The Storytellers

In the expanding world of podcasting, two Oberlin alums have conjured up a spellbinding series, Magic in the United States. Its three seasons explore the mystical undercurrents of American folklore, mysticism, and esotericism with sharp wit and infectious curiosity. Episode topics include the folk-magic origins of Mormonism; the popularity of spiritual hashtags on social media; and the origins of mystic figures like St. Cyprian.

After being raised a “militant atheist,” host Heather Freeman ’97, a professor of digital media in the art and art history department at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, first turned to spirituality after the death of her mother. “I struggled for a long time trying to decide what I thought about the world around me in terms of the purpose of being and things like that—those big questions,” she says. “After my mom passed away, it reintroduced to me that I can have a material, rationalist understanding of the world and how things operate but still carve out space for awe and intangibles like ancestors and spirits of place.”

Several years ago, Freeman was set to have her first major film about witchcraft, social media, and information technology picked up and produced; unfortunately, her funding was frozen due to COVID-19. During this time, she started listening to podcasts and became inspired to explore this new medium. Freeman adapted her film script into a podcast and, buoyed by a $389,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Magic in the United States was born.

After being approved for the grant, Freeman was paired with a producer at Public Radio Exchange (PRX), the entity that markets and distributes the podcast. Coincidentally enough, this producer turned out to be an Obie—Amber Walker ’11. “It was funny because PRX has put me with other Obies on projects,” Walker recounts with a laugh. “I wonder if that’s something they’re consciously doing because I [also] work on the American Railroad podcast with Rhiannon Giddens ’00.”

Walker became interested in podcast producing after earning a master’s degree in digital innovation and journalism at New York University. She wanted to veer away from the news-oriented practices she was used to and explore entertainment media, and she joined the PRX team while looking for freelance work. 

Freeman had already contacted historians and academics as a part of her NEH grant proposal, but much work remained. That’s where Walker came in. “I worked to make sure Heather had everything she needed to get the show moving,” she explains, “like scheduling interviews with guests, making sure transcripts were where they needed to be, pulling the tape so that she could dig into it.”

Both Walker and Freeman graduated from Oberlin with double majors—the former in Africana Studies and gender, sexuality, and feminist studies, the latter in German studies and studio art—and both say Oberlin sparked their professional careers. 

“[Retired Young Hunter Professor of Art and Africana Studies] Johnny Coleman taught this class on sound for artists, and that was my first introduction to the idea of approaching sound as a visual artist,” Freeman says. “It exploded my understanding of all creative disciplines in so many ways. It merged together everything that I loved about storytelling and everything I loved about the acoustic space.”

Adds Walker: “A part of the reason why I went to Oberlin was to figure out who I was on my own terms—and I was able to do that, which was great. But I think I took that approach into my professional life by trying to find work that made my heart sing, working on projects with people whose values aligned with mine and things that were personally interesting and compelling.”

This story originally appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of the Oberlin Alumni Magazine as part of the feature "A Pipeline to Podcasts."