Episodes

Are your interviews falling flat? Are the podcasts and stories you're creating on the foundation of those interviews just skimming the surface? Let's face it: Desiring candor from the human in front of you is one thing, but achieving it is another. Here's a transformative, counter-intuitive solution that will help you go to the heart of anyone's story. To read this issue of the newsletter on Substack and subcribe, visit "Interviews are the foundation of great storytelling. Are yours falling fla...

On May 6, 2024, The 13th Step team was honored with a Pulitzer Prize nomination for audio reporting "for their gripping and extensively reported investigation of corruption and sexual abuse within the lucrative recovery industry that sought accountability despite legal pressure.” Today, we go behind the scenes, once again, with New Hampshire Public Radio Reporter Lauren Chooljian and Story Editor Alison MacAdam to learn their techniques for ensuring journalistic accuracy and fairness as they faced attempts at intimidation. And this close team learned how to create a "trauma-informed workplace" -- and how emotional support techniques helped them to keep going.   This is Part 2 of "Behind the blockbuster investigative series The 13th Step: The best defense is the truth."

In 2020, New Hampshire Public Radio Lauren Chooljian received an email about Eric Spofford, the founder of New Hampshire's largest addiction treatment network. In it was an allegation that Spofford was sexually abusing female clients and employees. Chooljian set out to learn whether this could be true. Over the next three years, she would go on a journey to learn the truth, not just about this allegation, but about widespread sexual misconduct in the addiction treatment industry. The result of that journey is The 13th Step, a gripping series that  won a slew of awards, including the duPont, sometimes considered the Pulitzer of broadcasting.  This is Part 1 of a two-part episode that goes behind-the-scenes of The 13th Step. Along the way, Chooljian, her family, and her news director become targets of retaliation. What started as a reporting task would also become  about another thing: Freedom of the press. And how, why, and for whom to persist with a story in the face of unnerving t…

Sound Judgment is about the craft of audio storytelling. Not about the marketing of podcasts. But today, we're bringing you a gift from someone I trust completely when it comes to audience growth: Jeremy Enns of Podcast Marketing Academy, and his co-host, Justin Jackson, cofounder of Transistor.fm. They've teamed up to produce Podcast Marketing Trends Explained, a limited series that extracts proven audience growth techniques from Enns' comprehensive annual survey of podcasters about their marke...

At some point, every one of us will reach a point in our professional lives where it's time to change — but the status quo, even when it's not working, is comfortable. Are you ready to say goodbye to your old life in order to find your way to a new, better one? But you don't have a map?  That's what Daily Creative host Todd Henry and his "story architect" producer Josh Gott wrestle with in the episode we deconstruct together, "The Curious Death of Todd Henry." You won't be the same after you listen to this episode — a play in seven acts.

It's a brave thing to share the outtakes from a tracking session. All the blemishes are right there. But Martine Powers and Rennie Svirnovsky from the audio team at The Washington Post have graciously done just that. They invited Sound School's Rob Rosenthal into their studio to witness Martine at work voicing an episode of The Empty Grave of Comrade Bishop, with assistance from Rennie. Hearing how they work as tracking partners is a real gift for anyone who wants to perform better in the mic bo...

Marketing might get you new listeners, new readers — new audiences for whatever kind of content you create. But to hook those new people and keep them coming back? To create a relationship with them? That's a whole other thing. Today on the show: six storytelling techniques for making unforgettable work.

When award-winning podcast producer, host, actor and The Moth storyteller Sam Mullins describes a place, a character, or a situation, you'll never see him simply say: "John Doe was of average height, with brown hair, a sad face, and a slight paunch." Not for him are conventional descriptions. Sam, who hosted Chameleon: Wild Boys, searches for the telling phrase, the sensory description, the thing you've never heard, seen, or felt before. Which just might be why he's award-winning in the first place. Learn how to use specifics in the last episode of our six-part series on storytelling strategies to hook your listener and keep them coming back.

Today's episode dives into critical storytelling technique that you may not be thinking about — but you should.

There is no story without a left turn. As you write a feature, produce a podcast, construct a speech or make a video, always be thinking: What's the new information here? What's the new angle? Have I uncovered a fresh, personal story no one has heard?

Does your content come to life or lie there flat on the page, uninspiring on the stage, or dull in people's ears? Take a cue from filmmakers and be intentional by using scenes wisely to make your content come alive.

Welcome to Part 2 of our new series on six storytelling strategies for making your content unforgettable, no matter whether it's for the ear, the page, the stage, or the screen. In this bite-sized episode, learn how to use structure to make idea generation and production easier and faster, while increasing your creativity! Featuring Amit Kapoor and Michael Osborne, cohosts of the provocative, hilarious show about dead celebrities, Famous & Gravy.

Over the last 18 months, storytelling patterns have emerged from the on-the-ground experiences shared with us by today's best audio storytellers. Welcome to Part 1 of our new series on six strategies for making your content unforgettable, no matter whether it's for the ear, the page, the stage, or the screen. In this series you'll learn how to use sound vision, structure, scenes, surprise, suspense, and specifics to make content that audiences love and share. Each of these bonus episodes is bite-sized. This is Part 1: Sound Vision. Yes, it's about sound — and branding. It also applies to you, writers, public speakers, and video producers!

Did you ever work brutally hard to achieve your goal — but when you got there, it didn't feel like what you'd imagined? The Nocturnists host Emily Silverman did. She'd wanted to become a doctor since she was a little girl. But when she finally got through medical school and into a residency, she was shocked to discover she wasn't happy. A visit to a live storytelling event, The Moth, led her to a new career: creating storytelling events and an award-winning storytelling podcast that's "fostering joy, wonder and curiosity" for physicians, nurses, and other healthcare workers. We explore how storytelling humanizes medicine, how it can humanize your profession, and how storytelling might be the tool we need to figure out what we really want — and where we belong.

Podcasts may be the best thing to happen to history class since we stopped teaching history as a list of battles. After all, what could be more dramatic than stories about the people who changed society, for good and ill? But producing history is harder than it appears — and going under the covers of history podcasts offers universal lessons for everyone interested in great storytelling, no matter the genre. Lindsay Graham, the voice of American History Tellers, American Scandal, and History Daily, shares his successes, failures, and self-doubts in growing one of the most successful history franchises in entertainment today. He also addresses Wondery’s controversial “immersive storytelling” practice, which includes fictionalized reenactments of history. We dissect a History Daily episode about Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, and an American History Tellers episode about the Salem Witch Trials – an episode that sounds eerily similar to political events we’re going through t…

In Season 4, we're examining the roles of bravery, fear and authenticity in storytelling. This episode explores the kind of story you may have written or reported yourself — or thought about, and maybe even chickened out on telling: a deeply personal, emotional experience. Perhaps you want to use it as an example or a lens into a bigger issue, one that matters to millions. When memoir is done well, it can move us in a way that almost no other form can do. But pulling it off can be painful, and it's tricky to discern whether your story is simply your own, or whether it is meaningful in the wider world. Maribel Quezada Smith grapples with all of these challenges in her tale of life and death, "The Latino Expectation of Pregnancy: a Story of Pregnancy Loss," produced for The Pulso Podcast. What do we do when joy and grief collide in the same moment? Please use care when listening.