We are a small but mighty staff here on TTBOOK, so usually when we wrap an episode, we are all immediately at work on the next one, and the one after that (you get the idea.)
So, in the midst of still doing that, it was a thrill these past few months to also go on the road, doing two live events talking about our three-part series "Going for Broke," all about Americans on the edge of the economy. With a packed audience at each event, it was a wonderful way to keep the conversation going.
Our show’s distributor, PRX, invited us to present the series at their two live event stages – the PRX Podcast Garage in Boston, which we did in December, and then at the KQED PRX Podcast Garage in San Francisco in April. The executive director of our collaborator on the series, Alissa Quart of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and I were part of a five-person panel to field questions about audio storytelling, the state of journalism, and how to create shows with diversity, emotion, and beautiful sound.
We were grateful to have local moderators leading the evening discussions – Phillip Martin from WGBH in Boston and Ernesto Aguilar of KQED in San Francisco. They both brought knowledge specific to their cities and audiences. The real stars of the nights were two people we interviewed for “Going for Broke,” who are also working journalists. Alex Miller is formerly unhoused and told us his personal stories about housing and mental illness, and then, on the panels, told us what it’s like to keep telling those sorts of stories about yourself. Maia Szalavitz was once addicted to drugs and now dedicates her life to issues like harm reduction and a more empathetic understanding of addiction, and she spoke about the value of scientific evidence in tandem with the lived experience of personal stories.
I keep thinking about the smart, insightful questions from each audience. In San Francisco, someone asked how we as journalists covering difficult, seemingly unsolvable issues can bring more hope into our stories. It sparked a conversation about the way we look at the world, the way we work to take more care with our reporting and with each other, and that having and bringing hope to our listeners is one of the greatest things we can try to do here at TTBOOK.
– Shannon