PRODUCER SPOTLIGHT: HANNAH BOOMERSHINE
/Studio IX:
Good morning, Hannah.
Hannah Boomoershine:
Good morning.
Studio IX:
Thanks for taking the time. So tell us a bit about yourself and what it is you do.
Hannah:
My name is Hannah Boomershine and I'm an Audio Producer—a freelance Audio Producer based in Chicago, which is where I grew up, where I'm born and raised. I've had experience working for various NPR stations. Most recently I was at WBEZ where I was working on Motive: Season 3.
Studio IX:
How’d you get into radio & podcasting?
Hannah:
I got interested, like a lot of people, because I was a really avid listener. During the summers while I was in college I worked in retail at a clothing store. I was on my feet all day except for my lunch breaks, when I would sit down and listen to Radiolab—or the little bit of it I could listen to during my half-hour breaks. Looking back, that was a really transformative time. I was in school and didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. When you’re interested a lot of subjects it's hard to narrow it down to one, which is honestly why journalism and podcasting really made sense for me. You can explore something new with every project. I remember sitting there and listening to Radiolab every day and thinking, "This is what I want to make,” and “I don't know how they're doing this."
Studio IX:
I don't think anyone knows how they do it. (laughter)
Hannah:
Yeah, what does the script even look like for them? I was trying to visualize that…and it just seemed like magic— how they were able to piece stories together…stories that were about science, but also very existential and poetic…stories that left me, at the end of them, feeling much better about humanity. That’s not something you really feel when you're working in retail, to be honest. You’re like, "Man, people at their worst." But then you listen to an episode of Radiolab and you are like, "No, there is meaning in all of this." It was a really important show for me to hear at that time—when I was still a teenager. And it was part of the reason I decided I wanted to be a producer and get my foot in the door.
Studio IX:
Was storytelling something that appealed to you early on?
Hannah:
100% yeah. I was the kid growing up who would check out 20 books at a time. The librarians all knew me and I was really into fiction and nonfiction as well. And that just continued. I'm really lucky that I was encouraged at a young age. To me, it was always the most entertaining and powerful way to connect with other people. Especially as you get older. When you’re a kid, you don't experience as much, but I did experience loneliness and wondered "What does it all mean?”…and then you listen to a piece by Bianca Giaever, for example, who really dives into all those topics about ordinary life and existential anxiety and boredom, and you feel less alone. The fact that what I was listening to…the story that I listened to…brought me that sense of connectedness made me want to create that for other people.
Studio IX:
Absolutely. How did you first start working? What was the entry point?
Hannah:
So…in 2016 I was in college and I was a neuroscience major. I was studying psychology. I was really interested in how people think and work, but then I was like, "I can't see a career in this for myself…I think I'm studying it just because I'm interested in it." So I decided to call up someone at a local radio station named Cassandra. She and I had a conversation. I told her, "I have no experience in radio. I just love it. And would you let me work for you for free?" And she was incredibly generous and said, "Yes, of course." She ended up paying me, too, which was the right thing to do. She was my mentor at WFIU, which was the NPR affiliate in Bloomington, Indiana.
I was given a lot of free rein to create features for this show called “Cafe Indiana” and to create longer profiles, too. I remember the first story I did. I went to an amusement park my family founded in Indiana way back in the twenties, which had long since been sold. I went back there with my grandma because she remembered working at the amusement park when she was growing up. We walked through it together and I got her reflections on it. It was a really powerful moment for me to realize that not only was I learning a lot from that experience but it really meant something to my grandma.
I got a lot of feedback from the community after the piece came out—about how moving it was for people to have this nostalgia and this feeling of returning home…to a place that no longer really existed. It was those experiences that made me feel like, "interviewing people is super nerve-wracking…but it's rewarding because it’s connecting me to a community…and I want to keep doing it!”
Studio IX:
What do you love most about the work?
Hannah:
I love how it connects you with other people…that it opens up conversations. I can think of stories that I’ve created that really meant something to the person I interviewed. I was telling their story. They trusted me with that. And that's a really vulnerable position to put someone in. There’s a power dynamic when you’re holding the microphone.
