Special Dispatch: A new🎙️and some 📺 recs
Special Dispatch: A new🎙️and some 📺 recs
Sounds Like Impact: A newsletter for audio and action
Welcome to Sounds Like Impact!
As mentioned in last week’s newsletter, I’m sharing an interview that normally would’ve been published with last week’s edition, but I made a schedule change after return from my vacation.
I hope you enjoy this great interview with Laurel Morales of 2 LIVES podcast. Also, at the end, I share some things I’ve watched lately that I think you will love too.
Next week we will return with a guest curation + new interview; stay tuned!
Reminder: To guest curate, be interviewed, advertise and more, click here.
📣 Spotlight
Laurel Morales (she/her) created the award-winning podcast 2 LIVES after two decades of reporting for National Public Radio. 2 LIVES is one of several podcasts she has produced or helped launch. She’s had many 2 LIVES stories of her own, so her interviews are grounded in a lot of love and empathy. She’s won multiple awards for her reporting, writing, and podcast production including a Signal Award for best indie podcast. She is currently revising her debut novel.
Below are excerpts from the interview.
Prior to starting the show you were working as a journalist. What were some of the topics that you focused on?
I’ve reported on a lot of disasters — both manmade and natural — wildfires, drought, climate change, uranium contamination. Because of my proximity to the Navajo Nation and other tribes I often covered issues affecting Native people. In all I looked for the people most impacted, or the untold stories, like Michelle Sherman’s.
Michelle attempted suicide as an 11-year-old. Navajo LGBTQ youth are three times as likely to attempt suicide as their white counterparts, according to a Diné Policy Institute study. She found an unlikely champion in her grandmother and is now dedicated to helping kids like her.
What is a story that you know had a big impact?
The average household in the United States uses 100 gallons of water everyday to cook, clean, and drink. On the Navajo Nation they use seven. They have to make what little water they have last. Forty percent of the tribe has to haul their water or wait for a water truck to deliver it. This story focused on one tiny community on the Navajo Nation that relies on Darlene Arviso, otherwise known as the “water lady.”
As a result of this story the tribe got a new water truck and an organization called DIG DEEP that digs wells and pipes clean water to people’s homes in developing parts of the world received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.
In 2020 when the pandemic and the White House’s response consumed the news cycle, I turned off the radio. I had very little desire to report on what was happening. The only thing keeping me going was the knowledge that reporting on the pandemic’s impact on the Navajo Nation might bring them the help they so desperately needed.
I kept meeting people whose stories deserved more time including Navajo translator Marquerita Donald who barely survived COVID. But when she did, seized the moment to become a nurse, her lifelong goal.
That’s when I came across this quote: “We all have two lives. The second begins the moment we realize we have only one.” I got that fluttery feeling you get when you think you have a great idea.
I’d had my own 2 LIVES moments and knew how powerful they could be. That’s how I came up with 2 LIVES - stories of people who have faced darkness and how those moments transformed them.
Marquerita’s story became one of my first episodes.
Is there any new or upcoming work that you would like to share with us?
We are wrapping up season 10 with two incredibly powerful episodes — one about what happens when we don’t deal with small t traumas in our life, and the other about how one woman learned to recalibrate hope after a devastating loss.
Also, I’m teaching a workshop through AIR Media and Sound Path called From Idea To Launch: How To Create A Sustainable Podcast.
There may be 2.5 million podcasts in the world, but the majority haven't dropped more than ten episodes. And only a handful have grown their audience consistently. Even fewer have won awards for their efforts.
In this intermediate-level workshop taught by an award-winning podcast creator, learn the essential steps to take before you drop the first episode that will help you sustain a show you actually want to keep making.
Through listening sessions, discussions, and writing prompts, you will finish the course equipped to launch your own sustainable podcast.
Class dates: September 17, 19, 24, & 26
Class time: 2-3:30 PM PT / 5-6:30 PM ET
Registration Link: www.soundpath.co/course/sustainable-podcast
To read the rest of the interview, please click on the link below.
🎞️ Recommendations
It’s been a minute since I’ve shared some film recommendations, which almost always tie to some social issue. And I know summer (at least in the northern hemisphere) is coming to an end and you might want to be outside instead. But, on the off chance you find yourself wanting a reprieve from the heat, check out these films in theaters or on streaming.
Dìdi - a coming-of-age of a Taiwanese-American boy growing up in the California.
Sugarcane - a filmmaker tells the stories of his family and others impacted by a notorious Indian residential school in Canada.
Kneecap - to encourage pride in the Irish language, start rapping. This is a biopic of the group, Kneecap (film leads are the actual group members!)
Bye Bye Tiberias - a documentarian with a famous Palestinian actress mother shares the story of their family.
Sing Sing - learn about the very real Rehabilitation Through the Arts theater program through this story based on the program.
Io Capitano - a perilous migrant journey from Senegal to Italy. The film is led by two young boys who are first time actors!
Power of the Dream - many leagues within the WNBA have been at the forefront of activism. Here is the story of the Atlanta Dream’s impact.
Butterfly in the Sky - Reading Rainbow is ICONIC and one of the most impactful literacy initiatives of our time. Learn about how it all came together.
The Strike - solitary confinement is inhumane. These incarcerated men used the power of organizing to demand change.
Thelma - a nonagenarian (age 90-99) goes on an adventure to get her money back after being a victim of fraud in this funny and touching film.
🌟 Classifieds
Nothing to promote but still want to support? You can donate here.
