00:00:53.240and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:00:58.760I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:01:02.380Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:01:09.920These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:01:13.740Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:21.360If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:01:27.100Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:35.740Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:01:45.760Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.1.00
00:01:51.720There are no girls on the internet. We'll be back with a new season soon.0.97
00:01:54.620But until then, and in honor of homecoming, enjoy this special mini-celebration of women using technology to make change on the campuses of historically Black colleges.0.95
00:02:04.160We'll be back for our regular season soon.
00:02:10.060There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:02:18.180I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:02:20.920the internet is ephemeral how can you archive something that happened on social media
00:02:28.700or something that existed completely online that's actually one of the reasons why i created this very
00:02:35.340podcast i saw all the ways that underrepresented communities contribute to the internet and
00:02:40.740technology but i saw those same contributions being overlooked or forgotten i didn't want
00:02:46.620them to fade away. Audio is a bit like that too. Tape fades, hard drives crash, and pieces get lost
00:02:54.860forever. In the age of searching text, audio is that much harder to hold on to. But there's something
00:03:02.600magical about the medium of audio. Hearing someone tell their stories in their own words
00:03:07.280just hits differently. That's why it's so important that we be intentional about whose voices we
00:03:13.040preserve. Jocelyn Robinson is an audio producer and preservationist, and she has long-standing
00:03:18.680roots in the museum community. What if, she thought, we could survey the audio archives
00:03:24.260of the voices and stories housed at radio stations on the campuses of historically Black colleges and
00:03:29.420universities, or HBCUs? So in her late 50s, she quit her day job, went back to school,
00:03:35.100and made it her mission. Jocelyn served as the very first archives fellow at Dayton, Ohio's
00:03:41.360only national public radio station, WISO, where she produced Rediscovered Radio, a series
00:03:47.760built around WISO's civil rights era audio.
00:03:51.360Now, Jocelyn works with HBCUs to start a dialogue around preserving the audio at their
00:04:23.620And by 2015, I had quit my day job and was producing part-time and teaching part-time.
00:04:30.960And I had always in the back of my mind had this idea that I, you know, would love the thought of doing long form audio at HBCUs because it's not something that's typically taught in mass communications courses and programs.
00:04:50.660And when I was working initially, I used some archival audio from WISO that is mainly from the 60s and 70s into the 80s.
00:05:04.920And so it reflected the civil rights era and also the movement into black nationalism, the peace movement, anti-war movement of the 70s.
00:05:15.960And I just became enamored of historical materials, kind of related to my background in the museum community.
00:05:27.180There's around 100, roughly, HBCUs in existence today, and a third of them, just about, have radio stations.
00:05:35.520And I thought, you know, if WISO has this kind of material, it was also a college radio station initially at Antioch College in Yellow Springs.
00:05:44.520If that college radio station has such incredible material, and I mean, it's incredible material and the voices of people who were significant from those periods are represented there, as well as the history of the local area and the college and the state and, you know, what was going on in the world.
00:06:05.600But I thought HBCUs being the crucible of the civil rights movement in so many ways must have some materials too.
00:06:13.480And so I had I had thought about it. And when I quit my day job, I went back to school and got a grad certificate in public history with a with a focus on archives so that I would be knowledgeable about the archival process and about the materials and their preservation.
00:06:31.780And in the course of doing that, I kind of fell into a preservation activity that was initiated at the Library of Congress, the Radio Preservation Task Force.
00:06:51.240And that just opened up this whole world of people who were seeking out and figuring out how to preserve and use these materials all over the world.
00:07:03.300So I was aware of this world, but I became kind of immersed in it.
00:07:08.400And I became a member of the African-American and Civil Rights Radio Caucus of the Radio Preservation Task Force and went to conferences and did presentations with this idea.
00:07:20.400that wouldn't it be great if we could survey the materials at historically Black colleges and universities,
00:07:30.020and someday if I can find the funding for it, that's what I'm going to do.
