Running to the Noise, Episode 22

Carmen Twillie Ambar: I am Carmen Twillie Ambar, president of Oberlin College and Conservatory. Welcome to Running to the Noise where I speak with all sorts of folks who are tackling our toughest problems and working to spark positive change around the world. Because here at Oberlin, we don’t shy away from the challenging situations that threaten to divide us.

We run towards them.

Almost 30 years ago, Joe Richman had a radical idea, give teenagers tape recorders and ask them to document their own lives. What started as a bold experiment became the groundbreaking series Radio Diaries. Since then, Joe and his team have handed recorders to all kinds of people. Among them teenage boxers, undocumented immigrants, lighthouse keepers, and prison guards, and invited them to be the narrators of their own stories.

Joe has spent his career proving that journalism isn’t just about reporting facts, it’s about connection. Being a good storyteller, he says it’s like being a meteorologist, reporting on the windchill factor. It’s not enough to tell people the temperature. You also want them to know how it feels. His work airs on NPR, This American Life, the BBC and the Radio Diaries Podcast, and it’s received some of the highest honor in the field, including multiple Peabody Awards.

In the spring of 2025, Joe returned to Oberlin to teach a course. He titled Journalism Skills As Life Skills. In short, Joe believes that the tools of journalism, deep listening, curiosity and being open to surprise are essential on and off the air. In this episode, I sit down with the Oberlin history major lifelong, WOBC, devotee and proud Oberlin dad, to talk about the lessons of that class, why radio builds empathy and why everyone has a great story to tell.

Yes, it’s a conversation about journalism, but it’s also a useful instruction manual for life. As Joe says, a microphone is a passport to places and people we might not otherwise meet. So Joe, I’m so excited to have this conversation with you because lots of people talk about Oberlin as a place where kind of podcasts began.

We have a lot of firsts like that at Oberlin. And I guess I’m wondering, when you think about Radio Diaries, what sparked that idea? Do you remember where it came from?

Joe Richman: First, I was into documentary films coming out of college, and I think there were just some things that really influenced me. The main things were Studs Terkel’s work, his book Working, and then Eyes on the Prize, those two things together, how do I do something like this? And I thought it meant documentary film, but then as I was working in radio more and hearing more stuff, that was like what I wanted to be making that felt like a path. And the thing that really turned things was I was doing a little bit of work on, actually on Eyes On the Prize too, that second series.

Yeah. As an intern and seeing how much money and time and work goes into this stuff. And meanwhile, I had just gotten a tape recorder and I was out there like talking to people. And that you don’t have to ask for permission. You just go and you interview someone that you’re interested in, and that was kind of addictive.

So that turned me to radio for good.

Carmen: So I’m wondering if you can tell the audience, walk us through your process a little bit, because this idea of just handing someone a tape recorder on a mic and turning them loose. When you’re finding these subjects, what’s that process like? What kind of education did you give them?

How do you get them ready to tell their own story?

Joe: I mean, I’ll back up to say that we, at this point in Radio Diaries, we do a lot of things. We do a lot of historical documentaries, right? And a lot of these kind of non narrated, highly produced kind of experiential kind of documentaries that aren’t necessarily giving people tape recorders.

But the diaries are what we’re, what I’m known for, right? What I did a lot of in the years past, and we’re getting back to now, which I can come back to, and the process there is, you know, partly it’s about choosing a topic that sort of needs to be humanized. Maybe the stigmas and associations need to be blown up in some way through just one person getting to know one person.

So sometimes it’s looking for an issue. Sometimes it’s just finding a great person. Mm-hmm. Who’s just an interesting talker. So I would say as far as the beginning process, I. When I first started, this is almost about 30 years ago. I know it’s been a little bit, it’s been a little bit, I just turned 60, so I’m, I’m, I’m in the little bit, quite a bit right now.

Carmen: Yeah. Well, you and I are close in age, so when I was thinking about 30 years ago, I was trying to take myself back to that time period and what it means because. At some point here we’re gonna talk about TikTok and the ways that people tell their own stories now, but 30 years ago in the tradition that you all developed, I think is something to really be proud of and something significant that you’ve added to this culture.

Joe: Well, thank you. It, it is something I’m thinking a lot about because there, when we started doing these diaries, it really sounded different than anything else, and it’s not the case anymore. Everyone is recording their own story. Yeah, so there’s a lot of question about what is the value of working in this way.

Basically what I come down to is doing anything well is worth doing. There’s just so much garbage out there, so good things just rise. But back then, yeah, hearing directly from people telling their own story felt a little more different. Revolutionary, it’s, we different on the public radio airwaves, as I was saying, like I thought that.

I was gonna be looking for extroverted, funny, interesting talkers, but it was a lesson early on that people like good talkers come in all shapes and sizes. There are the extroverted ones, they’re the really kind of quiet ones that make you lean closer to your radio speaker. Mm-hmm. There’s the ones who tell a good story.

Joe: The ones who are good on detail, the ones who are very open. People have their strengths.

Carmen: Right. Right. But I’m wondering when you’re in the editing process, they’ve told their story, now you are in the editing phase. What’s your mindset about the curation of that story?

