The Takeaway

Our host and our staff have remained dedicated to one thing: bringing you, the listeners, a quality news and information show. 

Unfortunately, in February, The Takeaway staff found out that WNYC executives planned to cancel the show. The last day of the show was June 2nd, 2023. No official press release or external communications from NYPR mentions the end of the show, so in this episode, we address it head on with our former executive producer and current Executive Editor for GBH News, Lee Hill.

Then, to celebrate the end of the show, we heard from the incredible people who have been making the show, both past and present.

We want to say to all of you, thank you for being apart of the conversation and our community. The work of public radio is daunting, challenging, and often unrewarded. So, that's why we want you to remember this podcast as our final farewell. 

Rounding out our Producer Appreciation Weeks, intern David Escobar and host Melissa Harris-Perry look back at some of the stories he’s produced for The Takeaway:

Does The Indian Child Welfare Act Hang in Peril?; An Enduring American Pastime: The State Fair; Working Out the Four-Day Work Week; Healing Trauma Through Nature in Wildcat; How A Doll Became a Queer Icon in M3GAN

"David Escobar is a senior at Fordham University, double majoring in Journalism and Digital Technology & Emerging Media. His first memories of public radio started back in his hometown of San Francisco, where he remembers constantly listening to his local NPR-affiliate KQED in the car with his family. David began at WFUV in 2022, anchoring the midday newscasts at the station.

Now David hosts the “Fordham Conversations'' public affairs program, where he taps into the Fordham University community to discuss and uncover issues that impact our world. His passion lies in political and cultural issues around the country, especially in New York City.

David also regularly hosts WFUV’s “What’s What,” the station’s daily news podcast."

David Gebel spent many years working as a singer and actor, and in between shows would work as a temp at various corporate jobs.

Little did he know that all those acquired office skills would help him end up at WNYC, initially supporting Radiolab, and then expanding his work to also include supporting The Takeaway and the podcast More Perfect.

David focuses on the paperwork, the scheduling and the business support tasks, so that everyone else can focus on making great audio, but David was also incremental in shaping our "Aging While Queer" special series project and a number of other listener-involved segments. We are sending him lots of love and appreciation for all the incredible work he's done on The Takeaway.

"Atlanta influences everything." 

As part of our Producer Appreciation Weeks, Host Melissa Harris-Perry talks with the professionals behind the scenes who bring you the stories you love. 

Digital producer Zachary Bynum is a resident of Atlanta who's worked remotely with The Takeaway for the last 2 years. He produces, edits, and publishes all of our social media content, webpages, and podcasts.

Zachary has also produced some enterprising coverage on the show, so today we are revisiting some of his favorite segments he produced:

Cop City; Takeaway Report: A Teen Vogue State of the (Youth)ion; Dragphobia is on The Rise; Exploring Consumer Protection: The Kroger-Albertsons Merger; Black.Queer.Rising.:Moore Kismet (they/them) & George M. Johson (they/them)

You can follow Zachary on Instagram and Twitter: @__zaby (2 underscores)

You can pitch him here: [email protected] 

Subscribe: Linktree: zabywrites 

As part of our goodbye to The Takeaway, Melissa Harris-Perry sits down with the beautiful folks behind the scenes who make the show happen every day! Today, we're highlighting the work of producer,  Monica Morales-Garcia, by listening back to a few of her favorite segments:

"Black Maternal Health Week Comes to an End""Hospice Care Is Plagued by Exploitation""Brittney Johnson is Spellbinding""Keyla Monterroso Mejia is Taking the Lead""Now, Who Speaks [non-English]?

"

 Monica joined The Takeaway in 2022, after a year-long audio fellowship at the Peabody Award-winning show Latino USA, the longest running national Latino news and cultural public radio program. Where she produced long-form narrative stories like, "Chisme: An Ancestral Language,"  and "The Little Black Dress: A Hidden History."

As an independent journalist and producer Monica has worked on, 30 Años: An Oral History of Latino USA, and has produced and fact-checked at Our Body Politic, the public radio show created and hosted Farai Chideya.  

As part of our farewell to The Takeaway, host Melissa Harris-Perry sits down with the people behind the scenes who make The Takeaway happen. Today, we're taking a look at some of the work done by Cat Sposato while here on the show. Some of her favorite segments include:

Unpacking the Parkland Shooter VerdictA Conversation with MacArthur Fellow Kiese LaymonHurricanes, Puerto Rico and Bad Bunny's "El Apagón"The Polarizing Popularity of Pickleball

Cat joined The Takeaway team in September 2022, while in the final semester of her Master's program at New York University's Journalism Institute. Previously, she's worked at NPR Music and their Alt.Latino podcast, and covered entertainment for NPR's Weekend All Things Considered. Her work has been featured in V Magazine and VMAN. In her spare time, she runs a Substack newsletter called Pop-Closure, where she rants and raves about all of the moments across our culture that she cannot get over. 

