Transom Podcast

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A Favorite Episode of Nick’s: Aftermath

From the company headquarters of Aftermath, Inc., amidst a strip of bland office buildings in Chicagoland, Tim Reifsteck makes his living cleaning up after the darkest side of human society. I chose this episode because it definitely illustrates a lot of my favorite editing tricks. Produced with Laura Kwerel.

About Love & Radio

A large part of Love & Radio’s style has been inspired by watching too much television and too many movies. In those visual mediums, the editor acts as a kind of character–every editing choice is right there on the screen. But in radio, we’re both blessed and cursed with an ability to hide the entire editing process: whole phrases are moved around, breaths are added and taken away, and the whole time our listeners are kept in the dark.

These days, I’ve been primarily focused on figuring out how to translate some of those visual editing ideas into a non-visual medium. To that end, I try to make my edits obvious and sometimes rough and intrusive. I’ll intentionally cut out room tone, or add coughs, lip smacks, and other audible detritus to indicate when an edit has taken place. Another trick is to end a region by “fading up” instead of fading out–depending on your ambience, it creates a neat sort of reverse-cymbal crash sound and gives a nice subtle pop. It’s a lot like turning the seams inside out on a piece of apparel.

Phil Dmochowski, who helped produce several episodes last year, once said public radio needed to take more cues from glitch hop. That statement has always stuck in my brain. I’m not where I’d like to be in that respect, but I always try to keep in mind what a radio interview would sound like if it were edited by Prefuse 73.

Tech Info for Love & Radio

I use an HHB Flashmic, but more recently have been using a Zoom H4. The Flashmic is undoubtedly better, but I love working in stereo. Most phone interviews are done with a Broadcast Host. Voicemails are recorded using simplevoicebox.com.

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Love & Radio

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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.

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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,