Origins and Journeys in Creative Production
Premiering in the fall of 2021, The Greenroom was an initiative for curious and conversational
podcast listeners and producers
Each session we invited a producer to share a piece of work in advance, then join us for a casual conversation about their process, practice and ideas.
Think book club, for podcast fans
ARCHIVE
SESSION THREE: THE FLAG
with Producer, Educator, Radio preservationist, Jocelyn Robinson
From the full conversation, recorded Wednesday, May 26 at 8PM:
The Flag
In both Germany and the U.S., the flag can be divisive, eliciting pride in some and unease in others. From patriotism to protest, Jocelyn Robinson explores the role that these symbols play in proclaiming who we are.
About Jocelyn Robinson
Trained through WYSO’s Community Voices program in 2013, Jocelyn served as the station’s first Archives Fellow, producing Rediscovered Radio, short documentaries using WYSO’s civil rights era audio as source material. The series received state and national honors, and she was recognized with a 2014 New Voices Scholar Award from the Boston-based Association of Independents in Radio (AIR). Her current role as Producer for Emerging Initiatives, Education, & Archives at WYSO's Eichelberger Center for Community Voices has her working on West Dayton Stories, a community-based story-telling project centered on the people and places of Dayton’s vibrant African American neighborhoods. She also trains others to claim their own narratives through digital storytelling.
Jocelyn is engaged with national radio preservation efforts and serves on the African American and Civil Rights Radio Caucus of the Radio Preservation Task Force, a project of the Recorded Sound Preservation Board at the Library of Congress. In 2019, she was awarded a National Recording Preservation Foundation grant to survey the archival holdings of HBCU radio stations.
SESSION TWO: QUESTIONS TO ASK WHILE WAITING
with Jenny Casas & Sebastián Hidalgo
From the full conversation, recorded Thursday, March 25th at 8pm:
Questions To Ask While Waiting
For session two we turned our attention to an episode inspired by the poem, 45 Questions to Ask While Waiting. WNYC reporter Jenny Casas looks to it when she wants to get to know the people around her. The poem was written by Chicago-based artist, educator and activist, Benji Hart. The list has questions that range from the mundane (2. Where is the least-visited corner in your home?) to the romantic (5. What is the cruelest thing you have done in love?) to the deeply personal (20. What hypocrisy in yourself have you yet to amend?) — in Casas’ episode, Jenny and Benji talk about how the questions have helped them think and listen while waiting.
As this month marks a year of life in the global pandemic, we continue to find ways to connect in our “new normal.” And as we’ve grappled with how COVID-19 has reshaped our day-to-day, we’re challenged to find ways to live and grow while we “wait it out.”
Jenny Casas (she/her) is a reporter for WNYC's The United States of Anxiety and the WNYC newsroom. She is New York based, via Chicago, where she reported on and produced season one of The City, USA Today's first narrative podcast about a 6-story tall illegal dump. Before that, she led reporting teams with City Bureau covering restorative justice in Cook County's criminal courts, and church-owned properties as a motor for gentrification. She was a daily reporter at St. Louis Public Radio covering power, immigration, and political protest. A California native, Jenny got her start in radio as a KQED news intern. At the end of the day, her reporting is geared towards generative reporting practices over extractive ones. Find her on Twitter at @jnnsmn.
Sebastián Hidalgo is an award-winning visual journalist, writer, educator, and founding member of The Visual Desk™– a bi-weekly editorial support group for freelance photographers in Chicago. Throughout his career, Hidalgo has explored a range of social issues affecting communities of color, as well as his own. Unpacking conditions that he often normalized growing up in a struggling community.
Hidalgo sought an education in journalism through untraditional avenues, mainly on his own as a freelancer. But also as an intern at The Chicago Reporter, an investigative newsroom on race and policy in the city; a 2x photo fellow at City Bureau, a civic-journalism lab; And as one of three inaugural local fellows at Catchlight Local, where he collaborated with the farmworking community and local newsrooms to investigate the affordable housing crisis in Salinas, California. Today, Hidalgo is a student of poetry. He continues to freelance independently and as a National Geographic Explorer.
SEASON DEBUT: DIARIES OF A DIVIDED NATION 2020 w/ Producer Jesse Dukes
From the full conversation, recorded Wednesday, November 18th at 8pm:
The Trump Diaries is a non-partisan, multi-episode, multi-season audio documentary. It follows a group of Americans who differ widely in their beliefs, personal identities, locations, and ages, as their lives intertwine with the politics of the day. It is a people’s history of the forty-fifth presidency, recorded in real time, over the course of the entire Trump presidency.
Left, Right and Center Presents: Diaries of a Divided Nation 2020 is the project’s second full length audio documentary, presented on KCRW and licensed by over 20 radio stations across the country. If featured interviews recorded almost entirely during the year of 2020.
Jesse Dukes has worked in radio since 2005 and is a senior podcast producer at WBEZ, having spent five years as the producer of WBEZ’s award-winning Curious City. His work has appeared in a wide range of national outlets, including NPR’s Morning Edition and Weekend Edition, Backstory, and many others. As an independent documentarian, Jesse’s work has been honored by awards from the Overseas Press Club, World Press Photo, and Digital National Magazine Awards, and his writing has been selected for inclusion in 2013’s Best American Travel Writing. Jesse is a contributing writer at the Virginia Quarterly Review and a principal of Big Shed Audio + Media. Jesse is based in Chicago, where he spends his free time looking for nature in the suburbs or fixing up an old house.