Joe: The curation is such a big part of it. You know, they’re recording 40 hours sometimes, right? More of tape.

Carmen: I’m wondering whether you have ever felt like as you are in the curation process that maybe this is not the path that we should be on. There’s something about this story that we need to pull back from. I’m trying to get underneath that curation and how you make decisions as you listen to these recordings.

Joe: I think you hit on what is the potential magic of working this way. When I’m a sort of a more regular reporter and I’m out doing a story, I may be looking to be surprised and have my expectations blown up a little bit, but mostly I think I know the story I’m going for. This is a little bit different.

Basically the outlines of a story, but the surprise is the whole thing. Like the moments when they say something or do something, you realize something. It’s not what you’re expecting are the moment you’re looking for. It’s the whole reason for working this way, that you’re sort of crowdsourcing someone’s life with them. Right. You know? That’s right. And so it’s anything that I might think to ask or think where this is going is just a starting point.

Carmen: Do the subjects have creative control? Do they get a chance to listen to it and say, I don’t want this revealed? Like how do the subjects play into the curation?

Joe: Yeah, that does happen. I mean, again, I’ll step back just for a second to say that with the diaries, the relationship is very different than if I’m doing a story on a more traditional journalistic story. With the diaries, they’re the reporter and I’m the producer, and so the arrangement is different. And what I say is if there’s anything they don’t want in the story, they just have to let me know.

What I try to avoid is playing them the story where some of the, kind of like the audio equivalent of, I don’t like the way my hair looks, might come into play. So they know everything that’s in the story. If there’s sensitive stuff, we talk about it. There have been cases where particularly parents or the teenager hasn’t wanted a particular thing in, so that’s come up.

But for the most part, I want them to record as freely as possible, and that’s really why I give them editorial control so they can get everything in there, and then we can have the conversation.

Carmen: You know, as I was prepping for this conversation with the team, we had one of those little detours. It was a 20 or 30 minute detour about social media. The world has changed. People are recording themselves and telling their stories. Do you feel like you are the sort of father of that you started 30 years ago, do you feel responsible for what you brought? Don’t know, do you, do you feel like that, that some of your work led to this? And what is your view of what’s happening on social media now?

Joe: I mean, the thing was when I started doing these audio diaries, there were actually similar things out there, video diary projects, some audio diary projects. Ghetto Life 101 was a wonderful project that influenced me. There was a time when that was kind of trendy. Handing over equipment. Right. Citizen journalism a little bit after that.

So it’s not like anyone invents anything so much. I just played a lot with the form and it’s funny that we’re talking a lot about diaries here because it’s not something we’ve done as much over the last five or six years. We’ve been doing a lot more historical documentaries, but you know. Things are changing.

Carmen: They are.

Joe: The world is changing. Our funding has been cut and changing, and frankly, I’m realizing that we need to go full on back to diaries. I think it’s a moment when I have felt like it hasn’t been a moment for this kind of form lately. And I feel like that just changed this year.

Carmen: I totally agree, and I think I wanted to have this conversation with you because I think we are moving back to a world of trying to understand the macro by these micro looks. Exactly. And I think that’s what’s powerful about these kind of intimate personal stories that are curated with some sense of substance, which I would describe as not so much happening on social media, although there are substantive things that happen there, which is why I’m so attracted to what you all do.

And I guess I’m wondering, since that you might be headed back to that framework, what you think the power of radio as a medium is. Is that how you would want to spend your time? Or is it also about video and the other ways that we see people tell their stories?

Joe: I am a 100% audio radio evangelist.

Carmen: Yeah, well you have to explain that now. We’ll be evangelist about it. We’ll, we gotta explain it to everyone.

Joe: We could spend the rest of the time talking about it. I mean, I really think it’s a magical medium. I do. The way that we get beyond the preferences that we sometimes have with our eyes and what we’re seeing is really powerful. I think many people talk about radio as an empathy machine, and I think it’s really true this way.

It lets people in, in a way that other mediums don’t always. It’s like this combination of the visceral, immediate emotional with the kind of way it actually gets in our body. I mean, you can even get as spiritual with like sound waves themselves are getting inside our body. That is the way that they literally touch us in all different ways.

I think audio for me is a way of finding stories that have emotional truth. Our ears have a great bullshit detector. They really do. I think more than any other sense.

Carmen: That’s so interesting.

Joe: I think it just helps us know what feels true to us deep inside.

Carmen: As we have been talking about this in the team, we spend a lot of time looking at the language that you use because you talk about yourself as a radio journalist. It’s actually a return to the past with the lens of this century, the lens of what’s happening in the world today. And I’m really fascinated by this notion that our ears have the ability to detect what is really true. And we’ve been having a struggle with the truth.

Joe: Yes, we have.

Carmen: In this country and certainly from this aspect of journalism and of storytelling. What is the truth? And I guess you’re offering up to us that one of the ways that we can be more discerning as truth seekers is to be listeners more than kind of visual consumers.

