University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

The drive home: a podcasting journey

(USC Thesis Other)

The drive home: a podcasting journey

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content

THE DRIVE HOME:
A PODCASTING JOURNEY

By

Christina Campodonico

______________________________________________________________________________
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM: THE ARTS)

May 2015

Copyright 2015 Christina Campodonico

ii

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Sasha Anawalt, Bill Anawalt, Elizabeth Nonemaker, Willa Seidenberg, Tim
Page, my mom, Susan Campodonico, and my grandparents, Joe and Nancy Mendoza, for their
participation in, guidance and support of The Drive Home.

iii
Abstract

The Drive Home is a podcast that marries arts journalism, criticism and car culture to
capture the conversations that occur after a performance ends. This thesis discusses The Drive
Home’s place in an emerging “podcast renaissance,” its implications for arts journalism and
criticism and documents my creation of a pilot season of the podcast. To produce The Drive
Home, I select a performance to attend and invite a guest to join me for the ride. I record the
conversation we have after the performance, while a driver steers us to a destination in Los
Angeles. After the drive, I then transcribe and edit the interview and add ambient and natural
sounds to recreate the discussion’s feel and mood.
Three episodes comprise the first season. Each chapter gives background information
about the episodes, including descriptions of the performance discussed, profiles of the guests
who come along for the ride, transcriptions of episodes and finally my reflections on producing
and editing the podcast. Together, these insights constitute an investigation into how the arts,
criticism, journalism and car culture can be bridged through sound and the medium-specific
components of podcasting.

iv
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iii
1) Introduction 1
1.1. Method 4
1.2. Guest Bios 6
1.3. Host Bio 8
2) The Journey Home: The Trip to Bountiful and The Drive Home, Episode 1 10
2.1. Episode 1 Transcript 13
2.2. Lessons Learned 18
2.3. Technical Notes 20
3) Dancing Home: L.A. Dance Project and The Drive Home, Episode 2 21
3.1. Episode 2 Transcript 22
3.2. Lessons Learned 26
3.3. Technical Notes 28
4) Musing Home: Mermaids, Merce Cunningham and The Drive Home, Episode 3 30
4.1. Episode 3 Transcript 31
4.2. Lessons Learned 40
4.3. Technical Notes 40
5) Conclusion 42
References 47

1
1) Introduction

Few things epitomize the power of audio storytelling more than the seductive draw of a
well-voiced radio piece, projected over an AM/FM tuner. Although, increasingly it is not radios
that emit this magnetism, but podcasts, released online, as opposed to airwaves.
In the opera Invisible Cities Marco Polo sings that, “It is not the voice that commands the
story: it is the ear” (Cerrone 2014). Reflecting Polo’s aphorism, (originally penned by Italo
Calvino for his book Invisible Cities), the balance of power in radio is at a critical juncture
between “the command of the voice” and the selectivity of “the ear,” as podcasts become more
popular.
Many ears are tuning in to these audio narratives—interviews, talks and stories—that
podcasts uniquely provide. As of February, Americans now listen to roughly 21.1 millions hours
of podcasts daily (Sebastian 2015). And iTunes has at least 1 billion podcast subscribers (L.
Friedman 2013). The on-demand nature of podcasts, which can be downloaded or streamed onto
a smartphone, tablet, laptop, even some Wi-Fi, enabled cars, have made podcasts readily
available to a growing audience of listeners (Roose 2014). In the process, a new landscape for
audio storytelling is taking shape.
With audience attention running high, trend pieces have dubbed 2015 “the year of the
podcast” (Beaujon 2014). While “podcasting” has been a “thriving mini-industry” with small and
loyal followings since around 2005, the medium has turned mainstream since the release of This
American Life’s spin-off series, Serial, in fall 2014 (Roose 2014).
A weekly, true-crime drama that re-examined the 1999 murder of Baltimore high school
student Hae Min Lee and the subsequent conviction of her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, Serial’s
first season averaged 1.5 million downloads per episode (Bishop 2014). During its twelve-

2
episode stint Serial became so present in the popular mindset that it even landed a parody spot on
Saturday Night Live, where comedian Cecily Strong riffed on Serial host and producer Sarah
Koenig’s penchant for musing into the microphone to investigate “the creepy mystery of a dude
named Chris who reportedly delivers presents to children on Christmas Day, much to the chagrin
of frightened parents” (SERIAL Parody 2014).
Jokes aside, Serial’s immense success and popularity has earned the show a second
season, because of listener donations and sponsorship deals, and contributed to the sense that a
“podcast renaissance” is underway (Rosen 2014; Roose 2014). According to Edison Research,
consumption of podcasts in the U.S. jumped 18% between spring and fall 2014 (Sebastian 2015).
In the same period, Serial made its debut. If not causal, the “Serial effect” on podcasting is still
palpable.
Podcasts are not only gaining listeners’ attention, media companies are expanding their
audio offerings, as well, to meet demand. The Slate Group, which manages a “family of digitally
native content providers,” including Slate, recently launched Panoply, a full-service podcast
network to promote podcasts from other media companies, celebrities and authors in late
February (“Slate Group Announces Podcast Network” 2015).
In this media climate, I have been developing my own podcast series, called The Drive
Home, under the direction of Arts Journalism director Sasha Anawalt, who initially
conceptualized the idea and allowed me to execute and produce it for my thesis.
As a concept, The Drive Home is the informal, yet critical conversation that occurs after
the performance ends. Whether it’s a walk back to the car, a shared drive back home, a ride on
the metro, or a post-performance discussion in the theater’s parking lot, The Drive Home is the
conversation that happens after the curtain falls.

3
The Drive Home is developed with the belief that performances live on and do
“continually reinvent themselves in the minds” of those who see and experience such works of
art (qtd. in Campodonico 2014).
In Los Angeles, such reinventions often take place in our cars as we drive home from the
theatre, discussing the performances just seen or experienced. In this city, cars function not just
as vehicles of transport, but also as intimate, mobile forums for the discussion of the arts.
Beyond the privacy of our cars, however, these conversations remain isolated, apart from critical
discourse about the arts in this city and in the world at large. The Drive Home was developed to
cultivate these hidden pockets of discussion and bridge the gap between what is said privately
and what is written or broadcast publicly through sound.
Episode 1 explores the meaning of the journey home through Horton Foote’s The Trip to
Bountiful. I discussed the play with my family after we saw it together at the Ahmanson Theatre
in Los Angeles. I discovered that while podcasting in a car is certainly the novel aspect of The
Drive Home, “the drive home” might actually be more of a state of mind, than an actual journey,
or destination.
For Episode 2, I hopped into the car with my thesis advisor and dance scholar and critic
Sasha Anawalt to talk about L.A. Dance Project’s October 25, 2014 performance at the Ace
Hotel and the state of dance in Los Angeles. I learned that while talking about dance through an
audio-driven medium might be difficult, it doesn’t limit the capacities of The Drive Home to be a
critical force.
In Episode 3, I chatted with my friend and colleague Elizabeth Nonemaker about
curiosity, creative living and growing up as these topics occurred to us after having seen
Performance, an experimental collaboration between former Merce Cunningham dancer

4
Rashaun Mitchell, visual artist Ali Naschke-Messing and Magnetic Field’s front man Stephin
Merrit that visited REDCAT in December, 2014. Through our talk, I realized that the
conversational tone of the episode—the rapport between guest and host—is just as critical as the
criticism that occurs within the podcast.
Following Serial’s model, these three episodes comprise a pilot season of The Drive
Home, but also constitute a kind of experiment in the podcasting genre. Jonah Weiner writes in
“Toward a Critical Theory of Podcasting” for Slate that:
While we know that podcasts are unprecedentedly popular, we still haven’t developed a
critical language to talk about them—to think about what makes them work, what makes
them great….what ‘pure’ podcasting might sound like, as distinct from radio repackaged
into podcast form. What kinds of stories, and storytelling, might arise from this new
medium? (Weiner 2014).

The Drive Home is made to figure that out. Hope you’ll join me for the ride.

1.1. Method
To produce The Drive Home I follow these steps:

1) I pick a show I’d like to go see.

2) I find someone who is not only willing to go with me to the show, but also will
provide a unique perspective on the performance.

3) Since I don’t own a car, I find a driver, who is willing to chauffeur me and my guest
around for the night. This decision is also in the interest of safety. Driving around Los
Angeles while trying to hold or talk into a microphone could be distracting and/or
dangerous.

4) I secure show tickets for my self, my guest and my driver.

5
5) My guest and I go see the show.

6) After the show, we talk about the performance and I record our conversation on a
TASCAM recorder, while our driver drives us around Los Angeles until we hit our
destination or we’re through talking. (There are a few exceptions to this rule, as you’ll
see in Chapter 1.) This can take up anywhere from one to almost two hours. I also
record us getting into and out of the car and any other associated natural, ambient or
automotive sounds.

7) I transcribe the conversation and put together a script for the episode.

8) Using the script as a guide, I then edit the audio recording, using Adobe Audition
audio editing software. I also collect any additional sounds. I download license free
sounds from the Internet
1
or make additional field recordings that might enhance the
mood and/or setting of the episode.

As you will see, however, creating The Drive Home is not a simple formula. As I record
the entire conversation from start to finish, making an episode of The Drive Home takes a great
deal of editing in post-production. With one to two hours of tape to listen through, following
every recording session, I have had to be selective about the parts of conversation I choose to
include. As such, the recorded conversations have been edited for length, concision and clarity.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1
Downloaded sounds are cited with the original author/recorder’s name in parentheticals, following the sound
referenced. Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License or the Creative Commons 0 License cover the
recordings used in this thesis. Where no name was given, the online username is used for the purpose of crediting
the author.)

