Transom Podcast

About Kidnap Radio

I was 19 when my father was kidnapped in Colombia. It was 1999. My mother came to my college campus to deliver the news and I flew to Bogota to be with my family for a few weeks. (My mother is American, my father’s Colombian and they divorced when I was 5.) After that, except for brief trips for a wedding and a funeral, I didn’t go back to the country where I was born until I traveled there to report this piece in the spring of 2009.

I was able to make the trip thanks to Jay Allison. I met Jay in Woods Hole through Ibby Caputo, a dear friend and a former intern at Atlantic Public Media. After hearing part of the story of my father’s kidnapping and rescue, Jay suggested I undertake this project and guided me along the way.

I asked my father to meet me in Bogota for a long weekend in April so that I could interview him. I had heard bits and pieces about the kidnapping in the intervening years – when I would visit our family– but in the course of our interviews I realized I had known very little about what he’d endured: All I knew was our family’s side of the ordeal.

My father’s kidnapping began on November 22, 1999 and ended August 13, 2000. He was kidnapped by the FARC and kept in 38 different places, spending the first months of his kidnapping alone, with only his guards and a radio, for company.

After talking to my dad, I went on my own to the radio station in Bogota, Caracol Radio, that had sent out messages from my family to my father, and continues to send messages to hostages from their families every Saturday night from midnight to 6 a.m. The show is called Voces del Secuestro, or Voices of Kidnapping. (There are several other stations in Colombia that send messages out on other days of the week). The host, Herbin Hoyos, is a journalist who started this program in 1994, after he was briefly kidnapped and scolded by another hostage for not using the radio to reach out to hostages.

Since then, Hoyos has broadcast messages from the family members of the kidnapped every weekend, despite threats from the FARC and assassination attempts (the most recent sent him into exile in Europe this fall). Today, around 50 messages go out on every show; at the height of the kidnapping craze, there were as many as 100, much shorter messages.

As I sat in the radio station listening to the messages, which are somewhere between prayers and diary entries, I noticed that many of the people calling in to the station were talking to relatives who had been gone for several years, sometimes for as long as a decade. Like my dad, they were kidnapped because the FARC and other groups, including right-wing paramilitaries and gangs with no political agenda, had made kidnapping a major industry in Colombia. Unlike my dad, these people hadn’t come back.

Some were almost certainly alive, like the soldiers and policemen held as political prisoners in the war between the FARC and the Colombian military. But others whose names were on the radio – civilians, by and large – were missing and unaccounted for.

Their families became the focus of my piece. Thanks to Maria Isabel Campos, the producer of Voices of Kidnapping, I was able to reach more than a dozen of these families in Bogota, including Ismael and Amalia Marquez. This couple has been keeping track of all the kidnapped families since their son, Enrique, was kidnapped in 1999. When I asked Amalia for help reaching others, she took out a tattered address book and turned to a page with my own family’s name and phone number.

It was chilling to uncover this corollary to my life – our life – this family of people who are bound only by the loss of a family member and a radio show. I dedicate this piece, Kidnap Radio, to them. They opened their doors to me, and taught me whatever it is that I have tried to convey with it.

From Print to Radio

This is not my first encounter with radio – in 2006 I took a radio ...

About Kidnap Radio

I was 19 when my father was kidnapped in Colombia. It was 1999. My mother came to my college campus to deliver the news and I flew to Bogota to be with my family for a few weeks. (My mother is American, my father’s Colombian and they divorced when I was 5.) After that, except for brief trips for a wedding and a funeral, I didn’t go back to the country where I was born until I traveled there to report this piece in the spring of 2009.

I was able to make the trip thanks to Jay Allison. I met Jay in Woods Hole through Ibby Caputo, a dear friend and a former intern at Atlantic Public Media. After hearing part of the story of my father’s kidnapping and rescue, Jay suggested I undertake this project and guided me along the way.

I asked my father to meet me in Bogota for a long weekend in April so that I could interview him. I had heard bits and pieces about the kidnapping in the intervening years – when I would visit our family– but in the course of our interviews I realized I had known very little about what he’d endured: All I knew was our family’s side of the ordeal.

My father’s kidnapping began on November 22, 1999 and ended August 13, 2000. He was kidnapped by the FARC and kept in 38 different places, spending the first months of his kidnapping alone, with only his guards and a radio, for company.

After talking to my dad, I went on my own to the radio station in Bogota, Caracol Radio, that had sent out messages from my family to my father, and continues to send messages to hostages from their families every Saturday night from midnight to 6 a.m. The show is called Voces del Secuestro, or Voices of Kidnapping. (There are several other stations in Colombia that send messages out on other days of the week). The host, Herbin Hoyos, is a journalist who started this program in 1994, after he was briefly kidnapped and scolded by another hostage for not using the radio to reach out to hostages.

Since then, Hoyos has broadcast messages from the family members of the kidnapped every weekend, despite threats from the FARC and assassination attempts (the most recent sent him into exile in Europe this fall). Today, around 50 messages go out on every show; at the height of the kidnapping craze, there were as many as 100, much shorter messages.

