meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Ear Hustle

Why Doesn't Ear Hustle Talk About People's Crimes?

Ear Hustle

Ear Hustle & Radiotopia

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.921.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Listeners had a lot to say about two recent episodes featuring residents of California’s death row, especially “Different Sides of the Earth,” which focused on condemned women. “It was hard to hear the joy, laughing, etc.” wrote one listener, “when you know about some of their crimes.” 

Your messages and comments gave us a great excuse to dive into some of the thorny editorial issues our team wrestles with behind the scenes. In this special episode, Earlonne and Nigel join Executive Producer Bruce and Senior Editor Amy for our first-ever roundtable conversation about the role of crime and remorse in the stories we tell.

Big thanks to our listeners for sharing their thoughts with us. (Ear Hustle listeners are the best listeners.) We look forward to doing more of these response episodes in the future.

Thanks to Warden Andes and Lt. Berry at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center; Acting Warden Parker, Associate Warden Lewis, and Lt. Newborg at the California Institution for Women; and Warden De La Cruz and Lt. Williams at the Central California Women’s Facility for their support of the show.

Support our team and get even more Ear Hustle by subscribing to Ear Hustle Plus today. Sign up at earhustlesq.com/plus or directly in Apple Podcasts. 

Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Erlon, Nigel, Amy.

0:03.5

Hello.

0:04.1

Hello.

0:04.7

This is a first.

0:05.6

This is a first.

0:06.6

This is a first.

0:08.2

This is a first.

0:08.5

Yeah.

0:09.1

First of us on Mike.

0:10.1

Nice, we in here with the heavy hitters.

0:11.4

I know.

0:12.3

That's right.

0:12.9

That's how we thought of on this team.

0:15.5

Why are we all together today on Mike?

0:17.4

I'm so glad you asked, Nigel. We thought, before we released these last two episodes, which were about people getting

0:26.0

off death row in San Quentin and then people getting off row at Central California Women's

0:30.2

Facility, on the team, we'd had a lot of conversations about how to frame the stories, how to approach particular parts of it.

0:40.3

And then after the last episode came out, a lot of those issues were raised by listeners in comments and emails and Instagram.

0:48.3

So we wanted just to get the four of us together, the people who are most involved in kind of both reporting,

0:55.1

interviewing those stories and then crafting the stories, to just talk through our experience

0:59.9

making it, how we made some of the decisions we made. And I also have some of the comments

1:03.8

that we receive printed out here. So I thought we could just maybe take a stab at talking about

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Ear Hustle & Radiotopia, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Ear Hustle & Radiotopia and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.