsure, ask them what the source is of the information they’re quoting.

Read more here

From the archives

Olive Samuel Greenspan’s Manifesto

Olive Samuel Greenspan is a filmmaker, writer, and radio producer based in Los Angeles. Previously, they used the name Sam Greenspan. They were a founding producer of 99% Invisible, a show about “all the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about — the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world.” But stories about objects and architecture can be uniquely hard to tell. In their manifesto for Transom, Greenspan had one piece of advice for how to do it, and how to notice that which goes unnoticed: take a walk. Learn from writers like Charles Baudelaire and become a “flâneur”.

19th Century Paris saw the emergence of a “leisure class.” Men (and they were men) would amble aimlessly, on foot, noticing all the small fragments of their city. They took to calling themselves flâneurs, from the French verb “flâner”, meaning “to stroll, loiter, lounge, saunter, or dawdle.” Some flâneurs, it is alleged, strolled with their pet tortoises, leashes around their shells, to boast exactly how much free time they had… I say: put walking in your reporting. Become a flâneur as you report. …

Baudelaire considered the flâneur a “connoisseur” or “botanist” of the street, who engages with the immediate world by taking the time to walk, and look, and listen. Someone both of the world yet detached enough to notice what’s going on behind the scenes.

Read more here

Community corner

This week’s question: How do you recalibrate a story if the pre-interview doesn’t pan out how you were hoping it would? Share your stories in the comments!

Leave a comment

• Two weeks left to apply to the Bloomington, IN Traveling Workshop! It will be lead by David Weinberg with support from Alex Chambers, host and reporter from WFIU’s arts and culture desk. Get your application in by February 20, 2026 (11:59 p.m. EDT). Thank you to our presenting sponsor Hindenburg for supporting the Traveling Workshops! Learn more and apply here.

• Join us Wednesday, March 11th in Brattleboro, VT for an evening of live, true stories told by community members! It’s part of our collaboration with Retreat Farm’s America at 250 series. Get your tickets here! And if you’re interested in being a storyteller, visit this link for more information.

• The Transom Traveling Workshop in Bombay Beach is wrapping up, and student Swati Singh wrote a pop-up newsletter documenting her experience there. Check it out here. Here’s an excerpt from the first one:

  “David assured me that nobody has failed out of this workshop or not made a story. So I’m just going to trust myself, the moment, and go with the flow. I’m going to carry my gear with me, make the mic an extension of my body, and soak it all in. If trash can become art, I can be a dork strapped with gear. I can do this.”

What’s new on Transom

My Rules of Radio by Erica Heilman

Intro from Sophie Crane and Jay Allison:

America is in crisis, this is no secret. People are looking for answers, for action to take, for ways to make things better without violence. In our work, we record and share. That can feel like a small thing, chronicling life as it happens around us. But, wait. It’s not a small thing. Look at Minneapolis. Community members recording life around them is turning the tide. They are carrying the truth of evidence. They are documenting.

That’s what we do. And, here at the Transom Story Lab, we have started a new project dedicated to reflecting this country back to itself. It’s called The Listeners and derives from the belief that solidarity comes from listening, deep observation, reflecting local community truths, and sharing them widely — that’s the stuff of democracy. This belief is nothing new. It’s at the core of the reason that, for 25 years, Transom has passed on the skills of documentary storytelling to new voices and maintained a robust archive of the more experienced ones. A healthy democracy depends on having people trained to do this work: Witnesses, observers, recordists.

It also depends on having people trained to listen, which is something Erica Heilman does better than just about anyone. At the end of last year, together with Erica, Transom announced The Listeners, an honest, poetic exploration of the places we live.

Erica is a model of steady, hyperlocal, poetic truth-telling and we turn to her now for some of her basic principles, something we’re grateful she was willing to do because she didn’t want to. She said that offering this to her colleagues was “like singing acapella, naked.” But she did it. And it’s a gift to read:

“I still don’t know what to say when people ask me what Rumble Strip is about. But at least now I know why I make the show and what I want it to do. It sounds dramatic and it doesn’t always work, but my goal in every interview is to fall in love with the person. I don’t need to like them, but I want to try and love them. And then I want listeners to do the same. I want to fall into someone who is unlike me and imagine their life from the inside out and then try and recreate that experience for listeners. That probably sounds a little pretentious, but it’s as close as I can come to describing why I keep making this show over and over, into my dotage.

