A New York Times Podcast Club Q&A with Love + Radio

The New York Times Podcast Club showed Radiotopia podcasts a lot of love in June — not only did the moderators of the Facebook group choose Ear Hustle’s first episode as an episode of the week last month, but during the first week of June, they also chose to listen to and discuss Love + Radio’s “The Living Room.”

The reporter/producer/editor of “The Living Room,” Briana Breen, and its editor/sound designer, Brendan Baker, hosted a question-and-answer session with members of the club on June 2. We’ve got the questions and their answers below, for fans of the show who didn’t make it to the virtual Q&A.

Matt Horton brought up the final moments of the episode, when Diane recalls putting her own bed up against the window. Was that the natural flow of conversation with her, or did you edit it to be the final note of the episode? If so, I’d love to know how you decided on that. (From Phoebe Lett)

Breen: Matt Horton has an amazing memory. Yes, this section was initially at the very start of the interview. Actually, it was originally at 2:30 into it. The very start of the story — about the first 90 seconds of the version you hear now — was essentially the start of the interview. But the story is highly edited, and so everything after that first 90 seconds, basically, isn’t in the order of the raw interview.

For personal memoir stories of this kind, which are not straightforward journalism, how much fact checking do you do. How much fact checking in general do you feel pressured to do/have to do in order to be comfortable releasing an episode, and why? (From Barry Lam)

Baker: Bear in mind that Love + Radio is a really small shop (at the time, just the host/director Nick and me, working occasionally with outside contributors like Briana), so we don’t have the same kind of rigorous fact checking resources as a big show like, say, This American Life. That said, we do our best to fact check as much as possible so we feel comfortable standing by assertions in the story. For a personal memoir like this, I’d take a position similar The Moth; it’s true as affirmed by Diane, the storyteller.

I know some people are more open and easier to interview than others, but I also know it takes skill to conduct great interviews. One thing I really admire about Love + Radio is how much emotion and detail the producers get from their interviewees. What are some of your strategies for inspiring such vulnerability and openness from the people (reluctant or otherwise) you’re talking to? (From Mc Emma)

Breen: I can’t speak for Love + Radio. I’m actually an independent reporter/producer. But I try to do my best to listen very actively while I’m interviewing. So if someone goes in a different direction than I originally thought — I try to keep up. It’s like any good conversation — both people have to be open and willing to talk and listen and react to each other. This was actually a one-time interview. The entire interview was 80 minutes long. I didn’t pre-interview Diane in advance, so this was a single, one-off conversation.

Baker: As for other L+R stories, we often spend anywhere from four to 10 hours interviewing people over the course of several days. (And, I should add, most of the people we interview want to talk to us.) Usually in that time spent together, we develop mutual trust and a good rapport. I think a lot of it just comes down to being an open, empathetic listener, a friendly presence (sometimes sharing things about yourself in the process). I find people usually reflect the quality of energy and attention you give them.

Was there ever any worry that the surviving subject of the story would recognize themselves in it and be unhappy? (From Jeremy Shatan)

Breen: This story was very much a personal project for me for a VERY long time. I worked on it alone for about a year before it went to Love + Radio. I didn’t know or assume that any show would ever air it. However, I was cognizant that if it did air, I didn’t want the family in the window to be identifiable. I would also say that there was another Love + Radio episode — “The List” — by one of my radio-making heroes, Sean Cole. “The List” is a story told entirely from the perspective of a surviving partner; it’s a beautiful piece. When I felt like I was getting lost in the editing process, I listened to parts of it to try and make sure I stayed present to and aware of the level of pain and heartbreak that was on the other side of the window. So I don’t think I worried whether they would be unhappy if they recognized themselves — because I didn’t really think the story would ever get broadcast anywhere. But I tried to be respectful and honor their experience as much as I could.

I understand that Love + Radio sometimes uses fiction in its pieces. Was any part of this story fictional? How do you decide when to employ fiction in your pieces, and when not to? (From Ryan Sweikert)

Baker: It’s true that L+R does dabble in fiction from time to time, but I can count the number of fictional stories we’ve produced during my time at L+R on one hand. And if you listen to the stories that incorporate fiction from start to finish, there’s almost always some kind of “tell” for the audience. That said, the vast majority of pieces we present are true. But, to answer your question: this was a true story of Diane’s perspective/experience. We didn’t fictionalize here.

As for when to incorporate fiction — that really depends on the piece and what any degree of fictionalization would do to serve the story. So, for example, we did a piece last season about a guy who has a relationship with a “real doll,” where we dramatized the doll as a character. This helped bring listeners into an otherwise weird story in a hopefully interesting and entertaining way.

How did you find the storyteller? And which facts do you check and why? (From Carol Jackson)

Breen: A friend of mine is a friend of Diane’s and heard about her experience over dinner. It was something that Diane had just gone through and so she was talking about it — as you do when you catch up with friends. My friend said I had to hear what had happened. I trust that person’s instincts a lot — and so I met Diane and did the interview without a formal pre-interview. I had the feeling that it would either be the best story ever or an hour of my time that might not result in anything. I felt like it was worth the risk.

Do you prefer a real story without emotion, or a fake one that turns on the audience? (From Victor Almeida)

Baker: Just speaking for myself here: I like stories that are interesting, whether documentary or fiction. There’s a kind of capital-T Truth you can achieve in fiction. And there are true stories that are stranger than fiction. (In general, L+R presents more of the latter.)

Breen: I, personally, only work in nonfiction.

