This podcast is being brought to you by WXAV 88.3 FM and WXAV.com. WXAV, bringing the best podcasts to you. Hi, this is Peter Creighton, host of The Rockology, which you can hear exclusively on WXAV 88.3 FM and WXAV.com. What you're about to hear is a really special conversation for me.
Recently, I was able to speak with one of my all-time favorite audio storytellers and podcasters, Jonathan Goldstein. Goldstein has worked on such programs as This American Life with Ira Glass, and for 11 seasons was the creator and host of Wiretap, a radio program which aired on the CBC and was one of the first podcasts I became a fan of. Currently, Goldstein is the host of a series from Gimlet Media entitled Heavyweight. The series explores what might have happened if you had acted.
Season 1 is currently available for download. Here now is my conversation with Jonathan Goldstein. So I just kind of want to go back and start at the beginning with you. Can you kind of talk a little bit about how you first, quote-unquote, discovered radio?
Well, I didn't come from a household that really listened to public radio, you know, or the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. We were more of like an oldies station kind of house. I would say that I sort of discovered this kind of radio documentary sort of radio through This American Life before it was a podcast, and it was easily heard in Canada, where I'm from. And I would listen to a stream on RealPlayer, you know, over a 56K modem on the Internet.
I think that was, like, it just excited me. It felt, it just sort of felt like it had a kind of aesthetic that made sense to me, you know, that connected with me. I really, I liked the voices that I heard on it, and I kind of felt like I want, like, that was a world that I wanted to inhabit. That's awesome.
Now, would you say then that This American Life is kind of what inspired you to say, okay, I'm going to become an audio storyteller now? I don't know if it was right along. It was never this kind of, like, audio storyteller kind of language. I mean, around that time, maybe even before This American Life, I was doing radio essays on the CBC.
And at that time, you know, I wasn't thinking of radio as a language to learn in and of itself. It was more about, like, I was a writer, and I was a writer that wasn't getting a lot of traction. But I found that I was able to find a place for my writing on the radio. So initially, it was just sort of like, you know, like a megaphone.
It was a vehicle for this writing that I was doing. It was only when I started at This American Life I think I started thinking more about it in terms of, like, you know, as you would say, like audio storytelling and structuring audio and the ways in which it differs from work that you create for the page. And also, in a long way, it differs from the podcast, because you were just assuming that people were flipping stations, and you had to keep them engaged and buy attention in a different way than with podcasts. You know, we're kind of like destination listening.
That's interesting. And that's kind of leading into a question I have a little bit later on. But I want to real quick go to, you have an excellent new series called Heavyweight. It debuted about a year ago from Gimlet Media, and it came on the heels of another series that you did, Wiretap, for 10 years that came to an end.
Can you tell me a little bit? Yeah, 11 years, actually. Oh, it was 11 years. Oh, man.
Yeah, 11 seasons, yeah. I got to just real quick, as a sidebar, absolutely love Wiretap. That's actually what kind of inspired me to really get into doing audio storytelling myself in that, is hearing that show. Oh, that's really nice.
I'm curious what in particular. It feels as though, like, there's, like, a lot of different threads to that thing. You know, there's people who would write in and be like, I really like the writing, but I don't like you goofing around on the phone. And then there'd be people who would be like, I love the phone calls, but I just don't like the writing, you know?
You know, I was at Oddball. I loved it all. I loved the fact that you had, you would do a monologue, and you'd have a very serious monologue where you contemplate, you know, your topic for the show. And then you'd have that interview with that expert when you would talk about it.
And then you'd have that goofy skit with, you know, Howard or Gregor or your dad. And I would just sit there in my office and just go, wow, here's a guy that's really literally able to do it all and make it work. And it just, it totally fascinated me. And it still does.
I still go back from time to time and listen to a lot of the old episodes. Wow. Well, thank you. Yeah, I'll sometimes find clips from the show in my email.