It's really beautiful when people trust you with their stories. And when their stories then resonate with many, many other people who are listening. I don't think people who make stuff get a ton of feedback. I think that should happen more. But I think about the times that I did hear feedback from people who had heard something I made…It made them question something…or it made them more curious. That was really meaningful and I feel really lucky to have had the experience of being able to do that—the opportunity to make something that would impact others.
Studio IX:
Who are the best interviewers?
Hannah:
That's a really good question. I have to think about that for a second.
Studio IX:
How about an interview that stands out to you?
Hannah::
I think it’s because I mentioned Bianca Giaever; but she's a producer that I've really admired for a long time and someone who has a career that I would love to emulate. I’m thinking about the first episode of Constellation Prize, her podcast for The Believer Magazine, during which she has an interview with a woman who lives alone and is dealing with a lot of loneliness and is a crossing guard. The way that Bianca is able to spend time with people and really gain their trust…and do so not only by being a good listener, but I think by offering some of herself…I think that's really important if you're asking people to be really vulnerable and dig really deep and maybe share things that they don't even realize.
“A lot of people are going to hear this”…that's a risk. To ask someone to take that risk is something that I think requires you as an interviewer to offer a little bit of yourself as well. To be vulnerable with them and make it a two-way street. It's a delicate balance, but just from hearing Bianca's pieces and the way she interviews—especially in that one episode—I feel like she’s really conscious of that. She’s really aware that this is an important story to this person and that she needed to be really careful with how she told it. Bianca also gave this woman the space to get out a lot of stuff she wanted to talk about before asking more questions.
At least that's what I imagine her processes is like. And I think it comes through in her stories because she’s able to get in there with people who are perfect strangers…but you’d never know it because she sounds like she’s known them for 10 years based on what they're telling her.
Studio IX:
Yeah. She is really exceptional in that way. I’m also reminded of a piece like Two Years with Franz. Her immersion…the hundreds of hours of tape…that she never met him…And yet, when you listen to that piece it feels as if they were hanging out. There's some sort of strange magic she works—creating an intimacy between what she learns of him, the obvious and real connection that she feels with him and how it echos her own experience. She’s able to make it feel like a real conversation. A real connection.
Hannah:
I think that element of her work is interesting, too. It's not plot-based…and I do really like narrative stories…but it’s interesting and maybe something I want to explore in my career…work that isn't plot-based. It's non-linear, but it's more character focused. Even how she inserts herself, a little bit, into the work she does, in the narration she does, I think it is really important.
It doesn't follow a plot with a typical story…the narrative structure we’re used to. It’s really interesting how she gets outside of that…but of course, there are still stakes, there's still tension, and you're still exploring a person…which is why it's really important that you get it right. Because this is someone's life.
Studio IX:
Do you listen to WTF?
Hannah:
Yeah, I do. He’s a fantastic interviewer, too.
Studio IX:
Did you hear the Larry King interview?
Hannah:
No.
Studio IX:
It’s amazing to me. One of the most uncomfortable, awkward introductions to an interview I've ever heard. So bad that I thought to myself, "I don't know if I can keep listening to this," But then Maron works his magic, disarms King with an apology and a bit of laughter and “boom,” the whole conversation just opens up from there.
Hannah:
He really does have a way of disarming people and breaking tension. He’s able to get people to feel really comfortable and familiar with him in a way I think is really challenging—especially with famous people because they’re used to interviews and they’re used to having their guard up, being prepared with canned answers. It's a skill to be able to get past that, to have people open up, to be more vulnerable and genuine without just saying the same thing again and again.
Studio IX:
Outside of radio, was there a light switch moment for you?
Hannah:
I'm trying to remember the title of this book.
Studio IX:
Yeah? Let’s find it.
Hannah:
Let me look it up real quick.
Okay. I have it. It's called, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. I alluded to this earlier as something that I’ve struggled with. As an emerging producer and someone who's new to her career, it's been hard for me to feel like I can narrow down onto something. And maybe I don't want to. That was something I struggled with in school. It was like, "What is my one passion?" I always had trouble figuring out what that was because I had so many different interests. So this book was really validating.
The author, David Epstein, gets into all these people in history who have been really successful, but they have been successful because they're able to merge many different worlds together and create connections in ways that someone who's a specialist might only be able to get a really deep dive into one topic.
