Since 1996, Radio Diaries has handed a tape recorder to nearly every age group and profession and asked them to share their extraordinary stories. The stories themselves are broadcasted on NPR’s All Things Considered, This American Life, BBC and on the Radio Diaries Podcast. Founder and executive producer of Radio Diaries Joe Richman, OC ’87, and his wife, Sue Jaye Johnson, both taught module courses this semester. He titled his course Journalism Skills as Life Skills (CIME 249). Recently, Richman held the event “Want a Career in Audio Storytelling?” which explored the professional opportunitues within audio storytelling.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The essence of Radio Diaries reminds me of developing film. You have an idea of what you might get, but the final product’s always a surprise. What inspired the idea of Radio Diaries?
It wasn’t a totally original idea. There have been people, both in radio and in documentary film, handing over the equipment and working with people to tell their own stories for many years. What inspired it was partly thinking about what radio is good for; the idea of handing over the story to the character. And early on I fell in love with the idea that the character isn’t speaking through me as the reporter, but is speaking directly to the listener.
Why did you choose to teach a module course at Oberlin this semester? Both your daughters are here, so that’s probably a factor. But why else?
I mean, yeah, that was a lot of it. Having both of our kids going to school here and, through that, remembering how special Oberlin is. The interest was just like, let’s take a break from our lives, let’s live in a small town in Ohio. Let’s expand time and do something different.
You titled the course you taught Journalism Skills as Life Skills. Can you tell me about your inspiration behind this?
The main thing is to teach how to tell audio stories and to play with the craft of interviewing, recording, and writing. But I do believe that for people in the class who are never going to do radio or podcasts, there’s such value in teaching a lot of these skills. It just felt interesting to me to think about journalism skills as life skills because it’s something that I believe in.
In 2021 you reflected on 25 years of Radio Diaries on NPR’s All Things Considered and said, “A microphone is still a passport to places and people we might not otherwise meet. That still feels as important as ever.” Can you tell me more about this?
It’s funny because that quote feels more important than ever. We’re in a moment in our country marked by a profound lack of empathy in which it gets harder and harder to understand the other side. I just think that the most important thing we can do as human beings is to try to understand people different from us. And that’s, as much as anything, the foundation of Journalism Skills as Life Skills.
As we head into a world that demands more visuals, how do you see audio fitting in?
Audio storytelling just tells stories in different ways. There’s the intimacy and the sense of empathy that’s possible in an audio-only story, when you’re not seeing the people and you don’t bring all that baggage that can happen with what our eyes tell us.
And there’s not as much of that going out into the field for the story happening now because it’s expensive and it’s hard. So a lot of what you hear, even on NPR, but certainly on podcasts now, is just talk or studio interviews. The microphone isn’t actually going places as much anymore. It’s really important to just be in the field. I’m committing myself more than ever to remembering that it’s important to go out into the world to do stories, not just let the stories come to you in a studio, in an office, or on your computer.
One of the memorable moments from your talk happened when you said, “I love obituaries, it’s my favorite part of the paper.” Could you tell me more about why you love them? Why is it important to combine history with audio storytelling?
It is true — the obituaries are my favorite part of the paper. What I love about obituaries is that you’re learning about these lives where someone did these amazing things and you didn’t know anything about them or what they did. It just opens this whole world, and I love that. What’s sad about obituaries is that it’s too late. You’re finding out after they’re gone. So I like the idea of living obituaries. That’s what radio is for. You can hopefully interview them before they are gone, and bring their voice to life and celebrate them while they’re still around.
As far as history goes, I think that the information we’re getting from the news — and the world — is so focused on now, and we get a really narrow frequency band of information about reality. History widens the aperture a bit to see our human experience in a broader way, with a bit more perspective and a bit more humility. Things change, things come around. We’re not the only people who’ve ever existed. We’re not the center of the universe. Everything is a cycle, especially right now.
