Public Radio Exchange

Meta Moth Moments

Genevieve posted on Thursday, April 11th, 2013 | Blog, PRX | 1 Comment

When worlds collide… sounds like the title to a Moth show, no?

Well, worlds are really colliding here tonight. PRX’s Lead Software Developer, Rebecca Nesson, will be telling a story at the Moth Mainstage at the Somerville Theatre, just a couple T stops up from our office. Mainstages are The Moth’s flagship shows with hand-picked storytellers.

By day Becca works on PRX’s mobile apps, including those for This American Life, Radiolab, and The Moth (forthcoming). We didn’t know she had a talent for telling stories as well.

At a Boston open mic Moth StorySLAM in February, Becca put her name in the hat and was called up to tell her story. The audience reception was fantastic, the story was beautiful, and the Moth asked her to tell it at tonight’s sold-out Mainstage. The theme tonight is Learning Curves and will include five storytellers. We’ll be there rooting her on.

In other news…

Moth StorySLAMS are expanding to more cities throughout the U.S. PRXer Audrey Mardavich has been producing sold-out SLAMS in Boston for six months, so another one has been added by audience demand. The new SLAM is produced by yours truly (Genevieve Sponsler).

As mentioned, SLAMS are open mic, so you never know who will get up on stage… come put your name in the hat!

(Sign up on the Moth mailing list and choose your city to get the latest info.)

(Hey, stations: Get on board with Moth popularity by airing The Moth Radio Hour weekly.)

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Photo by Allison Evans.

Global Story Project Feature: I Am Not the Only One

Genevieve posted on Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013 | Blog, Global Story Project, PRX | No Comments

This is second in our series of posts highlighting productions from our Global Story Project.

Rwanda is the land of a thousand hills located in the
heart of Africa. An old saying goes “Rwanda is the
place where God comes to rest”.

April 6th is the 19th anniversary of the beginning of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

In I Am Not the Only One from producer Arndt Peltner, two men who were children during the genocide look back and describe how they moved forward. Their parents were killed, they lost their community, and had to fight for their lives. Hear their stories:

Now for the backstory: Arndt wrote to us about his experience reporting this project.

“I have been travelling to Rwanda for some years, fascinated by the countryside and its people. But as a visitor you will notice very fast, that you can’t oversee the brutal history of the genocide. It doesn’t matter who you are talking with, at one point the question will come up, what they experienced in 1994, who they lost in the slaughter, how they survived, if parents or relatives or friends were victims or perpetrators.

“I met Richard through some friends at the German embassy, he started to work for them as a translator a while ago, translating for raped women in the eastern part of the Congo. Germany has some perpetrators of the war crimes in the Congo on trial.

“Freddy I met through researching another story about Rwanda at the genocide memorial. He was very open about what he experienced.”

Happy Poetry Month!

Audrey posted on Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 | PRX | 3 Comments

April is the month in which the nation gathers to celebrate poetry – a literary genre most people are not really interested in. Being a poet myself, I am here to convince you that poetry is for everyone, especially radio lovers!

We’ve got the full playlist of goodies for Poetry Month, but here are a few that I think both poets and non-believers will enjoy.

• The godfather of Beat poetry, Allen Ginsberg also wrote and sang songs that he accompanied with his harmonium. Here’s a beautiful and quippy demonstration song against the Vietnam War.
• Barrett Golding uses old recordings on top of original music to create a stunning piece that tries to answer, “What is Poetry?“
• In WORDSHAKERS from Hearing Voices, there are entrancing recordings of Tennyson and Whitman, as well as the everyday poetics of cheerleaders and hot dog vendors.
• What can we come to know through poetry that we couldn’t through other forms of thinking and talking? Dive deeper with Philosophy Talk.
• This Land Press asks community members to read a poem by Joe Brainard and then discuss the topics within, like homosexuality and the struggle of being a minority.
• 99% Invisible is a show about design, but in this episode, producer (and poet) Sean Cole discovers the architecture of a 25-year-old plaza where the words of Walt Whitman and Frank O’Hara are embedded. Here’s the full O’Hara poem to read after you listen!
• Finally, enjoy some straight-up poetry from Boston-area poet John Mulrooney. A listener said of the recording of Mulrooney’s poem:

“If you are listening while doing the dishes, you will stop doing the dishes. It is poignant and moving. It is both political and intimately personal. It makes poetry on the radio feel like a natural fit.”

That’s right! A natural fit.