Like, if I'm searching for an email, I'll find something unrelated that has, like, an MP3 attached to it that I was intending to send to a friend who was on the show. You know, like, say, Josh or something. It would be, like, just a little clip from the show to let them know how the editing is coming along. And I'll listen to it, not even remembering it because it was from so long ago, and just laughing and being, you know, amused all over again, which is a really nice feeling.
But now you have this really great new show that I'm loving. It's called Heavyweight from Gimlet Media. Can you talk a little bit about how you developed this idea of Heavyweight and how it came about? I think, you know, it took a long time to figure out, like, what I was going to do that was new.
And in the end, it really came down to a very simple thing, which was, in the end, I just found a common denominator among all of my interests. Like, I started with just pursuing the stories that interested me. And in a lot of ways, it was sort of like an extension of Wiredtap and that these stories dealt with people that I find just interesting and funny and kind of fascinate me and finding the stories, you know, that were a part of their life that we didn't really have the space or the budget or the scope, I guess, to pursue online. Because Wiredtap was more of, like, a studio show.
And I think the idea behind Heavyweight was I wanted to do something that existed firmly in the nonfiction camp that would be out in the world outside the studio and also long form, you know, like, have these stories that have many beats to them and could just be, like, one story for an entire episode. And in the end, I mean, I think, like, to answer your question, like, the thing that I saw was that I was very interested in the way that the past, and, you know, like, the way that the past, you know, impacts the present just as a kind of person who leans towards that kind of backwards-looking regretfulness. And I remember my wife, Emily Condon, who works at Disney's Life. I think Ira Glass at some point asked her, like, so what my new show was going to be about.
And she said, oh, it's going to be about, you know, Jonathan revisiting the past to make sense of stuff that's happening in the present for himself and for the subject. And Ira said, oh, so it's basically just like every single other story that he's ever done, which I think is, like, true, you know, and I think, and it just felt kind of like, you know, it aligned with my interest enough and it seemed broad enough to just kind of do the things I wanted to do under that umbrella. You know, there's so much there that I'd love to just unpack because, you know, now that you mention it, it is a really field-based program where you're out traveling and talking with these people, so you have a whole set of challenges there. But it really is true, you know, now that you stay with it.
You know, in preparing for this interview, I went back and I listened to about four episodes. I listened to the one with your dad and his brother, which is just an incredible, great first episode. The Julia episode with the bullies coming to her door and wondering what that was. Just, you know, really powerful, powerful stuff.
You know, I love the Gregor and Moby one, too. I mean, here, you know, those familiar with Wiretap know Gregor as this character, and then you just go and humanize them. You know, as you are doing this, and you're the narrator, you're the creator of this, how do you handle, like, all of those emotional aspects that you see, either people that you're very close friends with or just people that you know going through all these emotional, like, ups and downs? Like, it's like you're trying to be that, like, fly on the wall, and you're letting your guests go through whatever emotional experience they're going through.
How do you just kind of either try and pull that emotion out of them, or how do you almost, like, get out of their way and just kind of let them go through whatever process it is that they're going through, and then you just get it to tape? Well, a lot of times, I mean, in terms of things you're describing, I mean, it's a matter of having those kind of emotions emerge out of conversation with someone that's key to that. You know, like, for Gregor, I was having this kind of conversation with Moby, for my father, who was having this conversation with his brother Sheldon, who he hadn't really talked to in 40 years and probably never talked with in this kind of emotional way, and just sort of sometimes allowing the, you know, I would say, like, an answer to that, that interviewing or being in a field with a microphone is different than a social setting. It's similar in some ways, but it's different in the way that, you know, a cocktail party and there's an awkward silence, you want to fill it, because that's proper etiquette.