As I sat in the radio station listening to the messages, which are somewhere between prayers and diary entries, I noticed that many of the people calling in to the station were talking to relatives who had been gone for several years, sometimes for as long as a decade. Like my dad, they were kidnapped because the FARC and other groups, including right-wing paramilitaries and gangs with no political agenda, had made kidnapping a major industry in Colombia. Unlike my dad, these people hadn’t come back.

Some were almost certainly alive, like the soldiers and policemen held as political prisoners in the war between the FARC and the Colombian military. But others whose names were on the radio – civilians, by and large – were missing and unaccounted for.

Their families became the focus of my piece. Thanks to Maria Isabel Campos, the producer of Voices of Kidnapping, I was able to reach more than a dozen of these families in Bogota, including Ismael and Amalia Marquez. This couple has been keeping track of all the kidnapped families since their son, Enrique, was kidnapped in 1999. When I asked Amalia for help reaching others, she took out a tattered address book and turned to a page with my own family’s name and phone number.

It was chilling to uncover this corollary to my life – our life – this family of people who are bound only by the loss of a family member and a radio show. I dedicate this piece, Kidnap Radio, to them. They opened their doors to me, and taught me whatever it is that I have tried to convey with it.

From Print to Radio

This is not my first encounter with radio – in 2006 I took a radio ...

“Cat Lady” on PRX

About Cat Lady

I had struggled for a year, trying to write a piece about my mother, about myself, about what I observed to be an awkward, even incompatible relationship between the roles of artist and mother, about a child’s inheritance of his parents’ pain and desire. I had a long and unfocused essay, which I put aside.

A few months later Holly Hughes invited me to participate in a night of readings that would all be pet-themed. Did I have anything that would fit? I, barely legal, was excited and intimidated by others she told me were on the bill– Eileen Myles, Kate Bornstein– artists who were much older and more accomplished than I. Yes, I said, I have something. I read over and threw out that previous manuscript and sat down to write a short poem about my mother… and cats! Three days later I had overstayed my welcome in various diners across New York City and had a twenty-minute short story.

The piece went over quite well and Holly encouraged me to stage it, which I eventually did. As a theater piece it’s been performed, under Elizabeth Gimbel’s direction, in cities across the country and in Europe as well.

While I began in the autobiographical, the characters and events in “Cat Lady” are decidedly abstracted and fictionalized. My actual mother speaks in more dulcet tones and, as she herself points out, would never feed the cats Whiskas.

Tech Info

This was recorded in a studio at The University of Michigan’s Duderstadt Center with Katherine Weider and Stephanie Rowden. I edited it with Garageband.

Additional Support for this work provided by

“Cat Lady” on PRX

About Cat Lady

I had struggled for a year, trying to write a piece about my mother, about myself, about what I observed to be an awkward, even incompatible relationship between the roles of artist and mother, about a child’s inheritance of his parents’ pain and desire. I had a long and unfocused essay, which I put aside.

A few months later Holly Hughes invited me to participate in a night of readings that would all be pet-themed. Did I have anything that would fit? I, barely legal, was excited and intimidated by others she told me were on the bill– Eileen Myles, Kate Bornstein– artists who were much older and more accomplished than I. Yes, I said, I have something. I read over and threw out that previous manuscript and sat down to write a short poem about my mother… and cats! Three days later I had overstayed my welcome in various diners across New York City and had a twenty-minute short story.

The piece went over quite well and Holly encouraged me to stage it, which I eventually did. As a theater piece it’s been performed, under Elizabeth Gimbel’s direction, in cities across the country and in Europe as well.

While I began in the autobiographical, the characters and events in “Cat Lady” are decidedly abstracted and fictionalized. My actual mother speaks in more dulcet tones and, as she herself points out, would never feed the cats Whiskas.

Tech Info

This was recorded in a studio at The University of Michigan’s Duderstadt Center with Katherine Weider and Stephanie Rowden. I edited it with Garageband.

Additional Support for this work provided by

This week we’re featuring the co-winner of our Self Portrait competition. It comes from the comedy collective “Mortified” who encourage people to read out loud the most embarrassing things they wrote as children. “I Hate Drake” is an hysterical and heartfelt entry from Will Nolan’s childhood diary about an archetypal bullying episode. Like most of the multi-media pieces on Transom, it’s story-driven and works fine without the images, but the animation deepens the story and makes it even funnier. Producer David Nadelberg says, “I had a specific visual aesthetic in mind for what a Mortified animation should look like. It should have the raggedy, moody, frenetic energy of a teen notebook. Innocent at the core but frayed on the surface. We called this aesthetic: punk meets Punky Brewster.” If you’re feeling a little battered by life today, take a few minutes to let “I Hate Drake” make you feel better. As ever, the producers will be at Transom to take your questions.

Last year, Transom and the FLIK International Film festival put out a call for multi-media self portraits. We have our two winners. Soon, we’ll be featuring “I Hate Drake” from Mortified, but right now Transom is hosting James Barany’s poignant and powerful piece about his own obesity called, “My Most Important Self Portrait.” The animated images of James’s body and the sounds of his voice work together in a dark and elegant duet.

