Sound School Podcast

Did Robert Smith of Planet Money go to far to make the uninteresting interesting? Robert talks about using "Oblique Strategies" for reporting an arcane topic in economics.

Get your headphones ready and listen! Two buried treasures from Transom students. A story about domestic violence. Another about eels.

Some print essays make great radio. Jay Cowit, Technical Director for The Takeaway, tells us how they recently did it.

A lot of the music This American Life uses to score stories is composed for the program. Producer Jonathan Menjivar and musician Matthias Bossi of Stellwagen Symphonette talk about the music that works and doesn't work for the show.

There are no rules about starting a story but, there are some common approaches. Jessica Terrell dissects several story-starting tricks she used in the first episode of Offshore, the podcast about the off-beat side of Hawaii.

Story twists are the hallmark of Love + Radio. Nick van der Kolk dissects the blind-siding reveal in "A Girl of Ivory."

Rob dissects an episode of 99% Invisible to reveal a common but effective story structure -- the 'e.'

Outside/In host Sam Evans Brown narrated the first few minutes of an episode of the podcast just fine -- really well, in fact. Then he switched gears and brought two colleagues into the studio to tell them a portion of the story. Why?

A son. A father. And an alien abduction. What more do you need to know?!

Approaching a stranger on the street for an interview, pretty easy. "Doorstepping," knocking on the door of a house or entering a business for an interview uninvited, not so easy. Producer Nina Perry on her "doorstepping" interview for More Perfect.