Tape

Jonathan Menjivar is a producer at This American Life. "When I started in radio I imagined myself on the radio more. But I've come to a place where it doesn't matter to me. I just want to make stuff."

Emily Botein is the Vice President for On-Demand Content of WNYC. "I feel like as a producer, the whole goal is to have someone become more human, reveal something more personal, say something surprising. So it's your job to make an unrealistically good situation — everything has to be perfect for the host, you want the host to be super comfortable, whatever the host likes. And stupid things, from like what they want to drink, to how they want the mic positioned, to where they want to sit, to anything. It's like you want to make a heightened version of life because you're trying to create a moment. You're not just trying to go gather a story. Something is supposed to happen on the tape. So you need to do everything possible to think about what can happen, and how can you try to trigger it."

Jessica Abel is the author of Out on the Wire. "The group edit format, while emotionally difficult, actually is an incredibly efficient tool. In an hour, two hours, you can get the intellectual work done on a piece that could take weeks without it.”

Tim Howard is the senior producer of Reply All. "You can do radio stories without stakes they just have to be really fun."

Jacob Goldstein is a reporter for NPR's Planet Money. "I've never been that interested in the classic investigative story — here's this victim and here's this villain, and implicitly, I, the reporter, am the hero. ... They were never the kind of stories I wanted to read, they were never the kind of stories I wanted to write. I like profiles of weirdos and stories about systems."

Audie Cornish is the host of All Things Considered. "I ran a gauntlet of people who underestimated me. Every subject is like, "Are you the intern?" Every lawmaker is like, "I don't understand who you are?" People don't see me so when they finally meet me they're not sure what to think. And I think the only way you can get through this job, or any other job where people will underestimate you on arrival, is to just not on board it. Like I can't collect it. And so, maybe it means I've been successful because I can't remember any [moments of microaggressions]."

Sean Rameswaram is the host of sideshow. "On the outside, which I was on the outside for a long time, I thought public radio takes itself too seriously. My favorite moments in public radio are when Scott Simon interviews Ke$ha. We don't need to be highbrow all the time and it's actually endangering our medium."

Note: This episode is explicit. Kaitlin Prest is the host and creative director of The Heart. "My whole thing about making stuff is I want it to *feel* like the thing. If you're making a show about love, I want to feel like I'm falling in love when I listen to the show."

Anshuman Iddamsetty is Hazlitt’s art director and audio/visual producer.* "I stare at waveforms constantly. So like I'm staring at the layout of the waveforms more than anything. There is a sort of visual component to how the show finally comes together, right? I can tell how many — again I understand how out to lunch I sound now — but, if i’m being honest, I can kind of tell, “No, this sounds right because I can see the ratio of the a person’s cut up voice to the music to the sound effects to my voice, and the sort of compression of the guest coming in at certain points, or like how quickly a guest’s voice turns the corner." (*This episode is guest hosted by Ethan Chiel)

David Weinberg, a former Marketplace producer, is part of KCRW's Independent Producer Project and the creator of Random Tape. "I felt so trapped before I found and decided that radio is what I wanted to do. I placed a lot on this as being the thing that was going to save me. And so there was this huge amount of fear that like if I don't do it well then I have nothing. ... And so recording my life all the time was a way to be like, 'Oh, I'm not a bum bumming around with no plan. I have a plan. I'm working on it.' And the longer you do that, the longer you put off actually making something for the first time, the harder it gets. And I was just stuck in that period for many years. ... When I look back at it now, I'm like, 'You idiot. Why were you wasting all this time when you could've been getting better at making stories?' But I was so afraid to do things out in the open."

Nate DiMeo is the host of The Memory Palace. "I struggled a lot when I first got into journalism because I knew every Q&A I edited ... something would get cut. And that the person interviewed would not be entirely represented the way they wanted to be. ... So the best way to honor that person and to get at the heart of it was by writing really well. If their literal voice didn't carry and didn't get enough airtime the spirit of what they were saying was effectively and pointedly articulated by me as a writer."

Scott Carrier is an independent producer and the host of Home of the Brave. "It's what makes us human, is our storytelling ability. Animals can't do that. They can communicate. They can talk to each other. They understand, they know what's going on, and they can play. They have rules. They can make the rules, and change the rules, and break the rules, but it's always present tense for animals. But we can talk about the past, we can talk about the future, and that's what makes us so different, besides just our shape."

Dana Chivvis is a producer at Serial. "I thought it was important to be really devoted to your medium. ... I thought I have to love video. And what I realized is that it didn't matter to me what medium I was working in. It mattered what story I was telling, and how I was telling it, and who I was telling it with."

Lulu Miller, a former producer at Radiolab, is the co-host of NPR's Invisibilia. "I think there's this thing that goes hand in hand with journalism, or with radio, which is that professionally, you're an amateur, so you have to ask, and with not knowing, there's always discovery."

Alix Spiegel, a former producer at This American Life, is the co-host of NPR's Invisibilia. "I always want to understand like why? What do you know that I don't know? What is your life? And how do you see the world? And that's it."