Tomorrow we will be releasing our final episode. (Bring your tissues!) But today, we're running our final Hello, Goodbye feature spotlighting our team members. We'll be sending more information about the future of this newsletter soon, so please stay subscribed.
Everyone has their own way of discovering Invisibilia - my gateway podcast was Radiolab. And when I heard that former Radiolab producer Lulu Miller was starting her own show, I subscribed immediately. I remember listening to "The Secret History of Thoughts" while on a winter jog through Central Park and just being transfixed by the stories. When Yowei asked me to apply for an open position, I was thankful to her for nudging me because I might not have applied. When I joined the Invisibilia team as a producer/reporter at the start of 2021, it was a dream come true to do the kinds of stories I had admired for so many years.
Meeting current and a few former team members for the first time in person - 6 months after joining Invisibilia. (Left to right: Me, Alix Spiegel, Abby Wendle, Luis Trelles, Liana Simstrom, Anne Gudenkauf, Deb George, and Yowei Shaw.)
That feeling when you’re so deep into a listening session that you don’t realize you’re the only one who hasn’t turned off their camera.
Favorite episode you've worked on:
My favorite episode to work on was probably "International Friend of Mystery." With all the Covid-19 precautions over the past few years, most interviews we do are over zoom or the phone. The interview with this main character, Katherine Verdery, was the first time in well over a year I had been part of an interview in person. There’s something different about being in the same room as a person and connecting with them–they feel more at ease and you have a chance to pick up on the non-verbal cues they give off. Also, it was fun to cast for voiceover work and to sound design the whole episode. Before joining Invisibilia, I had been working at ESPN’s 30 for 30, which does a lot of history stories. So I was glad to have an episode that took place many years ago and made use of archival footage to create scenes.
Screenshot of the live recording session for International Friend of Mystery reported by David Gutherz.
Me and Liana Simstrom with a background view of the DC Capitol building from the Invisibilia workspace at NPR's headquarters.
BTS moments seared into brain:
Because I joined the team at a time when everyone was been working remotely, I don’t have as many moments to pull from. But there is one unique experience that I have had the pleasure of sharing with the team: improv. The work we do requires us to be a flexible and cohesive team both on and off mic, so, not too long ago, we decided to take some improv lessons over zoom. It was absolutely hysterical - not always in an intentional way– and it really did help us all communicate a bit better and improve our abilities to play off one another in the moment. It also gave us a fun way to set the right tone at the start of recording sessions. I thoroughly enjoyed watching Kia and Abby “yes and” their way deeper and deeper into a bizarre story that ended with some sort of cosmic animal comedy.
The Invisibilia team doing some zoom style improv classes with teacher Tia Kemp.
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