…

So these are some of my ‘rules’, and like all rules, they get broken sometimes. Every story I’ve ever made breaks at least one or two of these rules. But I believe in all of them and they shape the way my show sounds. There are plenty of great audio stories made by other people that don’t follow these rules. But these are mine…”

Read Erica's Rules here

More to explore on Transom.org:

• Catch up on the latest from Sound School and Rob Rosenthal, including a conversation with a young man in South Africa working through how to report on emotions.

Tip of the week: talking to strangers

Aaron Henkin gave himself an assignment. He was going to meet and interview every single person who lived on one city block in Baltimore and see what happened. But he pretty quickly ran into a problem: people hate talking to strangers. We’re taught to avoid it.

This was true in 2013, when Henkin started this project, and it’s true now. But in Minneapolis and across the country, we’re seeing the result of what happens when we choose to see our neighbors and community members not as the strangers they are, but as our fellow citizens. People worth caring for, protecting, and talking to. Here are some insights Henkin gained from his experience:

1. When you can convince people that you really just want to listen to what they have to say, that person will open their heart to you every time. When you listen to people you’re giving them a very rare and special gift.

2. When people tell you a story, it’s like they’re singing you a song. Every voice has its own musicality, its own tone and timbre. And even just a little half-sentence fragment can go in through your ear and tell you something profound about a person’s soul.

3. The public radio airwaves can be an echo chamber for predictable voices saying unsurprising things about familiar topics. But those same airwaves can also be a blank canvas for something different, for something a little more impressionistic, something abstract, that achieves its effect through tone and mood and juxtaposition, and honors listeners’ powers of inference and empathy.

4. Finally, it might make you nervous. It might feel awkward. It might be very counter-intuitive, the last thing you’re inclined to do, but if you talk to strangers, it’s a guaranteed way to improve your day and theirs.

Read more here

From the archives

Community Visions: Outside My Door by Anissa Weinraub

In order to change things, you must first have the courage to imagine a better future. What would the world around you look like? What would it feel like?

As part of a larger project with Philadelphia public school students and educators, Anissa Weinraub asked participants: If your community had everything you needed to fully live and thrive, what would it be like outside your door? What emerged became a tapestry of voices imagining peace, beauty, and community care — a ‘joyful blueprint’ for a future that can be realized.

“If you don’t know: Philadelphia is the poorest major city in this country. The homicide rate is at record levels, leaving heartbroken families and communities — disproportionately Black, immigrant and working class — to deal with relentless death and the fallout cycles of retaliation. Our economy constantly denies people the ability to live in dignity. And our police have proven that they are not the means of stopping violence or creating true public safety.

Given this stark reality, it is urgent to listen to the ideas of those who are most marginalized by the policy failures of our time. Their vision is a joyful blueprint for a transformed future.”

Read more and listen here

Community corner

This week’s question: What does your community need right now? Share links or ideas to support in the comments!

Leave a comment

• Applications for our workshop in partnership with The Hundredth Hill Artist Retreat in Bloomington, IN are now open! Visit this link for more information and apply before February 20, 2026.

• Want to spend a month in the Adirondacks this summer working on whatever you want? Apply for Blue Mountain Center’s residency program! Applications are due February 1st. Learn more and apply here.

• Vermont locals — join us for an evening of live, true stories told by Brattleboro-area community members as part of Retreat Farm’s America at 250 series. Get your tickets here! And if you’re interested in being a storyteller, visit this link for more information.

What’s new on Transom

The Art Of The Residency: What Audio Artists Need To Know About These Creative Sanctuaries by Avery Thompson

Maybe you’ve seen our various callouts in this newsletter to apply for this workshop or that residency. Maybe you’ve thought to yourself — what is a residency? What goes on there? How do you find one? What do you do while you’re there? Lucky for us, writer, producer, Transom alum, and overall residency expert Avery Thompson has written this extremely detailed rundown of everything you need to know. He answers questions big and small, and links to a ton of opportunities coming up. And it’s tailored to audio makers like us. Read it at the link below.

