On September 24 2020, Misha Melita and Katz Lazlo together with online attendees had an interesting session with Alix Spiegel, who is one of the creators of Invisibilia. Among many things, they discussed the Becoming Batman episode from the first season, storytelling techniques such as signposting, and Alix’ new job at Serial Productions. You can listen to the session and read the transcript below.

MISHA MELITA Hi, good evening everyone. This is Dissect with Alix Spiegel, and this is a belated session that was supposed to be Saturday, but we are doing it now, so we’re really happy that everyone’s here. Uhm, so my name is Misha Melita, I’m one of the organizers of the Podcast Festival and I’m here together tonight with Katz Laszlo. She’s an independent podcast producer, maker.

MISHA AND KATZ LASZLO: (Laughing)

MISHA And I’m happy to be here with you tonight-

KATZ Yeah me too.

MISHA -because you are a native English speaker.

MISHA AND KATZ (Laughing)

KATZ Among many things.

MISHA Among other things. (Laughing) That’ll make things a little easier.

MISHA And of course, we’re also very happy to be here together with Alix Spiegel, uhm joining us from New York.

ALIX SPIEGEL No, Washington, D.C.

MISHA Ah, from Washington, D.C.. OK, and this year the theme of the festival was invisible. Uhm, so yeah, quickly we thought, well, who is more perfect? Perfect for that than Alix Spiegel. You made the podcast Invisibilia and you just quit the podcast four months ago. Am I right?

ALIX Yeah, I’m not sure it’s quite as far, It’s like three or four months ago. That’s right. Yeah, uhm, I, well, I. Yes, I passed Invisibilia but Invisibilia will continue to live. Yowai Shaw, one of the producers ,and Kia Miakka Natisse, another one of our producers are gonna be the co-hosts and that was part of the way. You know, and Envisibilia was envisioned when Lulu and I first came up with it as this thing that we would build and then kind of help pass to other people.

MISHA Okay, so it was always the idea to pass it on to the next producers?

ALIX Yeah, well, the first idea was that it was going to be a cooperative. But in America, it’s really hard to get people … that like nobody was interested in. So… Oh, is my chair making a lot of noise? Sorry.

MISHA I didn’t hear it at all.

ALIX But you can hear it a little bit. Let me just see. Sorry about that. I’m my daughter’s room, my daughter’s chair. Uhm. So, yeah. So it was it was supposed to be more of a, we were hoping to make kind of a radio cooperative, but it didn’t fully work out that way. And then, you know, but the idea was always, you know, create a thing that could be a vessel for a whole bunch of different people. And so in passing, it feels very, it’s like a realization of the thing that it was intended to be. And also because I mean that I don’t I’m curious to hear about what you guys are doing in terms of like what your focus was in terms of the invisible. But it is also true that, I mean, the mission of Invisibilia was to see all of the kind of invisible concepts and that that kind of shape us without us quite recognizing it. And it feels like, you know, in order to kind of explore that, it’s good to kind of get different people who have different perspectives on who will, they are from a different generation. They will see-

MISHA Other invisible things.

ALIX Things that are not visible, that are less visible to me because I think we are all a product of our culture.

MISHA Yeah, okay.

ALIX And time and place.

KATZ How did you decide that that was going to be, that you really needed a show where like rather than being a producer who makes stories about invisible things, that you would really make a whole space where other people could come, that you would initiate a whole new show?

ALIX Well well, I helped create this American life. And so I had and I really wanted to get back to long-form. Because I was working for National Public Radio, which is basically like the BBC, but in America, and which means that I was doing eight minute stories, which is is, you know, it’s like very limited in terms of what you can explore. And so I really want to get back to long-form, but I didn’t want to move to New York and so I wanted to. And so there was nothing at NPR that would allow me to do the kind of work that I wanted to do. So I just decided to see if I couldn’t create a show that allowed me to do it without moving, because I don’t know how casting is there, but it’s very New York centric here, less so now. But it’s in terms of long-form, it’s harder when you’re not in that city.

MISHA Yeah. Let’s talk more about Invisibilia and your career also after Invisibilia. And I just want to say that if people who are listening or watching have questions, you can post them in the chat and then we will find an appropriate time to ask them. And let’s start with the first part of the program, which is the dissection of one of the most famous Invisibilia episodes, I think, which is “How to Become Batman”. Um, maybe you can first tell us a little bit about how this episode came to be.

ALIX OK, so this was this was a story. So, Lulu Miller was my co-host and we were just trying to kind of create Invisibilia and it actually took like a little while to figure out how to do it. But she had been for a long time really, really obsessed with this story of this man who didn’t have eyes because he had had a disease when he was very young. So he had his eyes removed but he was still able to navigate the world just as well as somebody that has eyes. So he would bike and rock climb and, you know, do skiing. And she was just very interested in him. And so, you know, once we sat down to try to make Invisibilia, she pitched the story and then for me, the thing that was interesting… So I came from this kind of behavioral science background, which looks at how… and I had done this story about this guy, Robert Rosenbaum, I think his last name is, and he’s the guy who actually starts the whole show because it starts with his study … I had done a story about this, he did a very similar study to the rat study except in schools. So he had like all of these students and he pretended to, he gave them this test that he invented, which was about it, which was about, you know, are these students going to suddenly encounter a massive change in how good they are at school? And and it was a fake test. And then he gave the teachers fake results. He said, these are your students that are just about to leap forward. And because he had said that and because he was like fancypants, you know, academic guy, they were like, “well, we must believe you.“ And that is a belief, that is an expectation. And then sure enough, all of the students that he had vaguely identified as about to have this leap forward did have a leap forward. And when he looked at it, it’s because the teacher had that expectation, then the teacher spent more time with the student, kind of digging in. So she was interested in this person and I was interested in, you know, well, could blindness, something that we think of as very biologically based and physically based, could that have elements of, uhm, could the way that we think about that be shaped by expectations? That was the kind of framing I mean. Typically at Invisibilia, it can go a variety of ways, like you have a really interesting narrative that either organically raises a broader kind of either moral, ethical, scientific question, or you just have a scientific question and then you go and you find a narrative that naturalistically allows you to engage it and helps people to understand. So that’s kind of how it how it started.

