[00:00:00] Katie: I'm Katie Sam wrote during the early part of the pandemic. I made the podcast transmission times, which was radio diaries from people around the world about life during the pandemic. And then over the last nine months, I've been making something called the mother mine, and that's been a global project where I have 75 people from around the world.

[00:00:19] Tell me about their mothers and. I've put together audio snapshots of each mother 

[00:00:24] Katie, one of the things that's always fascinated me about your work is that you pull from voice memos rather than interviewing people. 

[00:00:32] Why have you opted for voice memos as opposed to interview. One answer is just like practicality. It's easier for me because I don't have to spend time interviewing someone. Right. Like I just, they send me the audio, but for both mother mind and transmission times I've felt that the ability to just talk to yourself allows people to say things they might not otherwise say 

[00:00:55] I mean, especially in mother mine, you know, I've reached out to people have absolutely no connection with right. And[00:01:00] I'm from a completely different cultural background than they are in age and everything. I think it could be very awkward for me to be there as an interviewer, but to themselves, they read the question and they answer it.

[00:01:10] Like people say the most amazing things. And for both shows, sometimes people just say whatever they want and it doesn't answer the question, but it doesn't really matter because people are still saying really interesting. So there wouldn't really be the freedom to do that in an interview right. In the interview.

[00:01:24] It's much more like you have to answer the question. There's just something that's been really amazing about, that moment of what do people say to themselves, even though they know they're being recorded. It's different, I think, than having another person. 

[00:01:36] Your sound quality is amazing for both shows.

[00:01:39] But before we get into that, what are some of the specific questions that you have found yield really good responses with voice memos, because I will tell you as somebody who has used voice memos, occasionally I mostly have shied away from it because.

[00:01:54] Half the time, what I get back isn't usable because it sounds like they're reading but I feel [00:02:00] like when I listened to your shows, I'm like, man, these must be really good questions because the responses that they're getting are so wonderful, but I wonder what you're doing on the backend.

[00:02:11] I think part of the secret is really open and actually intentionally vague questions. Okay. So questions where you read it and you're probably like, man, that could be interpreted a hundred ways.

[00:02:22] Exactly what. How does your mother's influence show up in your life? It's an open question. I'm not asking, does your mother's influence? I'm just immediately like just making this assumption, but it's also very vague, right?

[00:02:34] So some people think immediately about particular things like, oh, I cook like her, but some people are like, because she was really overbearing. I try not to be overbearing with my kids or, there's a lot of room to maneuver, I think that's part of what makes it work is just really coming up with questions that are open so that it's not a one word answer.

[00:02:52] And also that are very open to interpretation because that's what I want. And that's how I think, you know, what you're hearing in the show is it's always [00:03:00] surprising how many different replies there can be to the same question. I get that, I think because I'm, intentionally building that in knowing that this question could be answered in so many ways.

[00:03:08] And to be fair, I have Don interviews a couple of times. And those usually work out too, but it's not my preferred way to do it. I know that you prep people a little bit too can you talk more about how you coach people through that on the front end?

[00:03:22] Because I think that's really. , 

[00:03:24] I try to make it really simple, I just say, please just do this off the cuff, just sit down and do it. . Don't worry about it being perfect.

[00:03:30] You know, don't worry about misspeaks. I edit that out. I clean it all up, you know, you'll sound amazing anyway, just answer straight from the heart that's all I want. And that produces the best. And I think to be fair for most people when you kind of give them that little reassurance and that permission to do it that way, 

[00:03:46] I mean, I have a couple of people where they obviously have prepped. For the most part, those are always much harder they're not the best ones because they're just, they're too canned. The vast, vast, vast majority of people don't do it that way.

[00:03:58] They do take me at my word and just [00:04:00] speak candidly and openly, and that works great. you also mentioned the sound quality and I do encourage people to record in like a. Quiet space, but I don't want to make it too hard.

[00:04:10] Right. I don't want to make it sound like, oh God, they've got to do something, you know, really onerous. So I just kind of leave it at that. And again, most people send me pretty clean audio. I do get a fair number with maybe like a few honks or, you know, people who live in a city and can't really get away from the street.

[00:04:25] But I also do a lot of editing the voice, right? Like I do a lot of E Q and a lot of just going in and making sure that I make that voice sound as good as possible. And I get as much noise out as I can. And again, for probably like 97% of the recordings, that's totally good enough.