“It is not hyperbole to say that residencies have changed my life. They’ve deepened my understanding of art, of life, and of myself. They’ve challenged me in ways I didn’t know I needed, and blessed me with friends from all over the world that I can no longer imagine living without. They’ve given me the confidence to call myself an artist. And in spite of our industry and culture’s many recent attempts to extinguish artistic flames, artist residencies have provided the safe harbor creativity needs.

So please, as the audio artist that you are, I hope you’ll consider applying to one, and then another, and another.”

Read more here

More to explore:

• What would happen if you let the subject narrate the story? In this week’s Sound School, Rob Rosenthal investigates this news taboo.

Listen here

• Check out the January edition of , featuring an interview with former Blue Mountain Center resident Charlie West.

  Read All Hear

Tip of the week: radio for filmmakers and film for radio makers

Documentary filmmakers and documentary radio makers have a lot in common — both rely on strong interview skills, writing, and research. But there’s a ton that doesn’t transfer, and shifting between mediums requires a targeted approach.

Learning an entirely new method takes more than a scan of an article of course, but you need to start somewhere. If you’re a filmmaker thinking about experimenting in audio, check out this piece from Ben Shapiro, who talks about the distinctions between each:

“Unlike film, radio also allows a kind of unconstrained flexibility in editing and scene construction. Imagine being able to edit within a shot, down to the length of the pacing between words or phrases, and even the rhythm and movement of each scene action. In film, this kind of play with form is limited. In radio, it is straightforward and typical, and offers countless possibilities. The radio producer (who is also usually the cutter) becomes a kind of writer/director, marshaling the words and speech of others. What appears a straightforward portion of a finished piece — a well-shaped monologue, a direct scene that conveys the necessary information to advance the story or build character — was likely the result of much deliberation, construction, trials, re-shuffling, reconsiderations, often among a group of collaborators.”

Read more here

On the other hand, it seems like all of us audio people would be wise to learn a thing or two about video. The equipment can seem daunting when you’re used to a handheld mic and headphones, but Jay Allison’s list of notes to himself when he was working for ABC News Nightline makes clear the expansive possibilities of film once you get over that fear:

Jay’s Tips

• Just shoot, so you have a ton of ingredients later. While you’re shooting, you don’t know exactly how the scene will play out, so don’t pre-edit it in your shots and angles.

• Get details, so you don’t know where you are or who is who, e.g. I forgot to get really tight shots of a softball game. I should have gotten mitts, the ball in the air going different directions, feet running, a bat on the ground, someone picking up a bat, etc. etc. That stuff also helps you change direction to someone moving right-to-left to left-to-right.

• Keep both eyes open looking around. Look for the unexpected, e.g. Cut to cat sharpening its nails in a tense domestic situation.

• Get extraneous stuff when you’re doing a portrait to take the focus off the principal, e.g. in courthouse: shoot others coming and going, hands and feet, newspapers, court seal, gavel, view out the window, a door opening, closing.

• If doing a story about a PLACE, get lots of angles, different times of day, different weather. Shoot at night.

• For a large crowd scene, get good wide establishing shots from different angles, then get groups of 2 and 3 looking various ways, also shots looking down a line of people, and close shots, and extreme close-ups of details. Get listening shots. All these things allow you to use various angles, and switch the apparent left and right.

Read more here

From the archives

A Dancing Life by Mary Helen Montgomery

Spend four minutes this Friday afternoon delighting in the story of 91-year-old tap dance teacher Margaret Rogers. This piece was made by Mary Helen Montgomery for the first ever Transom Story Workshop in 2011.

Listen here

Community corner

This week’s question: what can radio makers steal from filmmakers and vice versa? Sound off (pun intended) in the comments!

Leave a comment

• There are a few hours left to apply for our workshop on Catalina Island. Apply here — applications close tonight at midnight.

• Midwesterners: Applications for our workshop in Bloomington, IN will open next week on January 16. Workshop attendees will spend the week on the pristine, rolling, green woodlands of the Hundredth Hill Artist Retreat’s grounds. Applications can be found here next week.

• Blue Mountain Center is inviting audio storytellers and documentarians to apply to their month-long residency program in the Adirondack Mountains! Spend a few weeks in the woods this summer in a gorgeous place, surrounded by incredible people, working on whatever you want. Applications are due February 1st. Learn more and apply here.