What do you think? Do poetry and radio have more in common than we think? Are you a radio producer AND a poet? As a radiomaker do you consider radio a poetic form? Let us know in the comments.




Audrey Mardavich works at PRX and is also the 2013 Fifty-Two Sundays Poet, a project with Desire Books in Sydney, Australia. She’ll be writing a poem a week for every week in 2013. Hopefully she will not lose her mind doing this.

Photo credit: Shutterstock.

PRX’s STEMchat, Storified

Lily posted on Monday, April 1st, 2013 | Blog, PRX, STEM Story Project | No Comments

Don’t try this at home. | Image from Shutterstock

A big thank you to all of you who were able to join us for some STEM-ulating conversation last Friday for #PRXSTEMchat! 

In case you missed it, we put together a Storify highlighting our favorite moments.

PRX held the tweetchat to discuss our latest audio experiment, the STEM Story Project. We engaged interested producers, journalists, bloggers, educators, and enthusiasts in an hour-long conversation about STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). 

PRX will also hold one STEM project webinar on Friday, April 5 at 2PM ET to answer questions — register here.

If you can’t make or wait for the webinar, email your questions to stem@prx.org. But read the application and guidelines first!

Global Story Project Feature: An Overnight Metropolis

Genevieve posted on Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 | Blog, Global Story Project, PRX | No Comments

This is the first in a series of posts highlighting productions from our Global Story Project.

A street in Zeytinburnu, one of the neighborhoods
under earthquake risk.

An Overnight Metropolis is the story of city dynamics, eminent domain, and mother nature — and how they affect what we call home.

Producer Ashley Cleek takes us to Zeytinburnu, a district in Istanbul where many live in housing that may not withstand an earthquake. And with the city due for another major earthquake where two-thirds of the city’s three million homes could be at risk, residents are being asked to move. Take a listen (and check out a companion article from Ashley published in The Atlantic online!):

And now, the backstory: Ashley wrote to us about her experience reporting this project.

“Being able to return to a neighborhood multiple times allowed for a couple of key advantages in reporting. It allowed me to keep track of politicians’ promises and forecasts and actually hold them accountable for what they had said six months prior.

“Also, it’s not easy to let a stranger into your house, especially a foreigner with a microphone, but after returning to the neighborhood several times, families began to recognize me and trust me, as a journalist with a real interest in their neighborhood. People started calling me into their businesses to talk or haranguing their neighbors to stop and speak to me. It allowed for surprising character development. On one visit I met a man named ‘Zafer’ who was so suspicious of the government and his neighbors that he carried his apartment deed in his coat pocket and wouldn’t talk about the urban transformation in public.

“On my final trip to Zeytinburnu a few months later, I was walking down the street to catch the bus home when Zafer shouted from his window that he had changed his mind and was going with the government’s plan. That was the most surprising moment, to see a person change, and through his example possibly a neighborhood. None of that would have happened in a single day of reporting or without the help of PRX.”

Join us for #PRXSTEMchat on Friday, March 29 at 2PM ET

Lily posted on Monday, March 25th, 2013 | Blog, PRX, STEM Story Project | 2 Comments

In case you haven’t heard yet, PRX is holding an open call for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) stories. We’re calling it the STEM Story Project.

Join us on Friday, March 29, 2013 at 2PM Eastern for #PRXSTEMchat on Twitter! We’ll be brainstorming topics for the STEM Story Project as well as answering any questions you may have about project details. This is a great opportunity for you to speak directly to us about the project and vice versa! Whether you’re a scientist, science enthusiast, producer, or listener, we invite you to sit in.

How to participate on Friday, March 29, 2013 at 2PM ET:

1. Log into Twitter
2. Use Tweetchat to follow the #PRXSTEMchat hashtag
3. Converse with us in real-time!

Lily Bui (@dangerbui) will be hosting the event.

Got a science topic close to your heart? Submit it ahead of time below in the comment section — and we may bring it up Friday!

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PRX will also hold a separate STEM Story Project webinar on Friday, April 5 at 2PM ET to answer more questions — register here.

PRX in the (Sound)Cloud

John posted on Friday, March 22nd, 2013 | Blog, PRX | No Comments

One of PRX’s strategic goals is to massively increase listening to public radio works of all kinds, no matter the platform or channel. (We do pretty well!)

So, we’re taking one of our most successful recent specials — Generation Putin — and making it available or free streaming, embedding and sharing through SoundCloud.