[00:04:42] And then there's like 3% where it's fine. It's listening, but you know, you just can't get it quite as good as you want to, to my, my mind. Anyway, it doesn't detract. 

[00:04:51] Are there any other challenges that you faced as you're gathering these voice memos that are really at this point from all over the world?

[00:04:58] The only other [00:05:00] thing I could think about in terms of sound, and this is, quirky because of getting people from all over the world is trying to recognize what people are saying and very distinct accents. So even though, again, the majority of the people in mother mind were speaking in English, the Kenyan accent versus a Nigerian accent versus the, Israeli accent, all speaking English, but the accents are very different.

[00:05:20] There were many times where I would listen to a section over and over until I finally went, oh, that's what they're saying there. Right? Like, just because of the way they pronounce the word is just slightly different and that it would find the click at some point. 

[00:05:34] Katie, I don't know if you do this with mother mind, but I remember with the transmission times you had a phone number that people could call and actually leave their voice memos that way, rather than recording on their phone and sending it to you.

[00:05:46] Can you talk a little bit more about that process and like how well that works? Yeah, that, wasn't ideal. use that for transfers to times, and I didn't from other mind because it was phone quality audio, and it wasn't great. And it wasn't that well used. I think I had [00:06:00] one person from the general public called it, and then a couple of people.

[00:06:04] Particular episode that I was doing called it as well, but it was landline phone audio. So it really left a lot to be desired. I thought so I didn't want to do it that way. I did a few tape syncs for some of the global ones just to reach people who didn't have a cell phone.

[00:06:22] This is kind of basic, but since I know some people listen to this, won't know what a tape sync is. Can you just quickly explain what that means? Yeah. It's just like hiring someone in a particular location to go and record someone else. And then that's it. They take the recording equipment and in this case they would go and ask the mother mind questions, and then they would send me the recording.

[00:06:41] You kind of talked a bit about cleaning up the audio once you get it. I know there's a lot. You do. And I know we'll do a different conversation with video so you can show us some of that stuff. But are there three things That you can just highlight of, like, I do this, I do this and I do this whenever I get the audio, maybe things you do no [00:07:00] matter what.

[00:07:01] And so I use Hindenburg, which I love, I am almost always going to put the noise reduction on, not everybody needs it, but a lot of times you put it on and then you realize, oh, actually that does sound better. So I almost always pop noise reduction on there. First. I also have. Plugin from isotope, I've got their basic pack, but it's got a D click.

[00:07:17] And I love that it gets rid of tons of clicks. So I almost always put that on everybody. And then it's okay. How can I use IQ to clean up the voice? And really my third thing, if the voice is echo-y, you just have to get in there and make it less echoey. My dad, I do with IQ. I'm glad you brought that up because the episode that is associated with this module is lost and found, which is one that you actually helped me when you got on zoom with me and you actually showed me how to do exactly what you just said.

[00:07:47] I remember it was Elmer's track and it was Elena's track. And with both of them, it was one of those situations where, you know, you do your best to get good quality audio, but Elena. Sitting next to a very, [00:08:00] very, very busy street. Her house is a mile away from mine in Oakland.

[00:08:03] And she doesn't have a lot of places that she can record quietly. And especially if she's going to be on zoom where she needs to be on a computer. So that was one that I was dealing with. And then Elmer is this lovely native American artist in New Mexico. And his computer is set up in, I think it must be in his artist studio.

[00:08:21] It's like this giant cement room, so much echo. And, you know, he had his painting up behind him, which was lovely on the zoom, but not so lovely with the audio. And both of them, I had given them very specific instructions of, can you be in a quiet room, be in a closet, whatever. And you know, it was just like, it was not going to happen.

[00:08:39] But the things that they said were wonderful. And so I knew I wanted to use the tape. And so I actually reached out to you when we were first putting together that episode and said, Katie, what can I do, please help me. So I think you did exactly that. And what were you listening for? you Can you hear in the episode?

[00:08:57] Like it's still not perfect audio because it was just [00:09:00] so echo-y and so noisy. But what were the things that you were looking for specifically? If you can remember what those tracks. Sure. I mean, like you said, it'd be, there was definitely the echoes. and again, you go into IQ and you find where the echo gets worse than that.

[00:09:14] You pull it down a bit to compensate. And you want to do several passes of a little bit better rather than like, oh, let's pull it down a huge amount in one pass,

[00:09:23] and so I think that's partly what we did for the echo. The noise reduction is actually similar. You can put more than one noise reduction filter on at a time rather than like turning one filter up to max. So that tends to be a little gentler and tends to work a bit better. I'm glad you mentioned that because I remember Elmer's audio in particular was really, it was just tough.

