“The human voice is the organ of the soul”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We are in a golden age of the audio story. Institutions like the BBC and NPR and other public radio affiliates are producing groundbreaking and experimental work. Traditional writing-based institutions like The New York Times, Slate, and The New Yorker are branching into podcasting in a major way. Audio storytelling innovators like This American Life and Radiolab are going strong. In the past decade, the medium has opened up to young startups and unaffiliated individuals, who are pushing the boundaries with little more than a smartphone and inexpensive or free audio editing software. Marc Maron started his WTF podcast in 2011 out of his garage and went on to interview President Obama. This is all to say, opportunities to produce and share audio stories are greater than ever before.

Despite all this, we are living in a crisis of listening. Millions are clamoring to be heard; millions more are shocked at how deaf they have been to their fellow humans. In this The Art of Sound: Radio, Podcasting & Digital Narrative, we will, above all, learn to listen. We will recalibrate our ears. We will listen to a wide variety of podcasts and radio stories exploring pressing topical issues like racism, gentrification, and climate change, as well as personal stories about memory, love, and grief. We will develop new ways to listen to story subjects through interviews and sounds of everyday life. We will grapple with the ethical problems that come with presenting other people’s lives. We will question our own assumptions at every step, and seek new insights on ourselves. We will learn to open up about the creative process, listen to each other’s work, and provide sensitive, supportive, and imaginative feedback.

Along the way, we will cover recording and editing techniques, analyze and breakdown how audio stories are structured and put together, and discuss ways to distribute and draw audiences on the web and social media. We will explore why audio continues to be such a vibrant and potent way to communicate. While this course is focused on producing audio stories, the skills presented are applicable beyond podcasting: to writing, documentaries, and any profession where listening, comprehending, and communicating play a vital part—which is to say, all professions.