MISHA It was your idea of expectations and how they shape people’s behavior and also-

ALIX And even if there was physical behaviour. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

MISHA -and her fascination with the Batman story? Because he had been in the media already.

ALIX Right. Exactly. So he had been in the media already. I think she had seen him in like National Geographic. And we used this kind of invisibility, a filter. So we frame it in a specific way that allows us to explore. Something that is relevant to everybody, and then we just find very extreme examples which people wouldn’t believe, which can demonstrate … like, essentially the concept is, and this is for narrative podcast makers, the concept is in order to get attention. Well, there are a variety of ways of getting attention. But you either need a kind of fact pattern that is extraordinary in some way, but speaks to a broader issue that is not or you just have to be really, really good at telling stories. Either of those can work.

MISHA But what do you mean? You have to have a fact pattern?

00:10:53
ALIX: Well, I think like if you want somebody to see the world in a new… It’s so hard to grab attention, right? Such a busy, loud world that we live in. And so the things that we attend to are things that stray in some way from our expectation, often. Do you know what I mean? Or things that make us afraid, things that you know, things that make us angry. So there are a variety of ways, there are a variety of ways of activating people’s attention. That’s why, y’know, so much news is so sensationalistic, because that is if they scare you, then they can grab your attention. But also if there’s something that doesn’t fully conform to the fact pattern or create some question in your mind then, that like you can’t figure out, then you will pay attention until you resolve the question. That’s also, by the way, if you’re thinking about how to construct a story, one of the things that I typically do in my constructions is like in the very beginning, I always write in a way that immediately raises a question. Ira Glass, who started This American life, always said that, you know, like if you start any kind of story where it’s like, so this is what happened, then people naturalistically kind of feel the need to follow to figure out what it is. And that’s why he used this kind of storytelling method. But also, for me, the thing that I do is insert something that doesn’t quite sit, do you know what I mean? Or something that raises a question right up front.

MISHA So what would that be in this episode, do you think?

ALIX I should probably have the transcript in front of me. Well, I think it starts with us posing this question. You think that your thoughts about a cat, no a rat, the cat is in the other room, do you think that your thoughts about a rat could affect how that rat moves through space? Now that raises a question. And that’s an example of like first of all, that’s not typically how you would, it’s not the kind of thought that you have every day of the week as you walk down the street. But also like it raises a question that you need an answer to and inserting kind of tension into like even the very beginning, rather than, you know. Everybody is different and some people can do scene setting really beautifully in a way that engages. But if you’re looking for a quick fix for how to grab attention. Framing something right up front with something that doesn’t quite sit right or which has a question embedded in it in some way is a way to force people, to not force them…

KATZ (Laughing) To keep them listening to you.

ALIX …to get them to talk, to attend, because it’s so easy to loose attention. And more broadly speaking: as journalists, you do, ehm, like what is your job as a journalist? Right. So your job as a journalist is to get a whole bunch of information that is important for people to know. Absolutely. And then also, your job, as a journalist, is to present it effectively enough that they are actually able to get the information, that they can understand and receive, like they understand and receive the information. And that’s why all of these storytelling skills techniques are, in my view, as much a part of your job as a journalist as, you know, the actual, like, unearthing of material that is important for people to know. And that’s also one of the things that Invisibilia did, or was really focused on, it’s like focused on giving people information that’s not accessible typically, but it is important for them and can be useful to them. This information in “How to Become Batman”, which is about, look, your expectations have a real impact on outcomes in a variety of ways that you understand and in a variety of ways that are invisible to you and also your expectations of other people. That’s very important when it comes to race in particular in this country. And disparities, disparities that you see in education, like. This is all that was actually the Robert Rosenbaum. That was what initially it was about, it was really about racial disparities, racial differences in education. It was an attempt to kind of understand that.

MISHA So what would that be in this episode, do you think?

ALIX I should probably have the transcript in front of me. Well, I think it starts with us posing this question. You think that your thoughts about a cat, no a rat, the cat is in the other room, do you think that your thoughts about a rat could affect how that rat moves through space? Now that raises a question. And that’s an example of like first of all, that’s not typically how you would, it’s not the kind of thought that you have every day of the week as you walk down the street. But also like it raises a question that you need an answer to and inserting kind of tension into like even the very beginning, rather than, you know. Everybody is different and some people can do scene setting really beautifully in a way that engages. But if you’re looking for a quick fix for how to grab attention. Framing something right up front with something that doesn’t quite sit right or which has a question embedded in it in some way is a way to force people, to not force them…

KATZ (Laughing) To keep them listening to you.

ALIX …to get them to talk, to attend, because it’s so easy to loose attention. And more broadly speaking: as journalists, you do, ehm, like what is your job as a journalist? Right. So your job as a journalist is to get a whole bunch of information that is important for people to know. Absolutely. And then also, your job, as a journalist, is to present it effectively enough that they are actually able to get the information, that they can understand and receive, like they understand and receive the information. And that’s why all of these storytelling skills techniques are, in my view, as much a part of your job as a journalist as, you know, the actual, like, unearthing of material that is important for people to know. And that’s also one of the things that Invisibilia did, or was really focused on, it’s like focused on giving people information that’s not accessible typically, but it is important for them and can be useful to them. This information in “How to Become Batman”, which is about, look, your expectations have a real impact on outcomes in a variety of ways that you understand and in a variety of ways that are invisible to you and also your expectations of other people. That’s very important when it comes to race in particular in this country. And disparities, disparities that you see in education, like. This is all that was actually the Robert Rosenbaum. That was what initially it was about, it was really about racial disparities, racial differences in education. It was an attempt to kind of understand that.