Joe: People do talk about it’s the first sense that turns on when we’re babies inside the womb. There is some way that audio is sort of a cosmic connection for us and what we know is true or something. Yeah. So there’s that. But I think what you’re suggesting is something that I’ve been thinking a lot about, I think many people have been thinking a lot about is what is the role of journalism in this moment?

Yes. When the truth is so contested and no one listens to each other, and so what do you do with that as a journalist? For me, I think the only thing to do is to find that sort of emotional truth kind of path. When I think of these diaries, sometimes I think about them as like little Trojan horses where you get to know someone and you forget about whatever the issue is.

You just get to know them and feel like a family member or someone you like, or you get to relate to them in some way different from the fact that they are an undocumented immigrant, let’s say.

Carmen: That’s right. You know, you said something, Joe, that I think is so important, which is that it’s about helping people connect to an emotional truth, not so much a factual truth because we struggle so much with the facts, but maybe we can get back to an emotional truth.

So one of the things I thought we might do is just you and I to listen a few minutes to one of the stories, and then let’s talk about it a little bit from the standpoint of what we’ve been describing, which is this connection to the emotional truth.

Amanda (audio): My parents know that I’m bisexual, but they don’t talk about it much. My father doesn’t really talk much at all. My mother, on the other hand, when I first told her and she reacted totally crazy. 

Mom: It was all against my growing up beliefs. Anyone who was gay or who is lesbian was considered sick, wasn’t accepted in the Catholic Church at all. It just, it wasn’t accepted.

So I’ve grown up with that concept all my life. So they hear that you’re, that’s you. Wouldn’t that blow your mind?

Amanda: How do you feel about it, Dad?

Dad: About what?

Amanda: How do you feel about me?

Dad: Fine. What about it? 

Amanda: Sexuality wise.

Dad: Oh, you’re, you are 17 years old. You are not definite, you’re not formed in your ways. 

Mom: Someone at 17 does not know what is at the other end of the line, anybody. There’s just not enough life that you’ve seen. You haven’t seen enough. You haven’t done enough. You have not lived.

Amanda: Well over two years, and five months have gone by, and that’s what I believe.

Mom: I think if a good fella came by and really treated you right. Your mind would switch.

Amanda: My mind will switch. So it’s all in my mind.

Mom: It is. It’s all in your mind right now. You just don’t say, well, this is how I feel and this is how I’m gonna be for the rest of my life.

Amanda: I’m not saying that’s how I’m gonna be for the rest of my life. And I’m not saying that I’m not gonna have sex with a guy. I’m saying that I do. I want to go and have sex with a guy. It’s not happened yet.

Mom: I hope not.

Amanda: No, it’s not. But I mean, I’m going to, I’m not gonna deny myself of that.

Mom: Well, that’s why I said don’t deny yourself of that. And you may find when you do that, that your whole outlook may change. 

Amanda: It’s just not, oh, this is somebody’s decision. They don’t really know what they want right now.

There’s guy. I mean, I’ve been out with guys while I’ve been going out with Dawn. Dawn’s been out with guys while she’s been going out with me. I mean, we are so like, we’re really close and there’s like a love there for me towards her than her, towards me, and you know what I mean? But we’re with each other.

Mom:  Well, maybe that’s just a good friendship. You love friends.

Amanda: Yeah, but I don’t do what I do with Dawn, with friends. Do you know what I mean? You don’t do what you do with Dad, with friends.

Joe: It’s a bit of a timepiece for me. And I’ll say that Amanda won the very first diary almost 30 years ago now, and just hearing it, I mean, it’s a timepiece in terms of the issue of course, too. That was a very different time for a young girl to be coming out to her parents.

And I know now how happily the story has turned out. Like her parents are not just supportive of her and her. She has a wife now who, and they have kids.

And they're supportive of other kids in the community who come out. They counsel parents. So it turned into a very happy story in that way. I’m just remembering how much it taught me really. That was the first one I did, and it just taught me like the incredible power of having a conversation like that.

Carmen: That’s right. I think that there were a couple of words that I stopped on as they were discussing, and it is a different time, so we have moved as a society for sure, but I think the notion that someone is an other, that someone is different and that the parents described it early on as you’re sick.

The word sick came out for me in that conversation and then for her to say, there is love there, right? In a time and period where people didn’t perceive that there was an ability for people to have love that wasn’t heterosexual love, and it’s amazing how we shifted.

But the themes that exist around people who are different, people who have different perspectives, people who make different decisions and choices and live a different life experience and feeling like they’re not of us. That is in that story.

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that. It, like the, being a 17-year-old who is exploring their sexuality isn’t such a big deal anymore, but this idea of control and not being so free to just explore whatever you feel like you want to explore is, is right. Feels more powerful than ever.

Carmen: I think that we’re in an interesting time in this country that is complicated in so many ways, but underneath some of the complications are just cultural wars about how we live our lives, who we are, who we value, what we think is significant, who we think should have power and authority, and who we think should have influence.

It’s all underneath lots of these stories, and I appreciate the conversation that we had about emotional truths and emotional truths helping us find the clarity in how we think about who we are as a society. And that’s what I think is so interesting about this return that you are suggesting that you might do to these personal stories.