6

1.2. Guest Bios
For The Drive Home I invited several individuals to appear on the podcast as guests.
Below are their bios. Cited bios were supplied by the guests for inclusion in this thesis. Where a
bio has not been supplied or cited, I have written one. These are in alphabetical order:

SASHA ANAWALT is an associate professor and director of the USC Annenberg Master's
Program in Arts Journalism, a partnership with USC’s six arts schools that she co-founded in
2008. She has co-produced numerous innovative journalism projects known as the Engine Series.
In spring 2015, she launched DanceMapLA, a Los Angeles county-wide original online
surveying project intended to take a census of dancers and choreographers and define the city’s
dance landscape through data. She wrote The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the Making of an
American Dance Company, called a “milestone in dance writing” by the New York Times and
published by Scribners. A documentary film about the Joffrey Ballet based on her book aired on
PBS American Masters in January 2013. She served on the Pulitzer Prize juries for criticism for
two years. Anawalt was chief dance critic for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner for six years and
later for the LA Weekly and KCRW, an NPR affiliate in Santa Monica. She attended McGill
University and graduated from Barnard College (Anawalt 2015).
SUSAN CAMPODONICO is a first grade teacher at Lillian Street Elementary School in Los
Angeles Unified School District, where she has taught for nearly thirty years. She attended
University of California, Berkeley and graduated from University of California, Santa Cruz with
a degree in Art. She serves as her school’s Union Representative to United Teacher’s Los

7
Angeles. She has been a longtime resident of Whittier, California where she raised her daughter,
Christina.
JOSEPH (JOE) MENDOZA was born in Pasadena, California and attended Pasadena schools
before earning a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering from University of California, Berkeley in 1951.
He was a U.S. Navy fighter pilot during WWII. He was a former board member of the Cal
Alumni Council and a member of Pi Kappa Alpha where he sang with the PKA Quartet and was
also a member of the Glee Club and a Charter Member of the Men's Octet. He also earned an
M.S. in Petroleum Engineering from USC in 1957. He lived in Venezuela five years with his
wife, Nancy, and two children, Susan and Jay, during 1963-1969. He retired after forty-five
years with Texaco. He has three grandchildren and one, Christina, graduated with high honors
from Princeton and is now obtaining her M.A. at USC. He lives permanently in Big Bear Lake,
California (J. Mendoza 2015).
NANCY MENDOZA, a native of Orange County, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at the
University of California, Berkeley, with an emphasis in art. She then studied at the Laguna
Beach School of Art with Roger Armstrong, Ray Jacob and Sueo Serisawa. While attending the
Silvermine School of Art in Connecticut, she developed her skills in figure drawing with Pat
Warfield and continues to study in Orange County with Sandra Trapesso’s figure workshop.
Nancy, a lifelong Big Bear summer local, now lives permanently in the Valley with her husband
Joe, residing on the acreage, which has been in her family since 1912. She has exhibited at the
Ratcliff-Williams Gallery in Sedona, Arizona and has been in numerous group shows in
Connecticut and California. She shows in Laguna Beach galleries and her work is in private
collections in the United States, Canada, Europe and Latin America. She has two children and

8
three grandchildren. Her eldest grandchild, Christina, is graduate student at USC (N. Mendoza
2015).
ELIZABETH NONEMAKER is an Annenberg Fellow at USC pursuing an M.A. in Specialized
Arts Journalism. Her métier is writing about music. Nonemaker grew up in Annapolis,
Maryland. As a practicing composer, her pieces have earned her residencies at the MacDowell
Colony and Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and prizes from ASCAP, the National Federation of
Music Clubs, the Society of Composers, Inc., and others. She has written commissions for
various ensembles including the Baltimore Classical Guitar Society, Musical Chairs Chamber
Ensemble, and the Definiens Project. As in love with writing as with music, Nonemaker has
published essays, criticism, poetry and fiction. She regularly reviews events for Neon
Tommy. Having graduated with high honors from USC Thornton School of Music as a B.M. in
Music Composition, she hopes to continue building a broad career in the arts: one encompassing
music, journalism, creative writing and arts promotion (Nonemaker 2015).

1.3. Host Bio
Here is a little bit of background on me, the host of The Drive Home.
CHRISTINA CAMPODONICO is a reader, writer and arts enthusiast, who grew up in Southern
California and spent her college years in the Northeast. She studied English and Dance at
Princeton University, where she wrote for The Daily Princetonian’s Editorial Board and
performed in as many plays, musicals and dance concerts as she could. In her senior year, she
conducted literary research for her thesis at University of Oxford’s Lincoln College as an

9
inaugural Princeton Breadloaf Fellow. Campodonico continues dabbling in the arts as an
Annenberg Fellow at USC, where she is pursuing an M.A. in Specialized Arts Journalism.
Fascinated by the intersection between the arts and media, she has worked with independent film
and PR agencies throughout Los Angeles. She regularly contributes to Neon Tommy, The
Hollywood Journal, as well as Ampersand, USC’s dedicated arts & culture podcast, which she
co-founded in 2014. A SoCal native at heart, she still manages to survive in the City of Angels
without a car.

10
2) The Journey Home: The Trip to Bountiful and The Drive Home, Episode 1
I don’t own a car and I’m rarely the one behind the wheel, but I love long drives.
During my childhood, many summer and weekend hours were spent on the road with my mom
cruising to Big Bear Lake, a small tourist town in California’s San Bernardino mountains,
where my grandparents live and care for a cluster of cabins on three-acre plot of land that has
been in the family since 1912. Generations have spent their summers here, fishing in the lake,
scraping their knees on hikes, and cooking up big pancake breakfasts on a fat, wood-burning
stove of stone.
Similarly, these drives to Big Bear have their customs—two hours, just me and my
mom, headed toward our family home. She’s in the driver’s seat and I’m sitting shotgun. We
talk about whatever comes to mind. She regales me with stories about growing up on an oil
camp in South America or living out of a van in Santa Cruz during the ‘70s. I share with her
the gossip from my friends and tales from campus.
Many times, though, we sit silently in the car, listening to an eclectic mix of classic pop
and teeny-bopper hits — N’SYNC, Michael Jackson, Sting . The flatlands running along the
dusty, desert freeways give way to the curving mountain roads and ultimately a gravel lane that
leads to my grandparent’s house, surrounded by tall pine trees and brambly wild flower fields.
As if by magic we arrive at the very spot where my great-great grandfather pitched a tent and
built a log cabin just over a hundred years before.
What is it about long drives that makes them seem so magical? Perhaps it is the
prospect of returning home after a long journey, or after a long time away.
The Trip to Bountiful by American playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote is a story
especially concerned with the joys of returning home and the sorrows of leaving it. The play

11
follows the elderly Carrie Watts, as she escapes from her son and daughter-in-law’s confining
house in Houston to make one last visit to her childhood home in rural Bountiful, Texas. Ludie
and Jessie Mae pursue her—Ludie to save his mother from befalling any danger on the ill-
planned journey; Jessie Mae to make sure that her mother-in-law’s social security check,
(which the couple also lives off of), won’t go missing, too.
Performed for the stage, the screen and television audiences, The Trip to Bountiful has
become a popular piece in theatrical revivals, “particularly as a vehicle for character actresses
hoping to put their stamp on the role of Carrie” (Miller, n.d.).
American cinema icon Lillian Gish starred in Bountiful’s 1953 teleplay and its short
stint on Broadway that same year, following the on-air debut (Miller, n.d.). Geraldine Page,
after three decades of nominations and losses, won the Academy Award for her leading role in
the 1985 film version (Miller, n.d.). Lois Smith brought Carrie Watts back to life in the
Signature Theatre’s 2005 revival of the play, a performance that left New York Times theater
critic Ben Brantley “drenched in tears” (Brantley 2013). The play was most recently revived
on Broadway in 2013 with an all-black, lead ensemble (Brantley 2013). Dramatic actress
Cicley Tyson, (returning to the stage after a thirty-year hiatus), headlined the New York
production with Vanessa Williams and Cuba Gooding, Jr. in the play’s supporting roles
(Brantley 2013). Gooding played Carrie Watt’s son Ludie and Williams played his selfish
wife, Jessie Mae.
Tyson and Williams reprised their roles in the Lifetime movie-version and in the Los
Angeles production, which ran at the Music Center’s Ahmanson Theatre from September
through November 2014 (Lowry 2014; Gray 2014). Blair Underwood took over as Ludie in
both the film and L.A. stage versions.

12
In his 2005 review of the Signature Theater’s revival Ben Brantley wrote incisively of the
play being about “the myth of an idea called home” (Brantley 2005). For Foote’s characters, a
house is “a fortress and an anchor in a world of threatening flux,” he said, but also “an illusion”
(Brantley 2005).
Abstract or concrete, “home” is an idea that is tied closely to the heart. It informs not
only our sense of place, but also our sense of self.
These themes came up, while talking with my mother, Susan Campodonico, and
grandparents, Joe and Nancy Mendoza, about The Trip to Bountiful. We had just seen a matinee
of the play at the Ahmanson Theatre and gathered in the plaza outside the theater on a sunny
October afternoon to discuss it.
I had originally imagined my conversation with my mom and grandparents after The Trip
to Bountiful to be a test run of sorts, for a “drive home” I was to do later that evening with Sasha
Anawalt in downtown L.A. Since I’ve been going to plays at the Ahmanson with my family
since I was ten years old,
2
I thought practicing with them might ready me for my “first official
episode” of The Drive Home later that day.
But The Trip to Bountiful’s subject matter turned out to unlock special meaning for us, as
a family. Like Carrie Watts, who must say a final goodbye to her home at Bountiful, my family
is facing the very real prospect of saying goodbye to our family home in Big Bear. In 2012,
following its centennial, my aging grandparents put the property up for sale, in an effort to
downsize their home and living expenses. (As of publication, the acreage is still on the market.)
The conversation we had following the matinee performance was an emotional one,
because its story and themes resonated so deeply with my loved ones: my grandmother’s joy,
like Carrie Watt’s, at driving up to the cabins that her forefathers built, my grandfather’s sadness,
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2
!As season ticket holders, we’ve seen almost every Ahmanson play since 2000, together.!

