Ben Calhoun has been in love with radio since he was twelve years outdated. After faculty he started working at WBEZ, Chicago’s Nationwide Public Radio affiliate, finally working his method to This American Life the place, amongst different tasks, he was a reporter on the story “Harper High School,” about gun violence in Chicago, and an editor on “The Out Crowd,” which gained the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting. Calhoun has additionally contributed to dozens of exhibits and podcasts, together with Morning Version, All Issues Thought-about, Serial, and Radiolab, and labored on tales about every thing from college board fights to “artificial calamari.” He’s at the moment the manager producer of The Day by day, a podcast from The New York Occasions, the place he oversees an editorial group of greater than fifty individuals. As somebody who is aware of nothing about making radio, I used to be grateful to Ben for educating me about shut listening, collaborative modifying, and how you can navigate the numerous evolving types of audio journalism.
Merve Emre: Give us a short capsule biography of your journey from faculty to the place you’re immediately.
Ben Calhoun: I’d say there are two main plot factors. The primary was once I was twelve. I used to be listening to public radio within the backseat of a automotive, sitting exterior of a grocery retailer ready for my mother to return out. Terry Gross was interviewing a musician named Ted Hawkins, who was speaking about his life and his music. I fell in love with broadcasting. I fell in love with the concept that a dialog might deliver everybody listening into another person’s world; that you may inhabit it and really feel issues and see issues that you just didn’t have entry to in any other case. It was like magic to me.
I listened to the radio relentlessly after that, from jazz DJs to public radio. There’s a photograph of me standing subsequent to a speaker in a Nirvana shirt and ripped denims, however what I’m listening to is Prairie Residence Companion. If you happen to drilled into the molten core of public radio in 1980, Prairie Residence Companion would stream out of it.
The second second was in faculty. I had a job delivering pizzas for Papa John’s, and in the future my brakes went out. I had been listening to an episode of This American Life about enterprise conventions. In that episode, Nancy Updike tells a narrative about two individuals who meet at a conference and fall in love, however certainly one of them dies on the aircraft experience dwelling. On the time, I didn’t have a cellphone, I needed to ship 5 orders, and I used to be in the course of nowhere within the suburbs of southern Milwaukee. It was an actual drawback. However I spotted, I wish to hear what occurs subsequent within the story. It registered for me: I don’t understand how they make this factor that they make, however I swear I’m going to seek out out, and I’m going to do it.
What occurred to the pizza?
I made it again. I simply ran the automotive into the curb once I wanted to cease.
I graduated from faculty, throughout which I ran a bunch of radio exhibits, with the intention of simply getting my foot within the door. I ended up at WBEZ in Chicago, and I did something that the information division wanted: xeroxing, binding audio-editing manuals, writing newscasts for Morning Version at 4 o’clock within the morning. It took ten years, however finally This American Life employed me. I spent half a decade at that present, over two stints, and at Serial, our sister manufacturing.
Speak to me about shifting from This American Life to The Day by day, which is a unique style of audio.
I spent the primary 9 years in information. I grew to become a creature of newsrooms, with a sure belligerence towards authority and a love of scrutiny and obsessive accuracy. Afflict the snug and luxury the bothered. These have been concepts that actually appealed to me. The thought of giving individuals entry to a platform to speak about their experiences was all the time compelling to me. I advised many alternative journalistic, nonfiction-type tales at This American Life, however three years in the past The Day by day knocked on my door and was like, We want any individual along with your bizarre mixture of experience—one half information and one half longform. That’s the double helix of what that present is: a longform, structured audio story propelled by the information second. The Day by day was start-up measurement once I obtained there. For 5 years, they made the present with about twelve individuals, working till 5:30 within the morning and getting up at 9 AM. They introduced me in to transition to a extra sustainable, long-term mannequin for the group.
Lots of the editors I’ve interviewed have began out at magazines modifying criticism or journalism, and that’s all they’ve edited. Or they began out commissioning and modifying book-length nonfiction, and that’s all they do. However you may have labored within the newsroom, you’ve labored for longform podcasts, and also you’ve labored for The Day by day, which you describe fantastically as twinning longform and information. How do you assume schematically in regards to the completely different genres which are jostling towards each other in audio immediately?
For my very own sake, I’ve all the time damaged it down, first, into information, just like the NPR selection—typically brief kind, although generally with longer arcs that go to, like, seven minutes. Then you definately’ve obtained polished nonfiction, like Radiolab, This American Life, and Serial, with that scripted aesthetic. Then there’s “chat,” the Invoice Simmonses and the Name Her Daddys, these sorts of exhibits with a number of riffing and modified monologuing. There are additionally the miscellanies, and I really like these exhibits too. There’s an excellent outdated present referred to as Joe Frank, by a man named Joe Frank, who would make these arty, indescribably stunning episodes—you’ll be able to hear a number of the precursors to This American Life in there—the place he’s scoring for emotional atmosphere with script or spoken-word efficiency. There was additionally a present referred to as Phrase Jazz by Ken Nordine in Chicago. Mainly, that’s how I map it out.