00:07:34.200Jocelyn got a grant from the National Recording Preservation Foundation to survey HBCUs about what kind of audio were housed at their campus radio stations.
00:07:43.640How tragic is it to think that an audio recording of Rosa Parks could be collecting dust in some campus basement somewhere,
00:07:50.400Well, Jocelyn wanted to make sure these radio stations had access to the ability to archive their audio.
00:07:56.100What I found was that radio stations at most colleges are not necessarily included in the institutional records management or preservation efforts that the college normally takes on.
00:08:14.240and that it was an opportunity to connect the radio stations with the institutional archives on their campuses
00:08:22.140and at least get a dialogue going, if not get the institutional archives to take on the task of preserving the audio material.
00:08:32.380So what was it exactly about HBCUs? Why did you feel like it was so important to be doing that work on HBCU campuses?
00:08:39.480Having sort of an intimate understanding of the challenges that are faced by HBCUs and also their importance to the American higher education landscape and to our communities.
00:08:57.500I mean, there were times when, you know, teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers were, you know, trained primarily at HBCUs.
00:09:09.220And that's one of the things that distinguishes a historically black college from a predominantly white institution.
00:09:24.660And, you know, here in Ohio, we're a bit isolated. But as I got to know my counterparts at other campuses and got to know their institutions, you know, and realizing how important they are to Black people in this country and particularly in the Southeast, they are hallowed ground.
00:09:48.260And anything that took place there is worthy of not just preservation, but also honoring to look to it as an example of resilience.
00:10:01.800I don't know that we can even imagine, those of us who do not live in the former, you know, Confederate states, what life was like and how our institutions, our churches, our communities, but especially centered around our historically Black campuses were refuges, places of, you know,
00:10:30.360where the intellect and ingenuity and creativity of Black people could shine and thrive.
00:10:40.340And, you know, that's an important legacy to honor.
00:10:46.180And with audio, it's such an intimate and, you know, emotionally charged medium.
00:10:57.620And I think that, you know, finding materials, which is very difficult, radio is ephemeral and not a lot of recordings were made at times.
00:11:11.200Making recordings was expensive. You know, a quarter inch tape was expensive.
00:11:15.140The playback equipment was, you know, expensive and maybe few and far between at times.
00:11:22.040That changed, you know, when cassettes became more prominent, but certainly when it was reel-to-reel, you know, that's a big bulky machine with a big bulky tape.
00:11:33.120So, you know, to try to find anything. And also, you know, the thing about radio stations is that they often change format when the license changes hands.
00:11:47.720And what happens is whatever was happening before kind of gets swept up and thrown out into the dumpster.
00:11:54.740So to make sure that that anything that might be of significance at an HBCU radio station is, you know, found and preserved is kind of it's a mission for sure.
00:12:08.940Audio is a special medium. That intimacy is one reason why I became a podcaster in the first place.
00:12:15.300Hearing someone tell their story is just different than reading it in print.
00:12:19.480Through her work, Jocelyn preserves this intimate magic for future generations.
00:12:23.560I often wonder if listening, if people listening to two audio producers talk about audio production is like boring.
00:12:32.480But I have to say, when you talked about the intimacy of the medium of audio, like that's what made me fall in love with it.
00:12:42.400She is from Charlotte, North Carolina, and she is a, you know, Black Southern matriarch of a big Southern family.
00:12:49.980And the University of North Carolina reached out to her to do this archival project where she sat down and talked about her life with a researcher.
00:12:59.280And I had read clips of this before, and I really enjoyed reading it.
00:13:02.880But one day I found the audio of her telling these stories.
00:13:08.480And something about hearing her voice was so different.
00:13:13.780You know, I had read what she had said before, but hearing her say it in her own words, I've always felt that there's something intimate and magical about the medium of audio.
00:13:40.280But I think it just always comes back to that intimacy.
00:13:43.780Well, one of the things that creates that intimacy, if you think about it, is that if we're thinking of other media and we're thinking of especially a visual media, what you see is what is in the frame.