13
also like Watt’s, at leaving the place that he has come to identify as his home, and my mother’s
struggle, like Ludie’s, to balance her work responsibilities in the city, with her daughterly duties
to my grandparents in the mountains.
The Trip to Bountiful left my family emotionally vulnerable and exposed, but also more
ready to talk about how family and home are mirrored, in both life and art. My grandmother was
so moved by the play that she recounted driving the road to Big Bear—a road that she has ridden
throughout her lifetime—in rich and vivid detail.
But the irony of the afternoon was that we could not go there together. We did not “drive
home” after the play, like Carrie Watts, Ludie and Jessie Mae do at the end of Bountiful. We
each had to go our separate ways—I, to another evening show, my mom to our sick cat in
Whittier, my grandparents back to the mountains, for they had no place to stay overnight.
As I slid into the passenger seat of the car, with my mom at the wheel, I felt as if we were
going back to Big Bear, because Grandma’s vision of the road to that familiar destination
lingered so strongly in my head. Perhaps The Drive Home is not so much a physical journey, but
rather an explorative state of mind?

2.1. Episode 1 Transcript

The Drive Home, Episode 1: The Trip to Bountiful
Date of Production: October 25, 2014.
Audio Introduction

14
Christina Campodonico: The Trip to Bountiful is a play by American playwright Horton Foote.
It follows the elderly Mrs. Carrie Watts as she makes a final pilgrimage to Bountiful, Texas.
This is the place where she grew up and she is determined to go back one last time before she
dies. One day Carrie escapes from her son and daughter-in-law’s house in Houston to make the
journey. Her son Ludie and his wife Jessie Mae tail her in hot pursuit. Ludie doesn’t want any
danger to befall his mother. Jessie Mae just wants to make sure that Carrie’s social security
check doesn’t go missing, too. Ludie and Jessie Mae eventually catch up with Carrie in
Bountiful. She says a final good bye to her home and the family returns to Houston.
Ultimately, the play is a story about the joy of returning home and the sorrow of leaving it
behind.

I saw this play with my mother and grandparents at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. An
all-star cast led the production. Cicley Tyson returned to the stage to play Mrs. Carrie Watts,
after a thirty-year acting hiatus. Vanessa Williams played the self-absorbed, Jessie Mae. And
Blair Underwood took on the role of Ludie. After the performance, I talked with my mom and
grandparents about our family home in Big Bear Lake, California. The property has been in the
family since 1912, but my grandparents have put it up for sale. We talked about what it means
to go back there now.

Episode begins

[Applause, then people milling about in the theater. Jazz music, laughter, clinking glasses, and
birds chirping circulate, as we move outside to a plaza, where children shriek and water spills out
from a fountain (Antwash, n.d.; Zyblut, n.d.).]

15
Susan Campodonico: When she began to talk about all the different types of birds. Cicley Tyson
plays the character of Carrie Watts and she begins to discuss all the birds. And she says, "Wait!
Is that a red bird that I hear? Is that a Scissortail?" And it reminds me of the birds that I hear in
Big Bear.
[Bird call sounds (Swift, n.d.).]
Nancy Mendoza: That part of the play hit me very hard at the end, as she said goodbye to home,
especially right now because we are planning on selling our home and it's probably going to be
one of the most difficult things...one of the hardest things I will ever have to say goodbye to.
CC: What about the idea of coming home? We have a family home in Big Bear Lake and I
always have this very warm feeling when we're driving up to the mountains and you go up there
and you go on the gravel road and there it is, sort of appearing like this wonderful place. How do
you feel when you come home?
NM: I'm always on a high. Every curve of the road as we get higher and higher in the mountain,
I think, "Oh, we're almost home." I love to drive the road and I love to ride the road. Some
people say they're fearful of falling off the road. I have no fear at all. I feel like I'm flying up this
beautiful mountain with the granite rocks. The first half of it is on the flat land in Orange and San
Bernardino County. It's on a freeway. It's busy. I can hardly wait to get to the bottom of the hill.
Until we get just to the 5,000 foot mark, then it's like, "Wow!" And the pines, the smell of the
pines. Usually by now, it's becoming clear. And when you're in Running Springs, which is a tiny
village, the pines appear and the willow and the oak and the winding road. And then the high
slopes above me. And then when you get to Arctic Circle and you're going round and round and

16
you look down to the deep crevices and out to the mountains in the distance that seem to look
like a Japanese painting. Every, every mound of hill beyond, beyond, beyond, gets a different
shade of the value of the gray-purple-blue hills, or mountains. It's breathtaking. There's nothing
like your memory of your home and the return to your home. It's just the most self-fulfilling
feeling in the world.
[Water from a nearby fountain spills onto the pavement (Zyblut, n.d.).]
Joseph Mendoza: I'm sorry to see it go because I put so much work into it. But this play
personified how I feel. I spent the majority of my life up there. I could consider it home. And it
brought back to me all the memories. This play was very good in that. And I could sympathize
with Mrs. Carrie, who was played by Cicley Tyson and I could feel it. And I could feel what she
felt. And she had to go back home and see it once more and then was at peace. It touched me
quite a bit because of the problems we're having and the regrets we're leaving behind in Big
Bear.
[Water rushes from a fountain (Zyblut, n.d.).]
SC: When you talked, Dad, I just realized—I've been feeling a pain in my heart, just like my
heart's been getting ripped up. And I know it's probably about this, but I can't quite say, "Oh
that's what it is.” And then the pain goes away. Since I'm working down here, I feel like I'm the
man in Houston, Blair Underwood's character—Ludie Watts. I really related to him because he
was so torn. He had to stay in the city to make a living, but his heart was truly in the mountains.
That was his home. That is where he had been born. To me it's really the home I know. We
moved around so many times as a child that Big Bear is my home. Every summer for five years

17
I'd come home and spend three months in Big Bear with my grandparents and my mom and my
brother and Dad would come up for month to stay with us. But when we were younger, we'd stay
there and he'd come up on the weekends, so since before I was born, Big Bear was really my
home. And I still feel it's my home—that I'm just working to make a living in the city, but on the
weekends I go up there. And I still try to go quite a bit in the summer. I felt the terrible stress that
Ludie felt of, "Gosh, is there any way I can hold onto this and keep this home because this is
really who I am, who we are, and where we want to be.
NM: It struck me as we watched Ludie, in his struggle, the struggle that we're going through to
make that decision of leaving home. We think that we're just being torn apart by this move. But I
recognize the struggle they're feeling—our daughter, our granddaughter—with watching our
struggle and wanting everything to be just wonderful for us. And yet, the reality is that leaving
home is the answer. I will say that watching this play, seeing the resolution that this play gave us,
I just know in my soul that I will come to grips with it. Acceptance has to be the healthy, healthy
resolution of conflict. And it is a conflict, but I know, I can accept it and deal with it. It will
make me miserable the rest of my life if I don't.
[Bird call sounds (Swift, n.d.).]
SC: Okay, well, goodbye Mom.
NM: I'll see you. We're heading home, now.
SC: Okay, I'll see you later.
NM: Yeah, I love you. [Smooch sound]

18
SC: I love you, too.
NM: It was a wonderful, wonderful experience. I'm glad we had it together, as a family.
SC: Me, too. Have a good trip home.
NM: Goodbye. Goodbye.
CC: Bye, Grandma.
CC and NM [overlapping]: I love you. [Smooch sounds]
[Kids playing by a fountain (Zyblut, n.d.). A purse unzipping. Keys jingle as they’re taken out of
a purse. High heels click on the pavement (Stevious42, n.d.). Bird call fades away (Swift, n.d.).]
Credits
Christina Campodonico: And that’s The Drive Home. Special thanks to my family for opening
up. Until next time, I’m Christina Campodonico.
End of Episode
Length: 10:09
2.2. Lessons Learned
This first episode of The Drive Home wasn’t originally intended to be a full-length
episode. It was supposed to be a “practice recording.” But it was also untouchable. Afraid of
resurrecting that vulnerable and emotional afternoon, I didn’t listen to the recording for months.
But after some encouragement from both my advisor Sasha Anawalt and the Executive Producer

19
of Ampersand, Stephanie Case, to take a listen, I plugged in my headphones and pressed play in
mid-January. What I heard was what Anawalt would call “blood on the page”—a story that is so
stirring it almost bleeds and reverberates with emotional vigor and passion. Because the story
struck my heart in such an unexpected way, I decided to develop it into a full-length episode.
The circumstances of that afternoon deviated from my original vision for The Drive
Home’s—where I would host and shape a post-performance discussion with my expert-guest, in
a car, on the drive back home. In this case, I had four voices to contend with, including my own,
(although I ended up editing out my voice, except where needed). We weren’t in a car that could
buffer all exterior sound; we were outside in an outdoor plaza where birds chirped, a huge
fountain gurgled and people milled about and dined. And thirdly, my guests weren’t necessarily
“experts” or critics. They were my family members.
What seemed at first like a far cry from journalism or critical discourse was actually a
true, heartfelt and deeply resonate story that reflected the play’s themes in a way that few other
types of criticism could.
A traditional written review could not capture the shake in my grandparents’ voices, or
the lump in my mother’s throat as they identified with the play’s characters and their plights.
Nor could it replicate the intimate, audio experience of a family group relating their real life
experiences to those of a fictional family. A traditional piece of criticism would likely contain
only one voice—that of the critic’s—while this audio format allows for each member of my
family to be heard.
In unpacking the popular allure of podcasts Jonah Weiner wrote in Slate that: “Most
podcasts are structured around the oral traditions of either storytelling or conversation, which
underscores the most obvious formal fact of podcasts: They’re driven by voices… In the case of

20
podcasts, the air literally thrums, our eardrums vibrate, and the cliché of the ‘human touch’ is
physicalized” (Weiner 2014).
This first episode of The Drive Home was driven not only by my family members’
varying voices, but also made resonate by their fragility and sadness. They spoke from their
hearts, giving the episode and our discussion of the play a deeply personal touch.