On this podcast final 12 months, we talked with critics about their observe of shut studying: of studying a textual content attentively to schematize and interpret it. Is there a observe of shut listening that helps you consider the way you go about modifying, setting up, and deciphering a narrative?
After I obtained to This American Life, I used to be used to public radio edits with a one-to-one mannequin, that means that, as a reporter, I’d write a narrative after which I had an exquisite editor, Cate Cahan, who would clear it up. After I went to This American Life, I realized how you can do group modifying.
Let me clarify with a visible:
It appears to be like like a extremely unhealthy poem. Issues are indented and justified left. The place you see “track, track, track,” that’s the place you set key phrases from what the author, the audio narrator, is saying—as you’re listening, you’re registering issues that you would be able to hold on to. Then, if the narrator goes to a clip of tape, like a sound chew from an interview with somebody, that’s the place it says “Speaker A.” There, you’ll choose up a key phrase that was in that clip from the tape. Then you definately return to the narrator, who’s now performing one other monitor, and choose up a key phrase. So, you go down and alter the indentation when it adjustments audio system.
Right here you’ll be able to see it in observe.
These are hand logs made by my colleagues. You may see they’re simply chicken-scratching out key phrases from completely different parts of the story. What this does is, it makes a miniature construction. You may map a one-hour audio documentary, basically, on 4 pages. This provides you handles for what your expertise was. I’d make a circle the place I obtained bored and the place I began to float, or put a query mark and circle it the place I used to be confused. Or I would make a line with two little arrows to point out the place I assumed one thing was taking too lengthy and we’d wish to condense it.
I wish to share this as a result of I’ve come to really feel that a lot of modifying is about clocking your personal expertise as a client of the factor and being hyper-alert to the emotions that you just’re having, then having the ability to talk these emotions as notes to the one who made it—feedback like “shorten this” or “make sure that this point lands cleaner.” Then they will implement their adjustments. Everybody at This American Life would take heed to a draft and create a shared map that we might then use to debate it. At instances, we’d have 4, 5, or six individuals on an edit. Afterward we’d go round and everyone would give their notes utilizing maps that look identical to this.
It sounds such as you’re listening for a number of various things. First, for theme: What’s the particular person speaking about from one second to the following? How are we shifting between theme one and two and three? Second, for voices: The place do Speaker A and Speaker B come into the monitor? Third, for tempo: How lengthy do I spend on a degree earlier than I transfer on? What is going to individuals’s tolerance be? And fourth, for a story arc: The place do we start and finish? What factors are presupposed to land? Does that sound correct?
That sounds completely proper. If I have been to spotlight two issues to search for when modifying audio, they’d be confusion and tedium. They’re quite common when making one-hour documentaries. I herald drafts of exhibits that have been presupposed to be an hour and ended up an hour and forty-five minutes—you’re liable to have some boredom and confusion in there.
With audio modifying, you’re coping with the uncooked materials or a draft of a narrative. Audio is insanely illiberal of repetition, much more so than print. If there’s a lightweight repeat in how something is conveyed, your mind units off this obnoxious alarm: “Oh, I feel like I’ve seen that tree before. Are we going in a circle?” Additionally, audio is all the time structured in reverse. You’re beginning with an thought, a sense, or a plot level that’s necessary, and dealing backward. I used to make a diagram for those that confirmed how they pay attention by way of time. You’re going together with the story, and it’s escalating, and whenever you hit, say, the music publish—you understand, when the music in This American Life is available in—it all the time arrives with a sense, an thought, a realization, a mirrored image. We all the time construction audio so {that a} part is driving at these issues. The purpose is the payoff. It’s obtained a really experiential particularity.
There’s an analog right here with sure types of print. My editor at The New Yorker typically says that the distinction between educational and journal writing is that teachers start with the payoff after which inform the story, however journal writing tells the story to provide the payoff on the finish.
To land it with a punch.
How does hand-logging provide help to reverse engineer the construction of a narrative? Does studying how you can pay attention educate you how you can produce?
That’s a extremely good query. There’s a separate device that I gained by way of a number of ache, which I shouldn’t have needed to undergo. I’m going to share a giant story about this.
