Transom Shows

New Show: Jennie's Secret Jennie Hodgers (right) with comrade. For Memorial Day, Transom is featuring an unusual veteran's story. "Jennie's Secret" is about a woman who posed as a man during the Civil War and went on to live most of her life as a man in the tiny town of Saunemin, Illinois. Over the years the town has been ambivalent about their most famous citizen and is struggling to figure out how to honor the memory of Jennie Hodgers/Albert Cashier. Producer Linda Paul became "obsessed" with this story and tracked down all sorts of interesting people to talk to. It's the kind of piece that was once easy to place in a public radio magazine show, but it's eighteen minutes long and it's not news. That makes it an orphan these days. It's worth pondering what we should do with stories like this--when an obsessed producer and a fascinating story converge, and the story isn't news and doesn't fit the mold. Read more »
Other Recent Shows
	Prostate Diaries If this piece were about blood or bones or lungs, it would have aired on NPR. But because it is about the prostate, and includes a talking penis, it presented problems for broadcast. There’s no equal time for body parts. Barrett Golding of HearingVoices asked us if we at Transom would be interested. Yes. Cancer is cancer and it makes sense to talk about it openly and personally, wherever in the body it occurs. The piece also presents complex challenges of interest to radio producers. It is based on a stage presentation written by the patient himself, Jeff Metcalf, and performed by Paul Kiernan. It was recorded and produced for radio by the estimable Scott Carrier and Larry Massett. They are present on Transom to talk about this work, its style and content.

	Killer Whales Ari Daniel Shapiro is following that well-worn career path from Killer Whale Biologist to Public Radio Producer. This piece is an homage to his former profession--a gentle paean to the passion field biologists feel for their work, and, in this case, for whales. It also confronts the quandary that plagues both journalists and biologists: What if your quarry doesn't show up? How do you still tell its story? Ari has been working with us at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, and we're also featuring a bunch of the "Science Minutes" he's made, and an amazing ninety-second video tribute to cell division, with an unexpected musical soundtrack.

	After The Forgetting This is a delicate story about love and dementia. It weaves memory and moments through the intertwined lives of Greg Sharrow, his mother Marj, and his husband Bob. And, if you’re wrestling with a tricky emotional story, producer Erica Heilman has written usefully on Transom about the process of making this meditation. As she says, she wanted to “offer people a picture of how one family is managing dementia in a really graceful, loving way. I wanted to achieve this without ever using words like ‘loving’ or ‘graceful’."

	A Trio of Podcasts To complement Curtis Fox's current Manifesto on Podcasts, we're featuring a few interesting examples of the genre submitted to Transom over the past year or so. "Frickin Circus" by Frick is part audio blog, part travel show, part behind-the-scenes look at The Circus. "Dial-A-Stranger" by Zachary Kent and Mercedes Martinez takes questions from random strangers (like you), and poses them to other strangers (like you) on the telephone. "Love & Radio" Produced by Nick van der Kolk is somewhere between NPR and a shockumentary special. It's a surreal journey into a confusing world of ex-lovers, ex-cult members, and fruit. Lots of fruit.

	Fake City, Real Dreams Zak Rosen is a radio producer. Neil Greenberg is a map-maker. They're both from Detroit, but their hearts are in a different city, a city they think is possible--at least in the imagination and maybe in reality. The radio piece they made together treats this place as if it were real. It is a creative exercise that hints at a plausible future. Fake City, Real Dreams is unlike any "arts feature" you've heard before.

	How Are You Who You Are? The Nadeaus were, to most eyes, an ideal family--enlightened, brilliant, prosperous. But then things turned upsidedown. In a remarkable series of events, Doug and Lynn Nadeau were forced to re-define their identities, to confirm the foundation of their love.

	Running From Myself There's something about Louis' voice; it's both wise and callow. It feels like he has the answers while he's searching for them. Louis used to rob people on the street, but he stopped. Now, he's trying to reconcile the person he was with the person he is and wants to be. Louis worked with Anthony Mascorro at 826NYC to tell this powerful, complicated story. (By the way, it was nice for us to learn that Anthony acquired his editing chops at Transom.) We all hope you'll visit Transom to listen, and talk to Louis and Anthony about their piece.

	Blunt Youth Radio At Transom, we often feature work by and about young people. We are in a kind of golden age of youth radio these days, with groups working all over the country, many of them offering a chance to be heard to people who don't usually have it. That's good for them and for the rest of us. These programs are often more than just simple training; they capitalize on radio's therapuetic qualities of talking and listening, and determining what's true. Since 1994, Blunt Youth Radio has been working with kids in Maine. As founder Claire Holman says, Blunt is about, "youth empowerment through direct media access. The key is for our members to take responsibility for creating the show—from the first idea, to the features, to the live broadcast. It's their show."

	Not Guilty: Life After Exoneration Joining Final Sale from Samantha Broun and Neal Menschel is Not Guilty an audio-slide-show made by photographer Vance Jacobs and radio producer Evan Roberts. It tells the story of Rick Walker, falsely accused of murder and held in maximum security prison for 12 years. The story covers a six month period of Walker's life as a free man. The blend of images and sound is simple and delicate, an invitation to listen and see.

Jennie's Secret