Over the Transom | 04.04.25
Audio ancestors, telling sports stories, and rescuing a piece with your voice
Hi again! A bunch of announcements this week:
Shouting out two Transom Workshop alumni for their well-deserved Webby nominations (voting is open until Thursday, April 17!):
Zach Hirsch and the If All Else Fails team at North Country Public Radio were nominated for the Podcasts - Limited Series & Specials - News & Politics category
And Melody Rowell with the indie podcast Less Radical was nominated for both Best Indie Podcast - Limited Run and Best Podcast - Documentary
Also big congrats to the ten *amazing* producers who just completed the one-week Transom Traveling Workshop on Catalina Island. Join us in applauding Ngoc Bui, Loane Bouguennec, Malya Fass, Maya Fawaz, Olivia Hewitt, Hussain Khan, Lusen Mendel, Tania Mohammad, Steven Rascon, and Emma Vecchione – they all made it to the finish line with wonderful pieces, shared insights, and new radio-tribe friends:
“I knew I was going to love this week, but I did not know I would love it THIS MUCH. I was genuinely very sad for it to end and miss the people in my cohort already. This workshop fueled my love for audio as a medium, and a big part of that is because throughout the week with this group, I felt - "these are my people." Finding friends and mentors through this is a big part of what makes it so meaningful. I am so grateful to have been a part of this! And I know our cohort plans on staying in touch and continuing to make audio together. Thank you for this space! It is a magical one.”
- 2025 TTW Catalina Graduate
Are you a teacher who uses Transom's resources in your classroom? If so, we'd love to hear from you. We’re in the early stages of designing a flexible, innovative curriculum built from our extensive collection of articles, episodes, and our years of experience running the Transom Story Workshops. Let us know what you need by filling out our quick educator survey. Your input will help us create something truly useful.
And last but not least, here’s a little beacon from Transom’s founder, Jay Allison: With science, media, and the arts and humanities all under attack right now, Jay wrote this inspiring letter to the editor to remind us why we all need to come together.
What’s new on Transom
Audio Ancestors: Norman Corwin’s reporting trip that changed the world
“Many admired practitioners of the audio arts today suffer from an amnesia about the origins and histories of their own techniques and sensibilities,” Neil Verma, Northwestern professor and audio historian once wrote. "...as if no one had thought to tell radio stories before This American Life.”
Story editor, producer, and reporter Julia Barton has a particular passion for audio history -- she recently completed a Nieman Fellowship exploring audio's fascinating, troubling, and sometimes weird past, and she's just released a newsletter focused on this very thing. We thought it would be fun to travel with Julia in the wayback machine and learn from some of audio's notable icons through an "Audio Ancestors" mini-series. Julia will be bringing us a handful of stories in the weeks ahead and there's no better way than to start things off with Norman Corwin and a closer look at how he forever changed the world of audio with his project One World Flight.
Here’s why I think One World Flight is worth studying: Corwin was one of the very first people to use actuality tape on American air. Almost no one else, not even the famed war correspondent Edward R. Murrow, had managed to get permission to use field recordings on a major network. Yes, you read that right. Corwin had to get permission.
- Julia Barton, from the “Audio Ancestors” series
More to explore on Transom.org:
Listen to the latest episode of Sound School from Rob Rosenthal: Beware the Chicken Bomb. It’s all about what to do about those bits of tape that seem too good to lose, but are too distracting to keep.
Coming up:
And on the next episode of Sound School, continue your walk into deep radio history with Julia Barton and Sarah Montague as they join Rob to talk about two audio storytelling classics from the 1930s. Old school radio at its best!
Tip of the week: telling good sports stories
NCAA March Madness is winding down this weekend. It’s a time full of exciting upsets, stunning let downs, and other gripping stories. But a lot of what you’ll find in the sports section of your podcast apps are chat shows. How come good narrative sports podcasts are few and far between? Bradley Campbell thinks part of it is because, at least in public radio, these stories aren’t treated with the same rigor as other topics. In this 2018 episode of Sound School, Rob Rosenthal talks to Campbell about what it takes to produce rigorous, narrative-driven sports stories.
From the archives…
Other People’s Stories by Tobin Low
When producer Tobin Low was doing the Transom Story Workshop in the fall of 2013, he found a guy on Craigslist who seemed to be full of stories. But when it came time to put his piece together, Low was stuck. He found the solution when he followed his own voice.
…it’s one thing to find a person interesting, and another to try and tell a story about them. This piece went through A LOT of different iterations. Many attempts were made to identify a point A and a point B, and to get the listener from one to the other. But it just wasn’t coming together. I thought about scrapping the whole thing and finding a new story.
There’s something Rob said that I wish I’d remembered earlier: “Use whatever it is inside of you that got you here to Transom to tell your story.” I come from a music background, and more recently worked at a contemporary music station. I’m also passionate about radio and working with audio. At some point, in the middle of a sleepless night, something finally clicked, and I thought, “Well, why don’t I use more of my personal experience to tell this story.
Listen to how the piece turned out:
This week’s community question: In the comments, tell us about a chicken bomb you were bummed to have to cut from a story. The weirder the better!
So great to be part of the traveling workshop cohort this year. Unforgettable experience and learned a ton. Could really relate to Tobin Low’s story!