00:13:56.800What you see is what the person who made that image, whether it's moving or not, but what the person you're seeing, what the person that made that image chose for you to see, what they curated for your eyes.
00:14:12.060And with audio, I tell people, you can't use Photoshop on audio. You cannot change what you hear. Microphones are dumb. They're not smart. They pick up everything. So what you hear is what was heard. You hear all of it.
00:14:31.020You hear the train whistle in the background.
00:14:54.980So so it's and and you hear it all without a filter the same way that that, you know, that with a visual that image is curated.
00:15:08.060So so I think that that's what creates that sense of of of total experience, even though it's just coming through your ears.
00:15:19.220And there's something about that vibration that, you know, it's on a vibrational level, you know, that even in a recording, even in a facsimile, you can feel that vibration.
00:15:32.220When I first got into podcasting, I was very self-conscious because I was very new at it. And so I would try to edit my audio to make it seem as though I was just the most well-spoken person. I never used a filler word. I never stopped and restarted. I never had to catch my breath. I never cleared my throat while I was thinking.
00:15:53.820And it's funny because those are all the little markers of somebody figuring something out in real time. And that's actually why you listen to audio, because you get these unfiltered, unedited moments that aren't photoshopped, like you said.
00:16:07.540And I think the more that I, when I realized that the reason why I like audio is because you get to hear the crickets chirping and the this and the that, and allowing those little nuances to stay in my own audio, it really just, I feel like it all clicked for me.
00:16:25.660It really helped me in the craft of audio storytelling.
00:16:29.480I think what it does is it helps us stay in touch with our humanity.
00:16:33.680You know, it, it, it, even if it's, even if something we're listening to is, is highly, um, uh, produced, um, you still get that, that sense that, that, uh, you know, you're, you're hearing it. It's that hearing is, and, and, and listening are active, you know, um, sorts of things.
00:16:54.580It's that you're not passive. You have to you have to pay attention. You know, you have to you have to let your brain absorb, you know, what's being heard and make sense out of it.
00:17:07.440And I think there's a humanness to audio work that really kind of transcends the fact that we are using these highly technical and technological tools to preserve it and disseminate it.
00:20:51.100Um, wow. That might be a big question. That's a big question. You know, I, I spend so much time,
00:20:59.020um, listening that, um, I listened to a lot of things.
00:21:06.680And, um, you know, I think that's what, what I love about the archival audio actually is that
00:21:12.700it's transports me, you know, I, it takes me back to a place. There is, um, a, uh, I think it was
00:21:21.220probably a Pacifica produced, um, interview with Maya Angelou that just, you know, still knocks my
00:21:29.740socks off. And it's, it's, uh, it was part of WISO's collection because back in the day, um,
00:21:37.220folks used to swap tape so it was a tape that ended up somehow in WISO's tape library but was
00:21:46.500produced at I believe at WBAI if I'm not mistaken so it was it was you know from from years past
00:21:57.360and she sings on it she not only speaks her poetry but she also sings a spiritual
00:22:05.720This is Uprising. Up next, the late, great Maya Angelou.
00:22:11.720It's in the reach of my arms, the span of my hips, the stride of my step, the curl of my lips,
00:22:20.900because I'm a woman phenomenally, phenomenal woman. That's me.
00:22:29.040If you listen to it again, and, you know, as we were just saying, you hear everything in her voice.
00:22:36.220You hear her life in her voice. You hear the Black experience in her voice.
00:22:40.600It's just, yes, it's transportive. It's transcendent. So transformative.
00:22:49.060Yeah, that's one of my favorite pieces of audio, for sure.
00:22:52.700According to the Women's Audio Mission, a nonprofit that trains women engineers and producers,
00:22:57.520Less than 5% of the people creating the sounds, music, and media that make up the daily soundtrack of our lives are women or gender nonconforming folks.
00:23:07.560And as a podcaster, I know that our audio landscape definitely skews white and male.
00:23:13.500But it also tends to skew young, a dynamic that Jocelyn, who quit her day job to train as an audio producer in her late 50s, challenges.
