Dear Bellos,
I’ve been thinking lately about one of the provocations from last year’s Third Coast Conference. It’s called “We’re All Losing” by Liza Yeager (starts at 43:55), and it’s about helping talented young producers to develop their own voices. The stakes, Yeager says, are high: “If we don’t make space for emerging producers to develop their own voices, we will lose those voices.” These producers won’t just leave an organization. They might leave the audio industry entirely.
During the ongoing conversations about supporting people of color in the audio industry, I think back to this talk. It’s about young creators who are at risk of either being pushed out or having their voices, their styles, their instincts trained out of them. But it’s easy to swap out “talented young creators” for “talented creators from non-public radio backgrounds,” or “talented women creators,” or “talented Black creators.” And I see the same risks: people will be forced to conform, or they will be pushed to leave. And leave they do, as described in this survey of 101 former journalists of color.
When I read about the public radio and podcasting institutions that are driving these talented creators out, I think about the stakes for the future of podcasting. As Yeager says, “it’s not only that all these brilliant people will be gone or squished into boxes, but it’s that the potential of our industry and what we can make will have been totally undermined.”
xo,
Galen
Recommendations
1.I have been excited to check out Driving the Green Book ever since I watched creator/host Alvin Hall give a presentation last fall at Sound Education. I immediately downloaded the first episode this week and learned about the past and present realities regarding The Green Book — realities you won’t hear from the Hollywood version. Hall and his producer Janée Woods Weber drive from Detroit to New Orleans to collect stories and weave together a history surrounding The Green Book from the Black Americans who lived it. I can tell a lot of care went into the narrative, and I can’t wait to hear more. (Erik Jones)
2.The Nocturnists (live storytelling from healthcare workers) just finished an excellent audio diary series called “Black Voices in Healthcare.” I recommend starting with the episodes about standing out in the crowd and touch. These personal stories highlight everything from the reality of racism to daily heroism, but the strongest take away for me is that these voices are the best of us. (Erik Jones)
3.If you liked Uncover: Escaping NXVM or 30 for 30’s Bikram, check out Unfinished: Short Creek, a new series about the fundamentalist Mormon group that lives on the border of Arizona and Utah. I’ve heard snippets and fictionalizations of this story before (I’m looking at you, Big Love), but this series looks beyond the crimes of prophet Warren Jeffs and centers on the people who believe, the ones who left, and the ones who lived through the community’s complete transformation. And it does it all with a close lens — one of the reporters embedded in the community for months, living in the prophet’s house. (Galen Beebe)
4.I think a lot these days about the infinite number of Terms of Service agreements I’ve signed away without a second thought, the vast display of my intellectual and emotional maturity that could be charted through my social media feeds, and how that the nexus of these two events means there is a pretty full picture of me that exists on the internet. That knowledge makes more wary of what I hand over these days. In Machines We Trust, a new series from MIT, reckons with the myriad ways automation has already infiltrated our lives, and imagines what comes next.
5.From the outside, Grouse may look like the familiar journey of a writer finding herself in an unexpected environment and learning something new about herself along the way. And while there are elements of that story here (think Cheryl Strayed and Reese Witherspoon in Wild), there’s so much more, too. Grouse is a story about the environment, about an increasingly endangered bird (the greater sage grouse), and about the people who want to protect it. Don’t sleep on this gorgeously sound designed project from BirdNote and Ashley Ahern. (Ashley Lusk)
6.Just as is suggested in the opening of The Hidden Djinn, my only exposure to the Djinn, or genies, was a funny blue guy with phenomenal cosmic power who lived in an itty-bitty living space. But there is so much more to Djinn. The first episode of this new series is really interesting and informative and, frankly blew my mind in its sheer depth of the legend of the Djinn. I look forward to learning more about this race of beings that live in a parallel dimension. (Calen Cross)
7.The latest episode of AirSpace is about Gander Airport, just after 9/11, told through the lens of one of the first female airline pilots and the Broadway play about her story. If you have never heard of Gander, this is an excellent introduction to the story that will pique your interest. (Calen Cross)
8.Into the Zone, a new show from Pushkin, proves that everything is more complicated than it seems. Take country music, for example. In this fantastic episode about the genre’s history, you’ll hear country that sounds like it’s being played at a luau and country music that’s been written by AI. Yodeling. Old Town Road. And music from way back when that makes country music feel less black vs. white than it is today. (Lauren Passell)
9.When I was a kid I had dreams of cracking a real case — finding fingerprints, confronting robbers, and setting out on search missions. Criminal’s “Kids on the Case” tells stories about kids who used out-of-the-box problem solving to make it happen. (Lauren Passell)
10.And speaking of child sleuths: Back for season two, it’s Meddling Adults, a game show podcast in which guests compete to solve mysteries from popular children’s mystery series like Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew. I am so distracted by how funny this show is I’m not even trying to solve anything. As a bonus, listener contributions go toward a charity of the winner’s choice. (Lauren Passell)
11.One Strange Thing is a brand new show, and their first episode is a sad and sweet love story that revolves around a long lost class ring. Is more than a little luck needed to bring the ring back to the owner? (Paul Kondo)
The Bello Collective is a publication + newsletter about podcasts and the audio industry. Our goal is to bring together writers, journalists, and other voices who share a passion for the world of audio storytelling.
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