2.3. Technical Notes
Because The Drive Home veers into the realm of opinion and criticism, rather than
reportage, I have created accompanying soundscapes that are close to life, but not exact
recordings. For instance, some of my field recordings from The Music Center plaza in downtown
Los Angeles were very faint and could not be further enhanced in post-production. To add clarity
to my field recordings, I mixed in generic, ambient sounds from Freesound.org with natural
sounds I had recorded in the field. Doing so, allowed me to fully amplify and enhance the audio
landscape of The Music Center’s plaza, making a setting that was true to life, supportive of the
podcast’s tone, genuine to the episode’s mood, yet also audible.

21
3) Dancing Home: L.A. Dance Project and The Drive Home, Episode 2

In her book, All I Did was Ask, Terry Gross takes “comfort” in “the invisibility of
radio”—“All you are on radio is a mind and a disembodied voice, and for someone as physically
self-conscious as I am, this can [be] liberating” (Gross 2014, xix-xx). While this degree of
anonymity conceals the radio host in a protective layer, the invisibility of radio and its
podcasting cousin, also makes discussing an abstract and visually dependent medium, such as
contemporary dance, challenging.
When narrative milestones are absent and characters, in the traditional sense, are
nonexistent, how does one discuss the artistic and critical implications of a movement so that the
listening audience can “see” and understand it?
Sasha Anawalt and I engaged with this challenge during a drive around downtown Los
Angeles, after seeing Benjamin Millepied’s L.A. Dance Project perform at the Ace Hotel. The
October 25, 2014, performance featured works by William Forsythe, Israeli choreographer
Emmanuel Gat and L.A. Dance Project’s co-founder Millepied.
Millepied, a former New York City Ballet principal dancer, launched L.A. Dance Project
in 2012 with composer Nico Muhley, art consultant Matthieu Hummery and producers Charles
Fabius and Nicholas Britell (“L.A. Dance Project, About,” 2015). The company of eight dancers
collaborates with writers, visual artists, musicians and arts institutions in Los Angeles to promote
works by emerging artists and produce seminal works by influential dance-makers (“Benjamin
Millepied and Music Center Announce L.A. Dance Project,” 2011).
Even though talking about dance was a challenge, Anawalt was, in several ways, the
perfect guest for talking about L.A. Dance Project on the podcast. Not only did she originate the

22
idea of The Drive Home and encourage me to develop it for my senior thesis, her expertise on
dance is formidable.
She has been observing and reporting on the art form in Los Angeles for over thirty
years, starting in 1982 when she left her native Manhattan where she wrote for the SoHo Weekly
News. She was the chief dance critic for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, bringing unexpected
attention to dance generated outside of conventional performance venues by reviewing dance in
mini-malls, church basements, gymnasiums and on city’s streets. Anawalt later worked as dance
critic for LA Weekly and voiced Dance Notes on National Public Radio’s Santa Monica affiliate,
KCRW.
Because her professional life is rooted in Los Angeles’ dance scene, Anawalt brought
expert insight to our discussion of L.A. Dance Project, as well as a seasoned perspective on the
reemergence of dance as a cultural force within Los Angeles. Talking with her was an
opportunity for me to pick the brain of one of the most knowledgeable and respected dance
critics on the west coast—like taking a master class in dance criticism from one of the best in the
business to discover how dance could be conveyed through sound.

3.1. Episode 2 Transcript
The Drive Home, Episode 2: “Sasha Anawalt on L.A. Dance Project”
Date of Production: October 25, 2014
Audio Introduction
Christina Campodonico: L.A. Dance Project is a collective of dancers and artists, currently
managed by James Fayette. The company is the brainchild of Benjamin Millepied, a former

23
principal dancer with the New York City Ballet and the new director of the Paris Opera Ballet.
He is best known for choreographing the psychological thriller, Black Swan.
On Saturday, I saw L.A. Dance Project perform Millepied's new, untitled work, set to music
from Philip Glass's Mishima. A piece by Israeli choreographer Emmanuel Gat, called "Morgan's
Last Chug" preceded it and opened the evening's program. The night concluded with "Quintett,"
choreographed by William Forsythe.
After the performance, I hopped into the car with Sasha Anawalt, the director of Arts Journalism
Programs at USC. Anawalt has been a critical force for dance in Los Angeles for over thirty
years. She was the chief dance critic at the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and later the LA
Weekly, as well as the voice of Dance Notes, KCRW, National Public Radio.
On The Drive Home we speculated on the future of L.A. Dance Project and discussed its role in
the dance scene of Los Angeles.
Episode begins
[Car ignition starts. Car door beeps, repeatedly as passengers nestle into the car. A car door
slams shut. Then another. Then another. The car’s motor idles (NHumphrey, n.d.). Traffic
swooshing by.]
Sasha Anawalt: I think what's exciting about tonight is you go to the theater and you do, you
bump into Barbara Krueger and you bump into Steven Prina and you bump into Olga-Garay and
you bump into--
Christina Campodonico: [interjecting] Yuval Sharon. [laughs]

24
SA: Yuval Sharon and you know see all those people who are part of the creative life of L.A. and
they really care about being here and being part of this.
CC: I do think it's interesting to look at this company from a sort of sociological angle for the
reasons that you were talking about. This is an emerging company in Los Angeles and changing
the ecosystem. We're seeing people at this dance concert—younger audiences—dressed like
they’re ready for a rock concert or a fashion scene of some kind. When you saw those pieces did
you think, "Yes, this is L.A. dance?!” Or did you think, “This is just modern or contemporary
dance?” Is there a regional feeling to it?
SA: Is it L.A.? I'm not sure, yet. And when I'm looking at this company, I'm seeing not only the
crowd of people who are there and how young they are, but I'm also seeing—I think that those
dancers are quite beautifully trained and really, really—I love looking at them.
CC: I'm really interested in hearing your opinion about group dynamics, as presented through the
dancing in the company?
SA: When I saw Charlie Hodges, who is the bald dancer in the first piece. When he is dancing
something amazing happens to this particular company. There is a quality of movement that he
has that is so rare and so liquid, beautiful, connective, that to me when he's on stage everything
begins to make sense. Because I see these extra invisible things that come out of him, so he's
doing all those movements. He was doing a lot of things, where his hand was circling around his
head and you could see, sort of, a globe and orbit. It's all just this luscious awareness of space
around him, as much as in him. And that's why I liked this first piece, because it was inside and

25
outside. And for me, looking at him, he could just do that. He could do that inside-outside thing,
which I thought was absolutely gorgeous. And then he affects the others.
CC: I was enamored of him the first piece and the way he swoop his hands over his head and sort
of had a sign language with his movement that was so expressive.
SA: You said that they were speaking sign language, or something in the first piece? And I wrote
a little note to myself that said, "Death. What language are they speaking?" So I was thinking
about death in that piece. I was certainly thinking about it in the "Quintett." Weren't you?
CC: Oh most definitely. I'd read that "Quintett" had been choreographed for Forsythe's dying
wife. The dancers were partnering with each other and seemed to have these loving
relationships—these tender moments and friendly inside jokes by patting each other on the head,
or kicking each other in the pants, and all that sort of thing. I couldn't help but think that I was
sort of watching a silent film or old home reel of these lovers and partners chasing each other and
having a Kodak moment, in a weird sort of way. Even though it was so austere at times. A lot of
what we were thinking about when we were watching was death, but this company has an also a
new and emerging life to it. So is there life in death for L.A. Dance Project?
SA: I predict life. I think it's going to be hard because there is not one big community who cares
about movement in this city and who want to get together and do something about it and pay
attention. The best chance we have, I think, is L.A. Dance Project. And I think that if they can
get over some of those barriers that keep everybody apart, I think it can be extremely exciting.
And I think they are smart enough to do it and I think that they have the heart to do it and the
taste to do it, so just the feeling that I'm getting is very real.

26
[Traffic swooshes by. The car pulls up to a curb. Its motor idles. The car door cracks open.]
CC: Thank you. Good Night.
[The car door shuts. The car drives away. Footsteps recede and the sounds of people and children
talking in the street rise up, then fade.]
Credits
Christina Campodonico: Special thanks to Sasha Anawalt for appearing on the show and Bill
Anawalt for driving. Until next time, this is Christina Campodonico for The Drive Home.
Episode Ends
Length: 6:33

3.2 Lessons Learned
In an interview for Big Think, Radiolab creator and co-host Jad Abumrad said,
“Ultimately the coolest thing about radio is what it lacks. It’s somehow empowered by it—by the
absence of pictures” (“How Radio Creates Empathy” 2013).
Similarly, what I thought would be a challenge—describing the specifics of L.A. Dance
Project’s performance—was actually an opportunity to discuss the dancing on a vividly detailed
and specific level. In recreating the movements of the evening for the ear, Anawalt and I had to
become auditory painters, as well as audio choreographers. We had to walk our invisible
listeners through the movements, as if teaching them the steps with only words to guide them.
Anawalt, through her enthusiastic voicing and rich descriptions, guided me in imbuing my
descriptions with enhancing words and imagery.