What’s new on Transom

13 Questions I’ll Never Get to Ask Alice Wong by Lulu Miller

Alice Wong was a disability activist, writer, MacArthur Award winner, audiophile, and cherished friend of Radiolab host and author Lulu Miller. In this moving tribute, Miller imagines a conversation she might’ve had with Wong before her passing in November, asking all the questions she wanted to ask and discussing the things that they left unsaid. Miller hunts for clues as to how Wong might’ve answered in the work she left behind, like Wong’s memoir The Year of the Tiger. “You made a list called, “My Grown-Ass Disabled Person Make-a-Wish List,” that included dreams of acting in a Star Trek series, jetting to Tokyo, feeding a koala, and ended with this: “Two words: ghost sex.” WTF did that mean, Alice????” Miller writes. “I’d been planning to ask, for real, in our interview.” Read the interview below, and check out the accompanying episode of Radiolab, “Moon Trees”.

12. What do you want us to do in your honor? How should we grieve you? How can we grieve you?

To this, you actually provided an answer: “Instead of flowers, donations can be made to your local animal shelter, food bank, library, or mutual aid collective.” You wrote this in an obituary for your future self. You imagined you lived to the year 2070. You moved to the moon, started a punk band (named it, so dorkily, “Rage Against the Ableism”). You messed around at all hours of the night. We organized a multidimensional interstellar memorial on your behalf.

Yesterday, I took a run along Lake Michigan. Sunday, November 16, 2025. The Earth’s second full day without you. I got to my turnaround point a little before sunset. The sun was licking the waves in a porny way, making the freshwater look salty.

No one else was there. I wondered where you were. I pictured you zipping up toward that low sun. Your energy. Crips in Space, you called your imaginary space society in your imaginary obituary. You died too soon. We didn’t deserve you. I started this letter with my boob because that’s how I actually started it; I didn’t take it out because you always asked about my kids, because you always talked about the body.

More to explore:

• Our first 2026 dispatch from The Listeners is here! We present to you: “Going, Going, Gone” from the good folks at Interlochen Public Radio. Here’s what producer Ellie Katz had to say about making this piece:

  It feels so good to listen to people who sound like where they’re from describe the place they’re from. You don’t hear that a lot on public radio anymore: different accents, cadences, sayings, beliefs. Those things are what I love most about stories produced by Transom and Rumble Strip. I wanted to try doing that.

  I first called Nancy Tulgestka in the fall for a news feature on northern Michigan’s sawmills after a big storm. I liked how fast she talked and I liked her raspy voice. She told me she couldn’t help me with the story I was working on because she was auctioning off her sawmill later that fall. I asked if I could come make a story for our podcast about the Great Lakes region called Points North. I didn’t know what to expect and I didn’t know how to make that kind of story, but I figured the sound of the auctioneer would at least be interesting.
  
  I kept my mic on Nancy the whole morning. She was anxious and couldn’t stay still for long. It was hard for her to listen to the auctioneers rattle through a list of what had essentially been her livelihood, and she kept leaving the auction. That constant in-and-out became the structure of the story. It’s a day in the life of Nancy on a really, really hard day of her life. It’s also a single moment in what’s been a long, slow decline for family-owned sawmills in the northwoods region. One of my editors told me the story reminded him of being at a funeral. I still don’t know how to feel about that.

  Listen here

• Rob Rosenthal thinks your New Year’s Resolution should be to attend a Transom Traveling Workshop. To help you along, this week’s Sound School features two stellar stories produced by new and emerging audio producers at a Transom workshop in Nashville back in 2019.

  Listen here

Tip of the week: navigating stuckness

Jonathan Harris was stuck. The storyteller, painter, web visionary, data wiz, diarist, and artist-of-many-mediums had reached several peaks of success in his career so far. But none of them saved him from the inevitable periods of stuckness in between. “I thought of my life as a series of chapters,” Harris writes. “And I realized that each time I’d been majorly stuck, it meant that a life chapter was ending, and that a new one needed to start — like the stuckness was always a signal indicating imminent change.”

In his 2014 Transom manifesto, Harris writes about a few of his life’s chapters, the pivots he made, and how to navigate those uncertain, in between times before the imminent change.