Generation Putin is an hour-long show, that you can listen to in segments, about the Millennial generation in the former Soviet Union: you’ll find radicals, feminists, 20-and-30-somethings full of ennui and vodka, greedheads, unrepentant fascists and even rowdy punkers…in Kazakhstan, of all places.

Brooke Gladstone from On the Media is the host and two brave women from the Seattle Globalist – Sarah Stuteville and Jessica Partnow – did all the reporting on the scene. The generous people at the Open Society Foundations make it possible and PRX pulled the project together. 

So far, 35 individual stations including WNYC, WGBH, KUOW (Seattle), KUT (Austin), and Minnesota Public Radio have aired it.

Now you can listen on SoundCloud and..present it yourself on your blog, site, Facebook post or Twitter feed with your own context and comments.

Announcing the PRX STEM Story Project

John posted on Wednesday, March 20th, 2013 | Blog, PRX, STEM Story Project | 8 Comments

PRX is excited to announce a new competition for audio production funding. In partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, PRX presents the STEM Story Project, focused on STEM topics: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. We have a pool of $40,000 to distribute among multiple projects.

PRX recently completed an open call for stories as part of the PRX Global Story Project. This time around, our goals with the STEM Story Project are to:

• Unleash highly creative, STEM-based original stories and productions
• Educate and excite listeners about STEM topics and issues
• Tell stories and explain STEM issues in new ways

We want these productions to be heard and shared widely. So, proposals need to appeal both to stations and directly to listeners. You’ll find a lot more details about the PRX STEM Story Project here: application and guidelines.

So, get your ideas together, you critical thinkers, you! The DEADLINE for applications is April 22, 2013 at 11:59PM ET.

Thank you!

John Barth
Genevieve Sponsler
Lily Bui
The PRX STEM Story Project Team

P.S. If you applied to our Global Story Project, please read the guidelines for STEM carefully — we’ve changed some things.

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Join us on Friday, March 29, 2013 at 2PM ET for #PRXSTEMchat on Twitter! We’ll be discussing science topics and answering your questions about the STEM Story Project. Whether you’re a scientist, science enthusiast or producer, we invite you to weigh in!

Lily Bui (@dangerbui) will be hosting the tweetchat. Keep an eye out for more information on blog.prx.org and @prx.

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PRX will also hold one STEM project webinar on Friday, April 5 at 2PM ET to answer questions — register here.

If you can’t make or wait for the webinar, email your questions to stem@prx.org. But read the application and guidelines first!

Global Story Project Productions are Here

Genevieve posted on Thursday, March 14th, 2013 | Global Story Project, PRX | 4 Comments

A few months back, PRX called out for stories about people and situations outside of the U.S. that would help American listeners better understand the rest of the world. This was PRX’s first sustained effort to work with producers outside the US. The Global Story Project was made possible by the Open Society Foundations.

Here are the stories, from seasoned producers and new players.

