Safety First: Recording with Actors for an LGBTQ Story in Uganda

Ira Glass of This American Life is a master audio storyteller. He's equally skillful at laying out the mechanics of creative storytelling and reporting, too. Rob unearthed a presentation Ira made back in 2001 at a radio conference that is signature Ira and brimming with incredibly helpful tips on writing, structure, reporting, and scoring. A good listen for audio 

It's illegal to be queer in Uganda and incredibly unsafe. Queer people risk violence, eviction, harassment, and arrest. How then does a producer protect the identity of interviewees, especially when someone's voice might be recognized. British freelance producer Mary Goodhart solved this problem and many other safety issues while working on an LGBTQ story for the BBC World Service Podcast "The Comb." 

There's a moment in this episode when Rob is gasping and holding his hand to his chest. Why was he so astonished? Listen to his conversation with Jess Shane as they dissect the ethics of her Radiotopia documentary "Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative."

Deadlines, production meetings, staff management, show scheduling... in any given day, there's rarely time to pause and consider the craft of audio storytelling. Of course, PRX and Transom hope Sound School provides an easy opportunity to do that. On this episode, we'd like to introduce you to another podcast with the same mission: Sound Judgment hosted by Elaine Appleton Grant and featuring an interview with Jonathan Menjivar about his podcast Classy.

Have NPR's news magazines occasionally been sounding more radiophonic lately? Rob thinks so. He's collected a handful of satisfying moments of writing, production, and reporting from several reporters: Daniel Estrin, Avery Keatley, Andrew Limbong, Barbara Moran, Ari Shapiro, and Andrea Shea.

"Ums." You're supposed to cut them out, right? But what if the "um" means something? Talia Augustidis noticed her boyfriend "ummed" when he was lying and she thought "radio story." Talia takes a deep dive into the importance of not cutting out all the "ums" as well as the backstory to her piece for the BBC's Short Cuts called "What's In An Um?"

One of the top three questions Rob often hears when he's teaching is, "Should I record in stereo?" Rob says mono is usually the way to go. But on this archive episode of Sound School, former NPR engineer Flawn Williams evangelizes about the value of stereo recordings, and he brought along several sound-rich examples.

In the tsunami of serialized documentary making over the last decade, what happened to the short story? Where are the one-off curious and creative sound portraits or essays or found sound or audio postcards or.... ? Last year Transom commissioned a dozen short stories as part of "Small, Random, and Meaningful." Rob features his three favorites.

In honor of World Radio Day this week, The Sound School Podcast is celebrating with a story that exemplifies the power of radio to evoke striking images — a story reported from a remote hillside in Slovenia.  

Katz Laszlo says writing and tracking for herself is complicated enough. But it's an even greater challenge writing for and tracking with the two co-hosts of The Europeans podcast. Katz lays out how she and the hosts wrangle it all on the latest Sound School.