27
While Anawalt and I were careful to describe particular moments of the performance
with precise and vivid detail, we also realized through the course of our conversation that we
could not rely upon specific moments alone to drive our discussion of the performance.
Since we maintained a more traditional Q&A interview format for this episode, I used my
position as “host” to steer the conversation toward the wider subject of dance in Los Angeles. (I
also shaped the conversation, which had stretched over nearly two hours, in this direction during
the audio editing process.) This topic was not only enriched by Anawalt’s authority as a dance
scholar and critic, but also broadened the scope of our conversation beyond the technical.
By exploring a question such as, “Is there such a thing as “L.A. dance?”, we wondered
whether L.A. Dance Project might usher in a new golden age of dance in Los Angeles. This
angle allowed our conversation to move from the micro level to the macro one, so that our
discussion could be appreciated not just by dance buffs, but by any individual with a general
interest in Los Angeles’ artistic scene. In this way, our conversation became more than just a
critique of a particular performance, but a timely conversation on the state of dance in this city.
In the same month that Anawalt and I saw L.A. Dance Project perform, The New York
Times’ Brian Seibert wrote about how Millepied and his company had “attracted attention to…a
recent blossoming of dance in Los Angeles,” which included the recent growth of companies
such as BodyTraffic, Barak Ballet, Ate9 and the establishment of the Colburn Dance Academy
(Seibert 2014).
By speaking to this “sense of a sea change” in L.A.’s dance community the episode not
only carried critical weight, but also newsworthy relevance (Seibert 2014).

28
3.3 Technical Notes
I presented this episode of The Drive Home to my class, “JOUR 592: Reporting the
Arts,” in order to solicit my peers’ feedback on The Drive Home.
The purpose of presenting this episode to the class and listening to it together was to test
whether The Drive Home worked as a concept, a podcast and as an episode. The live-listening
audience was able to give me feedback immediately. Among their comments were the following
recommendations:

1) Drop the traditional interview, question and answer format. Make The Drive Home’s
discussion more conversational in tone, with more banter and back and forth
discussion between the guest and the host.

2) User proper names as often as possible, so that the listener knows who is being
discussed at any point in the episode.

3) To focus the discussion on “evergreen” topics, so that The Drive Home could be
played and/or discovered at a later date and still remain engaging, relevant and
interesting.

3) To use a laugh, incidental chatter, automotive sounds, and directions from a GPS
navigation device and/or Siri to suggest a transition in the conversation or the passing
of time.

29
4) And lastly to add more car sounds, such as a signal’s repetitive “tick tock,” the sound
of window being rolled down, or a car’s horn sounding.

These recommendations, in turn, suggested to me one major modification to The Drive
Home: mic the guest and the host, so that each person’s voice is recorded, allowing for more
back and forth banter and more informal conversation to occur.
Previously, I had only been using one microphone, so my guest(s) and I passed the
microphone back and forth and took turns speaking. This resulted in a more traditional Q&A
format, where I asked questions and my guest answered, or my guest(s) asked a question and I
would answer. Having a single microphone was not conducive to creating the warm and chatty
atmosphere, which my test-audience seemed to recommend.
Additionally, before I presented this episode to the class, Anawalt advised me to write
and record an introduction to the episode so as to properly credit the artists and frame the pieces
discussed.
During the editing process, I not only shaped the conversation to move from specific
moments to broader topics, I also rearranged the order of our original conversation to support
these shifts. Lastly, I learned to keep the tape running. After Anawalt and I seemed to have
“finished” our conversation, (we had arrived at Union Station, where I was going to catch the
metro to my house), we continued talking about the performance. A good portion this talk ended
up making it into the final cut of the episode.

30
4) Musing Back Home: Mermaids, Merce Cunningham and The Drive Home, Episode 3

The main criticism I received about my previous Drive Home was that it was too formal.
It sounded too much like a traditional question and answer session, rather than a casual
conversation between friends.
So for my next Drive Home, Anawalt advised me to go with a friend. I went with
Elizabeth Nonemaker, a musician, composer and fellow graduate student in journalism at USC
Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, to see Rashaun Mitchell, Ali Naschke-
Messing and Stephin Merritt’s work, Performance at REDCAT in December. We were both
interested in seeing the show. Nonemaker was a fan of singer-songwriter Merritt’s “blunt and
inelegant” lyrics, as well as his tragicomic musical work with the bands, Magnetic Fields and
Future Bible Heroes. Being a dance buff, I was attracted toward the headliner, Mitchell, who had
danced with Merce Cunningham’s company, as well as the work’s cast of dancers, which also
featured Mitchell’s partner and prominent former Merce Cunningham dancer, Silas Riener. That
Mitchell—a man from Merce Cunningham’s elite dance world—and Merritt—a musical wit
from the indie pop underground—were collaborating seemed like an odd, yet intriguing
arrangement.
A certain degree of celebrity, as well as curiosity, drew Nonemaker and me to this
particular performance. As fans of these artists, we each brought our passion and developing
expertise for music and dance to our discussion of Performance. But our talk was more than just
“fan-girling.” As friends and as artists in our respective disciplines, we were well matched to
discuss this collision between Mitchell’s movement and Merritt’s music.

31
4.1. Episode 3 Transcript

The Drive Home, Episode 3: “Mermaids & Merce Cunningham?”

Date of Production: December 7, 2014

Audio Introduction

Christina Campodonico: What do mermaids from Barcelona and Merce Cunningham have in
common? That’s what I tried to figure out this week on The Drive Home.

I went to see an experimental dance show at REDCAT, called Performance—yeah, it was just
called Performance.

Choreographer Rashaun Mitchell and singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt joined forces with set
designer Ali Naschke-Messing to create a whimsical evening of song and dance. Dancers Cori
Kresge, Silas Riener and Hiroki Ichinose also performed.

So what brings Mitchell and Merritt together? They seem to be from two different worlds.
Merritt is the front man for pop indie group the Magnetic Fields. He’s best known as a
wordsmith, who combines his witty wordplay with low-fi, musical mixes. Mitchell is a
contemporary dancer and choreographer. He used to dance in Merce Cunningham’s company.
He now frequently collaborates with his partner and Merce Cunningham alum Sila Riener on
dance projects.

32
By the end of Performance, I discovered that mer-people and Merce Cunningham actually do
have a lot in common thanks to my guest Elizabeth Nonemaker. She’s a musician, composer, and
a friend of mine at USC. She also happens to love Stephin Merritt’s music.

On The Drive Home, we talked about the relationship between Merritt’s music and Mitchell’s
dancing and what it’s got to do with mermaids and Merce Cunningham.

[Ambient and natural sounds playing underneath audio introduction:
Cars driving in an echo-y parking garage (conleec, n.d.). Car horn beeps (RutgerMuller,
n.d.). Car door pops open. Car door slams. Footsteps. Car door pops open. Car door is shut from
the inside. A seat belt is heard sliding over somebody's shoulder (evsecrets, n.d.). Then it's
clicked into place (evsecrets, n.d.). Car starts. Another seat belt is pulled over the shoulder
(evsecrets, n.d.). Clicked into place (evsecrets, n.d.). Sounds from the parking garage can be
heard. Cars idling and driving. Horns honking. Brakes squeaking. Laughter.]
Episode Begins
Christina Campodonico: I'm interested to know, Elizabeth, from a music perspective, since that's
your area of expertise, what was your feeling or assessment of this performance?
Elizabeth Nonemaker: So you were attracted to the dancers and I'm unfamiliar with the dance
world, but Stephin Merritt, I know about and am a fan of because of his work with Magnetic
Fields and Future Bible Heroes. He writes these songs that should be bad but aren't. They come
across as what they are, which is like a guy recording them in his apartment and they're usually
very simple. They have...blunt but inelegant lyrics. But they're very touching at the same time.

33
[Sound of car driving by (Woodlein, n.d.).]
EN: I was really interested in seeing that people could even dance to it in the first place. Like it's
his celebrity. I didn't know he was doing collaborations and things like that so I'd be very
interested in seeing that.
CC: I think that this was an interesting collaboration to watch to these two modern dancers
combine forces with Stephin Merritt, because in the contemporary dance world you wouldn't
think of Stephin Merritt as the first person to make music for your dance.
[Laughter]
CC: It was such an interesting choice for them, to collaborate with him and I'm really curious,
how that collaboration came about. Why did they decide, use this sort of, quirky, love-ballad,
ukulele music and with Stephin Merritt's base-like voice. You know? Where did this
collaboration come from?
EN: I could see them sitting around and having drinks and being like, "Hey, wouldn't it be funny
if we did show together? Like that would be funny."
[Laughter]
[The sound of a car driving by (Woodlein, n.d.).]
CC: Well, I like how you've brought the Stephin Merritt context to me for this, because when I
read the bill or the headline, right, I was like, “Who is Stephin Merritt?” I just want to go see the
dancers. I wasn't evening thinking about the music. It was like, “I want to see Silas Riener and

34
Rashaun Mitchell who are Merce Cunningham, or former Merce Cunningham dancers,” so I
didn't even think about the music. So for me, I was really delightfully surprised by the simplicity
and heart and sweetness of Stephin Merritt's little ukulele ballads, and sort of troubadour-esque
stories that he sang.
Elizabeth Nonemaker: He was the entire orchestra.
[Laughter]
CC: He was! I just remember seeing him when he came out on stage. I'm like, "Who is this
man?" And I didn't know who Stephin Merritt was. And here's this kind of portly guy in
pajamas—
EN: Pajamas!
CC: Sort of looking like an elf, a little bit.
EN: Yeah, yeah. [Laughs]
CC: And then they bring out a stool for him and he gets up on this lowered rafter and he sits on it
and they hand him a little ukulele. [Laughs]
EN: You know what it made me think about, was how being successful at your art justifies doing
otherwise really socially not approved things. I was like, "What if Stephin Merritt weren't
famous?" Like would his wife
3
tolerate him walking around—I don't even know if he's married,
or anything like that—like walking around in his pajamas, singing really weird songs on the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3
Stephin Merritt is openly gay (Halett 2010).

