NPR's Deborah Amos and Noah Adams recall their haunting, must-hear documentary from 1981 about mass suicide at "Jonestown," Guyana.

I’ve taught radio storytelling for 15 years which means I’ve shepherded many pieces. Lots, like four or five hundred.

I’ve aired a bunch of student work on HowSound over the years but I’ve hardly made a dent in the pile. So, this episode marks the first of what I suspect will be many episodes to come where I present good student stories, well told, along with a few thoughts on what I think stands out about the pieces. I’m calling this one “Buried Treasures.” (For full disclosure, the title is a complete and utter rip-off of Sound Opinions, which does the same thing from time to time.)

The first story features a series of blistering rides with a pizza delivery guy in Portland, Maine. The piece is called It’s Pizza Time and was produced by Alex Malmude. Alex was a student at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in 2009. These days she makes clothes for a living, most recently swimsuits. She told me that on her way to Burning Man this year, she recorded prairie dog “chirrups.” Radio never leaves your blood.

The second piece is a complete turnaround in terms of tone — Under Water. It’s a story of personal transformation as told by a photographer who takes pictures of water lilies. It comes from Brigitta Greene, a Transom Story Workshop student in 2013. Brigitta now works as a producer for Minnesota Public Radio.

“The Movie-Goer” is my third selection. The humor in this story is so dry it’s practically a desert. The Movie-Goer was produced in a week this summer at a Transom Traveling Workshop. Andrew Leland is the producer. He’s also the host of The Organist podcast and a contributing editor for The Believer magazine.

Last is an ear-bruising story about an internationally known grindcore punk rock record label in Hyannis, Massachusetts — a surprising location, hence the title of the piece Punk in the Unlikeliest Places. Mary Decker produced this for WCAI’s Creative Life series when she was a student at the Transom Story Workshop in 2014. Mary now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, where she manages a vegan restaurant and produces radio stories.

Rob digs into an archive of good stories, well told and features four by his former students.

One of the most important parts of the workshops I teach at Transom is listening. We listen to radio stories at the beginning of nearly every class. Listening is essential for developing a critical ear.

While my playlist of stories has evolved over the years, one stalwart is “Dead Animal Man” by Ira Glass. It’s a profile of Clarence Hicks, a Baltimore city employee who, as the title suggests, picks up dead animals for the Department of Sanitation.

“Dead Animal Man” is so full of radio goodness; I can’t imagine I would ever not play it in class. The story prompts a lot of conversation about interviewing, field recording, note taking, writing, structure…. In short, it’s excellent for teaching. And, besides, it’s a lot of fun to listen to.

On this edition of HowSound, I dissect “Dead Animal Man.” I feature the story in its entirety, then go back through it minute by minute and talk about what Ira’s doing in terms of production and storytelling.

This episode originally aired in 2008 on Saltcast, the predecessor to HowSound. It received a lot of positive response then so I thought it deserved a re-airing.

Rob Rosenthal combs through Ira Glass's piece "Dead Animal Man" minute by minute pointing out all of its radio goodness.

One of the best questions a journalist can ask is: Really? That one simple question launched Karen Duffin into a story that took her over a year to research and produce — “Nazi Summer Camp,” Karen’s first story for Radiolab.

One day, Karen’s dad made an off-the-cuff remark about German POW camps in Idaho during WWII and she said “Really dad? Are you remembering this right?” He was. And off she went.

Karen interviewed experts, guards, prisoners, more experts, more guards…. She even spent a month sifting through documents at the National Archives. She became a kind-of walking Wikipedia page on the subject. Eventually, all of that information had to be whittled down to a half-hour radio story. Karen’s producer, Kelsey Padgett, said “If a gallon of water is Karen’s knowledge of this subject, I think we probably drank a small, eight-ounce glass from the gallon of water.”

Karen and Kelsey trace the fascinating and arduous path from a drop of water (Karen’s dad’s anecdote) to a gallon (Karen’s expertise) to an 8 oz. glass (the Radiolab story) on this edition of HowSound.

*Featured image courtesy of the Aliceville Museum, Inc., Aliceville, AL

How do you find the story when know too much and have hours and hours of tape? Reporter Karen Duffin and Radiolab producer Kelsey Padgett trace the path to "Nazi Summer Camp."