KATZ it’s interesting because in the story, when you begin, you pose this concept of like your expectations might be shaping the people around you. And that gives the listener, I think, also some power that they’re like, what is this power I’m wielding? I’m really paying attention. And then you introduce us to Batman. And the one of the earliest scenes is Lulu running behind Daniel on a bicycle. And then Daniel and his friend, I think he was called Brian, saying it’s actually really offensive the way you’re framing the story. I thought that was such an interesting moment because you left it in there, because it’s kind of what you’re talking about, like it was matter. You know, the expectation that a blind person couldn’t ride a bicycle. It was happening in the story. And I wondered how that moment came about. Like, did Lulu ask, you know, am I covering this story offensively or do they just sort of laugh at her in the moment?

ALIX I think they they volunteered that (Laughing) Yeah, but you know, but it’s important since the whole thing is about expectations and how they shape people and ourselves without our full awareness. It was obviously very useful and important to put it in there. The thing that Lulu really, when I just talked to her, and that she really wanted me to remind everybody, which I definitely wouldn’t have remembered myself, but because it reflects badly on me, is that when she was first pitching the story, like one of the things that she kept saying was you might not need eyes to see. And she wanted me to report to you all. Like, well, see, anyway, that my response to that was “why would that be interesting?” Like, why would that be important? She just wanted me to pass along to you guys that I was an idiot and I am faithfully doing so.

MISHA Why do you think it was your reaction?

ALIX Well, because I don’t think I understood. You know, she’s very interested in hard science and I’m very interested in behavioral science. And she kept, she was talking about it in a way that was very science nerdy. I love her, but like, it was all about neurological studies and stuff like that, and, you know, and at that point, being a science reporter for 12 years, still, I was a little bit like I didn’t think I fully understood what she was saying. And also I was more, I was like she was making a neurological argument. And I was much more interested in the kind of social in the social construction of blindness.

MISHA Yeah, so the expectation part.

ALIX Yeah. And so I was I was just like, but this is the interesting part and you know, but that’s good. That’s part of like the tension that I mean, it’s always good to have tension.

KATZ: Yeah. And also the tension of working together, I think.

ALIX Yeah! Yeah, exactly.

MISHA Because at some point in the episode you screamed this from a rooftop-

ALIX She made me. And that, that was part of… Yes. That’s like and that showed us as… because another element, since we are in the context of a podcast festival where I am assuming that everybody is making materials. Uhm, that was part of kind of also allowing ourselves to be humans in space. Which there have been several kind of waves and schools of journalism, and that obviously that kind of approach started very aggressively with This American life. But that was also an effort to show, you know, the tension between us as people, because she was like, come on, let’s, she didn’t tell me. And she’s also she’s from Radiolab and all of the processes at Radiolab are really, really different than the processes that are employed at, for example, This American life, that’s where I came from. So one of the elements that they use in Radiolab, which is used because it is like they don’t tell each other things and it’s all about keeping information so that you can harness the kind of energy and emotion that comes from genuine discovery. Because so she didn’t tell me what she was doing. She’s like, come on, let’s go. And in other like shows for that season. I remember at one point she has a fear of snakes. So naturally I went and I got like a huge thing. And I brought a snake into the building that was like, into NPR. That was like that’s also an element of that. But yeah, I mean, like that whole philosophy, the philosophy that I think Lulu brought me to much more, which is, you know, there are, that’s like if you’re if you’re asking how do you hold the ear? Like real human emotion kind of unfolding in time is another way and another way that you can hold the ear and like radio is so much about authenticity for me, like something that is happening emotionally that you can feel as it is happening and that was an attempt to do that.

MISHA Yeah, but you said you came from this American life and she was the one who brought this in, kind of in the process.

ALIX There’s a whole set of techniques that are associated with Radiolab, and there are a whole set of techniques that are associated with this American life. And they are different sets of techniques. So this American life is a scripting process and Radiolab is a conversation based process. I’m now working at The Daily, which is a podcast out of The New York Times. And I have to say their processes are totally different and like just cuckoo, crazy pants. I’m still learning them. But like I mean, just like the point in the process at which they, like, learn, they write sit down to write a script and just every… it’s funny because do you guys ever listen to the Daily?

KATZ AND MISHA Yeah.

ALIX What does it sound like to you? Does it sound like…

MISHA It does sound like it’s scripted

ALIX It does?

KATZ I would be cheating because I saw a script.

ALIX Oh really?

KATZ Yeah with the dots. I really was blown away because I always wondered, because the way that Michael Barbaro speaks he says (imitates Michael Barbaro’s speaking pattern) “and now with”. Like what’s what’s going on here? Yeah. And it works, it makes me listen.

MISHA What do you mean with the dots?

KATZ So on the script they have like dot, dot, dot, they have spaces.

MISHA Ohhh, oh really?

ALIX So it doesn’t sound kind of like naturalistic in any way?

MISHA Well it does sound somewhat naturalistic, but you do hear that there’s, they know where they’re going and they’re not surprised by the information they get, I think.

ALIX Does Reply All sound naturalistic to you?

MISHA Reply All? Yeah I think more so.

