Elizabeth Meister
Elizabeth Meister quit her job at the phone company to volunteer for public radio show This American Life in 1998, when she started their award-winning website in exchange for a chance to learn how to make radio documentaries.
Since then, her income has shrunk, but she's managed to produce and/or report stories for NPR's All Things Considered and Morning Edition, and This American Life. She's a roadtripping photographer, muddy gardener, a seeker of good music, and a very proud board member of the Enchanted Highway Foundation.
producer
American schools teach students that with hard work, they can realize their dreams. But this isn't the case for everyone.
After waiting for Mr. Right (who has yet to arrive) and experiencing years of fertility treatments, Suzanne, a single woman in her 40s, decides to adopt an African-American baby.
This hour: we head to the south side of Chicago and Japan.
This hour: selling, swapping, buying and trading.
This hour: change. Some of us crave it, some of us avoid it at all costs. But whenever and wherever it happens, change creates fallout, intentional or not.
This hour: an isolated village experiences rapid cultural change, a "border blaster" transmits totally unregulated radio programs from Mexico into the U.S., and a tiny frog causes trouble.
This hour: the BBC's groundbreaking Radio Ballads, produced between 1958 and 1964, which wove sounds, voices, and music into dense sonic tapestries that explored everything from the lives of coal miners to the lives of teenagers, focusing mainly on communities that weren't often heard from on the radio.
This hour: the work of Dan Collison and Elizabeth Meister of Long Haul Productions. Dan and Elizabeth specialize in stories that follow people over days, weeks, and even years.
This hour: a surprising look at the relationship between a hospice worker and his patient.
This hour: tongue twisters, brain teasers, cheaters, and one of the worst high school football teams of all time.
The Ivory Billed Woodpecker was thought to be extinct until 2004, when it was rediscovered near the small town of Brinkley, Arkansas.
presenter
This panel, moderated by Melissa Giraud, brings together two producers (Jay Allison and Elizabeth Meister) who were among the first in public radio and audio production to bring their innovation to the Internet, for a conversation about translating radio stories onto the Web and creating new art forms altogether.
participant
October 26-27, Holiday Inn, Chicago