I got good at spotting these teachable moments and condensing them into little narrative nuggets, so that others could digest them. I began to understand that principles delivered out of context will never be remembered, and that telling people the story of how you came to hold a given principle is better — so it’s like they lived through it themselves. I got obsessed with the potential of stories to communicate wisdom, but at the same time, I began to understand that really, you can’t teach wisdom — it has to be won by experience. Stories can alert you to the existence of certain truths, but you never really embody those truths until you reach them on your own.

Read more here

From the archives

Kidnap Radio by Annie Correal

Annie Correal’s father was kidnapped in Colombia in 1999. Abductions were common at that time, and civilians were often taken off the streets and disappeared for ransom by the FARC — the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Families of those who went missing started radio programs like “Voices of Kidnapping”, broadcasting messages in hopes that their loved ones would hear them and hold out hope for their rescue. When her father went missing, Correal and her family sent out messages to him via the radio, and he heard them. In this 2010 piece for Transom, she tells her father’s story, as well as those of a few others who weren’t as fortunate.

Read more and listen here

Community corner

This week’s question: it’s a new year, and one of our resolutions is to increase engagement and connection in the comments of Over the Transom! What kinds of stuff would you be interested in discussing here? Is there anything you wish this newsletter would do more of / less of? Let us know in the comments, or by replying to this email!

Leave a comment

From California to Michigan and beyond, we helped usher more than forty new storytellers into the wonderful world of audio. Their workshop pieces were aired at live local listening events that brought communities together for evenings of delight. Some were published on local NPR stations. We can’t wait to hear everything our 2026 cohorts make as we bring the traveling workshop to even more places (thanks, Hindenburg for sponsoring!) — including going to Moab, UT, and Bombay Beach, CA, for the first time, and Bloomington, IN, for the first time in a long time.

In 2025, we also kicked off our Science Storytelling Workshops. We started this initiative with the goal of helping to combat misinformation and distrust in science through human-centered storytelling. With the help of collaborators like the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the Marine Biological Laboratory, the Woodwell Climate Research Center, Schmidt Sciences, and The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, we trained twenty-six incredible research scientists in live storytelling and helped them shape vulnerable, first-person, human stories about themselves and their work. Below are a few pieces from our most recent workshop in Washington, D.C. that are really worth a listen:

We had a successful first summer with residents at Blue Mountain Center in the Adirondacks (and applications are open now if a free month in a beautiful place to work on a project sounds useful to you!).

Transom has deep roots in public media, and 2025 was a dark year for the industry. As sources of funding and infrastructure disappear for us and so many others across the public media ecosystem, we remain steadfast in our commitment to fostering the art of audio storytelling. We believe quite deeply that this sort of storytelling has immense power to help heal our broken world. We’re always looking for new and different avenues to educate, expand access, and connect our communities in the unique way that this craft can. This will continue in 2026, and your continued support and participation makes us feel hopeful for the future, rather than despairing. One way you can join us next year is with The Listeners — a movement to make short, hyperlocal, documentary-style portraits that help us listen to one another again.

In the new year we’ll be back with guides and other training materials to help you learn about this style of documentary. And our inboxes are open — please submit any work you’d like us to consider for publication at the link below:

Submit your work

Thank you so much for being a part of the Transom community. We hope you have a wonderful holiday season, and we can’t wait to continue the work in 2026.

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• Today is the last day to apply to spend a week in the red rock canyons of Moab, UT. You have until tonight at midnight — don’t miss your chance! The workshop will take place March 15 – 22, 2026. Apply here.

• Applications are now open for Catalina Island, taking place April 19 – 26, 2026! Spend a spring week making audio in this beautiful seaside community. Apply here by January 9, 2026.

• Keep an eye on our Traveling Workshops page for the remaining cities and their applications.

What’s new on Transom

Introducing: The Listeners

We’re inviting everyone and anyone who makes audio to respond to our call to listen. The idea is a simple one: we want you to go out and make hyperlocal, documentary-style portraits that help us listen to one another again.

Inspired by the work of Studs Terkel, Erica Heilman of the Rumble Strip podcast, Humans of New York, Radio Diaries, and others, The Listeners is a return to public radio’s original ethos: highlighting stories that appreciate the poetry of everyday life.

We’ll publish more guidance in the coming weeks, but the heart of it is this: we hope to promote stories that are real, rooted, artful, and true. Stories with attention to regular, often unheard people from our communities. Stories about all the unimportant things that happen between the important things.

