Podcasting Work

I was always interested in communications and storytelling, declaring a creative writing minor and serving as the managing editor for The Grind, the student lifestyle blog at Stanford, but it was during my junior year when I received a Braden Storytelling Grant that I began to explore audio as a storytelling medium. The grant enabled me to travel to Iceland and create a half hour audio piece on the impact that the growth in tourism was having on the Icelandic landscape as well as the country’s rich tradition of folklore. I drove around Iceland for three weeks speaking with dozens of individuals from environmental organizations, local businesses, and government, as well as locals and tourists, and discovered the fairly unique capacity of audio storytelling to weave together numerous and diverse voices and perspectives into a narrative whole. In short I was hooked. While in school I continued to pursue podcasting, working on pieces with the Stanford Storytelling Project and Generation Anthropocene, and finding ways to fuse my interest in environmental and food systems issues with my new pastime.

Podcasting became a way of having conversations with people I otherwise might not have the opportunity to meet, satisfying my curiosity about topics that piqued my interest, and attempting to scratch an unrelenting itch to craft stories that might in some small way provide a connection for listeners to the environment and to agriculture. It was this itch that propelled me to Northern California farms to tell the story of small scale farmers who were fostering community through their operations, and to Wisconsin to learn about the loss of dairy farms in the state, and the impact of this trend on proud dairy farmers and declining rural areas.

In 2021 I had the opportunity to collaborate with the Organic Agronomy Training Service, a science-based training program for agricultural professionals working with organic or transitioning producers in the United States, on a six episode podcast series about the top skepticisms agronomists have about organic agriculture. We interviewed over a dozen farmers, agronomists, and academics and tackled questions such as “Can organic feed the world?” and “Are organic farmers addicted to tillage?” The lack of advisors for organic operations is one of the most significant obstacles for farmers looking to transition and I am proud to be part of an effort to close that gap.