Snap Studios.

I'm Erlon Woods.

I'm Nigel Poor.

We're the hosts and creators of Ear Hustle from PRX's Radiotopia.

When we met, I was doing time at San Quentin State Prison in California.

And I was coming in as a volunteer.

The stories we tell are probably

not what people expect from a prison podcast. Like cooking meals in a prison cell,

keeping little pets, prison nicknames, and trying to be a parent from inside. Stories about life

on the inside, shared by those who live it. Find your hustle wherever you get your podcasts.

Okay, so it sounds crazy, but my first real job was to watch TV.

For real, at a bustling newsroom.

The Grand Rapids Press, Grand Rapids, Michigan,

I'd watch the nightly news at 6 and 11 make sure that the TV people thought it was important.

We'd have a story on the front page the next morning.

I love that newsroom.

Dozens of reporters, editors, photographers, ad folk running around with the coffee, the sweat, to raise voices on deadline, holding the powerful accountable, keeping the public informed. It was wonderful.

Felt like something out of the movies.

And that, that was not long ago.

First, they laid off half the staff.

But half of that staff.

And again and again, the mismanagement, the malfeasance greed shipped the production of our Michigan paper to Cleveland, Ohio, gutting it, stripping it.

...