Thank you. It is good to be here.

Yeah. Sidedoor is the flagship podcast for the Smithsonian Institution, and we sneak you in the side door to find stories that can't be told anywhere else. Those span the whole range of 19 museums and research complexes, and the National Zoo. A lot of these places, you can't even visit on a trip to the National Mall, so it's sort of a way in behind the scenes. This project got started in 2016, it was actually the idea of the Central Office of Communications. The goal was really just to reach new audiences where they were, because a lot of people don't have the opportunity to visit Washington, DC. We wanted people anywhere to be able to hear some of the stories of what goes on here.

A typical episode is about 30 minutes, and it takes... Do you want to guess how long it takes?

No. 100 hours.

We did the math one time. Justin O'Neill, who was senior producer of the show for many years, he sat down and did the math one time, and for each episode, it's about a hundred hours when you think about research, interviewing, transcribing, scripting, cutting, editorial meetings, revision, mixing, mastering music, and then putting it up, and even the social media stuff. I don't even think we counted the social media stuff. Yeah, it's 100 hours. We're working on about three episodes at a time, at any given moment.

Well, as a producer, thanks for being a listener.

That is a great question. It really depends. Some of the time there's an exhibition that's been eight years in the making, and it's finally opening, so we really want to find a way to feature some aspect of that exhibition to help further that reach, so that more people can learn about it, the fact that it's opening. That's one way that we get into stories. Another is sometimes we have a curator who will approach us and say, I've been working on this research about this mysterious person I've discovered from history, and I think that they would make a great candidate for a Sidedoor story. We love those internal pitches, especially when it's somebody who's already done so much primary research, who knows so much about the subject. Other times, it's just us saying, wow, we really haven't featured this museum in a while, we would love to do a story with them, let's get on their website and poke around and see what they have going on. So it really depends, we get stories in all sorts of ways. Occasionally, listeners write in with an example or with an idea, and that's always very exciting.

I had a feeling you were gonna ask that question. It's so hard, because there's so many different kinds of stories. There are definitely some that I feel especially proud of. One of my favourites is Apollo 12's very close call. Apollo 12, being sort of like the middle child of the Apollo missions that people don't really pay attention to, but it was so exciting. I loved that story just because it was a fun yarn to spin, it had great characters, it had high drama, in space. When you're hurtling through space, and all of your electrical equipment goes down and you don't know why, that's the definition of drama. That was a really fun story to tell. There are stories that have been really challenging, like one we did last season called Reservation Mathematics. It was about basically the history of blood quantum, this notion that, oh, I have half Cherokee blood and a quarter Irish blood or whatever, this idea of dividing up your blood, where that comes from, and how it really is a tool of colonialism that exists to exploit native peoples and indigenous peoples, and is carried forward today in really interesting ways that continue to impact those communities. Telling that story was really challenging because I am not a member of a native community, so telling a story about a community you're not a part of carries a lot of weight, especially when you're approaching it from this sort of institutional standpoint. But we were able to really get into that story in a way that felt good, by way of an artist who was photographing members of her family, and as a way to tell the story of blood quantum. We really worked with her, she interviewed members of her family, and we were able to use those stories via her and her photography work, and really get into this fascinating, gnarly, thorny history. That was a really, really challenging story to tell, but one that I'm very proud of the fact that we did it. Then there's just, oh my gosh, the one on leeches. I do have this fear, or I should say I did have a terrible fear of leeches. For this story, I had to go stand in a swamp and let leeches bite me. That got my blood going. That was one of my favourite ones to record, really, because I like to be a little bit scared most of the time. Ok, not most of the time, some of the time. This is 2022, I like to be a little scared some of the time.

I'm glad to hear that. Weird and out there is what we go for.