35
ukulele, or would she get really tired of his shit? But he's Stephin Merritt, so whatever he wants
to do is okay. I've been thinking a lot about that. It's the whole going into adulthood and being
anxious about what you're doing with your life. All the stuff that's encouraged when you're a kid
is suddenly not encouraged when you're adult. [Chuckles]
CC: Yeah.
EN: When you look like Stephin Merritt.
CC: When you look like Stephin Merritt. But yet there was this child-like, playful quality to the
performance.
EN: Well, there was this one scene where one of the dancers was lying on the floor and he kind
of started doing the worm, except without any hand motions. And then there was a female dancer
and she would get on her back and shake her legs around and this other dancer was standing on
top of her and was very loosely swinging his arms over the tops of his face. And it was the kind
of motions that you do when you're a kid. There's no point to them whatsoever other than
enjoying the way that your body is moving and that it's kind of funny and silly that you can be
humorous just in the way that you're moving.
CC: And Rashaun Mitchell, starting off the piece by cartwheeling—cartwheeling—onto the
stage.
EN: The numbers came across as if they were spontaneous, even though they weren't. They had
this sense that the dancers were playing around with what a certain movement might feel like.

36
CC: Yeah, playing around with movement and playing around with the set, which was so
delightful. The movement was tactile-ly delightful.
[Chuckles]
CC: 'Cause they were touching the gold leaf flakes and dancing through them and then that
octopus, ribbon, jellyfish construction when it rose up, when that finally rose up, and those
ribbons were hanging down. And they were really playing with it. Like one moment, Silas, was
waving it and there was another moment when, one of the women, she was playing it, as if it
were a harp. And that whole "Mermaid of Barcelona" bit was so entwined with the jellyfish
installation.
EN: Yes, I think that that was probably my favorite number.
CC: So Stephin Merritt started to sing this song on the ukulele--"The Mermaids of Barcelona"
[theatricalized voice]. Like, very Spanish, sort of like, vibrato-y, ballad-like phrase. And then it
was sort of like a wives’ tale, like a fisherman wives’ tale?
EN: Yeah, so the story was there were these two mermaids in Barcelona and everyone was really
impressed by how beautiful and kind of magical and in love with each other they were.
Something happened to one of the mermaids, and I think one of them wound up alone.
CC: Oh, [sighs]
EN: Yeah, at least that's what I got from it. It seemed like they sort of died from despair. The
mermaid piece to me, almost seemed like kids thinking about what love might be like when
they're adults. If we're going off of this theme of they were kids sort of imagining what

37
adulthood might be like—I just had this thought when the mermaid died of despair. I was like,
"Uhh, how immature!?"
[Laughter]
EN: I was like, "Get over it!"
[More laughter]
[Car horn sounds]
[Sound of car driving by (Woodylein, n.d.).]
EN: If you have that really passionate approach to life, does it necessitate your dying, if it's taken
away?
CC: Oh, if your creativity is taken away does it necessitate your dying, like your metaphorical
death?
EN: Yeah, does it necessitate you actually passing away from despair? Is carrying on and
becoming more mature kind of like a small death of the passion that made you want to do it in
the first place?
CC: You know, that's a really good question, especially for anyone who aspires to a creative life,
or who is aspiring to be an artist. I think that's a question that many artists have to ask themselves
at one point or another in their careers, especially when they're first starting out. And it's
interesting question I think for Silas Riener and Mitchell to pose. At this point in their careers
they've become pretty established and they've gained a reputation for themselves and they were

38
working with Merce Cunnigham, and of course that gave them a really good foundation in the
dance world. Now they are starting to embark on their choreographic journeys, creating their
own work and maybe stepping out of the shadow of a huge choreographic legend, an icon like
Merce Cunningham. They are coming out of that tradition. Maybe this is a way for them to be
like, "What can we do?" Like, "How can we experiment?" You know? "How can we be the next
generation of choreographers and artists?" And so, I think this piece, Performance sort of posed
that question, like, "What's the next phase of their choreographic journey and development?"
EN: Yeah, and also what if it doesn't work out quite the way that we want it to? What if a
performance doesn't come up to our expectations of it? How do you continue to access that
initial thrust of conviction, because this is what you have to do, because you can't stop dancing in
your soul, etc., etc. So yeah, I saw the entire thing as—the more that we talk about it—as a real
homage and praise, not only to childhood, but to the energy that moves it.
CC: And kind of going back to that first creative act. Like, what initially inspired you?
EN: And makes you think that this is the only thing I want to do with my life.
CC: [Laughs]
EN: It's perfect and nothing else will do and if it doesn't work out, I will curl up under the
seaweed and pass away from despair.
[Sound of car driving by (Woodylein, n.d.).]
EN: This was a good conversation.

39
CC: We went all around the world.
EN: I know.
CC: And all around L.A.
EN: Yeah. [chuckles]
[Sound of car door opening and car beeping]
EN: Well, thank you so much for the ride. And for the good conversation and the ticket and for
everything else.
CC: Oh you're welcome. Thank you for joining us on The Drive Home.
EN: You are welcome. It was my pleasure.
[Laughter]
CC: All right.
EN: All right.
[Car door slams shut (aliceemily, n.d.). Nights sounds of a quiet residential street fade away.]
Credits
Christina Campodonico: That’s all for The Drive Home. Special thanks to my mom, Susan
Campodonico, for driving. Until the next time we take to the road, I’m Christina Campodonico.
Episode Ends

40
Length: 12:43

4.2. Lessons Learned
In All I Did was Ask Terry Gross writes that the interviews she hosts on Fresh Air “sound
conversational,” but that “they bear little resemblance to the conversations we have in daily life”
(Gross 2004, x).
The challenge of putting together this episode of The Drive Home was making a friendly
and deep discussion—that lasted for nearly two hours—sound conversational, but also concise.
Rather than roughly truncating a long conversation, I broke up the episode using snippets
of laughter and car sounds to create transitions and distinct scenes. These transitory sound
elements operated like “cuts” in a video reel, allowing the frame of reference to shift, so that the
conversation could transition from one point to another. I did this by inserting the sound
elements between chunks of conversation, then fading in and out these sound effects into the
primary conversation.
While this episode remains the longest in the series, it is also the most casual and
conversational, showing the warm and laid back rapport Elizabeth and I had, while discussing
the Performance. Ultimately The Drive Home should always capture this level of conversational
ease, but with more concision.

4.3. Technical Notes
Applying feedback from my peers and advisor on the previous episode, in this Drive
Home I used two microphones, so that Elizabeth and I each had a microphone to speak into.
Having two microphones record each of our voices led to a more fluidly rendered conversation. I

41
was able to capture our off-the-cuff, back and forth banter. It also broke up the formal question
and answer format that had characterized the previous episode, making the episode’s tone feel
more casual.
However, there was one downside to this recording procedure. Plugging two
microphones into one TASCAM recorder actually recorded both of our voices onto a single
track. This led to two difficulties during the editing process:
1) Since the TASCAM could record only at one level, Nonemaker’s voice, which is
quiet, came out rather softly, at times. While my voice, which tends to project, came
out more loudly on the recording. I adjusted the volume of our voices accordingly in
Adobe Audition, so that they could match in volume, however, at points where our
voices overlapped this still proved difficult.
2) If Elizabeth’s and my voice happened to overlap at a point in the track where I
wanted to cut, I could not because there would be an audible gap in the flow of our
conversation and dissonance in our talking tones. Therefore, I had to leave certain
chunks of conversation in, even though they could otherwise be considered
extraneous.
I consulted further with the broadcast advisor for my thesis, Professor of Professional Practice
Willa Seidenberg, who also is the Director of Annenberg Radio News. She advised me to record
future Drive Home sessions in stereo
4
and mix the recordings to mono
5
in post-production. (I had
been recording my sessions in mono previously.) She told me that recording in stereo would
record each voice through separate channels and onto separate tracks, allowing me greater
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
4
“Stereo (or Stereophonic sound) is the reproduction of sound using two or more independent audio channels in a
way that creates the impression of sound heard from various directions, as in natural hearing” (“Mono vs. Stereo”).
!
5
“Mono (Monaural or monophonic sound reproduction) has audio in a single channel, often centered in the “sound
field”(“Mono vs. Stereo”).!!

42
control in post-production to edit the vocal parts. She also recommended acquiring a portable
sound mixer that could operate off of battery power, or that could plug into the car’s cigarette
lighter. With a portable sound mixer I could plug my microphones into the mixer. Using the
mixer, I could then adjust the audio input level of each microphone, so that the voices would be
recorded at an appropriate volume.

5) Conclusion
!
Having passed its test drive, where does The Drive Home go from here? Does it live in
USC Annenberg’s Media Center or Annenberg Radio News? Is it housed on a blog, like my
class’s arts & culture blog Ampersand, (www.ampersandla.com)? Does it have a satellite campus
on a sound-sharing site, like SoundCloud or audioBoom, where new listeners can discover and
stream it? Could it go on iTunes to be downloaded by subscribers? Could The Drive Home be a
fully produced show distributed on a podcasting network? Would NPR even consider it?
There are no easy answers to these questions because the world of podcasting is in a
“wild west” moment (A. Friedman 2015). New podcast networks, such as Radiotopia and
Gimlet Media, which operate like music labels by sharing resources between podcast shows, are
on the rise. Launching in February 2014, Radiotopia, an extension of Public Radio Exchange
(PRX) aimed at producing story-driven, public radio quality podcasts, secured a $200,000 grant
from the Knight Foundation and raised over $600,000 through crowd funding on Kickstarter
(Blattberg 2015). Throughout 2014, veteran public radio reporter and former Planet Money host,
Alex Blumberg, turned to venture capitalists to start his podcasting network, called Gimlet
Media, ultimately raising $1.5 million for the project (Bloomgarden-Smoke 2015).