The difference with, you know, being out in the field with a microphone is sometimes, you know, emotion can emerge out of the awkwardness of the silence, and you don't want to undo that, and you want to allow that to breathe, and sometimes that could be uncomfortable, you know, but I don't think there's usually an upcoring of emotion without some degree of discomfort. So I think it's a matter of creating, hopefully creating a context for these conversations to take place, and as much as possible, just getting out of the way, and then also having the benefit of hindsight when you're actually sitting with the tape and editing it and writing the story and engaging back on it and re-listening to it and listening to it over and over, pouring through it, you hopefully have a kind of eureka moment where you're able to perceive something that you couldn't in the moment when you're engaged with it, you know, and hopefully extract some thought about it that approaches, in a sense, grandiose, like, some little bit of wisdom. I gotta ask, is there any updates about Season 2, you know, episodes that you're working on, or anything that you might be able to share about Season 2? Yeah, I mean, it's working on, I would say, like, at this point, about six or seven stories all at once, hoping that they can.
Like, you know, I mean, the thing about the difference between Wiretap and Heavyweight is that with Wiretap, the fact that it kind of toppled between fiction and nonfiction allowed me the control to, you know, finish stories with a tighter deadline, you know, in that I can kind of create and invent things, we'll say, a whole cloth, you know. A lot of these stories, you know, I mean, the excitement of doing things in the real world is that, you know, there are all kinds of surprises and stuff, but the downside is sometimes you just end up hitting a lot of dead ends, waiting on people. So there's a lot of hope, too, you know, this side's going to work out because we invest so much time in these stories. But I would say what we're looking at, and hopefully this isn't, like, overly optimistic, there should be something out before the end of the year.
Right now, I'm talking with Jonathan Goldstein, host of Wiretap and Heavyweight and creator of both of those programs. You know, you're one of the, in my opinion, one of the best radio producers, radio creators out there today. You know, just your style is so distinct. I mean, it's really, when you listen to a Jonathan Goldstein production, you know you're listening to a Jonathan Goldstein production.
So I'm kind of curious what your take's going to be on this. You know, I work at a university, I have students who are looking to get into broadcasting, whether it's video or audio, but they're always told that radio is dying. So I'm curious, do you see radio as dying, or do you see it going through, like, another stage of its evolution? So from your viewpoint, what do you see as the overall state of radio and podcasting right now?
Well, I'm never really very, I'm not attuned to that kind of thing. I mean, to me, it's sort of like, God, I swear, I've never quoted Billy Joel before, but it's sort of like that dumb song, it's still rock and roll. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
We were talking about punk and this and that. I mean, to me, it's all kind of radio. And I think podcasting, the name podcast, is a little bit of a silly name. And to have that as a profession, I sometimes feel a little embarrassed by calling myself a podcast.
I don't know why. Maybe it's a generational thing. But I think I, that, you know, I think when you say that radio is going to die, I mean that it will be, like, audio will always exist, right? Or do they think that's not even, they think that's not going to get the terrestrial radio, like, real-time radio may not.
Yeah, I think what they tend, from my perspective, I think what they are trying to say is the current state of, like, commercial broadcast radio is just it's dull and it's boring. But because it's dull and it's boring, it's going to go away at some point because no one listens to it, like they did, say, in the 80s or the 70s or things like that. But for students who are looking to get into that field, you know, they sometimes get a little disconcerned where it's like, you know, am I getting into an industry that's going to be gone in five, ten years and everything? You know, on the flip side of it is, like, when I started doing, when I started learning radio production, there were no jobs for it.
I mean, it was just basically that kind of radio production existed at This American Life. And maybe the beginning of Radiolab, it's kind of like, you know, this sort of like documentary radio. I mean, it's always existed, you know, on CDC and public radio. But there wasn't, I mean, now people are, you know, you're being sought out.
I know Gimlin, you know, is always looking for good radio editors. You know, you have the potential to probably be in more demand and earn more money than it was 20 years ago. I mean, I would say that the beginning of, I don't know that Wiretap would have had the same resonance or would have been, like, if Wiretap, you know, the show that kind of people found on the radio dial by chance who were listening to the CBC, this very kind of newsy medium, and some will cross the thing to guys arguing on a telephone, they were kind of initially like, what the hell is this, you know, in a way that was hopefully intriguing. It was intriguing to some, maybe not everybody.