Because maybe that’s the only way, it’s almost like accelerating those individual stranger conversations. Like how can we have exponential growth in our ability to have these individual conversations so we can think differently about the world because we know somebody personally.

Joe: That’s exactly it. Feel like a family member, feel like they’re in the car with you telling the story, and that’s the idea. Whether it’s the diaries or the other kind of work we do where it’s still non narrated. I just think about like the listener, how direct a feed can you get.

Carmen: Yeah.

Joe: That isn’t so mediated by the reporter, by the narrator, by all of that.

Carmen: That’s right. And that’s what I think is so powerful about your work, and I’m so glad that you are encouraging us to focusing on a particular sense and getting rid of all of the other senses so you can really, really hone in. That’s what you’re saying to us about radio and these personal stories that’s going to make the difference. I think that’s what you’re saying to us.

Joe: It sounds like my evangelist for audio is taking hold, radio.

Carmen: I want the audience to know that you have been on our campus teaching, which I have been so excited that you returned to your alma mater to teach, and some of the things that people should know about you is that you were involved in the radio station when you were here, right?

Joe: Yeah. I had a music show and I did a little kind of public affairs thing for one semester. I loved it. Yeah.

Carmen: For the audience, you have to Google WOBC and listen to our students. And I’m assuming that some of that experience led into how you thought about your work after Oberlin—

Joe: —and that sort of love of certainly music and sound and just… yeah. Loving being, I mean, I love being in the radio studio. Yeah. So all of that definitely laid down some of the sort of the love tracks. I’ve taught radio journalism before so I have some experience and I knew I could do that and I knew that was gonna be the main thing. Teach you about journalism and how to do stories and they all produced stories in the end. And really surprisingly good stories, I have to say. Good. Really excited.

Carmen: You were impressed with our students.

Joe: I, yeah. Well my daughter was one of the students, so… yeah, I was impressed with all of them. Absolutely.

Carmen: That’s fine. To be impressed with our own children.

Joe: What I wanted for them is to go out into the world, talk to people, and come back and make a story. And they did that and the stories were great. This idea of journalism skills as life skills was just something that, almost like a personal investigation for me that I wanted to kind of embed into the course. And it wasn’t so much we were teaching that, but that was like underneath everything, right?

So they go out and do an interview and it’s like we were, besides just talking about how to do a good interview, we talked about what does it mean to give that kind of attention and the curiosity and what is the relationship there? What is the give and take? And we did this one assignment that I love. I had them do one interview that wasn’t for any story, it was just to find someone that they want to interview and then give them the recording.

There’s a formalness to doing it with a microphone. It’s not just a chat, but then it’s not—you’re not editing in your head. You’re not trying to get anything in particular, just following it, because that’s something I’ve been doing in my own life lately as I realized I was getting bored of doing interviews to kind of bring the spark back. So just to… we called it a question bath and just to give someone that kind of attention and then give them the recording for themselves, they kind of flip the exchange a little bit.

Carmen: That’s right. So we did that. Was there any, any purpose—I mean, you know, when you said to bring the spark back for yourself doing that exercise, was it simply the idea of listening with the purpose for understanding, not with the purpose of doing anything with it exactly?

Joe: Is like just to be in it. Not to be like, what’s the next question? Where did I get what I need? Is this working out? Not to have any of those thoughts—just to, in the experience of the interview. It changes it when you don’t have a goal.

Carmen: That’s right. It’s so funny you say that. I definitely want to talk about this idea of talking to strangers, ’cause I think that’s part of it. But I will do a little tangent because we have this program called Sustained Dialogue here at Oberlin. It’s not part of a course or anything like that. It’s an extracurricular activity. And the idea is to try to talk to people across difference and try to talk to people who have different perspectives than you do, and frankly, try to practice it.

And I use that principle from Sustained Dialogue: listen with the purpose of understanding, not with the purpose of changing someone’s mind, because it’s that exercise in listening without a purpose of trying to figure out the next question or respond to them or whatever. That is the key to understanding. Because if you’re not trying to do anything with it other than to listen, it totally changes how you are approaching this interaction. Yeah. And so I love that the students did that because it’s a broad lesson. There are lots of applications to that.

Joe: It changed the feeling. I mean, it’s a great relationship lesson too, you know?

Carmen: Yeah, it is. That what happened in my marriage. Okay. Good to nudge, Joe.

Joe: You know, for someone to feel like the curiosity is authentic, the worst thing you can do is just be going down your list of questions. Here you go. And you feel like you’re just checking off the list.

Carmen: Right. So you know those—
 not letting the conversation naturally move and flow with the things that happen.

Joe: Yeah. I mean, that’s what we’re all after. Yeah. Whether it’s here in this podcast or like for someone doing a produced story or whatever it is, you’re just trying to get something that feels like a real interaction and connection and experience, and it’s all the same thing.

Carmen: I love it. So I know one of the other things that you said to the students was that they should talk to strangers and I just think about this world today. It’s really hard to talk to strangers actually. I mean, you have to make an effort. It sometimes happens to me when I’m on a plane. Someone sits next to you, you might have a conversation, and I can remember I went to law school in New York City and feeling like that you thought your day was successful by how little you had to talk to your neighbors. I can remember, like, rushing in to get in my door. Oh my God. Someone’s coming down the hall. I don’t want to talk to them. Let me get in here before I have to. Why? Why is that a lesson for our students? Why should they talk to strangers?

Joe: I think it’s the worst advice we give our kids. Don’t talk to strangers. And we actually were thinking of starting a project here at Radio Diaries where we actually work with different communities and different stations to get people in their local areas doing interviews with strangers. I mean, for me personally, I love it. I love those little, like the New York City street flirt where you just have an interaction with someone and you know the—oh well, whatever it is.

Carmen: Did you see this taxi? Oh my God, what’s going on over there?

Joe: Exactly. So I love those kind of exchanges, but also I just feel like that’s almost everything we’re talking about. We could be like, especially now—but yes, that feels like an especially now category. The faith of it and the act of it is important to talk to strangers.

Carmen: Speaking of your comment, especially now, we all are subjects of our routine, of our own media circles, of our own same conversations. And just this idea of talking to someone that you don’t know and where the topics might come up that you have very different viewpoints about. And the possibility to know something that you didn’t know with that admonishment that you gave to us at the beginning of listening. Right. Not trying to respond oftentimes. Wonders if just some of those little tweaks could be the very thing that changes the world for good, right?

Joe: Yeah. And just to bring it back—you were bringing up social media earlier—the thing I most can’t stand about the world of this moment is the way that we’re all lost in our own algorithms.

So the idea that we’re not even looking to talk to strangers, we’re looking to talk to someone who confirms our views.

Carmen: That’s right. That just feels like a huge problem, frankly, given what’s happening in our world today. Sometimes we’re not even talking to the people who are not strangers, right? I mean, you walk into a restaurant sometimes, and I oftentimes notice people get in the restaurant and everybody at the table’s on their phone.

Mm. Oh, that’s not true. Their sister’s not, so maybe you should start out, Joe. Maybe you should talk to your family first and then they’ll practice a little bit and then you can work yourself up to strangers. But it’s so true about we are all in our own bubbles. We’re all in our own algorithm. We’re being confirmed. We all have confirmation bias. It’s no wonder that our political system has become so broken that we have parties that can’t talk to each other. We can’t find the truth we’re arguing about. Anything and everything because we can’t find a way to make an emotional connection to anybody other than what’s scrolling on our phones.

Joe, I’m wondering if you could share some of your favorite stories. I know one of them was your Peabody Award–winning Teen Contender. Can you tell us a little bit about that story?

Joe: I would say Teen Contender is… every once in a while you get really lucky just by choosing the right story. And that’s a good example actually, I would say. I didn’t get lucky. My wife got lucky. That’s right. She was a photographer and a writer and she was photographing women boxers at the time, and this is leading up to the London Olympics. 2012 was gonna be the first time women were boxing in the Olympics. And she just kind of discovered this young 16-year-old girl—wasn’t even allowed to box with the women yet—in a basement in Flint, Michigan. And just met her and saw the way she was boxing and said we had to do a diary together.

So we did a diary with Clarissa in the months leading up to the Olympic trials, where then she ended up making the team. My wife then kept following her with a film documentary crew through the Olympics where she won the gold medal and beyond that, and then back to Flint, Michigan, where life actually wasn’t that different despite the gold medal.

It’s sort of a story that went from a photo essay in The New York Times to a radio diary to a film documentary, and then that was recently, over Christmas, released as a feature film called The Fire Inside.

Carmen: That was a really great story and I know she ended up winning two Olympic gold medals, if I recall.

Joe: She—two Olympic gold, yeah. And now she’s in mixed martial arts. She’s basically the Muhammad Ali of women’s boxing. Yeah. And she’s funny. And a trip. And wonderful. So yeah, as far as latching onto a story early that you have no idea where it’s gonna go, but it goes all these places, intersects with the world in such crazy ways—that’s never really happened before. Right. In this way.

Carmen: I think the interesting thing too is all the different mediums it shows up in. Radio shows, it ultimately turns into a movie. There are lots of ways that this story kind of has not only twists and turns for the character, but all the different ways that we get a chance to see Clarissa and what happens with her.

Joe: And then in the radio diary, the beautiful thing is, besides seeing this budding boxer who we don’t know yet but is going to become the best women’s fighter of all time so far… yeah. She’s just a teenager with all the stuff that’s—

Clarissa (audio): Hello, this is Clarissa again. Come on. Go. There you go. I’m at Burton Field House right now and it is 17 days before the Olympic trials. You ready, Riss? Hurry up. Okay. Hold on, coach. Yeah. Can you explain to me what’s going on right now? Uh, Mr. Jason Crutchfield, Coach Crutchfield, you going to spar with them two guys right there.

(Sounds at the gym): Come on, y’all get ready. Ready. Bye. Good shot. Let ’em go right there. Real. There you go. Let it go right there.

Clarissa: To me, the gym is a beautiful place. You know, as soon as I walk in there, it’s like all stress just… it just leaves you. If they would let me live there, I would. I mean. We got a bathroom upstairs for showers. I bring my clothes, pillow, a nice size cover, probably make me a pallet in the ring. Cut the light off and then just go to sleep.

(Sounds at the gym): That’s a good shot there. Come on, ref. Let’s go. Stay into it. Sloppy, sloppy. Don’t get sloppy. Keep yourself together. Come on. There you go.

Coach Crutchfield: Well, I can remember her dad brought her down to the gym. She was 11 years old.

Come on—11. And he told me, asked, he said, Hey, um, my daughter want to box. The week after that I noticed how she was punching aggressively and fast, and her fire, her hunger. Man, there you go.

A coach always wants a champion. That’s why we coach. We want to help the kids and stuff like that. But the first thing is to have a champion. There you go. Now look, I think I got one. Come on. I just never thought it was gonna be a girl.

Alright, come here, Riss. You gotta do 15 minutes of ice. 15 minutes of heat. You got me?

Clarissa: Hello? 

Coach Crutchfield: Turn that phone off. 

Clarissa: Yes, I’ll call you back. Okay. Oh man. Alright. 

Coach Crutchfield: Who is this boy? 

Clarissa: Uh, what? I mean, ain’t no big deal. Dang.

Coach Crutchfield: So you’d rather talk to the boy than be at the Olympic trials? 

Clarissa: Come on. Now, what question is that?

Coach Crutchfield: You know how close this thing is?

Clarissa: Mm-hmm. 

Coach Crutchfield: Real close. You don’t need anything that’s going to take your attention somewhere else. Nothing.

Clarissa: Whatever. I like boys, can’t help it.

Coach Crutchfield: That’s cool. But just keep it platonic.

Clarissa:  What that mean?

Coach Crutchfield: Nothing but a friendship. If you like him, drop him.

Clarissa: Ooh, nothing. 

Coach Crutchfield: Rissa, you are up against a lot. When we go to these Olympic trials, you gonna be up against grown women that are stronger than you, that ain’t gotta go to school, that ain’t got homework. All they gotta do is box. These people hungry.

Clarissa: Mm-hmm. That makes sense.

Coach Crutchfield: You gifted. You real good. But you’re not ready yet. We almost there. We’re not there yet.

Clarissa: Well, I’m strong-minded. I’m not gonna let nobody feed me off in the wrong direction.

Coach Crutchfield: Riss, look at me. Just stay focused. But you got all your life for boys. This is a once in a lifetime thing right here.

Carmen: What I loved about that as a mom of teenagers is that you go from this kind of most important topic to him saying, my favorite line is, you have plenty of time for this boy. This is a life-changing moment, right? Yeah. And anybody who has teenagers knows that the energy to try to help them figure out the important thing they should be focused on, as opposed to this thing that seems important to them right now but is not, it’s like the challenge of parenting teenagers.

Joe: Totally. I love that scene so much. And I would just say I was there when they were recording that actually.

Carmen: Oh, wow.

Joe: And I was like, this is so good. This is so good. Please don’t let anything mess this up. Just a conversation between them. And then I realized in the days following that they have conversations like that all the time. This little debate that goes on.

Carmen: Yeah.

Joe: But I’m so glad we caught that.

Carmen: I’m wondering if there is a history story that you feel like really changed your perspective or a personal event that you found really compelling in that part of your work?

Joe: Willie McGee and the traveling electric chair.

Carmen: Yeah.

Joe: That was, that’s a powerful—

Carmen: Story.

Joe: That’s one of my favorite stories, because we do these historical documentaries that rely on a lot of first-person interviews and archival tape, and then we do these diaries, and that’s one where it’s like the best of both worlds and also just like a very human search to figure out what happened.

The quick story is Willie McGee, who is kind of almost like a To Kill a Mockingbird kind of story. He was accused and ultimately sentenced to the death penalty for raping a white woman. And so there’s a lot of questions about what actually happened. Right. We knew about this story and we had found this incredible archival tape that’s in the story, which is a recording of the execution, in a sense, from a distance from the plaza, the town square.

So we were very interested in doing this story, and it wasn’t till we found the granddaughter and found that she was on her own search to uncover what happened—

Carmen: Yeah.

Joe: On her own efforts to try to discover what happened that the story really came together.

Carmen: This has been a theme throughout our conversations about emotional truths, about talking to strangers and people who have different perspectives, and that comes through so powerfully in this story as she is talking to the son of the prosecutor, trying to discover the truth and this tension that they have around the conversations that he may have had with his father about what really happened and his desire to keep that to himself, right, as the father has given him information that the father suggests he can’t reveal, and she is seeking the truth of what happened to her grandfather, and everything is laid out.

It’s about race, it’s about the criminal justice system, it’s about our familiar connections and our obligations to our ancestors. Like it’s—everything is in that story, right?

Joe: Yeah.

Carmen: As the audience is also struggling with how it feels about what has happened.

Joe: And it’s also a good example of someone who’s really digging into the interview in a graceful way.

Carmen: Yes.

Joe: It’s a good example of interviewing too.

Carmen: Yes, yes.

Joe: There’s something in that scene that I will never forget.