43
Digitally driven companies are also expanding their presence in the podcasting space. As
discussed earlier, The Slate Group, which operates Slate, recently launched the full-service
podcast network, Panoply. While Slate currently manages 15 podcasts, Panoply will work with
such media giants as the New York Times Magazine and The Huffington Post to create, acquire
and promote audio programming for these outlets, as well. Buzzfeed, known for producing and
spreading viral media content, launched its first podcasts, Internet Explorer, about obscure
corners of Internet culture, and Another Round, about race and gender, in March 2015 (Perlberg
2015).
With seasoned radio reporters and established media entities starting new podcasting
ventures, is there room for a homegrown podcast, like The Drive Home to succeed as a creative
project and/or survive as a viable business?
The medium lends itself to homemade audio making. A tech savvy DIY-er (do-it-
yourself-er), with a smartphone, a laptop, some free audio editing software and a SoundCloud
account could produce a podcast. In this way, producing a barebones podcast could cost as little
as the price of a good computer (Piazza 2013). (Apple’s top of the line laptop is $1,999).
In my case, my production costs were low because my start-up costs were defrayed
through my Annenberg Fellowship at USC. I applied stipend money from my fellowship to the
purchase of a laptop. I received a subscription of Adobe Audition for free through USC
Annenberg. As a journalism student, I could also check out audio recording equipment for free,
whenever I needed to. Most of my out-of-pocket expenses went toward buying additional show
tickets for my guest and driver, as I was usually able to secure only one press pass for myself for
free. Had I paid for my laptop, audio recording equipment, and editing software out-of-pocket,

44
my startup costs would be about $2500, but ultimately my expenses came to $60 for tickets and
$4.83 for gas, totaling $64.83 for three Drive Home productions.
Monetizing The Drive Home could prove difficult, as it would involve building an
audience large enough and loyal enough to attract the attention of potential advertisers. Brand
advertisers have yet to invest strongly with podcast advertising because podcast analytics are so
“murky” (Sebastian 2015; A. Friedman 2015). While you can track downloads, there is no
universal way of tracking whether those downloads were actually listened to (Sebastian 2015; A.
Friedman 2015). For those advertisers who do advertise on podcasts, they won’t consider a
show until it reaches 50,000+ downloads per episode (A. Friedman 2015). For a homegrown
endeavor this could prove to be a monumental, and perhaps impossible, task.
Podcasts in particular are structurally and technologically resistant to viral-sharing
(Alcorn 2014). As long, pre-packaged chunks of audio, that have to be called up through special
apps or platforms, the medium does not easily divide into spreadable sound bytes or tweetable
moments. Although platforms like SoundCloud make it easier to share audio on Facebook,
Tumblr and Twitter, listenership of podcasts through this site can be low. For even a popular
podcast like This American Life, “the total plays of their hour-long episodes on SoundCloud peak
at roughly 3% of its digital listenership, and are usually under 1%, hovering around 5,000”
(Alcorn 2014). So while I could upload The Drive Home to SoundCloud or a similar platform, it
may not reach enough listeners to make The Drive Home revenue-worthy.
Despite these daunting measures, the The Drive Home itself holds exciting possibilities
for journalism, arts criticism, podcasting and audio storytelling. The Drive Home is taking
something that we do all the time—talking about the performances we see and experience on the

45
way back home—and turning those conversations into a podcast that can be replayed again and
again for many more ears to hear.
In terms of arts criticism, The Drive Home could become part of an artwork’s critical
oeuvre. Just as historians and researchers turn to dance and theatre reviews to reconstruct a
performance from a previous era, The Drive Home could become an audio artifact of a
performance.
The Drive Home also holds out special opportunities for audience engagement if
published online. For instance, on SoundCloud a listener could leave a comment at a particular
point in the audio. On audioBoom’s platform listeners could leave an audio message through a
recording widget (“AudioBoom for Podcasts,” n.d.). By inviting audio commentary, The Drive
Home’s online presence could create a listening experience that is both intimate and interactive.
Lastly, The Drive Home stands as journalistic product, unique to its environment—Los
Angeles. In Episode 1, my grandmother took us on an imaginary drive from The Music Center
and the freeways fringing L.A. to the mountainous “winding roads” of Big Bear. In Episode 2, I
talked with a Los Angeles dance critic about L.A.’s dance scene, while we circled around the
streets of downtown for almost two hours, before I was dropped off at Union Station, the historic
gateway to the city. In Episode 3, I got lost in conversation with Elizabeth Nonemaker. Our
discussion lasted so long that our driver took us from downtown L.A. to UCLA on the Westside
and back via Wilshire Blvd. We circled Pershing Square in downtown twice, each
circumnavigation bookending our talk at its beginning and at its end.
Few cities in the world are as defined by car culture as Los Angeles.
Architecture critic and historian Reyner Banham analyzed Los Angeles through

46
windshield-colored glasses. He drove the city to better understand it, immortalizing L.A. in
architectural theory as an “Autopia:”

The language of design, architecture, and urbanism in Los Angeles is the language of
movement. Mobility outweighs monumentality there to a unique degree ... And the city
will never be understood by those who cannot move fluently through its diffuse urban
texture, cannot go with the flow of its unprecedented life (qtd. in Dimenberg 2006).

So it seems appropriate that Los Angeles’ arts criticism should also be influenced by an
automotive state of mind. Podcasting certainly lends itself to that. Not only can I take my audio
equipment with me to record a conversation in a moving car, but podcasts, themselves, are a
mobile medium. We carry them with us in our pockets via our smartphones; we listen to them in
the car during a long commute. We don’t need to transfix our eyes upon a digital screen while
we listen to them; we can move about our business, yet the podcast still remains within earshot.
Jonah Weiner writes, “…so many of us turn to podcasts when traveling—unmoored, in
flux, in between ports….traveling creates a circumstance in which we desperately want
something familiar, accessible, and digestible to listen to—not only to help the miles whoosh by,
but, on a deeper level, to make ourselves feel oriented” (Weiner 2014). “There are certain kinds
of stories we most like to encounter when we’re in motion,” he goes on to say (Weiner 2014).
The Drive Home contains some of those familiar and comforting stories that we want to
hear, but it also experiments with conventional criticism through and with sound. In this respect,
there is only the promise of the open road ahead. Maybe I’ll get to drive that road one day, when
I finally do acquire a car. Until then, I’ll take the backseat with two microphones in hand and
recorder ready and consider another option: finding a home for this show on an established radio
station. Who knows? Stay tuned.

47
References
aliceemily. “Door_Slam.aif.” Freesound.org. n.d.
http://www.freesound.org/people/aliceemily/sounds/176308/

Alcorn, Stan. "Why Audio Never Goes Viral." Why Audio Never Goes Viral. January 15, 2014.
Accessed March 24, 2015. http://digg.com/originals/why-audio-never-goes-viral.

Anawalt, Sasha. "USC Annenberg | Sasha Anawalt." Accessed March 21, 2015.
http://annenberg.usc.edu/Faculty/Communication and Journalism/AnawaltS.aspx.

antwash. “birds chirping.mp3.” Freesound.org. n.d.
http://www.freesound.org/people/antwash/sounds/118577/

"AudioBoom for Podcasts." Audioboo For Podcasts. n.d. Accessed March 24, 2015.
https://audioboom.com/about/for-podcasts.

Beaujon, Andrew. "After 'Serial,' NPR Says Podcasts Are Mainstream Now." Washingtonian.
December 30, 2014. Accessed January 11, 2015.
http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/capitalcomment/media/how-npr-is-preparing-for-the-year-
of-the-podcast.php.

"Benjamin Millepied and Music Center Announce L.A. Dance Project." Benjamin Millepied and
Music Center Announce L.A. Dance Project. November 21, 2011. Accessed January 11, 2015.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/11/dance-benjamin-millepied-and-music-
center-give-birth-to-la-dance-project.html.

Blattberg, Eric. "Enter the Podcast Network: A Year of Radiotopia - Digiday." Digiday. January
21, 2015. Accessed March 21, 2015. http://digiday.com/publishers/enter-podcast-network-year-
radiotopia/.

Bishop, Katherine. "Whodunit? 'Serial' Changing the Audio Business." CNBC. November 21,
2014. Accessed March 21, 2015. http://www.cnbc.com/id/102207557#.

Bloomgarden-Smoke, Kara. "Can Former Planet Money Host Build the 'HBO of Podcasts'?"
Observer. February 27, 2015. Accessed March 15, 2015. http://observer.com/2015/02/gimlet-
media/.

Bowers, Andy. "Slate’s Audio Honcho on the First 10 Years of Podcasting (and Its Future)."
Slate. December 14, 2014. Accessed March 21, 2015.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/ten_years_in_your_ears/2014/12/podcast_10th_anniversary_sl
ate_s_executive_producer_andy_bowers_on_the_state.html.

Brantley, Ben. "There's No Place like an Imaginary Home." The New York Times. December 5,
2005. Accessed January 11, 2015.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/05/theater/reviews/05boun.html?_r=0.

48

Brantley, Ben. "Home Is Where the Years Disappear." The New York Times, April 23, 2013.
Accessed January 11, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/theater/reviews/the-trip-to-
bountiful-at-the-stephen-sondheim-theater.html.

Campodonico, Christina. "THE DRIVE HOME: Sasha Anawalt on LA Dance Project -
AMPERSAND." AMPERSAND. November 1, 2014. Accessed March 15, 2015.
http://www.ampersandla.com/drive-home-la-dance-project/.

"Call Me Ishmael." Call Me Ishmael. n.d. Accessed March 24, 2015. http://callmeishmael.com/.

Campodonico, Susan (teacher). Interview with the author, Los Angeles, CA, October 25, 2014.