So I did, I walked away from my teaching job, and I walked away from my relationship, and I thought, if I could really do anything, and I turned off all of the voices that say, it's too late, you're too old, you don't know how, I would try to tell audio stories. I had no idea how to do it, so I had been interviewing family members and friends for years, I realised, fellow teachers. I had some interviews I'd collected and I started trying to teach myself audio editing via YouTube, and free online software and my phone, I just had my voice memos app on my iPhone, anyone can do it. But I'm a perfectionist, so I felt like I was waiting for the perfect foolproof bulletproof story that nobody could say anything bad about ever, and then I could really start being an audio producer. But surprise there, that story doesn't exist, and I wasn't actually making anything. I made a New Year's resolution that year, I was working as a barista for health insurance and kind of chugging along and doing volunteer gigs and trying to learn whatever I could, but I thought, ok, I'm gonna do an interview every single day with a stranger, because even if I suck at this now, by the end of the year, I will have enough hours of interviewing, and I will be good at going up to strangers and ask if I can talk to them. I will surely be at least a little better than I am now. I did that, and that grew into a show I produced called “Your Story Here”, which is basically just me learning how to do the thing. A local small podcast network distributed that, then I started to get freelance gigs, and then I started freelancing for the Smithsonian, and eventually came on as a full time producer, and then a host. That was probably a longer version of that story than you needed to hear, but I haven't thought about it in a little while. I think I'll say that the connection for me between teaching and podcasting really is storytelling, it is all about can I effectively communicate something in a way that will capture and hold the listeners attention.

Really?

Yeah. I'll add, I was fortunate that I had a safety net that I didn't need to use, thankfully, but I knew that I had family I could call on if I ever couldn't make rent. I recognize that it's not a risk everyone can afford to take. I had a lot going for me in that regard.

Now, that's a little different from what we do on Sidedoor, because I'm not telling stories about myself, most of the time. But the principles hold true, and I would say the specificity holds true. The more specific you can get the more universal appeal a story has. The other thing that a story really needs is strong characters. Maybe you're not the main character, but the story needs to have vibrant characters. Ideally, it needs to be somewhat scenic, it needs to have strong, vivid images, it absolutely needs action, something has to happen in your story for it to be a story. The main thing that it needs is a reason to care. In the storytelling world, we call that steaks, sort of a reason for a listener to care what happens to this person or in this tale. In the museum space, I work a lot with curators and researchers who are experts in their field, and they know so much. But often they'll come to us at Sidedoor with an idea and say, I have a story for you, and then they'll say it's about... Gosh, I don't want to give an example because I don't want to out anybody, but they'll say I have a story for you, and then they'll give me not a story, but a topic, like a general period of history or like a subject, like leeches. Leeches is not a story, that is a topic. So you really have to find the story within the topic. A topic is general, a story is specific. Does that answer your question?

Now, that's a little different from what we do on Sidedoor, because I'm not telling stories about myself, most of the time. But the principles hold true, and I would say the specificity holds true. The more specific you can get the more universal appeal a story has. The other thing that a story really needs is strong characters. Maybe you're not the main character, but the story needs to have vibrant characters. Ideally, it needs to be somewhat scenic, it needs to have strong, vivid images, it absolutely needs action, something has to happen in your story for it to be a story. The main thing that it needs is a reason to care. In the storytelling world, we call that steaks, sort of a reason for a listener to care what happens to this person or in this tale. In the museum space, I work a lot with curators and researchers who are experts in their field, and they know so much. But often they'll come to us at Sidedoor with an idea and say, I have a story for you, and then they'll say it's about... Gosh, I don't want to give an example because I don't want to out anybody, but they'll say I have a story for you, and then they'll give me not a story, but a topic, like a general period of history or like a subject, like leeches. Leeches is not a story, that is a topic. So you really have to find the story within the topic. A topic is general, a story is specific. Does that answer your question?