Here’s what Transom’s Executive Director Sophie Crane has to say about the project:

Our hope for The Listeners project is to inject poetry into the airwaves (and the airpods). It’s to — for a moment, at least — set aside stories that are national in scope for stories that are much, much smaller, but no less important. When you listen to a story from this series, we want you to feel a deep sense of place.

For more information on the project and how to join us, visit the link below:

Join us

More to explore on Transom.org:

• The latest Sound School episode revisits a conversation between Rob Rosenthal and producer Jazmine T. Green about expanding the way we talk about audio stories.

  Listen here

• Take a listen to some of the stories high schoolers told Sam Broun for her Small True Things series.

  Listen here

From The Listeners

Old La Sal by Scott Carrier

Scott Carrier has always been a singular voice, making radio in a style that is deeply resonant and unlike anything else you’ll hear. Putting on headphones and listening to one of his stories is like being sucked into a new world. Which is why there is no one better to kick off The Listeners with this inaugural story.

Carrier is building a house on the sparsely populated land of Old La Sal in Utah. He’s been trying to figure out how to live in a place so remote, recording it all as he goes. He talked to his neighbors and asked them questions; letting them take the reins of telling the story of the place. The result is a meditative, human, slice-of-life piece, and a perfect taste of what we’re trying to do with The Listeners.

I knew what I wanted — people who sounded like the place where they live. This place, Old La Sal, has almost no sound of its own. The mountain is huge, but silent. So how do people sound when they talk about what it’s like to live here? I hoped to convey, through human voices, what you can see by standing here, what it feels like to be here.

My narration had to be minimal, and yet it is my story, so I had to tell it, somehow. Finally, I realized I had to say something about how my own reason for being there, for wanting to build a hideout, was something I shared in common with my neighbors. Not everybody, for sure, but many. I had to talk a bit about my own trauma problem. And this gives the story some structure. It sounds easy, but it took me a while to figure it out.

I’d like to go back to the idea of finding people who sound like where they live, because it’s something we can do, on the radio, or whatever, by listening. What we imagine by listening may not be accurate, but it feels whole or full, or true.

Listen to Old La Sal

Tip of the week: five heretical sermons

In 2016, Transom Founder Jay Allison delivered a speech on the opening night of the Third Coast International Audio Festival. It was a ‘provocation’; a call for producers to push boundaries and think outside of conventions. There’s the stuff that works, sure, but then there’s the stuff that only you can make. And it has value too, Allison said.

We hope you’ll get out into the world and join the movement we’re starting with The Listeners. Before you do, read this piece. It offers some inspiration for how to do it and the kind thing we’re looking for.

Sermon 1: Don’t Ask Permission

You want to get on the air, be on a show, have your story out there — but as you make your pitches, keep something precious in reserve and don’t pitch it. Just make it. Don’t even really plan it or predict what the narrative or sound will be. Just follow it and see what happens.

Be dogged in the expedition. The joy of this work is the exploration and discovery — both of which are antithetical to pitching, which even for the best of us, can inadvertently cripple the imagination by determining your trip before you walk it.

Walk in the dark, microphone extended, and don’t ask permission.

Sermon 2: Be Odd

Here’s the convention: Listen to the work you like or shows you want to be on, and then work in that style. Okay. But also: Don’t produce in someone else’s mold; don’t subscribe to someone else’s existing theory of narrative, musical tone, structural traditions, in a voice we’ve already heard. Find a new one. Make something we’ve never heard before.

Sure you can copy, and learn from the exercise, but sometimes: Be a poet. Be odd. Stick out.

I miss the whacko fringe in public media. It’s important, because the edges can move the center. So, nourish the Fringe in yourself.

And, while you’re at it, as useful as group edits can be, choose not to submit to them sometimes. Groups can make things that sound like groups made them. The edges are worn off, the individual fingerprint gone.

How fine it is to see someone out on a limb by themselves. That’s how new things happen — by following a seemingly crazy impulse. You will fall and fail sometimes, but it can be important, for yourself and for others who witness your risk. Once in a while, fail nobly, on your own.

Read the other sermons here

Community corner

This week’s question: What do you think about The Listeners? Do you have questions about the project? Drop them in the comments!

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