At some point, I needed to get one thing from Ira Glass at This American Life, so I am going to his workplace, and I say, “Can I just get ten minutes?” He stated, “Yes, if you talk to these two Israeli guys who want to make our show in Hebrew.” And I stated, “That is not what I was expecting, but we can do that. We can quid pro quo this situation.” These two guys ask us how you can construction a narrative for audio. Ira stated to me, “Well, you go first.” And I stated, “I would prefer that you go first, but all right: What I do is I take hours of logs and I flag all of the things that I feel like are the most meaningful. I flag key plot points. I flag beautiful exchanges. I flag what feel like meaningful or emotional moments, and I just mark all of the things that I’m kind of in love with.”
That is whereas listening to uncooked audio?
Sure. For any story, you may need wherever from two to, like, thirty or forty hours of uncooked tape. I’d undergo all of it, I’d quantity all of these issues, after which I’d make a desk of contents. It might be numbered one by way of fifty, and I’d star, circle, or be aware the issues that felt probably the most important. Then I’d use that as my little key, and sequence the numbers into an overview: We’re doing 4, then we’re doing seven, after which we’re leaping again to at least one. I’d make my define by letting it’s pushed by the facility of the fabric I used to be working with. As a result of, for audio, you simply all the time need the tape driving the development of the factor.
So I end explaining this, and Ira says, “Oh, well, I do the same thing. Except I use letters.” I spent twelve years developing with this technique, and letters are higher! I stated, “I wish I could go back to 2001, and you could just sit down with me for thirty minutes. You would have saved me years of agony.”
Here’s a third instance:
It’s basically an overview in my quasi-legible handwriting, some issues are blue and a few are pink. That is the construction for a narrative referred to as “Just South of the Unicorns.” What you’ll see within the define are moments I knew we wanted. These are in pink—the fabric I couldn’t think about this story with out. Then there are bracketed issues, that are the items of tape which are expendable. I’m making a map of what completely has to exist within the completed model and making selections about what I can lose. Whether or not it’s on the modifying or on the making facet, it’s about developing with a device so that you could put handles in your concepts.
“Just South of the Unicorns” begins with an opportunity encounter that motivates a deep dive into the historical past of a beloved author. Different tales you’re employed on are extra investigative. How do you consider structuring the second type of story?
I’ve obtained two children. They’re eleven and 13, and the eleven-year-old listens obsessively to books on tape. She lately began speaking in regards to the starting of any story as “the scrape.” I stated, “What do you mean ‘the scrape’?” And she or he stated, “You know, where they’re telling you what it’s going to be about, and they give you enough information so that you can follow it.” And I stated, “Oh, you’re talking about exposition.” I really like that by listening to audiobooks, she determined to name exposition “the scrape.” I used to be lately speaking to individuals at The Day by day about how I really feel like there’s actually just one construction. You’re locked right into a chronology, normally, with moments of reflection and that means. However stepping into the story, you’ll be able to have a ton of invention.
You may scrape in numerous methods.
You may scrape in so many alternative methods. Right here’s an instance of the story the place the scrape didn’t pan out. Sarah Koenig had gotten a tip a couple of man who labored in a pork-processing plant and had seen a bunch of bins labeled “artificial calamari.” “What’s artificial calamari?” he requested. One other particular person stated, “It’s hog bung. Hog rectum.” Since Sarah’s obtained higher-class issues to research, she requested if anyone wished to look into this. Oh, my gosh, I did. I’d body the entire thing as an investigation: Is that this true?
To be completely clear for everyone who hasn’t heard this episode, the query is whether or not or not hog rectum is handed off as calamari in eating places.
You simply need the reply, proper? I spotted at a sure level in reporting it out that I used to be not going to have the ability to get the reply. I bear in mind one morning, once I was within the bathe, I assumed, “The way I’ve built the stakes of this entire thing is not going to work.” However I need it to be true. I need this story to exist on the earth. Can I, midstory, swap the stakes for the listener?
The final particular person I talked to was this man Eddie Lin. He had a web site referred to as “Deep End Dining,” and he’d eaten a number of hog bung. That is an excerpt from episode 484 of This American Life, the place you’ll hear the place we swap out the stakes:
He thought it wouldn’t be simple. However he thought it may very well be accomplished. And there was just one method to inform if he was proper—to prepare dinner up some bung and eat it. And if the style was overwhelming and the feel was all fallacious, properly, then I’d have my reply.
And at this level, I’ll be frank. I began to root for the bung. I spotted that this isn’t a narrative about fraud. It’s not a bait-and-switch story.
It’s a narrative about risk. It’s traditional rags to riches. It’s about whether or not a reduce of meat—maybe the lowliest, most malignable reduce of meat in America—may one way or the other, in not less than one place on the planet, be dipped within the redemptive oils of the nice culinary equalizer that’s the deep fryer.