00:23:21.760so what was it like getting involved in audio production as a woman in her late 50s
00:23:30.680well what i felt like i was bringing to the table was a you know a lifetime of experience
00:23:37.480so the technical part of it was not a a big stretch for me um and in fact you know the
00:23:46.760first time I sat down with Hindenburg and started to, um, edit my own tape, um, it, you know, I was,
00:23:56.040I was in the zone. I was in the flow. I mean, almost immediately. So, um, I, I, I'm a musician.
00:24:03.480I, you know, I, I've, I've done, um, other creative, um, pursuits in my life and, um,
00:24:09.900And it was, you know, I recognized pretty quickly that I was doing something that was filling my heart and soul in ways that other things I had been doing was not.
00:24:22.940So, you know, so that part of it came pretty easily.
00:24:28.160And then because I was working in some community-based production areas, it wasn't really an issue so much that here was this person who in her 50s just starting out.
00:24:50.020And I had a lot of success pretty early on because I was doing work that I knew.
00:24:55.680I had a series called Rediscovered Radio in which I took the archival audio at WYSO and used it to make short pieces, short documentary pieces that aired on the radio station during the drive time shows, so during morning edition and all things considered.
00:25:21.540So I learned to work with the NPR clock almost right away.
00:25:26.620I was doing interviews as well as contextualizing the historical audio and putting it all together.
00:25:35.120And that the first, I did two seasons of it.
00:25:39.100So, you know, I've done dozens and dozens of them.
00:25:42.080And so I got to work at the craft, like hands on, already producing for air material that, you know, was, you know, the kind of production work that I think you don't necessarily get to do even as a young person.
00:26:05.260I was able to take the maturity that I had from the other parts of my life, plus the fact that, you know, I'd been this high level administrator and I know how to get things done.
00:26:15.520So I didn't have a lot of of downtime or, you know, when I jumped into it, I really got to jump into it.
00:26:25.080So there was that. But I have seen what I would consider ageism in the field. And in fact, that's a conversation that we're having at AIR right now about what that looks like.
00:26:37.680And not only for people newly entering the field and a pivot in their careers, but people who have been in the business for many, many, many years and have weathered all its changes as it has progressed and are finding themselves now getting boxed out or overlooked for something younger, newer, fresher kinds of things.
00:27:02.240So, you know, I think because I work with historical materials and I have a certain amount of firsthand knowledge of some of the events and so forth, you know, it has served me really well.
00:27:18.160But, you know, I also have found that I need to push my skill set and my producing chops.
00:27:27.920I have to just keep pushing it beyond that so that I'm doing work that is, you know, topical and, you know, again, new and fresh and, you know, keeping not just myself, but listeners engaged with what's going on in the world.
00:27:47.540So, yeah, I've just been really fortunate. It was all kind of a perfect storm of goodness.
00:28:00.820Yeah. You talked about ageism and how, I don't know, I guess I feel like we have this very pervasive culture where we're obsessed with 30 under 30 lists and people who are sort of young and successful.
00:28:15.900And that's a great story, but it does discount the wisdom and the skill set and the experience that comes with age. And I feel like we are so obsessed with youth that we can overlook that, yeah, if you came to audio production in your 50s, that would mean that you would come with an entire skill set, you know, and like many years of experience.
00:28:42.460And I think that because we're obsessed with youth, we don't allow for that to be as meaningful and as good of a thing as it really truly is.
00:28:55.200You know, and a lot of that is very cultural.
00:28:57.820And, you know, I mean, one of the things that I have been working with lately has been community-based storytelling projects.
00:29:06.060And much of that is focused on gathering and preserving and sharing the stories of elders.
00:29:13.820And going back to, you know, a cultural mindset in which the wisdom of elders is held in high esteem.
00:29:23.220And that is, you know, very much a traditional communities hold elders in high esteem.
