In the middle of Amelia's family, there's a silence. She wants to crack it open, so she starts learning to sing. 

Voice Lessons is a special feature from Signal Hill, a new, independent audio magazine. You can listen to more Signal Hill stories at www.signalhill.fm or wherever you get podcasts. Sign up to support Signal Hill through their membership program (there are perks!) here. 

Voice Lessons was reported and produced by Amelia Schonbek, with sound design and additional production by Jackson Roach. It was edited by Annie Rosenthal and Liza Yeager. 

Get lost in someone else’s life. From a mysterious childhood spent on the run, to a courageous escape from domestic violence, each season of Personally invites you to explore the human experience in all its complexity, one story — or season — at a time.

In the latest season of Personally: Creation Myth, Helena does not want kids. Her husband believes she’ll change her mind—she has so much love to give, she would be a perfect mother. That will never happen, she tells him. Again. And again. Until one day, he leaves.

In the silence, doubt starts rushing in. So she asks her close friends, her mother, her sister, even a perfect stranger—did she make the right decision? What is the purpose of life? Center your pleasure, says one friend. Go for adventure, says another, and isn’t parenthood the biggest adventure of all? Be true to yourself, says a father who regrets his decision. But the voice she needs to hear is her own. More episodes of Creation Myth are available wherever you get your podcasts and here: https://link.mgln.ai/CMxLM

Story 1: Safwat has A LOT of anxiety for his daughter's future: that she won’t learn enough Urdu to be able to talk with her grandmother while she’s still alive. That she’ll grow embarrassed by his accent. That she’ll bear the brunt of climate change. Now that she’s 7 years old, Safwat confesses some of these worries to his daughter and tries to uncover her own anxieties for the future.

Story 2: Julie used to hum in class as a kid to soothe her anxieties. Until her teacher complained that Julie’s humming was distracting the other students. So she found herself in a doctor’s office, being diagnosed with Tourette’s. And there, the doctor pointed to Julie’s mom and said “your daughter has it… because you have it.” Twenty years later, when Julie’s ticks reappear following a great loss, Julie and her mom talk about this shared connection.

Featuring Julie Piñero and Safwat Saleem. To see Safwat’s anxiety charts, go to: safwatsaleem.com

Talia is half-Greek and bisexual. But her Greek and queer sides have been forced to stay hidden from each other.

Her Greek grandad doesn’t know that she’s bi and keeping these two parts of herself compartmentalized has been taking a toll. So Talia comes up with a plan: to unite her two halves by dressing up as a Greek man on stage in full drag.

We follow Talia as she choreographs her first ever drag king performance, complete with costume reveals and lessons in homoerotic Greek history, as an attempt to connect more deeply with her cultural heritage and with herself.

Featuring Talia Augustidis.

Original Music by David Drury.

Story 1: When Mehran Mansoori was a kid, he would run home after school each day to be with the homing pigeons that his father kept in the backyard. He would hold them gently in his hands, feeling the softness of their feathers and warmth of their little bodies. When they flew up into the sky, he would spend hours watching them swoop and dive. Until one day, everything changed.

Story 2: On July 29th, 1969, just after midnight, Hiroshi Yagi was transporting rice up on Mount Naeba when he heard a strange howl. According to Yagi, it couldn’t have been anything but a wolf. But nobody believed him. Because wolves in Japan do not exist. They’d all gone extinct over a hundred years earlier. Still, Yagi never doubted what he’d heard that night and he would spend the next fifty years trying to prove that the lost Japanese wolf is still out there. And then one rainy day in October, he comes face to face with a mysterious dog-like creature.

Story 1: For the past few months, Chris and his partner Beth have been crying. A lot. What’s triggering the waterworks? Reading Dr. Seuss’ “Oh, The Places You’ll Go” to their toddler. It gets Chris and Beth weepy every... single... time. Eavesdropping on home recordings, we join Chris and Beth on their absurdist quest to get through this kids’ book without crying.

Story 2: Six years ago, Boen spent time in a psychiatric ward while in the midst of a mental health crisis. His shoes were removed—no shoelaces to hang himself with—and he was given a pair of grippy socks “so that I don’t slip and hit my head on the linoleum, which I suppose is another way to kill myself if I really, really wanted to.” Later that year, he meets Grace, who has spent time in a psych ward, too, and they bond over those sticky socks. Now, as Grace experiences a new wave of panic attacks, Boen reflects on life in mental health limbo and the experience of being on both sides of the psych ward door.

Featuring Chris Attaway and Boen Wang.

Story 1: Bob and Matt have a friendship ritual. For the past 24 years, they’ve been writing each other threatening letters. Until one of them suddenly stops.

Story 2: Linda discovers that the preschool she went to at the university her parents worked at was cheaper “because of the experiments." It turns out that the psychology department was studying Linda and her four-year-old classmates from behind two-way mirrors, examining their social behaviours as they played, like a little toddler Truman show. Linda needs to know: What secrets did those psychologists observe about her all those years ago?

Featuring Bob Kotyk, Matt Phelps, and Linda Besner.

Not long after Peter’s mother Mara dies, a stranger messages him on Facebook. His name is Francesco and he says that before she met Peter’s dad, Mara was the love of his life.

Francesco starts sending Peter poetry and links to love songs, describing his romance with Peter’s mom in more and more detail. And the woman in his stories is nothing like the mother Peter knew.

So Peter reaches out to Francesco for a phone call. A reflection on life’s sliding doors and how we can never truly know all the versions of the people we love. 

Featuring Peter Lang-Stanton. Original Music by David Drury.

Xander gets facial feminization surgery (FFS). As she searches for a face that will finally make her feel safer and prettier, she wrestles with cis and trans beauty standards, insecurities and self-hate. 

Episode Credits: Produced by Xander Adams, Cristal Duhaime and Mira Burt-Wintonick. Sound design by Cristal Duhaime, mix engineered by Xander Adams. 

Original Music by David Drury.

A new season of Love Me is coming. Real stories of real, complicated relationships. How does it feel when your dead mom’s Italian ex-lover won’t stop writing you? Or when you try to connect with your queer identity by.... doing drag as your grandpa? Or when people try to silence the one thing that makes you calm?

Join host Lu Olkowski for brand new episodes starting October 6.