And they didn't expect, you know, for fiction also in that context. And I think if that show had, you know, was never on radio and was just, you know, came out of the podcast and was framed in that way, I think it would make a different kind of impact. I think it wouldn't have the same, what the hell is this, aspect to it. And I think something would be lost.
Like, I love, I keep a radio in the kitchen, and I just like flipping the dial, and I like the randomness of it, and I like the comfort of it. And it's sort of like when you're in college and you are forced to read books and you're exposed to things that you wouldn't normally be exposed to. It's very different than if your tastes are catered to, and you have an app that says, oh, if you like this kind of book, then you'll enjoy this kind of book. And then it's nice to have something random dropped on you.
Yeah. Because I think there's an opportunity to just discover something new and, you know, maybe glow in some way. You said the magic word, and I've got to ask you about this, because I work at a college radio station, and I'm just kind of curious, you know, what do you see college radio's role in, in like a larger industry of radio and broadcasting? What role does college radio serve, in your opinion?
You know, again, like this is so outside my field of knowledge. You know, I came to, I never worked in college radio. I kind of came at it in a very sideways sort of way. I will say, though, that the first time that I was ever on the radio was on a college radio station in Montreal.
It was a station called CKUT that came out of McGill, and it was for a show called Thanks on Mikes. I don't know if you can be able to have a show called that. Maybe you could. And I remember being nervous about it, and I remember the producer very kindly saying to me, look, you know, the beautiful thing about radio is...
back it's ephemeral you do it and then it's out there and then once it's done it's finished and that's very i mean bring back you know different podcast now the things that you do are archived and are there into perpetuity and there's something both good and bad about that there is something kind of cool about something that exists that's ephemeral there's something kind of um that you know that forces you into the moment about it and um i think like to bring it back to college radio i think to give people as i was given like just an opportunity to kind of um you know sit in front of a microphone and and have just all the accoutrements of of of being a pro allows you to just kind of think your way through you know to have a time to experiment and to be playful is in retrospect it's like you will realize it's so it's so golden it is um you know i think it will it will fuel and feed if it's going to be your career it'll it'll fuel you for decades to come you're discovering your voice right now and with a different set of things you know you should be you should be able to have some fun you should be able to take some risks and you know it seems like a place to do it yeah yeah no you're absolutely right with that i got one final question for you and again you know just thank you so much for doing this it's my pleasure you know it's uh the way you're saying uh it's very nice it's very nice to hear oh i'm glad i'm really glad um do you have any advice for any aspiring audio storytellers out there that might be might be listening what advice would you give them i mean i i think the the only thing i think of is just like do it you know you don't the nice thing about the way things work now there is a kind of democracy you don't need to wait for permission and if you're doing something that's that's fresh that's different and i think there's like a lot of room for that too um i think people will take notice and uh you know like if you look at the itunes charts i mean there's a lot of shows that are you know high production and you know come from companies and then other things that are more lo-fi you know that come out of people's basements and garages and stuff and if it's you know if it has hearts if it feels like it has a new kind of honesty to it uh if it just touches people in whatever way if it's funny in a way that people jide with or you know what have you it's gonna make a splash and i think like the best advice i can give is just like in the beginning uh just try things out you know i mean like it takes a long time to discover your voice and you know now's the time to do it and and it never ends you know i mean for myself i feel like in many ways it doesn't get easier um it continues to be hard it continues to take a lot of time and it's always a blessing because it keeps it fresh you know you don't you can't you can't get lazy and every new story feels like a new beginning and makes you feel like you're at the start of something and all of your experience comes to there but in some ways it just doesn't like you're staring at blank slate that was my conversation with jonathan goldstein if you're interested in checking out his new series heavyweight it's currently available on itunes or you can visit the show's official website at ginletmedia.com slash heavyweight i would like to thank jonathan goldstein for the wide-ranging conversation i'm peter creighton and thanks again for listening thank you very much for listening to this wxav 88.3 fm podcast be sure to visit our website wxav.com for more information on your escape from ordinary radio