00:29:33.540And, you know, trying to move back toward that, I think, is very important. But, you know, work with oral histories and with, you know, interpreting some of the, say, for instance, interpreting some of the events that some of the historical audio might be representing.
00:29:52.160Is, you know, who better than someone who was actually there and who experienced it, you know, in their own lifetime?
00:29:58.960So, you know, really honoring the voices and the stories of elders as part of this work and finding that, you know, many of those elders are quite capable of, you know, producing and being, you know, active participants in that story gathering and that storytelling.
00:30:20.100So, you know, that's, I think, really important work. But truly, it's a cultural thing in the U.S., for sure. It's not quite as, I think, intense in other places as it really is here. It definitely is a cult of youth in the U.S.
00:30:41.880And, you know, one of my favorite things to tell people is like there's this old Richard Pryor bit where the junkie and the wino are talking and the junkie says something to him of the effect.0.99
00:30:58.120It's like, you old fool. And the wino says, boy, you don't get to be old being no fool.0.99
00:31:03.360i love that i love that i have to i have to tell you i mean i i hope this isn't like too much
00:31:11.480information but um i'm speaking to you today from my brother's condo in richmond virginia and i live
00:31:18.240in washington dc and um the reason why i'm here is because our father um had a had an unexpected
00:31:24.500health emergency so i'm here so that i can take care of him while he's been in the hospital this
00:31:29.280week and he's he's on the upswing he's doing much better but when I brought him in on when he came
00:31:37.360to the hospital on um Monday night and he was not doing so well all I could think was that I wish I
00:31:44.280had brought my recorder so that we could have a conversation so that I could remember I could
00:31:49.120hear his stories and get them on audio like that was all I could think was god I wish I had my
00:31:54.780recorder. God, I wish I had my recorder so that we could, you know, have a conversation because
00:32:01.080I often worry that, you know, we all love to have our elders in our lives. And then when they pass
00:32:08.900on, we would like, it would be, how meaningful would it be to be able to have an archival of
00:32:16.560those stories in their own words? That was all I could think was like, I hope I haven't missed my
00:32:21.500chance to to get his stories on audio that was like the the number one thing in my mind
00:32:27.660never leave home without it that's what i'm learning that's a that's a producer trick i mean
00:32:35.280and and sometimes i'm like why am i hauling this stuff around i'm don't use it it's here you know
00:32:41.260but but i have a bag that i love that has my my um my kid in it and i just make sure that if i'm
00:32:48.280going to be someplace where I don't know what's going on necessarily, um, that it's in the car.
00:32:55.120You know, I just, it's, I just take it with me everywhere. But the other thing is, you know,
00:33:01.000um, you have a recorder probably, you know, in your back pocket and done, um, done right.
00:33:10.720you can capture some pretty decent audio with a smartphone and um so in a pinch you've got
00:33:20.240something right there that that you could use and um you know story core has done a marvelous job of
00:33:28.060of making it possible you know democratizing the the whole notion of of of preserving stories and
00:33:36.960their interface for recording is really, really good. But you can get a pretty decent recording
00:33:46.260if you have an iPhone with voice memo. So voice memos is a perfectly good recorder.
00:33:58.740On this podcast, what I try to do is sort of create a kind of audio archive of
00:34:05.380underrepresented people and their contributions to technology, to digital culture, to internet
00:34:10.040culture, specifically because I feel those things can be kind of ephemeral. They can, you know,
00:34:15.280the internet changes so quickly and people forget about what came before. And so I wanted to
00:34:20.420chronicle some of this. What would your advice be to make sure that more underrepresented
00:34:26.960communities and voices are having their stories included in records and archives so that we know
00:34:34.120they existed? Well, particularly with, um, podcasts, there are a number of people who are
00:34:41.120developing, um, um, podcast archives and, um, seeking those folks out is, is important, but
00:34:50.280also public libraries are, are, are undertaking some, uh, uh, audio preservation. We work with
00:34:58.260the Greene County Public Library here to preserve some of the digitized material from the WISO
00:35:07.040collection, which includes oral histories and so forth from the civil rights era. So making sure
00:35:17.160that you approach your existing institutions to be able to make sure that they're including
00:35:25.100your materials in their collections as a member of that community, I think is an important thing
00:35:32.280to do. And I think that that's something that archivists as a profession are looking at more
00:35:42.000of knowing that they are gatekeepers for cultural materials and knowing historically what that has
00:35:47.900meant, in which white supremacy has created barriers to that material being collected
00:36:00.580So there are many, many archival projects and archives that are, I think, opening their
00:36:10.180collecting, you know, policies to right wrongs that have been perpetrated in the past.
