Audio craft, heard from the inside.
Sound School Podcast is an audio craft show from PRX and Transom, with Rob Rosenthal appearing in the excerpts. It studies silence, structure, humor, pitching, interviewing, and writing through close listening to real stories and working producers.
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Sound School Podcast is a craft-forward show about how audio stories are conceived, tested, written, edited, and made to hold attention. It comes from PRX and Transom, with Rob Rosenthal appearing across the excerpts as the central editorial guide. The tone is conversational, exacting, and lightly amused by the strange paths good audio can take. It notices small things. Silence becomes a subject, not an absence, as an episode lingers on quiet, ambient sound, and the way even an apparently empty pause is still filled by the listener’s room. A story about a film with donkeys climbing a hill becomes a way to think about patience, strangeness, and the value of not rushing meaning. A comparison between a podcast pilot and a first episode turns format development into something almost ecological, with Henry David Thoreau’s observations on forest succession unexpectedly pulled into the frame. The show likes that kind of leap. It also stays practical. Noelle King’s method for writing radio by telling a friend the story first becomes a concrete lesson in clarity, pacing, confusion, and audience attention. Robert Smith’s appearance on endings treats the final moments of a story as engineering, memory, and invitation all at once. Will Coley’s pitch about public nudity follows the uneasy route from idea to interviews to a possible piece, including the practical odds and doubts behind pitching. Episodes about The Turning focus on interviewing people who are shy, reticent, or shaped by closed communities, showing how trust and restraint matter to reporting. Humor gets treated seriously, too, especially when a funny piece makes a sudden turn toward grief, family, politics, and loss. Sound School Podcast is not a gear show, though technical questions do appear around audio work. It is more interested in judgment. Why start here? Why cut there? Why does one moment land and another one flatten? The show suits listeners who want the workshop floor beneath finished radio: messy pitches, careful listening, story instincts, and the hidden labor behind memorable sound.
Made for: For podcast makers, radio producers, editors, narrative journalists, audio students, and serious listeners who enjoy hearing how story choices get made. It especially suits people interested in writing, interviewing, pitching, structure, sound design, and editorial judgment.
What sets it apart: Sound School Podcast stands out by using real audio examples and working-storyteller conversations to examine the craft choices behind finished pieces. It treats odd starting points, archive lessons, and tiny structural moves as material worth close attention.
The Backstory to Great Audio Storytelling, hosted by Rob Rosenthal, for Transom and PRX.
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A thoughtful craft lesson on how ordinary street questions can open into intimate audio stories.
Street interviews can easily become a string of quick opinions, and Rob Rosenthal begins by asking what listeners actually gain from that familiar format.
Apple decisions, examined down to the window corner.
Weekly film, music, and arts criticism from Monocle 24's Midori House studio in London.
The engineering decisions behind code, agents, and control.
The host reflects on the podcast industry layoffs in 2023, highlighting the cancellation of shows like Heavyweight and Stolen.
Noelle King says she doesn't know what makes good radio writing, then reveals her unconventional 'tell, don't write' method.
Catherine Carr starts every street interview by asking strangers, 'Where are you going?'
Rob Rosenthal's Sound School episode in the 'Old School Sound School' series revisits Annie Cheney's 1998 debut 'Concerning Breakfast,' which aired on This American Life and NPR's All Things Considered.
Rob Rosenthal explores the value of silence and quiet in a sound-filled world, drawing from an episode of Unexplainable.
A discussion about a radio story titled 'A Cow A Day' and the filmmaker Brent Reneau's work, including a film about donkeys climbing a hill.
Rob Rosenthal experiments with a compare-and-contrast analysis of a podcast pilot versus its first episode, using Thoreau's forest succession as a metaphor for podcast evolution.
Rob Rosenthal introduces a story about a producer's journey to create a radio piece on public nudity, exploring its meaning and the pitching process.
Rob Rosenthal revisits a 2017 interview with Noelle King, who shares her technique of telling a story aloud to a friend before writing a script for radio.
Sound School host Rob Rosenthal interviews 23-year-old Johannesburg producer Kabir Jagram about his documentary Nothing Wrong, Bro, which follows his friend Meshack “Shaki” Davies through a mental-health crisis.
Sound School host Rob Rosenthal examines Anna Van Dyne's documentary about Dr.
Sound School examines how Champika Fernando developed "Ode to My Trash Man" during a one-week Transom workshop in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Nina Potok tells Rob Rosenthal that funny writing begins with honesty, using her 2024 story
Sound School revisits John Burnett's 2018 NPR immigration report, created without courtroom audio after three Guatemalan mothers were separated from their sons.
Rob Rosenthal and Robert Smith discuss the importance and challenge of crafting effective story endings in audio storytelling.
Rob Rosenthal revisits an episode about interviewing shy people, using examples from the podcast The Turning's new season on a cult.
Jasmine discusses creating a non-commercial audio retreat in Berlin to combat loneliness among freelance producers and foster collaborative creativity.
Rob Rosenthal shares a recording of Ira Glass's 2001 talk on simple tricks to improve audio storytelling and reporting.