Yeah. An example of that would be Adam Rippon, this Olympic figure skater. So we had Adam Rippon, he's this famous guy, he's coming to the Smithsonian, we need to interview him. So then figuring out what is the story that he can tell us, that's a challenge. Fred Tutman, the Riverkeeper, we had a great interview with him. Lonnie Bunch, the Secretary of the Smithsonian had a great interview with him. These are all episodes that just sort of rests on the shoulders of one interview. Pete Marra, this ornithologist, just went walking in the woods with him talking about birds. But no one wants to listen to like 25 minutes of like, there's a sparrow, there's a woodpecker, you can't see it anyways. So we had to think ok, what is the story here, building the narrative arc into the interview of like, birds are disappearing, why are they disappearing? Where are they going to? What does it mean for us? All in the course of this walking around and observing birds. I feel like I just talked for a very long time. Those are some of our challenges, I'd say.

Thanks.

So I feel like the podcast is a great opportunity to take any one item out of millions of items, and just go really, really deep, and tell the whole story behind it. When you visit the museum, you're moving fast, there's a lot of stuff to see. I don't know about you guys, but my classic blunder is, I'll go in, all fresh faced and ready to learn, and then I spend an hour and a half in the first room just like reading every word on every plaque and trying to connect it, trying to flush out my own internal timeline. And then by room two, I'm exhausted, and then I have to do the whole other three floors of the museum in about 20 minutes, like a sort of a whiz. Museum fatigue is a real thing. The podcast does a little of that work for you. It's like we're just gonna tell you what to pay attention to this time, and here's 30 minutes of this one story. I think that's helpful. The last thing I'll say is, podcasting is a surprisingly visual medium. I mean, you know that if you've heard a book on tape, you have images in your head that go with those characters, and you have a full world that exists in your imagination. When you see the movie after, it often is kind of disappointing. Podcasting is the same, so much of these stories happen at another moment in time, and I think it really enables you to form a connection with the characters and to form your own visuals. I mean, if we do our job right, and help that along enough, in a way that lands just as strongly as seeing the thing in real life.

Oh, my gosh, I feel like I'm outing myself talking to the museum experts about how bad I am at actually visiting museums, but there you go.

I feel like those of us who were like students who really cared about our grades are especially more, I don't know, more likely to fall prey to that. I must read every word, I need an A.

That's a hard thing to measure. As you know, when you make a podcast, you broadcast it out into the ether, and you hope someone is listening. But there are limited ways to know really, what people are doing with that information. We have some metrics, we can tell from download numbers and the steady growth that more and more people are listening and it's a very positive trajectory. We know that we're reaching a lot of people. We also have a newsletter that we send out that accompanies each episode, and we can tell based on how many people click and what they click on, and whether they become donors and things like that, how people are engaging with the rest of the institution, and that's very positive, too. Then we’ve seen the growth of other podcasting projects at specific museums and units. That's really encouraging to see too. I think between listener engagement and the growth of other audio storytelling initiatives across the Smithsonian, I would say that is the impact we've seen. The last thing I'll say is we have occasionally sent out surveys to listeners. One thing that really surprised me, is the percentage of our listeners who have never visited the Smithsonian. We know there are a lot of people listening who've never been to DC, who've never been to a Smithsonian Museum. That is really cool to see.

Oh, my gosh. How come? I'll take you.