KATZ I think the more I do radio, the more it becomes obvious when it isn’t natural, like I sometimes wish I could listen without having made it, because there are these little, you know, like. You hear like, oh hey, that was a cut, that means, you know, or you hear, oh, they’re going down at every sentence. That means they’re probably scripting this. But yeah, I would say Reply All feels to a degree scripted at least.

ALIX And do you guys…

KATZ Are you interviewing us or are we interviewing you?

ALL (Laughing)

ALIX I’m just I’m just curious. Do you guys have a preference for scripted or unscripted?

MISHA Not necessarily, no. I don’t mind being scripted. Because it also feels that the person who, or the maker knows where he or she wants to take you. So that’s also a nice feeling. And if it’s not scripted at all, then it feels not unsafe necessarily, but it feels like the story’s more open. So I also like it if it’s scripted and I know this is a very well thought of story.

ALIX Are there techniques that exist where you guys are making podcasts that are different than the techniques that exist where I’m making podcasts?

MISHA I mean, probably, but maybe you can tell us something about the techniques in Invisibilia because you have both these different background…

ALIX Yeah. Boy, that was hard. So she was better at learning my techniques, I think, than I was at learning her techniques. I think like moving from the scripted process to a well, first of all, the conversation based process is a lot more time consuming, depending on how you practice it. Right. Because if you practice it and like, oh my God, like if you practice it the way that Radiolab practiced it. Like sometimes you’re in the studio for an hour to get like seven seconds of material, that sounds often terrible. You mean it’s just like, oh my God, I’m bleeding out of my eyes! Like it’s not totally easy. As somebody who was trained in a certain way, it wasn’t as easy for me to be as naturalistic, I think, in front of the microphone as she was. So that took a minute. And what Invisibilia ended up doing was like really like a blend, you know, a blend of a whole bunch of techniques which, you know, that is like, as a producer that’s I mean, that’s like learning new techniques. Being a student of audio techniques is what I have been since I started in 1995. So for example, I just went to the daily. Why did I go to the Daily? To learn a whole bunch of new techniques, which I am learning and which are shocking.

KATZ Like what is something that has really baffled you? That you’re like “no”.

ALIX OK, so last night I was up till 12 o’clock because of their techniques and this sentence, like this is crazypants went through my head like several thousand times. OK, so they did not use. like they’re not into the scripting process. So I’m working on a story, I’m trying to work on the election stories. But the way that they do it, which is like a bat, like a different way of it’s like a different kind of method than Radiolab, but it’s related. The first thing that I did was I went through the story and I just wrote it like I would have This American Life or one of my Invisibilia scripts. But they’re like, no, no, no, no, no, you can’t do that. Just make us, like, for each scene, don’t do any narration at all. Just make a scene which has a beginning, middle and perfectly like… a scene from beginning to end. And then they’re going to, and I don’t, I can’t even tell you what happens next because I don’t know. I mean. So it feels like like it could potentially be a huge waste of time because it’s not always easy to construct naturalistic scenes. It’s much more like cinema verité. I think it’s a technique that’s is used very much in film. I think like if you ever watched Grey Gardens or like that whole era of in the United States or was like a whole era of Cinema verité. Did you guys have that? Do you have some cinema verité where you guys are.

MISHA We do have it, but we’re not really into cinema, I think. Or are you?

KATZ I’m not going to pretend to…

MISHA But if you describe it as if it looks like a script or you’re telling a story, then you would identify all the scenes.

ALIX Cinema verité is like, you’re not using any elements other than what’s in front of the camera. So like last night what I was doing was, I was trying to construct something that didn’t use any elements or minimalist elements other than what was gotten in the scene. So we went to we went to a Trump supporters house. Right. And he has given out twenty thousand Trump signs in the last two months. And he has guns. And he is like giving out Trump signs out of his garage. He’s got a brand new automatic weapon there because you never know. And so I had to create a scene that would give the listener the information, without anybody coming in, like, a narrator coming in and explaining.

MISHA So it would just be this person telling, or the interview that you had there, telling the story.

ALIXYes. And with This American Life, it’s so interesting to see these differences and to be forced to contend with the differences. I mean, like, you know, like because you have to make them and you have to remake yourself. Which again, if this is a conversation between producers and like, you know, I have a very strong ideology around, like how to conduct oneself as a producer, which is to not have… to not restrict yourself to a specific school of techniques like This American Life way or the Radiolab way, the like… but to to give yourself a whole variety of techniques so that you can, depending on what it is that you are doing, mix and match and use the thing that is most effective for that specific story. I don’t know.

MISHA Now, how would you do this story about the Trump supporter, how would you do that in an Invisibilia way if you would make that?

ALIX I was fighting with them about it last night or yesterday. Not in a bad way. In a like this is what you have to do to make radio way. But I mean, I was essentially saying those techniques are journalistically limiting. Because you can’t provide a whole bunch of context that would really, really be useful to understanding things, and that is certainly I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever listen to The Daily. They have tons of context and they build it in later. But, and I totally see the virtues of this kind of process and I am glad to be forced to learn it, because if you’re not forced to learn things, then you just, you know, you just go back to whatever it is that you already know. Right? That’s such a danger. And again, I’m just talking as like a maker, you know, not because like if you’re talking as a journalist, like, there are plenty of like the most important thing is you just do journalism that is really compelling and gives people the information and if you have a set of techniques that gives you that, that’s great. But, you know, as a as a maker, if you’re interested in learning and expanding and diversi-, I think it’s really useful to diversify your techniques, of course, and yourself.

KATZ And so in this moment, so you have to build the scene with the very clear beginning, middle and end, but you’re not scripting anything that you’re saying. And then is the idea that you later have a phone call that isn’t scripted and then from that they’ll build in the context?

