Transom Podcast

Back to “A Trio of Podcasts”

Read Curtis Fox’s Manifesto: “On Podcasting”

A Favorite Episode of Zach and Mercedes’: Life Savers

In this episode we asked five people the question “who saved your life?” This is the show that we come back to in our minds most often. In it we both find what is most essential about the show– the stories are interesting and engaging, but there is also an amazing level of honesty. When we finished this episode we both felt humbled by having these very personal stories shared with us.

About Dial-A-Stranger

Wouldn’t it be great if you were walking down the street and your phone rang? You know what would be even better? If, when you picked up the phone, it wasn’t a telemarketer or someone calling to ask you about your expired car warranty, but two people genuinely interested in your day and the stories you have to tell.

That’s what Dial-A-Stranger tries to do–interject a little bit of art, mystery and general excitement into your day. The hosts take questions from listeners, and attempt to find answers to them by asking strangers over the telephone. The results are compiled into a weekly podcast.

Mercedes Martinez and Zachary Kent started the show to highlight the stories of everyday people and to be the excitement they wanted to see in the world. In the process of producing the show they have talked to people about a wide range of diverse subjects including tiki conventions, egg donation, Disneyland and bounty hunting. This knowledge would make them much more interesting at the dinner parties they still aren’t invited to.

Tech Info for Dial-A-Stranger

The show is produced using a Mac Mini connected to an Alesis 8 channel FireWire mixer with a JK Audio Broadcast Host for the telephone interface and two Digital Reference DR-VX1 microphones. It is recorded and edited using Audacity. A Tascam HD-P2 is used for field recording, with sincere thanks to Transom for their tool reviews that lead to this choice.

Related Links

Dial-A-Stranger

“Running From Myself” on PRX

About “Running From Myself” from Louis

I learned about 826NYC when their staff came to my high school to work with my English class. The goal was to publish a collection of our short stories. 826NYC approached me at the end of my senior year to ask if I would be interested in telling my story in a radio piece. I met Anthony who gave me a mini-disc recorder and a microphone and told me to record anything I thought would work for the piece.

“Running from Myself” begins after I give up my negative lifestyle. I question whether my days of mugging have permanently stopped. And I look at my fear of losing many of the positive things I’ve struggled to gain since I stepped on a brighter path. The piece is my attempt to establish if I’ve legitimately changed. And so, I talk to various people about the old me.

Picking the recordings that would make the final cut was time consuming. Many of the conversations were spontaneous, resulting in a mixture of both significant and unnecessary material. The passing of time made the shape of the project clearer, which made editing simpler.

Piecing this together was an emotional time for me. Hearing my friend express her disappointment in me was hard to swallow. There were days where I didn’t want to hear the recordings I’d made to avoid feeling depressed. There were many cuts and changes in what I wanted to say throughout the editing process, because each time I spoke to someone, I learned something about myself. I can honestly say that working on this piece with Anthony and 826NYC was a growing process for me which I enjoyed and am grateful for.

About “Running From Myself” from Anthony Mascorro

I work for 826NYC, a non-profit writing and tutoring center in Brooklyn. We operate out of the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. The store is basically set up like a hardware store, but for superheroes. We sell all kinds of superhero supplies, like capes, cans of Anti-Matter, blobs, unstable molecules, etc. It serves to get kids inside the space and interested, and it also generates a portion of our annual budget to run the educational programming. One of the best things it does, I think, is that it lets the kids know in a very direct way that it’s possible to make kind of a lifelong practice out of honoring your imagination, being creative, and entertaining yourself as opposed to always turning to someone else for entertainment. You know, those things don’t have to end once you grow up and decide to do something productive, like run a tutoring center. It also really does get kids inside and doing homework, a lot of whom would not otherwise seek out the help that they need.

We first met Louis during the In-Schools program he mentioned above. Louis wound up contributing a few personal essays that were really well written and compelling, so when we decided to try a radio project with a high school student, it seemed natural to ask him if he was interested. He agreed, and we decided to use one of his essays as a jumping off point.

We got set up with an Mbox, Pro Tools, and a mini-disc recorder that Louis took with him to conduct the interviews you’ll hear in the piece. We really kind of figured everything out as we went along – not so much the technical stuff, which I was fairly familiar with, but more how to approach the story Louis wanted to tell through the medium of radio. Almost all of the radio classes we’d run at 826NYC up until now had produced fictional dramas and narratives. Neither Louis nor I had any idea how to deal with something that was, for lack of a better term, real. So, we figured, “real” means “interviews.” It was a good starting point, anyway.

Over the course of several months,