00:36:20.020So I think it's a changing situation. But certainly, again, you know, the HBCU community
00:36:27.120is a place where our stories are important and are considered, you know, worthy of preservation.
00:36:37.800And once again, I can't sing the praises of something like a community based project that I'm doing at West Dayton Stories, which is working with the African-American communities in Dayton, Ohio to collect and preserve stories or what StoryCorps can do with community based projects.
00:37:02.000They have a whole tutorial that can teach an organization about how to collect and gather stories and preserve them through the StoryCorps at the Library of Congress or through their own means in the libraries or what have you in the community.
00:37:18.020So, you know, there's that, but I think part of it too is there's an understanding, you know, that materials are somewhat ephemeral themselves, you know, magnetic tape deteriorates, color photographs fade, you know, film sticks together and can no longer be played or even digitized.
00:37:45.760And the whole digital environment also is not permanent there.
00:37:51.960You know, if you have materials that are preserved, so you think, on a hard drive and that hard drive fails, that material is gone forever.
00:38:04.600So, you know, digital preservation is a whole world unto itself.
00:38:10.420And, you know, look for libraries often will have, you know, little preservation workshops for families and individuals.
00:38:21.220And sometimes there's a lot to be found there.
00:38:23.480But then there are some wonderful websites that have, you know, material that people can read to figure out how to preserve their photographs or preserve their old tapes or what have you.
00:38:37.560And the Library of Congress has a really good website for that.
00:38:40.420So, you know, there's, there's information out there, but it really does help to talk to somebody who's in the know. And oftentimes that's, you know, somebody you can find at your local library.
00:38:53.240I love how oftentimes it always comes back to libraries. Like we forget what a resource they are.
00:38:58.700Oh, they're so important. Yeah, they are community touchstones for sure in many communities. And it's really one of those places where civic life can take place. And that's their charge. And that's what they're there for.
00:39:17.960So it's not just a repository for books and reading material, but there's so many other things. And today's libraries are places where there are maker spaces and they have podcasting studios and they do training in podcasting and or audio or oral history gathering and all of those things. So, you know, they're really great resources for all of it.
00:39:42.460Yeah, I mean, you're a great resource, too. You've really created this model of how institutions can be thinking about preservation and how all of us can be thinking about preserving the stories for our own families and our own communities so the next generation can learn from them when we're gone.
00:39:56.640So, you know, to that end, what do you hope that people say about your work 100 years from now?
00:40:00.680Well, I hope that, for one thing, that the HBCU materials are still available and accessible to students and researchers and community members to tap into, to know what life was like in some respects before, you know,
00:40:23.680the civil rights movement was able to turn a tide of experience for black people in America
00:40:32.040and what happened throughout that and then beyond. And, you know, if you don't pay attention to
00:40:40.660history, you're doomed or repeated, of course. And that's something that I think we're realizing
00:40:45.560today that we are experiencing because we haven't paid good enough attention.
00:40:53.420We haven't paid attention well enough to what's happened in the past and what's been done in the past.
00:41:00.020And, you know, that's an important thing to do.
00:41:02.900So, you know, 100 years from now, I wanted to start with the HBCUs, but I'm also hoping that the model that we set through the projects that are about preserving radio material from historically black colleges and universities, it was a model for others to follow.
00:41:22.960And that other marginalized and, you know, others whose voices have been left out of the American dialogue have a template to follow so that they too can preserve their voices.