ALIX Well, the purpose that you use, the purpose for using this technique is because you’re like, I can give you the rationale. They are working primarily with print reporters. Print reporters have a hard time performing radio scripts in a way that feels authentic. So you want to limit the amount of time that the print reporter is saying things because you cannot depend on them to say it well, in a way that will continue to engage the ear. And so essentially you build this thing and then you write a script that is just like teeny tiny little dollops and you try to do as little as possible in terms of connecting information. And then you have to weave it all the way through and you’ll notice with The Daily too, they’re always inserting archival materials, again, because you need to hold the ear and that is one way to do it.

KATZ Something that strikes me in the Invisibilia way to do it is that there’s always the like “no, that’s not quite the end moment”. And it was wonderful in the “How to Become Batman” episode as well, because you have this moment where we now know that Lulu forced you to shout at the top of a rooftop and then it’s like, by the way, my dad’s blind. No. And I wondered, that must have been really satisfying for you. And it sounds like that is a big part of your personality as well, that you like that feeling of, like, complexity. I’m wondering how you came to that style and also how you decided in that particular episode that now I’m going to put in a little bit of my personal life to complicate this a little.

ALIX Yeah, that’s interesting. So in terms of that specific episode. So one of the processes I mean, in Invisibilia I developed a ton of processes at every stage of the reporting process. And one of them is you create these things, you create whatever story you’re going to create. And then you put it in front of a group of people, before you put it in front of an audience so that you can understand how, especially people who are affected groups or whose groups are the subject, and so it just so happens that my father is blind and so I put it in front of him and he was just like mad and didn’t buy it even a little bit. And so and I am certain, like I knew, because you can imagine how offensive it would be, right? To certain blind people if you say to them, toanybody, you know, like if you say this thing that you have conceptualized as like it’s a physical disability, you have some role in whatever limitations, if you consider them limitations, that you are experiencing, that is a highly, highly problematic thing to say. The choice to include my father was as a way of kind of acknowledging, look, you know, there are plenty of people who just are like, “oh, please, A, you’re wrong, B, you’re wrong and C, you are incorrect.” You know what I mean? Like, in this whole thing that you’re constructing. And my father happened to be one of them. So why not just throw him in there? So that’s the answer to the more specific question. And then in terms of complexity, yes, I am I am I. So that was another kind of part of the mission of Invisibilia was to create journalism that allows for more gray. We are living in an increasingly polarized time in this country. I don’t know what it’s like in your country, but in this country. And, you know, it’s very hard to know exactly how to be a journalist, is the truth, and what is the right way. Like especially right now. You have the-, do you have to pick a side and kind of what is the right way to behave? Boy, that’s complicated. And I don’t have, like, a ton of clarity about exactly how to do it. But yes, Invisibilia sought to live in the gray and to allow- use empathy as a way of getting access to a whole variety of perspectives, some of which you can agree with and some of which you’re not going to agree with. That’s also now controversial, by the way, at least in the United States, the whole, we do like invisibility, the whole story about the end of empathy.

MISHA And I think it was the last episode that was out was about empathy, right?

KATZ No, so we have a whole season of last season about animals, which I am extremely enthusiastic about…

ALIX About climate change, which because that’s- and then the climate change story so depressed me like, oh, my God, that, like, knocked me flat. But uhm, and then I did a story about this woman in Scotland who can smell disease as a way of asking the question “what do you do when you see a terrible future coming?” That question seemed extremely relevant to me all of a sudden.

KATZ ( Laughing) The whole making radio as therapy?

ALIX Oh, totally. Oh my gosh. Absolutely. It’s like such a cheap way of going about solving your problems. And people pay you, I highly recommend that.

KATZ I’m thinking about the episode, about the end of empathy. If anyone’s listening and hasn’t heard it. Basically, you guys as a team made a story about this guy from his perspective. And I can’t remember the details exactly, but he’d had this breakup and he sort of –

ALIX Yeah, he was an incel.

KATZ Yeah an incel. And he like pursued his ex-girlfriend and it was all of this. And then you gave someone an edit test, I think, and they were like, this is an incel. So he’s stalking her and told the story completely differently. I’ll never forget that episode because it talks about, I mean, how we as humans can completely listen to a story wrong and that sometimes empathy can be wrong. Also as a journalist, I mean, what was it like for you in that moment where you got that story and you thought, wow, this is completely different?

ALIX Yeah. I mean, I think for Hannah, she was the reporter on that. That the realization that, so this is a very Invisibilia realization, the realization that empathy and the way that we people are just like, oh, empathy is good. And I was certainly raised that way. To realize all of a sudden that empathy itself is an ideology. And it was like all of the current ways that we think about empathy were constructed at a very particular point in time, after the Second World War, when it was seen as a way of not getting into problems like the Second World War. And then I was kind of raised within that whole ideology and never even realized that it was an ideology, just thought it was the way that the world should be. And then there’s a younger generation that really-. So to answer your question, I went to- there’s this podcast, first of all, actually, this is where that episode came from. There is a podcast festival in the United States called Third Coast. And it’s a great podcast festival and I highly recommend anybody go in there and they have this great talk there by Chenjerai Kumanyika and where he was, he basically he played this NPR’s Morning Edition piece, which powers our local show here, I mean, our national show and it and he- basically it was a story about this Trump supporter and a Muslim supporter who found each other and felt empathy for each other, and he played it and then he said, this story is morally wrong. And I was just like huhwhat? Like. Why is this why would that story, which is a story that I’ve been making for 20 years, why is that morally wrong and why am I complicit for making that story? Because that was essentially the argument that he was making. And there’s a very complex set of reason. I mean, they’re not complex at all, essentially saying, like, you can’t offer empathy to somebody who is a Trump supporter and you can’t you cannot use empathy with people who have power.

KATZ And you can’t equate them, that’s part of it, that you can’t equate the Trump supporters empathy for the Muslim person with the Muslim person’s empathy for the Trump supporter, right.

ALIX So after, Hannah and I both went to that talk, and that talk was basically just like a punch in the face but a good one, you know. So now you have this idea, this is often what happens with Invisibilia, so now you have this idea of like, oh, this thing that I thought was the right way to be, is actually like an ideology that was born out of a specific time and place. And other generations have different ideologies. And we should, you know, surface that so that people have some choices about which of these ideologies they are going to subscribe to. And so, yeah, so then that just happened to happen and that woman took the exact same tape and made the opposite story. And the difference is- the difference was this thing, empathy. She’s from a new generation, like she has the younger generation’s approach to empathy. And on our staff, there was a huge split between like people who are older, like Hannah and I and people who are younger, who like- because we have lots of like 20 and 30 year olds on our stuff who are just like, you know, fuck this guy and the horse you rode in on. And you’re like, well, you know, but then how are we going to have a better world than they’re like, by shooting them dead or, you know, by shouting them down. So is that an issue? Where are you guys struggling with that as well or not really?

KATZ Um, I think to a degree. I’ve been living between the states and the Netherlands for the past few years. So it’s obviously been something I’ve been thinking a lot about, I would say here there’s a little bit more empathy for people who are against cancel culture, like it’s a little bit more freedom of speech oriented here, I would say. But I do think it’s changing that it’s hardening. But anyway, that’s a whole conversation. I get it too.

MISHA I would never have connected it in this way to empathy. I think that’s very interesting.

KATZ I was wondering, actually, since you were talking about this next generation, what do you think about, I mean, you’re not the right person to ask in some ways, but the future of Invisibilia. You’ve handed it off. You and Hannah have started other lives. What do you think is going to happen with the future?

ALIX Oh, I think they’re going to well, you know, I am just as excited as anybody else to see. I mean, I think that they are. Like, well, you know, you know Yowei Shaw’s work? Like she did “A Very Offensive Rom-Com”, which I thought was like a really great story. And, you know, she- I think they’re both women of color. They’re going to be able to see things that Hannah and I as white women in America cannot see. And I think just every- it’s the same thing. It’s like every part of whatever it is that they will look at, will have a slightly different shape. But I think I think they’re keeping the core mission, which is, you know, to make more visible all the things that we are not able to see, that we just the- cultural constructs that are so bred into us, we’re unable to see them. And they will, I’m sure, they’ll do an amazing job because they’re both and like everybody who’s working on it is an amazing person. And I don’t know, I don’t know exactly like there was talk of a complete -we do like a completely you know, Invisibilia was a seasonal show. And the whole, one of the concepts was like, you know, we come out very rarely. So we have to do stories that are really, really like high end. But for a little while they were thinking of like, no, we’re just going to become like monthly or weekly, you know, I mean, like a completely different kind of show. And since we’re among makers, your time horizon has a lot to do with what kind of story you can tell depending on the techniques that you employ, right? So that I don’t know where they’ve come down on, like, I think they’re doing seasons more, but I’m sure it’s just going to be great. And that’s that’s part of this whole like. You know, I believe in audio. I am like a true, true believer in audio as like the best medium and like the medium that can, it really, you know, it can get to people and it doesn’t require them to sit in front of a screen and so they can be out in the world and yet, like filling their minds with all kinds of information that they wouldn’t have access to. And it touches their hearts. And I also think that we are at the beginning, like all of us, all of the people here, of making, you know, of making the medium and defining what it can be and hopefully experimenting with it. And I would love, like, if you guys have, I only speak English because, you know, it’s sad but true, but if you guys have any like I’m always interested in hearing new approaches, I would love to hear anything that you guys do, that you guys are proud of. I have a, you know, I have on Twitter, I have an email contact list people posted, and that was the one that didn’t work forever and now it’s working. So I will actually get those messages. And you know, I just feel like we have to remake the form, that’s our job. And we have to, like, figure out what it can do. I don’t think that that has been figured out fully.

MISHA And maybe since we’re talking about techniques, we can take one of the questions that’s in the chat. And so someone’s asking: “Since people listen to podcasts, they are often also doing something else while listening, like commuting or exercising or doing the dishes or anything else. Is this something you think about when you’re making- where people are listening and how you lure them into the story and how you keep them engaged?”

ALIX Very much. Consistently. Yes, yes. I mean, the question of well, and there are debates about the this too, just as there are debates about everything. But like this question, we talked about it earlier. How do you catch the ear? How do you catch him? Like, catch attention and maintain attention. But then also, like, since somebody is like in in a car like how much what’s called signposting do you need to do? You guys have signposting? Do you guys talk about that?

MISHA I mean, I know, but maybe you can explain shortly what it is.

ALIX And so, for example, the place where I am now has a really different philosophy of signposting. So signposting is where you are essentially telling the listener what to attend to. So before you go to a clip of tape, you write something that focuses their attention in one way or the other. Like this is the thing in the tape that you are you are trying to attend to. That’s called signposting or like a signpost. Like here is what this story is about. Here is what-. So at the Daily, they have a very different philosophy, which is, again, you know, which is- so this would be part of the philosophy of like don’t write things, let it bubble up and don’t direct the ear of the listener, let it organically kind of emerge from the tape itself. So now, obviously, even in the This American Life type process, there’s a lot of that happens, y’know the work the tape does a time for. But This American Life has a ton of focus on signposting. And in Invisibilia, I had a ton of focus on signposting and a lot of debates about how much signposting is necessary in order to direct the attention of the listener and how much you can just- you don’t need that kind of signposting. And, you know, it’s a debate. I think you can work in a variety of different ways, depending on what kind of, what kind of tape you have and how effectively you’re able to use it?

