Sound School Podcast

This podcast explores the progress of a comedy podcast called Bird Talk, discussing the challenges faced during launch, show development, and misconceptions about birds. It also delves into attraction, openness, and challenges in relationships, as well as the financial challenges of podcast creation.

Rebecca Hersher, a climate science reporter at NPR, offers excellent tips on reporting on climate change. But, at the heart of Rob's interview with her is something more philosophical: the role of hope in climate change reporting. 

Summer means cicadas. Those crackly, buzzy bugs that drone and drone in the heat like a live electrical wire spewing sparks. Mair Bosworth and Fiona Benson took that sound and crafted "Magicicada," a stunning "sound poem," as they called it, marrying Mair's stellar recordings and sound design and Fiona's nuanced poetry. 

Get your headphones on for this episode! Rob dives into three remarkable examples of scoring. He features examples from the Serial/NYT series "The Retrievals," scored by Phoebe Wang, "My Mother Made Me" from PRX's Radiotopia Presents scored by Ian Coss, and The Atlantic's "Holy Week," scored by David Herman.

Rob's a fan of the "radio art" style of audio storytelling from Europe but often, after listening, he finds himself scratching his head. "What was that about?!" He wonders if the problem isn't the storytelling but his American ears and the way he listens. Alan Hall, of Falling Tree, the English production company, helps him listen in a new way. 

No matter how good you are recording in the field, you're going to encounter challenges. Rob Byers does an incredible job explaining how to avoid and fix those problems on this archive episode of Sound School from 2017. At the time, Rob worked at NPR. He's now the Technical Director at Criminal. His recording tips are invaluable. And so are the resources we used on the episode from NPR's  "Ear Training Guide for Audio Producers.”  You'll make better recordings after listening to this episode.

Pushkin Industries released a "Best Of Audio Storytelling: 2022" but instead of putting it out as a podcast series, it's an audiobook. Does it matter? Julia Barton at Pushkin says no. On the latest Sound School, Julia talks about tearing down audio silos, and discusses a handful of stories from the collection, including selections from Radiotopia, NPR, Rumble Strip, and more.

The Sound School Podcast launched 15 years ago this month. But it was called Saltcast back then. And for the first episode, Rob featured once of his absolute favorite student-produced stories - one that he played in classes for years as an excellent example of documentary audio storytelling. To celebrate the show's 15th anniversary, Rob dusted off the very first Saltcast and this incredible story about a motivational speaker who can't talk. 

Antonia Cereijido has her ear to the ground. It's her job as Executive Producer at LAist to listen to what everyone is putting out. Rob asks her what grabbed her ears lately? She tells us about two recent series: the second season of LaBrega, the Puerto Rican experience in eight songs, and Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong.

A light went out recently. The bright light of Chris Brookes — a sorcerer of audio documentary and sound art. When Rob heard the news, he immediately started work on this remembrance featuring excerpts from several of Chris' distinctive productions — stories where Chris' clear, authorial voice, his fingerprint, is evident and inspiring.