Last year, Transom and the FLIK International Film festival put out a call for multi-media self portraits. We have our two winners. Soon, we’ll be featuring “I Hate Drake” from Mortified, but right now Transom is hosting James Barany’s poignant and powerful piece about his own obesity called, “My Most Important Self Portrait.” The animated images of James’s body and the sounds of his voice work together in a dark and elegant duet.

Jesse Hardman and Maura O'Connor recently drove around the southwestern United States visiting some of the 33 Native American reservations that have their own radio stations. They

said it became clear that "radio, often dismissed as outdated for the Web 2.0 era, was the most essential medium of communication in Indian country." Airchecks from these stations sound alive and connected, peopled by a real range of characters. On Transom, Jesse and Maura put together a report, full of photos and audio, and we also created two radio pieces. One is an NPR-style news magazine piece. The other is a Transom-style collage. Listen to both. Tell us what you think. On our discussion board, we'll be joined by some of the staff of the tribal stations and they'd like to hear from you.

Jesse Hardman and Maura O'Connor recently drove around the southwestern United States visiting some of the 33 Native American reservations that have their own radio stations. They

said it became clear that "radio, often dismissed as outdated for the Web 2.0 era, was the most essential medium of communication in Indian country." Airchecks from these stations sound alive and connected, peopled by a real range of characters. On Transom, Jesse and Maura put together a report, full of photos and audio, and we also created two radio pieces. One is an NPR-style news magazine piece. The other is a Transom-style collage. Listen to both. Tell us what you think. On our discussion board, we'll be joined by some of the staff of the tribal stations and they'd like to hear from you.

“Jennie’s Secret” on PRX

About Jennie’s Secret

I don’t remember how I first encountered the story of Civil War veteran Jennie Hodgers (aka Albert Cashier), but I was smitten from the start. I was amazed that hundreds of women had posed as men during the Civil War. I couldn’t imagine how she (or they) pulled it off. And I was positively gob-smacked when I found out that Hodgers went on to spend most of her adult life – as a man – in the tiny town of Saunemin, Illinois. That’s just 12 miles down the road from Pontiac in Livingston County. And Pontiac is where my family comes from.

For me though, probably 
the most fascinating part of this project was trying to unpeel the onion to find a more nuanced portrait of Jennie Hodgers. I found a person who could be kind to children, offering them a treat whenever they came to her home. But there was also a hot-headed, disingenuous, petty and unquestionably eccentric Jennie Hodgers. She had her foibles, just like the rest of us.

We hear about her darker side in the letters that Sammuel Pepper, a fellow soldier, wrote home to his wife. I got to those letters through the footnotes of an amazing book by Lauren Cook and Deanne Blanton. It’s called, “They fought like Demons – Women Soldiers of the Civil War” and I recommend it to everybody.

When I met Frank and Velma Crawford (who are in possession of over 200 of Samuel Pepper’s letters) they read me a newly discovered letter about Cashier with even more explicit information about his/her wartime experience. So hopefully this radio story deepens the historical record about Jennie Hodgers.

More nuanced information about Jennie Hodgers also came courtesy of Cathy Lannon. Today Cathy is a lawyer, but back in 1969 she wrote her master’s thesis about Hodgers’ life. Lannon was from Saunemin and interviewed older people in town who still remembered Hodgers. Here’s one story Cathy Lannon told me. You’ll see that she (and a lot of people in Saunemin) refer to Cashier as “he.”

Lannon’s great grandparents lived across the street from Albert Cashier and often invited him (her) over for meals. But that overture wasn’t always met with the gratitude that you might expect:

A few years before the rest of the world found out about Cashier’s true gender, Cathy Lannon’s great grandmother made the discovery. She had heard that Albert was sick one day and so she asked a nurse to go over to help him out. In short order the nurse came running back and spluttered,“ Mrs. Lannon, he’s a full fledged woman!“ The nurse was so upset that she packed up and left town and Lannon’s great-grandmother in a great act of empathy, didn’t tell anyone about it, including her husband.

When I first approached Jay Allison about this story, the only tape I had was of 93 year-old Nina Chesebro. Her great-uncle is the one who first hired Albert Cashier (Jennie Hodgers) as a farmhand when (s)he got to town.

I pretty much cornered Jay at a Third Coast Festival conference. He didn’t know me, but sat there anyway and listened to some tape. And then he said he bet we could make a story of it.

I was obsessed with the history of Cashier’s life. Just such a wild story. But Jay wanted to know more about the people who objected to restoring the house. After all, it’s been moved at least nine times. One time it was almost burned down in a practice drill for the Saunemin fire department. I mean the town didn’t seem too invested in the thing. And Jay wanted to know more about that.

That tack, I think, was fruitful. Because it turns out that there’s a long history of ambivalence in town about their most famous citizen. And bringing that angle together with the current effort to re-build the house gave us a frame to tell the history part.

Gear

I have almost no experience using music in stories.