MISHA Yeah, and you were saying when someone’s in the car, maybe you would use less signposting or-

ALIX More! Because like that you are assuming that people are distracted to some degree. And so the one thing that Ira always said is, which is really it’s a very didactic medium. Meaning what you have to point really hard at what it is that you’re trying to say. Now, subsequent generations, I think, really would take- really question that as an assumption, right? So, for example, the place that I’m working now, which has existed for all of three years, didn’t I mean, like they do beautiful work. That’s why I left in part why I left Invisibilia to go to them, like but that there is a really different kind of set of assumptions around that.

KATZ I’m wondering how you do that technically. It’s interesting, because I come from a BBC, you know, tradition in terms of listening, which is much less handholding, I would say, than at This American Life. And so it was, I think something I often hear here is that the sort of bigger American podcasts that are consumed here are very handholding in a way.

ALIX Interesting.

KATZ Yeah, that that’s a sort of a marker for an American style of podcasting. But something I think about when I’m making stuff, you know in my head, I’m like, oh, maybe someone’s doing the dishes, but I don’t go and listen while I’m doing the dishes. Like, I don’t actually have a way of saying, is this hearable? If I’ve taken a walk outside. I’m wondering how you really do that. Do you just think “it feels like it needs another signpost? Maybe that dishwasher is not hearing this word?”

ALIX I mean, the truth is, I was just trained into it by Ira. So it is a natural impulse, which at this point I’m trying to unlearn it in some way, you know? So I mean, for me, I think it’s useful as a maker to be aware of all of the assumptions that you’re making about the listener. And what I’ve learned over time is that many of the assumptions that I make about the listener are definitely not correct. But, you know, I assume that it’s hard to get people’s attention that that you need. Like, there’s also- this also has to do with pacing, like how fast are the cuts generally? I mean, like, how much time do you have before you- how much are people willing to go with you? You know, the answer to your question is I don’t take it out for a spin clearly. I mean I do, I do in the sense that like we have listening sessions and group critiques and you listen in that context in your- and you’re just trying to and then the act of learning how to listen if you’re new to podcasting, that’s really, really important in learning how to just, like, cut yourself in half and listen with one side of yourself and then watch you as a listener. So I do it in that sense, but I don’t like literally like a technique.

MISHA Is that the technique? How do you split yourself in half and learn how to listen?

ALIX Yeah, I think that’s one of the first things that I tell people who are being trained by me. And certainly one of the first things that I learned when I was being trained is- so for example, let’s just take one part of the process. You went out, you’ve got a whole bunch of tape. You come back to your house, you put it on your Pro Tools, and now you have to figure out what are the selects, right? So the way to do that, if you ask me, or the way that I was taught to do that is you press play or whatever. And then you sit and you listen and you try to notice, like, when are you paying attention? When you’re paying attention it’s good tape. When is your mind like “oh, I need to go do the shopping” when your mind is like, “oh I need to go do the shopping”, that is not the tape that you pull. And that is all the information that ends up in your script. And so like right from the beginning, you’re learning how to use yourself as a substitute for the listener. Use your body and your natural responses as simply a stand in for the listener, right? And so you sit down and so like right in the beginning, like when I was twenty two years old, I was learning how to like have an experience and simultaneously watch myself having an experience that is critically important. And it’s critically important in every single solitary part of the process of producing a piece of audio journalism. So, for example, when you are in the context of reporting. Right, so that you’re also using those techniques, you’re like having a conversation on one level but on another level, you have broken off and you are standing outside of yourself and you are watching the thoughts that you as a human being are just having in your head. And then that part of you that is broken off and is just watching is taking those thoughts and then making your mouth say them so that then the person can respond to them. So whatever horrible, awful thought you’re having in your head, because it’s radio and you need things to happen in front of the microphone, you are saying those things out of your mouth. That is that’s another thing that I learned from Ira. Just like if you think something terrible about something or you think something challenging about them, somebody, your listeners are going to think that. So then it’s your job to sit there and say it to them because otherwise it’s A, not fair. And B, not as good as it should be.

MISHA Nice, I’m seeing if there’s going to be more questions from the chat, but maybe we have a last question? Do you have a last question?

KATZ I do. but you’re also welcome to-

MISHA We can both have a last question.

KATZ OK

MISHA Well, I was wondering maybe because we just spoke about empathy and how your idea about empathy changed and now all your ideas may be changed because of making Invisibilia and this story that we’ve talked about today, “How to Become Batman”, you made it five years ago. Would you still make it in the same way or would it be a completely different story if you would make it now?

ALIX Such an interesting question. Now, this one, I would make it exactly the same way. So first of all, I haven’t subscribed fully to the new ideology around empathy. I, you know, so what happened at invisibility is that Hannah is just like, yup, that she agrees with the new position and I’m like, I don’t know. And so I’m in an “I don’t know” position at this moment. Maybe I will. Maybe not, although I will say, look at my new job, I’m more the voice of we can’t extend empathy- well I’m not really actually no, but I am the voice of like, you have to be unbelievably careful about what kind of narratives you tell. So, but I would say this one- that one, I do think that one just kind of sits, you know, understanding the degree to which your, essentially, outcomes are a function of expectation rather than, quote, unquote, reality. I think is a useful thing to understand in a more fine grained way. So I feel very comfortable with that story and the way that it went about its work. There are something things I’d change about it, I feel like, you know, that. I feel like the basic ideas are solid and they’re the basic ideas of what Invisibilia was supposed to be doing so. Yeah.