Jon Swartzfager (audio): Well, I remember the night of the execution very well. We were all standing in the kitchen and my father reached up in the cabinet and got a pint of bourbon, and he took the fifth of whiskey. He hid it inside his coat, and when he got to the courthouse, he told the sheriff that he wanted to see William McGee alone in a room, just the two of them. And they sat and they talked.

Well, Mr. McGee drank the whiskey and my father asked him, said, did you or did you not rape Mrs. Hawkins? Were you guilty? And he got his answer, and my father never divulged it to anyone else, and I’m not gonna divulge it now.

Bridget McGee-Robinson: I wouldn’t want you to go against your father’s wishes, but I still want to know as much history as I can about my grandfather. I’m not looking for him to be wrong, nor am I trying to find out if he was right, but it sure would make me feel better to know.

Jon: I certainly appreciate what you’re saying, but we have to take into consideration there was a pint of bourbon involved. I mean, this man was facing death in a matter of an hour or so, and what a person would say at that time, especially if they had been drinking, I just don’t think it’s fair to repeat them.

Bridget: But I also know that a drunk speaks a sober mind. And at that point in time, what did he have to lose anyway?

Jon: I wish I wouldn’t have told you now. I mean, I really do, because as much as I know that everybody wants me to say he said yes, he did it, or no, he didn’t do it, I can’t say that. I’m not going to say that. To keep rehashing something that happened 60 years ago can’t possibly bring about any good now.

Bridget: But me as a granddaughter, I’m here to get information because there’s another generation ahead of me that carries a McGee name now, and they don’t even know any of the history of what happened. So that’s my place.

Jon: Bridget, I certainly have a great deal of compassion for your family. I mean, none of y’all did anything. And I’ll give you your answer because I think you’re entitled to it, but I’m gonna do it for you off the record, alone. Is that fair enough?

Bridget: That’s fair.

Jon: All right. (Click)

Joe: Oh my gosh. And I was there in the room.

Carmen: It’s the most—

Joe: And I was thinking, no, no, no, I don’t— But they turned off the tape recorder and they had this conversation. And I remember later that night, going back to the hotel room, hoping and listening to that moment, and as soon as I heard the click I was like, oh my God, this is so beautiful.

Carmen: Yes.

Joe: That—the click of going to dark in that moment.

Carmen: Oh my God. As a listener, you’re just—you cannot believe. You turn off a little bit too, when it clicks. You’re like, man, oh my goodness. Such a powerful— You and I in this conversation have hit upon some things that I’ve been wrestling with in my own thinking about what’s happening in society. So can we get to emotional truths? Can we get to a place where we are reflecting what we think is right in the world through our own views, but also understanding what’s happening with our fellow citizens?

You have children that are close to my children’s age, so I have 18-year-old triplets who are actually all coming to Oberlin. I guess I’m reflecting on the world and what world they’re entering. I think in the same way that you probably are for your children, and I’m wondering what we can say to them about what we think they should be pursuing around this notion of truth as they enter this world, as they’re thinking about what media they want to consume and how they think about their creative endeavors. What is the lesson from journalism that you want them to know?

Joe: Until the attacks on the humanities and specifically National Endowment for the Humanities, and until teaching this class, I never thought so much about journalism as like the humanities. I think as a way to think about it that way, like an investigation of who we are, what we’re doing here, what does it mean to be human, those sorts of things.

There’s such a focus in journalism about what’s happening now, and that’s a problem. There’s such a full range of things that we could be looking at that explain the human condition and explain what we’re supposed to be doing on this planet. And I think that those are all worthy of looking at in a sort of journalistic lens too. So… I’m into the humanities right now in this moment. You know, like—

Carmen: Well, we really appreciate that because you know, that’s what Oberlin’s about in every way. So you just alluded to the cuts to the endowment of the arts, the recent conversation around cuts to NPR and federal funding and just what’s happening. PBS, of course. What changes are you anticipating? Why does audio journalism continue to be important in the context of these conversations?

Joe: We’re a small nonprofit and we just lost 40% of our government funding. Yeah. So it is like we’re in this sea that so many are in, and I think there is a call right now for journalism. For me, there’s a call for audio too, for some of the reasons we talked about. I think it’s even more a call to like, what do you believe in?

What are your beliefs? What are you standing for? What are those sorts of things? That’s the hope that you talked about that I’m feeling in myself, and in many people there is a clarification of believing in things.

Carmen: Right? I totally agree. So it’s been a complicated time for lots of institutions and certainly institutions of higher education. And what I’ve been saying to people about it is that this is the time to lean into what you value and what you believe is important and the significance of the work you do in our society.

And that this is, if you want to call it a battle, it is a battle for values, for what we believe in. I think it’s a battle for what this country has stood for, not perfectly, not in every way demonstrating it, but in who we fundamentally believe we are. And I don’t think that we can just sit back and decide that doesn’t matter. It’s not a big deal. I’m just gonna go to the movies, or whatever it is that distracts people from what’s important. And I’m hoping that everyone in society who has these values that we believe are important, that are fundamentally American values, will get a little spine about it because it’s gonna make a difference whether we hear the stories that you are producing or whether institutions like Oberlin continue to send people like Joe Richman out into the world to do good.