Originally from Passaic, New Jersey, Cat is passionate about telling the stories of communities like hers. 

You can find more of her work on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter at @CatVeryPopular and at catmariesposato.com

We continue our Producer Appreciation Weeks with Host Melissa Harris-Perry, who peels back the curtain and speaks with the talented folks that make The Takeaway every day. Today we're highlighting some of Morgan Givens' favorite segments produced during his time with The Takeaway:

What Makes a Black ManElectric Literature Editor-in-Chief Denne Michele Norris Makes History and Makes SpaceAward Winning Poet Danez Smith Rises to the TopWhy Titus Kaphar Won't "Shut Up and Paint"Level Up: Accessibility in Gaming

Morgan joined The Takeaway team in late 2022, and initially made his way into radio in a roundabout way. He spent years as a police officer in Washington, D.C., where he helped rewrite the training curriculum for the D.C. Police Academy before leaving the department for the non-profit sector, where he did work to eliminate sexual violence in the nation's prisons. Eventually, he interned with WAMU and NPRs 1A before becoming a producer for the program. 

Morgan is a graduate of the Transom Storytelling Workshop, Neon Hum and Sony's Editor Bootcamp, and is an AIR New Voices Scholar and Mentor. He’s been named one of Variety’s Storytellers to Watch, has been featured in The Washington Post, NPR, Buzzfeed, NPRs Invisibilia, Crooked Media’s Work Appropriate and is frequently called upon to host The Moth storytelling events and perform for The Moth Mainstage in venues around the country. A frequent audio conference panelist, he's also spoken at the AFI Documentary Film Festival about the art of creating great audio.

Morgan is also the creator of the award winning and critically acclaimed hopepunk fiction podcast Flyest Fables. Currently repped by CAA, he's hard at work on his debut memoir.

Find him occasionally on Twitter at @Optimus_Mo and at MorganGivens.com

As part of our farewell to The Takeaway, Melissa Harris-Perry sits down with the folks behind the scenes who make the show happen every day. Today, we're highlighting the work of Mary Steffenhagen — an award-winning investigative journalist and producer who joined The Takeaway just over a year ago — by listening back to a few of her favorite segments:

• "When Women’s Survival is Criminalized" and "Corrections in Ink"

• "A Culture of Abuse and Cover-Ups in the Southern Baptist Convention"

• "How Trains Left Indelible Tracks on American Culture"

• "Music In Their Own Words: Sylvan Esso"

• "The Realities of Race in Assisted Reproduction"

• "Human Composting is Legal in New York—Now What?"

Mary Steffenhagen's original reporting on labor organizing, social activism, and the political movement behind homeschooling has earned awards from the Sidney Hillman Foundation (Hillman Award), the Newswomen's Club of New York (Front Page Award) and multiple national student journalism associations. She has reported for outlets including Teen Vogue, City Limits and Chalkbeat. She was also a Fulbright scholar in the 2022 Berlin Capital Program and previously interned at Salon and Coda Media, where she helped produce a weekly news podcast. She earned a masters' in investigative and audio journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY in 2021. 

Find her on Twitter @marynotmerry__ and at www.marysteffenhagen.com

We continue our Producer Appreciation Weeks with Host Melissa Harris-Perry, who peels back the curtain and speaks with the talented folks that make The Takeaway every day.

Producer Ryan Wilde got his first taste of radio in an unlikely place: 104.5 Ice Radio in Antarctica.  After beginning his public radio career as an intern, and then producer for The Brian Lehrer Show, he also had a stop in Illinois to produce The 21st, a daily, statewide show produced by Illinois Public Media. After returning to New York City, he joined The Takeaway team in 2022.

Ryan revisits some of his favorite segments, and shares highlights from two series he's spearheaded, from his past year producing for The Takeaway:

"Downballot" Series"23 Mayors in 2023" SeriesMason, Tennessee is Fighting for its FutureA Fight For Survival: The "Salmon People" of the Columbia RiverRyans Only at the Ryan Meetup (and Definitely No Bryans)

Find Ryan on Twitter at @RyanAndrewWilde

As part of our Producer Appreciation Weeks, Host Melissa Harris-Perry talks with the professionals behind the scenes who bring you the stories you value and the shows you love. 

Producer Katerina Barton revisits some of her favorite segments that she's produced throughout the past two years on The Takeaway:

Katerina joined The Takeaway as an intern in 2020 and came back as a temp producer in 2021, before she became an associate producer in 2022. She has produced nearly 300 segments for The Takeaway. Prior to joining the Takeaway, Katerina earned a duel master's degree at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism in Global & Joint Program Studies: Journalism & European/Mediterranean Studies Institute, worked as a reporter at a weekly paper in central Texas, and spent a year teaching English on a small island in Indonesia as part of a Fulbright English Teaching Fellowship.

Find her on Twitter @KaterinaBarton.