Maker Sessions

Dive into scores of talks, workshops, and audio manifestos offering wisdom on everything from production skills to journalistic ethics from the best audio producers and makers on the planet.

Sources, Correspondents, Fixers: Making Radio With Bloggers

Millions of bloggers write every day about their own towns, industries, and lives. As a radio producer you can work with a nation -- a world – of storytellers to find out about everything from French politics to knitting habits in Iowa.

  • 2006
  • 01:17:02

A Sense of Place

Washington Post reporter Anne Hull shares her thoughts about how to capture an environment that reveals the world of a particular subject to your audience: by paying attention to detail and hopefully avoiding familiar cliches.

  • 2005
  • 01:19:08

Everyday Voices

David Isay and Alex Kotlowitz both try to discover extraordinary stories in "ordinary people."

  • 2004
  • 01:20:47

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things: Up With Bad

Founding producer of This American Life Nancy Updike on the inspiration she finds in the power of vice, foible and inappropriateness on radio, podcasts, TV and in books.

  • 2014
  • 01:08:29

Audio Educators Swap Meet

Get ready to steal from the best. Your educator colleagues at Third Coast have a fount of wisdom to offer, from hard-won mentoring insights to crafty teaching hacks. (Note: Audio will not be available.)

  • 2016
  • 0

Sound Design 101

Brendan Baker and Kaitlin Prest pull back the curtain on the alchemical process of combining stories and sound.

  • 2014
  • 01:18:04

Compose yourself: a producer’s guide to working with musicians

It’s becoming more common for podcast producers to work with composers to create an original soundtrack. At this session, producer Michael May and composer/producer Nick DePrey share their techniques for bringing a piece to life with music and sound design.

  • 2016
  • 01:15:20

These are a few of Audie Cornish and Sean Cole's Favorite Things

Audie Cornish and Sean Cole came up in radio together — smoking on the front steps of WBUR in Boston, puzzling over stories. Now Audie is a co-host of NPR's All Things Considered and Sean is a producer at This American Life .

  • 2016
  • 01:25:55

Breaking the Mold: Youth Producers Share Their Work -- Day One

Their work comes from the heart and gives us a glimpse into the most enigmatic of worlds: teenagehood. Listen in as young producers from around the country present their work and talk about how they're making radio relevant for a new generation.

  • 2003
  • 01:24:54

Audio in Space

Producing great audio experiences becomes challenging in entirely new ways when you go beyond the stereo field, and add the dimension of actual physical space (say, a person with an iPod in Central Park.)

  • 2010
  • 01:17:06

Music

Music and sound bring layers of meaning to your work. Incorporating them most effectively starts with looking for the movement and metaphor in your materials. Using examples from her own features, Sherre DeLys presents different approaches to integrated sound design.

  • 2002
  • 01:12:12

These Are a Few of Ira Glass's Favorite Things

Ira Glass plays and talks about radio and print journalism that has inspired him, including some surprising 1970s-era NPR documentaries which may be long forgotten by most.

  • 2002
  • 01:24:13

Rocks, Riptides, and Buoys: Radio in the Play of the Airwaves

Longtime proponent of radio as a fluid and flexible medium, Gregory Whitehead plays a variety of work from around the world and gives a philosophical and pragmatic talk on the role of imaginative radio in an increasingly congested media landscape.

  • 2002
  • 01:19:09

Featuring . . . the Feature

The radio "feature" is a long-standing tradition of European broadcasting, a format with a style all its own. Kaye Mortley, an independent producer based in France, describes the feature this way: "These pieces are mind movies -- road movies sculpted out of reality.

  • 2002
  • 01:26:59

Breaking the Mold: Youth Producers Share Their Work -- Day Two

Their work comes from the heart and gives us a glimpse into the most enigmatic of worlds: teenagehood. Listen in as young producers from around the country present their work and talk about how they're making radio relevant for a new generation.

  • 2003
  • 01:24:21

Ways of Hearing

It's not always easy to put aside the culturally-formed listening patterns we take for granted and hear radio in fresh ways.

  • 2003
  • 01:29:31

The Music of Voices

Creative sound projects are increasingly blurring the lines between radio, audio documentary, sound art, and music.

  • 2003
  • 01:32:08