POD BIBLE: At a time in America’s history when discussions of racism are at the core of so many topics – politics, health care, gender and sexuality, employment – how did education come to the forefront as the area you wanted to explore?

Chana Joffe-Walt: I’ve always been personally moved by the ideal of public education, and as a reporter the reality of public schools is very rich! Schools are a great reflection of the larger society. All of the big dramas and tensions of the country can be found playing out in real time in schools. The stakes are enormous because each child gets only one education.

PB: With a country as geographically massive as the U.S., how do you tell what is really a national story without making it hundreds of hours long and including every city in America? How can narrowing your scope assist you in tell a wider story?

CJW: I don’t really set out to find a story that will represent The Story of American Schooling. I just try to find a situation with people and tensions that I find compelling. I want the story to feel specific, but hopefully speak to some larger themes. In this case, I was interested in school segregation, which is a national phenomenon but can feel abstract when talked about on a national scale. New York City, where I live, is an excellent setting because it has some of the most segregated schools in the country. I think what actually makes this story feel like it speaks to larger themes is that it is not just a portrait of present day but the entire history of one school. As reporters we draw conclusions from an examination of a particular moment in time in American schools. I’d never seen all those different moments in a school’s history told as one story. I think it’s a different and useful way to understand a bigger picture of public education.

PB: How did you develop the name of the podcast? Do names get workshopped based on how people respond to them, what the language calls to mind, etc?

CJW: We tried a lot of different titles. For a while we were leaning towards a title that emphasized the repetition of history you can see when you lay out the history of a school. “The Story of the Story of IS 293” was one we liked for a little while. But we kept coming back to something that explicitly focused attention on white parents. The more the series was edited and focused, it was clear that what was notable here was the disproportionate power white parents have in public schools. It’s something that is rarely discussed, but is shaping our public education system all the time. It felt valuable to hang a lantern on that and say this is worth looking at.

PB: Once you decided to create Nice White Parents, did you find anything surprising in your research regarding the audio?

CJW: I really appreciated the conversation with one of the parents who wrote letters in 1963, Elaine. She was self-reflective, honest and generously willing to interrogate her own choices. There is a lot of defensiveness around these issues. I learned so much from speaking with someone who was genuinely willing to question herself and be honest about how difficult that is to look at yourself, what you believe in and the choices you actually make.

PB: Can you tell us a bit about the process of creating the audio experience of Nice White Parents? How do you find the right balance of soundscape, scripted narration, archival sound, and interviews?

CJW: I worked with an incredible editor, Julie Snyder, who was constantly trying to make sure there was a narrative and conceptual thru-line to carry you through all five episodes. The hardest challenge we had in terms of sound was figuring out a way to make a historical story feel emotional. We invested a lot of time into finding archival footage to help those episodes feel human and intimate. I discovered I really like archival research!

PB: If so, What are the working relationships with producers and engineers like for this programme, and how important are those collaborations to Nice White Parents as a finished product for podcast listeners to enjoy?

CJW: Yes. Every person I work with is incredibly talented. I am not saying that because I have to. It is weirdly true. The editors, production, fact checking and managerial team are all exceptionally competent at what they do and also good at at least four other things that are not their job.

PB: Can you tell us about the archivists and researchers you worked with in creating this podcast? Many of our readers, both fans and creators themselves, don’t realize that the archives of audio and information they are able to use to create content has to be curated by someone.

CJW: Sure! Early on, an education historian named Rachel Lissy took me on a “field trip” to the Board of Education archives in New York. She showed me how to navigate all the boxes and her enthusiasm for the hunt was contagious. I went there many times. We worked with another education researcher named Francine Almash. And we also hired an archival producer named Rebecca Kent who helped us go through news footage to find stuff that was personal and not too generic. I relied a lot on the guidance of scholars who do this kind of work all the time to find things that were specific to the school and its story. It’s really hard to know where to look. There are so many small collections that have great stuff.  It’s time consuming but every so often you find something really exciting so it’s hard to stop.

Nice White Parents is a limited series from Serial Productions. You can find the series on Spotify, and everywhere you enjoy well-researched audio goodness.

The post To the Archives with Chana Joffe-Walt from “Nice White Parents” appeared first on POD BIBLE.

Allow me to be clear: this is a highly successful, beautifully produced and well-researched podcast that does not need or seek our recommendation. And frankly, it would be lazy and thoughtless of me to simply drop the suggestion you listen to a two year old podcast on the topic of anti-racist activism as though that were enough.

It’s not enough.

The topics that Ms. Eddo-Lodge covers are important and relevant, but they were always important and relevant. The show may seem particularly poignant today, even though it was released in early 2018, but that only serves to highlight how late so many of us are to the table. As the programme once again climbs the podcasting charts, Reni commented via her Twitter account that a large podcasting company she and her team had pitched to once called it “broccoli”.

I have no idea what kind of vegetable this podcast would be (and frankly I love broccoli) but I do know it is a stunning piece of audio. Before we even get the chance to dive into the discussion and context, we are first confronted with incredible production quality and an opening sequence I will not likely forget any time soon. Opening credits and theme music are often overlooked in podcasting, and producer Renay Richardson sets about giving the listener a British history lesson in racism right from the moment you press play.

Over the course of the series, each topic brings us new guests, experts in their fields and participants from moments in anti-racist (and some wholly racist) moments of a nation’s history. Both host and producer offer the listener not only context and shape the takeaway of each discussion, but allow them to breathe – not so that we may relax, but in order to make us uncomfortable. There are moments when the last lines of an interview seem to hang in the air and the hair on the back of my neck stood as I waited for the catharsis of correction or rescission. Neither came – and that is the reality of the discussion of racism.

The concept that anyone ever called About Race “broccoli” is mind-boggling. Discussions of race and activism are not some unappealing item on our plate that we have no choice but to take in if we want to grow big and strong. A quality podcast is one that is created to either inform or entertain, but deftly uses its own medium as a tool to tell the story. About Race offers layers, not only in the language of the speakers, but in removing the visuals – and what we as listeners must confront about ourselves and our own deeply learned racism when Reni casually mentions the race of the person to whom she is speaking.

About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge is not recommended, it is required. You can find out more about the team of Black creators behind the podcast on the show’s website, and you can listen to all nine episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

The post REVIEW // About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge appeared first on POD BIBLE.