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.

In Praise of the Sandbox

What inspires those who inspire us? Seasoned producer Jay Allison shares work that inspired him a long time ago and inspires him today, work that contains a healthy measure of invention and play -- key ingredients of creativity, even in a serious world.

  • 2007
  • 01:21:59

Noah's "The Classics"

From CF and SD memory cards back to 24-track - with stops for MD, DAT, and cassette - Noah Adams rambles through 30 years of radio production, playing the stories that inspired his own work and that of countless others.

  • 2008
  • 01:29:41

Neo-Futurism: The Joys (and Rewards) of Forced Creativity

Greg Allen, the creator of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind -- the show which has spawned nearly 10,000 short plays -- conducts a workshop on generating new material, exploring new forms, and beating writer's block.

  • 2008
  • 01:19:44

Mastering the Grill: Why Some Interviews Go Up in Smoke

Some respond to praise, others to badgering, some the frontal assault, others when you sneak up from behind. Brooke Gladstone offers a few interrogation tips (and some audio examples) on how to get your guests to crack and make them like it.

  • 2008
  • 01:20:33

The Inner Sound of the Outer World

Microphones cannot capture situations as they are percieved. A car crash on tape lacks everything that the experience of an accident amounts to: the surprise, the holding of breath, the shock, the sadness.

  • 2008
  • 01:22:06

Approaching Approaches

Alessandro Bosetti talks of the tremors felt while approaching somebody else's life with a microphone in-hand, when fears of exploitation combine with implacable curiosity and the possibility that neither you nor your interviewee will understand each other's intentions.

  • 2008
  • 01:25:40

Lenin's Ears

Andrey Allakhverdov, from the Foundation for Independent Radio Broadcasting (based in Russia), talks about what the FNR is up to over in Moscow, and introduces the timezone-bending modern-day audio legend Lenin's Ears.

  • 2008
  • 06:48

Emancipation of Sound

The established elements of Feature productions have been words, music, actualities, and effects.

  • 2007
  • 01:15:37

Music: A Force for Good (and Sometimes Evil)

Radio makers have many techniques at their disposal for crafting each story they tell, including one in particular that gets used and abused more than any other: scoring.

  • 2005
  • 01:21:00

Die, Mediocrity, Die!

Do your own radio scripts ever bore you? Or frustrate, confuse, and deflate you?

  • 2006
  • 01:15:26

Seven Things I’ve Learned

This American Life host Ira Glass talks about seven things he’s learned over the past 4 decades in radio...

  • 2017
  • 0

Sounds Loved and Sounds Lost

This session is: 1) A brief survey of field recording by that and other names, with an emphasis on non-pragmatic applications of recording technology such as musique concrete (last century) and phonography (this one);

  • 2005
  • 01:29:47

Ask Away

Susan Stamberg, who figures she's conducted some 30,000 interviews in her brief career, plays examples of smart, dumb, informed, innocent, and baggage-laden questions, and discusses how to decide when each is appropriate.

  • 2005
  • 01:10:30

Anatomy of a Radio Piece

Imagine three producers from two continents working on one radio piece.

  • 2005
  • 01:15:54

Telling Stories Far From Home

How can a producer prepare to make radio stories about distant lands and the people who live there, and why tell those stories anyway?

  • 2006
  • 01:25:48

Teens With Mics

Youth producers are creating some of the most revealing and moving work on the radio these days, and we've curated a collection of gems for you.

  • 2006
  • 01:24:23

Talk the Copy

The voice of the storyteller is often overlooked but it's a vital part of making great radio. Marilyn Pittman shows you how to make your narration tracks authentic and compelling with her many tips and techniques.

  • 2006
  • 01:24:29

The Past Isn't Past

We're living through a profoundly unsettled time, both politically and culturally, and a lot of journalists are asking, "how exactly did we get... here?"

  • 2017
  • 01:23:06

Radio Norway

Kari Hesthamar demonstrates the distinctive sound of Norwegian radio features by playing and talking about some of the most important elements of her own work -- creating small films for listeners' ears, capturing the true essence of a scene, and producing stories that come alive through the use of the present tense.

  • 2006
  • 01:30:25

Let Your Sounds Do the Talking

So you're a great writer, and you've pretty much got interviewing down, but something's just... missing. Sound. The sounds we use and how we use them can say so much in a radio story, but often that potential goes untapped.

  • 2006
  • 01:11:58