Well, I'll say this, and I promise no one is paying me to say this. Honestly, I have so much more appreciation for what the Smithsonian does, having worked for the Smithsonian. I didn't know before I took this job, just how much research, active research goes on at the Smithsonian, and an active, like, cultural heritage preservation, things like that. I mean, there are people working in Ukraine right now from the Smithsonian, working to try to protect cultural heritage from destruction. We've had people in Haiti, in Iraq. When you're training with the FBI to go in and try to save art, I mean, that's kind of heroic. I didn't know that, and that's really cool. I also just think, you know, learning the story of the founding of the Smithsonian, how it really was this request for the increase in diffusion of knowledge, to build knowledge, and to spread it. I really can't think of a cause more worthy of that, especially today. So I'm sort of in a, you know, when you're in a relationship, and there's different periods of like, you're just sort of taking things for granted, you're bumping along and you're making breakfast and you're sort of like talking about the weather. Then there's moments where you're like, you're super in love all over again. I'm kind of super in love all over again with the Smithsonian right now. I'm just really impressed with the range of things that this institution does. And as a former teacher, the dedication to education. I think that as a non-museum person, I feel like that's the thing that actually equips me to do this job of hosting the show. I think that the thing that makes me a decent host, is the fact that I'm fairly unremarkable. I'm a bit of a generalist, I'm kind of interested in most things, but not super interested in any one thing. I don't have an area of expertise myself. I have to trust that my reaction to whatever I'm seeing or hearing is going to be more or less what anyone else's reaction is likely to be. So sort of trusting my instincts on that front. I think the fact that I am the everyman, the unremarkable person is what makes me a good audience stand in. So when I have those moments of like, what the heck am I doing here, I don't belong here, I know nothing, that's what I fall back on. It's my job to know nothing, but to be interested in everything. I think it works.

Thanks.

The thing I've learned from working on Sidedoor, is what it takes to create a professional quality and consistent show from an educational nonprofit institution. As far as nonprofits go, the Smithsonian being willing to put the time, energy and money behind a show like this, it's really rare in the nonprofit world. And I know, it's not easy. I'd say that for a museum that is trying to make a production like Sidedoor, you want to invest, you have to invest in the quality of the show and trust that the educational reach it has is worth the lift, because it is kind of a leap of faith. I'd say we're really, really fortunate that we have that internal buy in, in leadership at the Smithsonian, there's that commitment to education that really makes us able to make this podcast.

The Smithsonian has other shows, so let me just plug all the Smithsonian stuff. There is “Portraits”, which is out of the National Portrait Gallery, and that's wonderful. We sometimes guest feature episodes of Portraits. There's also “Airspace”, shout out to my friends at Airspace, at the National Air and Space Museum. I used to work on that show. That is a really fun show too. They're each a little different in their format, but they are great museum podcasts. Then the National Museum of American History just put out a limited series podcast called “Collected” about black feminism. That one is going to be excellent as well.

Yeah, we're about to wrap up this season. For our last episode of the season we're trying something a little different, because some of the listener feedback that we consistently get and never listen to, is that they want to know more about the Smithsonian itself, its collections and how we do what we do and all of that. That's sort of a guiding principle of ours not to do, we try to tell stories from the Smithsonian, not about the Smithsonian. But our last episode of this season is going to be about the Smithsonian, and in particular our very unusual story of how this whole party got started. It begins with this 200 year old document that showed up on the Smithsonian Archives, wrapped up in a Chelsea flower market bag, nobody knew what it was, it was dusty and old, and we unfolded it, and it turned out to contain this Masterpiece Theater level of drama, family drama that caused us to better understand the whole founding of the Smithsonian. So I'll tease it with that. That's the story that we're going to tell at the end of this season. Then we'll be brewing up a whole new set for season 8.

Ok, I'll tell you this thing I've been thinking about. If I had unlimited funds, I think I would start the Smithsonian Center for Storytelling. It would be all about how to just tell kickass stories, and we could do workshops and consulting and work with other museums and work with Smithsonian units, and just get everyone in there telling their own stories, so that they were better equipped and knew more about how to tell museum stories, because it's just so much fun. I think everyone could benefit from learning more about the fundamentals of narrative.

It would probably be more like a behind the scenes, like the behind the curtain of the behind the curtain. Maybe to go to the Smithsonian Center for... No, it would be open to all, never mind.

Oh, yeah. You can find us on social media, Twitter and Instagram, @sidedoorpod, all one word. You can also write us an email. Our email address is sidedoor@si.edu. You can visit our website to see all of our back catalogue of shows, and that's https://www.si.edu/sidedoor

Thank you so much for having me. It's been a real pleasure to talk with you all.