A final question for both of you from your different perspectives on truth vs. fiction, which this episode gave us a lot of debate around: Do you find it frustrating if something is perceived as fiction if it is true? Or does the ambiguity around this story add to its value as a standalone piece of audio? (From Phoebe Lett)

Baker: I was honestly surprised that people thought it might be fiction. But I think that may have something to do with how little awareness there is out there of just how very edited public radio actually is. TAL, Fresh Air, On The Media — all these shows are very highly crafted and edited, even if they just sound like people talking off the cuff. (And in fact, that’s the effect we’re going for.) With podcasting, too, there are a lot of chat shows out there that are unedited, so I wonder if some listeners expect that’s what ALL podcasts out there are. Part of my interest (and part of L+R mission as a show) is to expand the art/craft of podcasting — both editorially and sonically.

Breen: I exclusively work in nonfiction, so that aspect is something I care about a lot. But once something gets released into the world, it belongs to whoever hears it; and so if someone doesn’t want to believe it’s real — that’s up to them. I think the criticism of the piece that was more frustrating for me, personally, was the idea that the story might have been written and performed. Love + Radio does work with both fiction and nonfiction — and so that’s a fair question to ask. But that didn’t happen here.

Baker: That said, another part of L+R’s mission is to present stories without a lot of set-up or host narration, to be as non-didactic as possible. So we’re inviting that ambiguity, too. (Another reason why this story felt at home on the show.) In general, though, I like creating room for audiences to have their own response to pieces.

How many edits did the episode go through? (From Walter Petrichyn)

Baker: I know Briana had been working on this piece on her own for a while before connecting with us at L+R. But from L+R’s side of things, this was a relatively quick turnaround episode, put together in about two days. (A typical L+R story can take months. The backstory here is that L+R had another episode scheduled for release that week which we had to kill at the last minute. Thankfully, my roommate at the time — also a radio producer — introduced me to Briana, and we were able to collaborate on really short notice.) The story already had a pretty clear arc when Briana first sent it to me. From there, we did some additional cutting and internal re-ordering for rhythm and flow, making the story work with music, etc. I couldn’t tell you how many edits we went through together, exactly, but we were sending drafts back and forth pretty constantly over those two days. I could tell it was going to be a special story for us, though, so we were working well into the night and right to the edge of our deadline.

Breen: I worked on this story alone and edited it for a year. L+R asked me to use it, and it went to air in 30 hours. So Brendan and I worked together on the final edits, and he did the music and sound design in 30 hours. I did many, many, many edits in the year I spent on it alone.

Love this story — and its unexpected emotional ride — but at some points, its intimacy made me felt guilty for listening to it. Did you ever feel the narrator’s Peeping Tom remorse was contagious while producing it? (From Fernanda Hannah Suarez)

Breen: While I was editing this story (essentially, for a year), I also had new neighbors move in across the street who didn’t close their curtains for a while. All of a sudden, I had shockingly naked people right across from me, too. Like Diane, I also work from home, and so those windows are my only view. I felt like Diane’s experience — and my experience with my new neighbors — was less about being a Peeping Tom than it was about living closely together in cities, and also about how we all are both the see-er and the seen — and that we don’t realize how often that perspective shifts. We’re usually only aware of what we see. But, unless you live somewhere very remote, there are always people who see us — even when we’re not aware or aren’t paying attention to that.

Baker: Totally. My experience as a listener very much mirrors Diane’s own experience. Part of what I like about it (and what makes this story a good fit for L+R) is that when you dig deeper into the story, you realize that Peeping Tom doesn’t really capture what’s going on with Diane. I think it’s actually something more nuanced and complicated, and comes from a place of compassion and empathy, rather than simple voyeurism. But that’s intentionally left open to the listener’s interpretation, of course.

This episode of Love + Radio has had a pretty long shelf-life in the minds of podcast audiences. What do you think was different about this piece than other pieces you’ve worked on? (From Christina Blok)

Baker: Yeah, it’s amazing how much this one stuck with people, and we’re lucky to have been able to work with Briana on it! I think part of why it sticks is that people can really empathize with Diane’s experience in very direct way. L+R often produces stories about morally ambiguous or otherwise difficult/complicated characters, and many of these stories fall into the “truth that’s stranger than fiction” category. But it’s very easy to imagine yourself in Diane’s shoes. Also, she tells the story with such beauty and rich detail and has a lovely voice to boot. It’s hard not to fall for her, too.

After the Q&A ended, Breen left some closing thoughts at the bottom of the Facebook post where the session had taken place. Here’s what she said:

I mentioned above that I actually didn’t think the story would ever be heard anywhere. I do mean that. And I don’t think any other show — other than L+R — would have played it in its entirety. So, I’m very grateful that they took that risk. I knew that the topic I was working with was very delicate. I wanted to, as much as I possibly could, honor the unknown couple in the window — both the love between them that was witnessed by a stranger, and the loss. Maybe the reason that it has stuck in people’s minds is the same reason that I felt like I needed to stick with it and get it right … these moments happen all the time around us. But usually they’re invisible. The curtains are closed, and so other people don’t witness the incredible moments of joy and sadness and love and loss that are happening every minute right next door or across the street.

Also, I feel like we all can often be jealous of what we see others experiencing — that someone is luckier or happier or better or whatever. I think we project things onto strangers all the time — and we have no idea of what they’re actually going through. So maybe that’s also one of the reasons it’s resonated — that we literally don’t know what the person next to us is going through or has gone through — and other people know just as little about us.

You can listen to Love + Radio’s “The Living Room” below, and you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.