KATZ I think I see a question.

MISHA Ah yeah. Do you use specific audio tricks, techniques to keep your audience interested? I think we just spoke about this a little bit, but I think this person means something else. Um, they were saying so not on a content or editing level. So I guess in music or sound effects.

ALIX Oh, more tricks. And the tricks are not content, not so much on a content or editing level.

MISHA So I guess it’s it’s about music-

KATZ -and sound design.

MISHA Yeah. Sound design.

ALIX Yeah. I mean I am not the best sound design human that ever existed in the face of the world.

KATZ Does anyone feel like they are? (Laughs)

ALIX Yeah, Lulu is really great. I think like Abby Wendle. I have to say, I did a story of this, I did two stories this past season and one of them is called “Two Heartbeats a Minute”. And it’s about climate change, but it’s an entertaining romp through the climate change. (Laughs) You know, and the end of the world.

KATZ I don’t think anyone has ever said in a sentence.

ALIX It is totally, like that was the whole goal is to be an entertaining romp through our coming destruction. And I think it worked. And part of the reason it worked was like I mean, it worked as like an entertaining romp, was because of Abby Wendle’s sound design and the kind of tricks and techniques that she uses, which I don’t know as much about as I probably should.

KATZ But you’ve got the right people helping you.

ALIX I did

MISHA OK, so we should talk to Abby sometime.

ALIX Yeah. She would love to talk to you and she’s a sound genius.

KATZ I would love to talk to her

ALIX So, I mean she’s still at Invisibilia. Yes. You can just get her there. She’s also on Twitter.

MISHA Somebody’s asking what her last name is.

ALIX Wendle. W E N D L E.

KATZ My last question is, I just find it so interesting, this tension within you, that you come from this school that was sort of the first big narrative, now podcast, then radio show, now both. You have this sort of school that you’re holding on to more than your colleagues, more than Hannah. And at the same time, you’re really hungry to learn these new techniques. And you even put yourself in a show where you’re vastly outnumbered by the other- and I’m wondering if you have a big radio fantasy for what you want to do next. You’ve got this big space in your life now. I don’t know.

Alix Well, yeah, you know, that’s why I’m learning the new techniques. I mean, I’m learning- I moved from Invisibilia to The New York Times as a way to scramble my mind, because even though it is very unpleasant in the actual moment, like. I do find that if I can just sit with the discomfort. Eventually, something new will emerge, so I think I don’t have full insight into why it is I’m doing what I’m doing. I wish I did, but I think part of what I’m doing is I’m trying to figure out a new subject area by going to the Times and being exposed to a million different subject areas. Hopefully eventually over time. I’m doing politics now. That’s a new subject area. So I’m trying to find- because I also think that it’s not just techniques that I’m interested in, in like taking on. It’s also like taking on new techniques. It’s also like different kind of intellectual approaches and different subject matter, will also lead you to a certain set of conclusions. So if you are, let’s say, a computational scientist, which is somebody who looks at mass data, like you’re going to come to us, like you will always come to certain kinds of conclusions versus if you’re like a psychologist and you look on that level, like your distance from the object that you are observing has a lot to do with what conclusions you come to. So and there are just really different ways of thinking associated with different subject matter. So I, I think I’m shopping for a new kind of subject matter, and this is like, I’m guessing as much as you are, even though technically I do inhabit this body. But I think that’s part of what I’m doing. And then I think another part of what I’m doing is scrambling my brain in terms of techniques. And then I don’t know where I’m headed, actually. I hope that I have another chapter, you know, where I have something to say right now, like I have no idea what is going to come out of this. I wish I did. And I wish I could tell you that I all I know a lot more about- ah-. Here is another thing, I attend to my process more than I attend to my product, like if I go through a certain process of exposing myself to new ideas, of forcing myself into new positions, like typically something comes out of that. I don’t know what is going to come out of i. I’m just shutting up, I’m no longer talking on the radio. I’m only producing, I’m partnering with people and I’m seeing how that changes me. And I don’t know how it will, yeah.

MISHA Sounds like a very nice adventure.

ALIX Yeah, well, I don’t know. We’ll see. I mean, I think it’s been fun so far. Like, we’ll see, like, you know. I mean I’m a journalist so I always want to see new worlds and I mean, and this is like one of the ways that I do it, but it was so much fun to talk to you guys

MISHA Yeah, thank you so much.

ALIX I just think next time would you guys invite me again when we’re not in a global pandemic so that I can and like this time, I promise I’ll have all of my email accounts working perfectly and I will come and I will be in your beautiful country and where everything is awesome.

KATZ Well, it’s debatable that last thing. But thank you so much for talking to us.

MISHA Yeah. Thank you. Have a nice day.

ALIX Thank you guys so much. You be well.

MISHA AND KATZ Bye!

The Podcastfestival 2020 is an initiative from the Dutch Podcast Network and made possible by the Creative Industries Fund NL, the Democracy and Media Foundation, the Dutch Journalism Fund, the Dutch National Fund for the Visually Impaired, and the Dutch Catholic Fund for the Visually Impaired, the Dutch Institute for Sound and Vision, Hindenburg, Podcast Media and in corporation with Tolhuistuin, Domino Sounds, Podgrond, Wintertuin Nieuwe Oost, Radio Dakhaas, One World Magazine, VPRO Gids, Podnews, Dag en Nacht Media Media, Women Inc., and Riverside.FM. The tune was programmed by Hay Kraanen. Go to podcastfestival.nl to listen back to more sessions from the festival.