• India’s Shifting Gender Roles: One Girl’s Tale from Rhitu Chatterjee.
  A modern Indian woman talks about tradition with a unique 12-year-old girl. Recently featured on PRI’s The World.
• China’s One Child Policy: Stories of Struggles with its Unintended Consequences (series) from Jennifer Dunn
  How China’s one-child policy really affects its citizens: women and girls whose births were never reported so their parents could try again for a boy; couples finding loopholes — like fake marriages — to have more than one child; and China’s many bachelors who cannot find wives and what their futures hold.
• The Soul of Guatemala from Jesse Dukes
  Latin America has been overwhelmingly Catholic for centuries, but that’s changing, and Guatemala is leading the way, as Latin America’s Evangelical frontier. Available as a half-hour piece or in abridged form as three 5-6 minute features.
• The Things They Carry: U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan (series) from Jake Warga
  Inspired by Tim O’Brien’s Pulitzer-nominated book “The Things They Carried”, this series asks U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan what they have to carry around with them — from the physical to the emotional.
• The Symphony of Sirens, Revisited from Charles Maynes
  In 1923, enthralled with the Russian Revolution’s break from the past, Soviet composer Arseny Avraamov planned to conduct an orchestra comprised of the city itself. No recordings exist, making the performances the stuff of legend. This piece revisits Avraamov’s famed magnum opus by mining for details about Avraamov.
• Made in Italy…For Now (series) from Nancy Greenleese
  Italy is renowned for its artisans — from bakers to tailors, jewelry makers to marble workers. They create unique masterpieces by hand, even in a mass-produced age. But these artisans and their work is at risk of disappearing, leaving the wider world without skilled craftsmen trained in the Italian tradition.
• Permission to Speak from Anna Sussman
  As Burma transitions from dictatorship to democracy, hundreds of political prisoners have been freed after decades behind bars. In this story, eight of these freed political prisoners struggle to rebuild their lives, and test the emerging democracy.
• An Overnight Metropolis from Ashley Cleek
  Istanbul is a city of around 15 million people living in 3 million apartments. Civil engineers predict that two-thirds of those apartments could collapse in a major earthquake. This is the story of the government’s preparation plans and their effect on a neighborhood.
• In India, Everyone Wants To Be An Engineer from Bianca Vazquez Toness
  Getting into the top engineering schools in India is statistically harder than breaking into Harvard. So hard that students study for two years in special cram schools. Hear from some of those young people.
• The Kindness of Strangers from Kirsty McQuire
  Follow one woman as she practices targeted acts of kindness for 366 days in response to violence in London.
• Bartolo’s Honey from Diane Bock
  Using audio collected during a day of following a subsistence farmer in the Yucatan Peninsula, Bock illustrates the ancient — and rapidly disappearing — Mayan art of beekeeping.
• Texting in Chinese from Sandy Hausman
  Hausman talks with linguists and locals in Hong Kong to find out how to text in Chinese and what it means for the future of one of the world’s oldest systems of writing.
• Love is Complicated (series) from Bending Borders
  This series looks at the perils and perks love in many different places. Each piece is by a different producer and about a different country, including Afghanistan, Syria, and the UK. More to come.
• Rare Earth from Benjamen Walker
  An investigation into the stuff that makes anything digital actually possible: rare earth minerals. Uncover the dark story behind them in a gonzo journey to the Chinese mines, where 95% of the world’s rare earth minerals come from.
• The People The Rain Forgot form Sophia Tewa
  Reversioned from a documentary film of the same name, this piece explores the drastic impact of climate change on the agricultural areas of northern Kenya, where once-fertile lands are slowly turning into deserts.
• I Am Not the Only One from Arndt Peltner
  Two men who were children and lost their parents during the Rwandan genocide of 1994 look back and describe their way forward.

Hear them all in our Global Story Project playlist. And stay tuned: A few more Global Story Project pieces are coming soon from India, the UK, and Russia.

Additionally, we worked with The Seattle Globalist to present Generation Putin about millennials in the former Soviet Union.

PRX, iMA, SXSW, and Other Acronyms

Lily posted on Saturday, March 9th, 2013 | PRX | No Comments

If you’re looking for what’s up and coming, look no farther than Austin, Texas. This week, PRX joined many enthusiastic public media entities at SXSW for the Integrated Media Association Conference (iMA 2013). Each year, SXSW brings together those at the forefront of tech, music, and film for two weeks’ worth of showcases, demos, performances, and screenings. The iMA conference aims to do the same for public media.

Over two days, iMA conference sessions raised questions and sparked discussion about public media’s foray into the future. Multiple screens, social TV, aggregated audio, big data—enough to make your head swim! The future is coming, and not only does the world of public media intend keep up–it plans to get ahead.

PRX had a significant voice in this week’s conversations:

• Business and Operations Director Kerri Hoffman helped demystify the Public Media Platform, a collaborative 4-year initiative that aims to revolutionize and improve the way public media is distributed.
• Director of Development Andrew Kuklewicz dropped some knowledge about open source solutions that developers can use to build on a budget. In another session, Andrew also helped lead the discussion on various risks and benefits of hosting organization data in the cloud. At SXSWi, Andrew will also be co-presenting a workshop with PopUp Archive on organizing and storing digital content for future access.
• Director of Projects and Partnerships Rekha Murthy moderated a panel about public media aggregators (like our very own Public Radio Player) and the implications for controlling content and reaching new audiences in this new space.

PRX’s mission is to find meaningful ways to make public media even more public. Being a part of these conversations is essential to that process.

“With the right mix of tech, content, and distribution, you can do anything,” suggests David Shing, iMA conference keynote and digital prophet at AOL. By harnessing the best of our tech to bring quality, relevant audio stories to audiences on the internet and beyond, PRX aspires to be the right mix of all of the above.

Take a look at a summary of how iMA went down in the Twitter-sphere via our Storify. Want a more comprehensive look? Try searching for #iMA2013 on Twitter. You can also find audio recordings of all the sessions on iMA’s SoundCloud.