Cerrone, Christopher. Invisible Cities: An Opera by Christopher Cerrone. The Industry Records.
2014.

conleec. “AMB_Ext_ParkingGarage_Stereo.wav” Freesound.org
http://www.freesound.org/people/conleec/sounds/150004/

Dimenberg, Edward. "The Kinetic Icon: Reyner Banham on Los Angeles as Mobile
Metropolis." Urban History 33, no. 1 (2006): 109-10. Accessed March 21, 2015.
http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0963926806003543.

Dredge, Stuart. "Serial Podcast Breaks ITunes Records as It Passes 5m Downloads and Streams."
The Guardian. November 18, 2014. Accessed March 24, 2015.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/18/serial-podcast-itunes-apple-downloads-
streams.

E-audio. “Passenger’s Door Close (mono).wav.” Freesound.org
http://www.freesound.org/people/E-Audio/sounds/118247/

"Why Podcasting Is Bigger Than You Think - Edison Research." Edison Research. September
11, 2014. Accessed March 21, 2015. http://www.edisonresearch.com/podcasting-bigger-think/.

evsecrets. “Seat belt pulling and clicking” Freesound.org
http://www.freesound.org/people/evsecrets/sounds/170743/

Friedman, Ann. "The Economics of the Podcast Boom." Columbia Journalism Review. March
20, 2015. Accessed March 21, 2015.
http://www.cjr.org/first_person/the_economics_of_the_podcast_boom.php.

Friedman, Lex. "Apple: One Billion iTunes Podcast Subscriptions and Counting." Macworld.
July 22, 2013. Accessed March 21, 2015. http://www.macworld.com/article/2044958/apple-one-
billion-itunes-podcast-subscriptions-and-counting.html.

49
Gray, Margaret. "Review: Tyson's Inviting 'Trip to Bountiful' at the Ahmanson Theatre." The
Los Angeles Times, September 8, 2014. Accessed January 11, 2015.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-the-trip-to-bountiful-at-the-ahmanson-
theatre-20140928-story.html.

Griffith-Greene, Megan. "Podcast News: How a Once-nerdy Audio Tool Is Ushering in a New
Golden Age of Radio." National Post. March 6, 2015. Accessed March 22, 2015.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/03/06/for-all-the-audio-files-how-the-once-nerdy-podcast-is-
ushering-in-a-new-golden-age-of-radio/.

Gross, Terry. All I Did Was Ask. New York: Hyperion, 2004.

Hallett, Alison. "An Interview with Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt." The Portland Mercury.
Accessed March 21, 2015.
http://www.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2010/02/19/an-interview-with-the-
magnetic-fields-stephin-merrit.

How Radio Creates Empathy. Performed by Jad Abumrad. Big Think, 2012. Film

"L.A. Dance Project - About." L.A. Dance Project - About. Accessed January 11, 2015.
http://www.ladanceproject.com/about

Lowry, Brian. "TV Review: 'The Trip to Bountiful'" Variety, March 6, 2014. Accessed January
11, 2015. http://variety.com/2014/tv/reviews/tv-review-the-trip-to-bountiful-1201122883/

Mendoza, Joseph (Joe) (retired petroleum engineer). Interview with the author, Los Angeles,
CA, October 25, 2014.

Mendoza, Joe. “Bio.” March 2015.

Mendoza, Nancy (artist). Interview with the author, Los Angeles, CA, October 25, 2014.

Mendoza, Nancy. “Bio.” March 2015.

Miller, Frank. "The Trip to Bountiful." TCM: Turner Classic Movies. n.d. Accessed January 11,
2015. http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/188698|0/The-Trip-to-Bountiful.html.

"Mono vs Stereo." - Difference and Comparison. Accessed March 21, 2015.
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Mono_vs_Stereo.

NHumphrey. “Car Engine Start, Idle” Freesound.org. n.d.
http://www.freesound.org/people/NHumphrey/sounds/200973

Nonemaker, Elizabeth (Annenberg Fellow, USC / musician / composer / writer). Interview with
the author, Los Angeles, CA, December 7, 2014.

Nonemaker, Elizabeth. “Bio.” March 2015.

50

Perlberg, Steven. "BuzzFeed Joins the Podcast Frenzy." CMO Today RSS. March 24, 2015.
Accessed March 24, 2015. http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2015/03/24/buzzfeed-podcasts/.

"On SoundCloud Pro." SoundCloud. Accessed March 24, 2015.
https://soundcloud.com/pro?ref=t061.

Roose, Kevin. "What's Behind the Great Podcast Renaissance?" New York Magazine: Daily
Intelligencer. October 30, 2014. Accessed March 15, 2015.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/whats-behind-the-great-podcast-renaissance.html.

Rosen, Christopher. "'Serial' Is Renewed For Season 2." The Huffington Post. November 26,
2014. Accessed March 21, 2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/26/serial-season-
2_n_6227844.html.

RutgerMuller. “Car Door Porter Beeps Muffled.mp3” Freesound.org. n.d.
http://www.freesound.org/people/RutgerMuller/sounds/50696/

Sebastian, Michael. "Will Podcast 'Golden Age' Unlock Brand Advertising Budgets?"
Advertising Age. February 25, 2015. Accessed March 21, 2015.
http://adage.com/article/digital/podcast-golden-age-unlock-brand-advertising-budgets/297299/.

Seibert, Brian. "Kicking Up a Boom Out West." The New York Times. October 11, 2014.
Accessed January 11, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/arts/dance/los-angeles-is-
attracting-more-top-dancers.html

SERIAL Parody. Performed by Cecily Strong. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjidkNvN-Ps

"Slate Group Announces Podcast Network." Slate. February 25, 2015. Accessed March 15, 2015.
http://www.slate.com/articles/briefing/slate_fare/2015/02/panoply_slate_group_announces_new_
podcast_network.html.

Stevious42. “Footsteps in Street Woman.wav” Freesound.org. n.d.
http://www.freesound.org/people/Stevious42/sounds/259639/

"This American Life." ITunes. Accessed March 24, 2015.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/this-american-life/id201671138?mt=2.

"Upgrade AudioBoom." AudioBoom. n.d. Accessed March 24, 2015.
https://audioboom.com/about/upgrade.

Weiner, Jonah. "Toward a Critical Theory of Podcasting." Slate, December 14, 2014. Accessed
January 11, 2015.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/ten_years_in_your_ears/2014/12/what_makes_podcasts_so_ad
dictive_and_pleasurable.html.

51
Woodylein. “At a Bus Stop.” Freesound.org n.d.
http://www.freesound.org/people/Woodylein/sounds/213564/

!

!

!
!

Abstract (if available)

Abstract The Drive Home is a podcast that marries arts journalism, criticism and car culture to capture the conversations that occur after a performance ends. This thesis discusses The Drive Home’s place in an emerging “podcast renaissance,” its implications for arts journalism and criticism and documents my creation of a pilot season of the podcast. To produce The Drive Home, I select a performance to attend and invite a guest to join me for the ride. I record the conversation we have after the performance, while a driver steers us to a destination in Los Angeles. After the drive, I then transcribe and edit the interview and add ambient and natural sounds to recreate the discussion’s feel and mood. ❧ Three episodes comprise the first season. Each chapter gives background information about the episodes, including descriptions of the performance discussed, profiles of the guests who come along for the ride, transcriptions of episodes and finally my reflections on producing and editing the podcast. Together, these insights constitute an investigation into how the arts, criticism, journalism and car culture can be bridged through sound and the medium-specific components of podcasting.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

The art of Ampersand: applying the creative process to podcasting and audio journalism

PDF

Changing the dialogue: How digital creators are reshaping film criticism

PDF

At home in Los Angeles

PDF

Music between the lines: how duality informs the artistic process and future of classical music

PDF

Cultural collisions and identity across artistic mediums

PDF

Outfit: a queer fashion podcast that explores the relationship between the LGBTQ community and their clothing

PDF

Misunderstood films from the 90's - 00's

PDF

What happened to critical criticism? Art criticism expressing a negative opinion seems to be a dying breed, but this is how we save it from extinction – for we must

PDF

The Nutcracker network

PDF

Dancing a legacy: movement in the wake of the Greensboro Massacre

PDF

Christopher Trumbo: Growing up with the Blacklist pilot podcast produced utilizing primary source material from the Focus on the Masters Archive & Library

PDF

The Awareness Podcast: a look into how sports can negatively affect a student-athlete's mental health

PDF

An old art in a new home: Beijing Opera in Los Angeles

PDF

One of us: exploring the relationship between Hollywood and disability

PDF

The road to Hopscotch: an exploration of identity with Los Angeles' mobile opera

PDF

Skid Row culture: an embedded journalist's exploration of art and community in the nation's homeless capital

PDF

The Black catalyst show

PDF

One big damn band: an introduction to the Red Dirt musical scene

PDF

Doing fringe In LA: how three performing artists stay off-beat in the entertainment industry's backyard

PDF

Trailer talk: performance journalism staging conversations and re-engaging public space

Asset Metadata

Creator Campodonico, Christina (author)

Core Title The drive home: a podcasting journey

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism (The Arts)

Publication Date 05/05/2015

Defense Date 04/01/2015

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag arts criticism,arts journalism,audio,Benjamin Millepied,car culture,Dance,L.A. Dance Project,Los Angeles,Merce Cunningham,OAI-PMH Harvest,performance,podcast,podcast renaissance,podcasting,Radio,Rashaun Mitchell,REDCAT,Silas Riener,Stephin Merritt,The trip to bountiful,Theater

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Anawalt, Sasha (committee chair), Page, Tim (committee member), Seidenberg, Willa (committee member)

Creator Email campodon@usc.edu,ccampodo@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-567063

Unique identifier UC11301140

Identifier etd-Campodonic-3439.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-567063 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Campodonic-3439.pdf

Dmrecord 567063

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Campodonico, Christina

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA