Bonus: Prisoncast

Motive

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2022

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this bonus episode of Motive, we bring you some excerpts from a special project we created. After a years-long investigation into prisons, we wanted to make something that wasn’t just about people in prison, but also for them. In August of this year we collaborated with radio stations across Illinois to create a broadcast that was heard in prisons statewide. We played sounds incarcerated people requested to hear from the other side of the prison wall, and dedications for sounds that family members thought would be important to their loved ones. People requested simple sounds from the outside world, like babies laughing, rain on a tin roof, the waves of Lake Michigan. We also played people’s music requests and even an original song, “Bring It Back”, created by some students of the Rebirth of Sound program, inside Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, Illinois.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the sound of a big laughing.
0:09.4	If you listen to season 4 of the Motive Podcast, it's not exactly the kind of sound you've
0:17.4	come to expect from us.
0:19.2	To be blunt, most of our reporting has been pretty dark, bleak even.
0:23.5	So even though it's been months since our final episode, we wanted to jump back into the
0:27.6	heat and share a bonus episode with you.
0:31.0	Something that brought us a lot of joy, and we think we'll bring you joy to it.
0:37.9	After years of investigating prison abuses, we decided it was important to do something that
0:52.5	wasn't just about people in prison, but actually for them.
0:57.2	People locked inside prison don't get podcast, but many of them do have radios.
1:02.4	So we got together with radio stations across the state of Illinois to arrange a two-hour
1:07.4	broadcast that would reach inside every prison in the state.
1:10.8	We'd include information and resources for people in prison, but we'd also take request
1:15.8	for sounds people want it to hear from the other side of the prison wall, or sounds
1:20.4	that the loved ones wanted to send inside for them to hear, like baby laughter or bird chirping.
1:28.8	Rides are the great America musume.
1:36.0	The waves of Lake Michigan.
1:40.7	We broadcast those sounds and more into every Illinois prison earlier this year in a project
1:46.4	called Prisoncast.
1:48.2	And today on this special bonus episode for season 4 of Motive, we're bringing some of
1:52.9	it to you.
1:59.1	From WBEZ Chicago, I'm Shannon Heffernan.
	...

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