[00:09:45] It was super echo-y and I was trying, even after you and I worked on it together to pull it down even more, I remember that. And I was working in D script, which at the time that I was putting this episode together, they had a brand [00:10:00] new feature called studio sound, which I will say has gotten much better now, you know, when they first came out with it, I think it was a little bit heavy handed.

[00:10:07] I remember playing with that and thinking, this is great. Because it takes the echo out completely, but it also makes it sound like he's kind of talking, under a furry blanket it was too much. at the time that I was making the episode de script, wasn't at a point yet where it could be adjusted. And so I ended up kind of going back and forth with that and, it was tough.

[00:10:28] I mean, I learned a lot through that process I at some point we'll go back and adjust that maybe. I don't know, maybe I won't, sometimes that's also just how it is. Like You're working on a schedule, you got to get the episode out and you kind of do the best you can do and, move on and hope people will forgive you. I feel like all the things I know now are things that you can only know by having gone through the process a lot, in some ways, I don't know that there's a short. For, you know, having made, well, over a hundred episodes, you know what I mean? [00:11:00] because you learn so much every time you're doing the thing.

[00:11:03] Well, I don't know about you, but I feel like I learned more from my mistakes then for when everything goes well, I mentioned the Elmer situation in lost and found. I don't think I'd ever encountered that exact situation before that. And even in the moment, I wasn't able to act fast enough to fix it the way that I would now, but I know what I know now because of going through that and like trying a whole bunch of different things.

[00:11:27] And now since then learning a bunch of stuff. So I think you're right. I think it's like you learn and you try to keep getting better and better. And for me, at least we shelter in place. When I listened back to season one, it's not awful, but it's not great either. Like there's a lot of zoom interview conversations and you can hear my computer fan behind my voiceover in the beginning. And you know, these things that I've since learned.

[00:11:49] I couldn't have learned that without just doing it a million times and hearing through really good headphones and being like, oh, I hear that computer fan. I hear that airplane flying overhead that I didn't think it was [00:12:00] going to be a big deal when I recorded it. But actually my mic picks it up. I gotta, I gotta stop talking when the airplane flies overhead.

[00:12:08] And I guess if there is anything to learn, it's don't record on zoom.

[00:12:11] Yeah. If you can avoid it, we found this with our Kasama collective trainees where they'd be recording voiceover in their iPhone or whatever smartphone, which actually a lot of times it was okay, but they couldn't hear the computer fan noise or the street sound or whatever it like, it wasn't even perceptible through earbuds versus when they'd send me the audio, I'd be like, oh gosh guys, this is like really a lot of fan noise.

[00:12:36] And. there was this light bulb moment for me of realizing, oh, it's because they don't have headphones. 

[00:12:41] totally. At some point in transmission times I got headphones, but There were many times where I would listen like, on my earbuds. I wasn't listening to anything on headphones. And then suddenly when I got a new mic, I got headphones. the ones where you just hear what it is.

[00:12:56] Right. They don't change it at all. And then I was like, oh, [00:13:00] okay. Cause that's what you really need to be able to adjust the IQ and mixing stuff. Like you really have to hear what's there. 

[00:13:06] I mean, I don't know about you, but I would even say headphones are more important than a good mic. I mean, a good mic is great.

[00:13:12] I'm very happy to have a good mic now, but you can get pretty far if you have. An iPhone and if you're being careful about not getting too close, not too far away, being in a quiet environment, you can do a lot with just like recording in your closet or under a blanket for us. totally. Yeah, and the other thing is don't tilt that iPhone up and talk into it, just hold it at the normal, facing you and talk at it. That's another thing. Cause sometimes I've tried out for myself. If you talk into it, then you get all these pops and all kinds of messy things.

[00:13:41] But, just talk three, four inches from your mouth, but hold it in the normal way you would hold it. That helps a lot. Yeah. That's a great tip. See, I just learned something from you. I didn't know that. And I was like, oh yeah, such a good tip.

[00:13:53] I didn't think about that, but of course comes out great. 

[00:13:57] Well, Katie, where can people find you [00:14:00] and your beautiful work? Actually transmission times is on the same feed.

[00:14:03] But the feed is called mother mind right now. It's wherever you listen to podcasts. And the website is actually out of many presents.org Katie. You're the best. Thank you for talking to me. And it's fun.