I feel like a lot of creativity is taking unrelated subjects and unrelated findings and putting them together. For example, I studied neuroscience in college and that was something I went really deep into and then later I was like, "Oh, why did I do that? I didn't end up having a career in that field. Was that a waste of time?" My radio and podcast knowledge came from work experience outside of school—but I've come around to saying that it isn't the case at all.
This book has given me permission to say “It's never a waste to keep learning and to keep going into areas that might seem irrelevant now.” Maybe that hobby could one day connect back…and it's okay if it doesn't. It was helpful to read that book because I’ve often felt like I’ve needed to specialize super early on. But that's not even the way most people have careers.
Studio IX:
Do you consider yourself an artist?
Hannah:
That's a tough question, but yes, I would consider myself an artist.
Studio IX:
You sound like one.
Hannah:
Thank you. It's hard to admit that, though, because it feels really self-aggrandizing—or like I need to be like a painter or something. But I think there's something to thinking creatively and thinking artistically. And if you feel that, if that's what you do, then you're an artist.
To be an artist…the barrier to enter should be really low. Everyone who wants to be an artist should be one. And so that's something I've slowly come to accept over time—that even embarking on creative projects is being an artist.
Studio IX:
Yes. I'm an artist as well. And there are all these other things I've done that surround that—but that's the central thing that I am. And so much of it is how I think and how I perceive and experience and engage with the world. It's not: “did I make a painting? Did I make a pot, did I make a photograph? Did I make a podcast?” That's all secondary.
It’s exciting that that awareness (& practice) seems to be more and more prevalent in the business world; in the tech community and in other sectors. That gives me hope because imagination is the key to real change.
Studio IX:
So where do you see this going ultimately?
Hannah:
I think for me the experience of working on Motive, Season 3 with WBEZ, was a pretty transformative learning process. I had never worked on a long-form documentary style podcast and I worked really closely with some amazing people. Colin McNulty is the senior producer on that. Odette Yousef was the reporter and host. And Kevin Dawson was the director who oversaw all of what we were doing. Working on a really ambitious project like that—with hundreds of hours of tape and storyboarding the entire show, episode by episode, and figuring out that it's almost more of a process of what doesn't go in, as opposed to what does…that's really challenging because I think you have to have a nose for it.
The whole podcast was about a really important subject…Neo-Nazis Skinheads in the 1980s in Chicago and how you can really trace a line from them to the rise of far-right extremism today. Working on a project that really confronts social issues and has an impact on how people are thinking and examining history—that nothing we're dealing with today is 100% new—is really powerful.
I like the idea of contributing to a project that challenges the way people think and asks them to look at themselves and question, "How am I helping this issue? How am I contributing to the problem and what can I do better?"
So, working on projects that I realize I have a social impact is really meaningful to me.
Addressing topics that I think people are uncomfortable talking about… We're very divisive in this country. That’s no secret and we can't ignore it…And at the same time we need to be careful about what voices we're giving power to versus what voices are we leaving out…What voices are we marginalizing? What voices are we not even thinking about? I think that's really important when making work. And I think that was something that I learned a lot about while working on Motive.
Studio IX:
Any regrets thus far?
Hannah:
Maybe one. It’s not a big regret because I learned from it. I used to get really nervous interviewing people. I remember I was interviewing Alice Waters for a piece for WFIU. She’s a famous restaurateur and founder of the slow food movement. I was going to go with her to the farmer's market and we were going to talk. I was going to interview her that way. I remember being so nervous though, thinking: "She's a big deal. I'm a big fan of her’s. What is this going to be like?"
And it was fine. She was the sweetest and she taught me so much.
But yeah...I would get so intimidated by people…but they're just people even if they're famous. So, if I had any regrets, I think it would be that I didn’t just tell myself, "You're fine. You can handle this and there's no need to get really stressed out about talking to people." And, like I said, having the microphone is powerful. Editing is also powerful. The more confident and comfortable you are in yourself, the more comfortable you can make the person you're interviewing feel.
Studio IX:
Perfect note to end on. Thanks so much, Hannah.
Hannah:
Thank you!