So last thing that I wanted to ask you about, because it’s been kind of a hallmark of how I’ve ended these shows. So lots of people know that Michelle Obama came to Oberlin and was the graduation speaker well before my time, but certainly a significant speaker to our graduates, and she described OBs as people who run to the noise. So what are the next things on your plate or things that you’re gonna be pursuing that you would describe as running to the noise?

Joe: Because we’ve done a lot of history programming the last six years, right, because we’ve had NEH funding—that is gone now. So the silver lining is that we are freed up, right? So there’s a real question, what do we want to be doing if we’re not tied to funding? We’re not tied to this, we’re not… And it is really a returning to the diaries that I started doing so many years ago. And to hear more directly from people and to go into places and follow stories over time too. Right. Because that’s a really important part of the diaries. And I feel a sense of inspiration now that I haven’t in recent years.

Carmen: Well, it’s nothing like an existential crisis that can shake you. And that can make you feel differently. You know, it’s interesting that you call it inspiration. I was reading an article today. Someone described it as inspirational independence. Pursue what you value and what you think is important. And there is some hope in that, I think.

Joe: I’ll tell you another thing. My wife and I lived in South Africa for a couple years. We were doing projects there and I can’t help but think about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the idea of letting go of punishment for the greater good of the story of the truth. And I feel like we’ve been—Radio Diaries have been—covering history a lot for a lot of what we do. And this is just, this is history right now. This moment is so clearly history and the idea of documenting this moment for the future feels also like a call. I think that’s right.

Carmen: I’m a person that believes in the divine order of things. I have a faith that’s important to me. I can’t help but be an optimist because it’s just how I was wired. And there will be a moment where we’re going to look back on this time and the tellers of this truth, and I would certainly put you and your work in that category, will be the people that help us make sense of where we are and make sense of what we need to do next.

And that’s why I’m so hopeful, even though sometimes it is challenging to think about what’s happening, because I know there are people like you, Joe, out there in the world. Sometimes I’ve heard people describe it as that moment—I don’t know if anybody in the audience has been out there late at night sometimes—and when you look up at the moon, you try to think about someone who’s doing the same work that you are doing in a different way and have that kind of confidence that we’re looking at the same moon trying to accomplish something significant in different ways. And that comfort that you have, that the right people are out in the world doing this good work.

Joe: Totally agree. I have those people in mind a lot lately. Those reminder people.

Carmen: Right. Reminder people.

Joe: Something that’d be fun to tell you in this context is that you helped to inspire one of the stories that we’re working on right now.

Carmen: Oh wow.

Joe: Because in that talk that you gave in February that I was at, where you were talking about the executive orders and stuff, you said something like, if you want to get perspective on a moment like this, talk to a Black woman over 70. Is that—did I get that sort of right?

Carmen: That’s right. That’s right.

Joe: Long ago I was talking to a friend who was talking about her grandmother, who was 107, a Black woman. We’re setting up an interview with her. She’s lived a lot of life. 107.

Carmen: That’s right.

Joe: And been through everything. And so I have you in the back of my mind with that story.

Carmen: I appreciate that. I say that out of experience. So my mom is 84. My dad passed away a couple of years ago and she moved in with me here at Oberlin, and I have to say that what we’re experiencing right now would be so different for me if I didn’t go home and get a chance to have conversations with her every night. It’s just a different lens.

That perspective gives you a way to have hope about what’s possible. And I’m excited to hear that story, because I think that it will help people have a different posture about not only hope, but what our role is in making what we want to believe so. Because that’s also the perspective about the work that those folks did during really challenging times where society was much more challenging than it is now. A society that oftentimes I say about my parents was designed for them not to be successful. The whole society was set up that way, and most of us don’t have that experience where we grew up in a society that’s designed for us not to succeed. And you ask those people how they made it through—changes the way you think about the world.

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. So I’m—

Carmen: —excited to hear that story.

Joe: Yeah. I’m excited to hear her too. The only thing I’ll add, just to say a word: it was so fun to be back at Oberlin.

Carmen: Oh, I’m so happy. I’m so happy you enjoyed it.

Joe: I mean, I knew it’d be fun, but like to go back to where you went to college 40 years ago and be teaching, it was one of those very strange, like spiral-path kind of experiences, right? Where you’re in the past in the present. And then having my kids there, it was, um, it was really a special block of time.

Carmen: Oh, I’m so glad you feel that way.

Joe: We were talking about reminders before, and it felt like, oh, this is a place that reminds you of some things that are important.

Carmen: Remind you what you know to be true. Excellent. Thanks, Joe.

Joe: Thank you.

Carmen: Thanks for listening to Running to the Noise, a podcast produced by Oberlin College and Conservatory. Our music is composed by Professor of Jazz Guitar Bobby Razza, and performed by the Oberlin Sonny Rollins Jazz Ensemble, a student group created through the support of the legendary jazz musician. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to hit that subscribe button. Leave us a review and share this episode online so OBs and other folks can find this too. I’m Carmen Twillie Ambar, and I’ll be back soon with more great conversations from thought leaders on and off our campus.