And it would emerge reworked, not an outcast, however as an alternative hair combed, clear shaven, in a swimsuit and tie. It would stroll reborn onto a desk. By way of sheer pressure of resemblance, it is likely to be cherished. Its historical past, years of drudgery and hardship, doing the physique’s least glamorous job, all washed away.
No, this isn’t the story of a con man like Bernie Madoff. It’s Fairly Lady. That is whether or not Good Will Looking finds his means out of Southie. It’s whether or not Charlie, on that final chocolate bar, actually can get a golden ticket.
I really feel like I’m listening to a locker room speech. The group is down, and also you’re the coach telling the gamers they’re going to show it throughout. The music begins to swell. We get a rags-to-riches, losers-to-winners story. After all, it’s fully hilarious too, and ridiculous. How did you write that? How did you rating it?
If we couldn’t get to the reality about calamari, we might get to the reality about feeling like an underdog. That’s what the story was about for me, as a story and as a risk on the earth. Everyone knows the underdog story. It’s such a deep properly. It’s so common. I assumed, if I can wrap my arms round how that feels, perhaps I can pull off this switcheroo. Truthfully, I didn’t know if it was going to work. I wrote that story with out an preliminary edit. I bear in mind I introduced it into Ira’s workplace, and he stated, “How long is it?” I stated, “Twenty-six minutes.” He stated, “How long should it be?” And I stated, “Well, it depends on your appetite for butt jokes.” It ended up being twenty-four minutes lengthy.
In reporting the episode, you referred to as the Nationwide Restaurant Affiliation and the Nationwide Pork Board, and also you spoke to an anthropologist who advised you your questions have been racist. How do you embed a resistant supply or a hostile supply right into a story?
One of many issues I really like about audio is how the interplay of conversations might be alive within the expertise. I really feel like my present employer can be troubled by me speaking about this within the context of The Day by day. However The Day by day is so typically a reporter’s journey. How did the reporter get on this topic? You pose the query going ahead, and then you definitely observe by way of the gathering of data, which might take so many careening turns.
After I went again to work at WBEZ in Chicago, there was an schooling reporter beginning on the beat. She had talked to the Chicago Public Faculty District for a spot in regards to the funds. She stated, “The tape is so hard, the spokesperson is mansplaining to me the whole time.” I stated, “Do you have a good clip of that?” She performed me a clip the place she says one thing that’s clearly proper, and he doesn’t wish to hear what she’s saying. He simply goes, “Becky, Becky, Becky, Becky, Becky!” I used to be like, “We are putting that on the radio!” It was unorthodox for a Morning Version information spot. However once I listened to it, I used to be excited for her. You have been out of a newscast for a second, and also you have been in an trade between two human beings, certainly one of whom was being belligerent. She discovered a means for that interplay to exist in an act of storytelling.
The whole lot that you just’ve described for us—hand-logging, thematically arranging (and rearranging) a narrative, speaking to a number of sources, discovering methods to make use of a hostile supply—makes full sense within the context of a longform podcast, a extremely polished type of kind. How did the wants of The Day by day change your observe of modifying?
The Day by day is sort of a speed-chess model of the identical factor. I exploit all the identical instruments. The method of The Day by day is very structured, regardless that the format is a dialog between colleagues. We now have a query, and we go to a reporter who we predict has accomplished the reporting and may give us the reply. Or we see an article and we predict it might maintain an episode. Then there’s what everybody calls a “pre-interview,” however inside The Day by day known as a “pre-chat.” I don’t know why. However we name the reporter and ask a bunch of questions in regards to the reporting, and what we’re doing is simply mining for concepts. In the event that they’ve obtained materials, we’re speaking in regards to the materials, after which structuring a dialog round concepts.
I consider these conversations just like the tango. There are specific issues that occur at sure instances, and also you’re anticipating them to occur. The reporters sense it from the conversations earlier than the present. The producers and the hosts all have a map of how issues are anticipated to go. We could veer off, however we all know the thought or the sensation we’re going to drive at earlier than the ad break in the course of the present. We all know what we’re going to do and when, however the choreography unfolds in a means that propels you from beat to beat. The genius of the group that created the present was determining how you can reverse engineer a dialog in order that it retains a specific amount of life and oxygen.
The present’s energy—one story advised daily, plucked from the information—can be its vulnerability. There’s stress on the editorial resolution of what story warrants that stage of focus. In our noisy information cycle, there’s a lot energy in that focus. I hear on a regular basis from listeners who say, “I won’t pay attention to that story, I’ll just wait for a The Daily episode to be made. They can come in and I can make sense of it. They’ve got the decoder ring.”
