Theme music Hi everyone. Rob here with another episode of Sound School from PRX and Transom. I want to start the show this way. Audience participation. Raise your hand if, when you were first starting out making audio stories, you tinkered around. You experimented. You played with sound and story. Raise your hand if you did. Yeah. I see a lot of hands. Thank you. In case you were wondering, I’m holding my hand up, too. Okay. Put your hands down. I’ve got another question. Think back. When you were making those experients and trying things out, raise you’re hand if it wasn’t that great. Yes. Lots of us. Myself included. My hand’s in the air. Well, Champika Fernando found themselves in the same situation. Champika has a background in technology. They worked for a company that designed online software for young people. Software to be creative – to make short animations and games and things like that. But along came the itch. To make stories. And the experiments began. Champika - I had done some like interviews with my family and I've been wanting to sort of document their stories and stories interviews with my friends and kind of taking all of that and mixing it together And when Champika listened to what they made… well, as Ira Glass once put it, there’s a moment early on when your taste exceeds your skills. Champika - For me there was like a really big gap in terms of the stuff I was getting and then what I would hear in audio stories that I admired or appreciated The question is, what should you do about that? How do you close the gap? Keep making stuff? Sure. For some people that’s their way into the audio storytelling world. Try and try and try again. Champika could do that. But they also thought they could use a hand up. So last summer Champika signed up for a Transom Traveling Workshop. Champika - You learn best when you're learning alongside other people, both, you know, who are I mean, especially when those people are a little bit further ahead than you are. And so it felt like a great opportunity to meet other people and learn alongside them and with them. Champika also confided in me that they were a little bit shy about sharing their experiments with others. Champika - And the workshop felt like a really good way to force myself to do that in in a comfortable, safe space. Long-time listeners to Sound School know that I used to teach for Transom. I did so for many years. I stepped away in 2021. And, the workshops went on hiatus for a while during the Covid years. But, now they’re back. In full swing. David Weinberg is teaching them. David is a stellar audio producer. When he makes something, I listen. Podcast series like “Welcome to L.A.” and “The Superhero Complex.” And that’s just for starters. David is prolific. Plus, David taught alongside me for many years. So, it makes sense he’d take up the mantle of the workshops for Transom. Transom held workshops in 2025. There was one on Catalina Island, off the coast of Los Angeles. Another in Interlochen, Michigan. Berlin, Germany. Amherst, Massachusetts. In fact, that’s the one Champika attended. The one in Amherst. Champika told me as soon as everyone arrived, they were off and running. Each student producing a profile of a person who lives in the area. Champika – It was challenging because it was such a short period of time. We had one week to get out there, record, edit, and put it all together. And then we shared it at the end. So it was it was nerve wracking as well. Champika lives near Amherst in Western Massachusetts. West Stockbridge to be exact - where there’s no municipal garbage collection. Everyone in town has to bring their trash down to the dump – or what’s formally known as the transfer station. That’s where Champika met Wayne, the guy who runs the transfer station and the person she wanted to profile for the workshop. Champika told me Wayne is always ready with an opinion on anything and everything. But it was his contradictions that were most interesting. Champika - He's this like super gruff kind of guy, but is also very spiritual. And he always seems angry, but he's also like one of the nicest people I've ever met. Rob – Did you have a sense of the story? Or, did you just have what seemed like an interesting person on your hands? Champika - I think just an interesting person. I knew that, you know, anytime you talk to Wayne, it it's like, you know, it's really hard to even pull away from the cause he's got a lot to say. So I knew there would be a story there, but I definitely didn't have one in mind. Rob – So you set up this interview. You show up with your gear. And you start talking to him but you don’t have a sense as to what the story is. You just know that he’s a good talker and you’re libel to get some good tape. Is that a fair assessment? Champika – Yeah. Rob – And so how was that for you conducting an interview where you weren’t quite sure what you were after? Champika - I felt comfortable with it only because I think in terms of my own personality, I'm not really a planner. And so I really enjoy the process of like gathering a bunch of stuff and looking at it and then trying to make something of what you have as opposed to sort of going into it with a clear plan…. I know there are some people who work much better in the in a planning sort of approach. But for me it felt nice because I, I felt like I was just having a conversation with Wayne. We did, you know, in the workshop, the day before we went out and interviewed, we spent some time brainstorming as a group, like questions for each of our each of the people we were interviewing. So that was super helpful because I walked in with you know, a rough idea of different types of things I could talk to him about and ask him about, but it made it feel much more relaxed as if I was just having a conversation with him and on any given day. Rob – Do you feel as though you ended up coming away with a story? Champika - I don't know that I felt that right as I was walking away. I knew when I was walking away from the interview that there were a lot of like great sound bites that I had. But it was after listening to all the tape that I started to sort of see a story come from it. That story is called “Ode to My Trashman.” And, I’d like you to keep an ear out for the end. It’s the part of the story that really caught my attention. I didn’t see it coming and thought it was a really impressive maneuver by someone just starting out making audio stories. Wayne - There's too much trash. Amazon, you buy a little package at Amazon, it's a six by six box it comes into and they got a box around it, right? It's eight inches to eight inches high, sixteen inches across, two feet long. Champika -That's Wayne. He manages the town dump here and tiny West Stockbridge. Picture a gravel lot the size of a small gas station. It houses a couple of industrial trash compactors and it's surrounded by the idyllic Berkshire Hills. In our town, we don't have trash pickup. So every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, we town folk come here to drop off the boxes from that week's Amazon purchases. It's nine o'clock on a Tuesday morning, an hour before Wayne opens up the dump. It's quiet except for the sound of the birds, a car in the distance, and a couple of lawn sprinklers Wayne has set up for his wildflowers. Wayne - No, no, no. It was a spam call. Champika - Do you do you get a lot of spam calls? Wayne - Yeah, about ten a day. Champika - Wayne's a seventy year old retired US Marine who has two broken shoulders and walks with a limp. He stands at about five four. Wayne - Yes, it Champika - Usually Wayne's dog Smokey would be here too, in his army vest. Smokey was a gigolo. Wayne - Yeah, he was a gigolo. He's he was a purebred showdog. And they got rid of him 'cause his tail got closed in the car door. It had a little kink into it, like a Z. Champika - Smokey died last year. There's a life size plush toy dog that takes his place. Wayne - Now I got the dog. He's up on the porta potty and turn around that's run another dog down. Champika - The dump is filled with things like this. Looking at the water, things Wayne has saved from the town's people's trash. Wayne - Skeletons sitting on the bench had a sign on 'em. What time does the bus get here? And the other s skeletons saying, Oh, it's always late. No, gotta have a little fun down here. Champika - Wayne gives them a new life. Wayne - I got a puma up in a tree and the puma was looking at the bird and the bird was looking at the dog and that was going, this is circle. It's just things people throw away and they look good. Like Buddha there. You can't throw a religious thing away. And that's bad juju. Like I said, I'm not religious, but I ain't taking a god dang chance. I'm not superstitious, but I will not break a mirror. Champika - What do you think like the meaning of life is or the purpose of life? Wayne - Well I'll put it this way, that some things they've done in my life I won't speak of today. I spoke of them once after I got sober. Forty-two years ago, the ninth of this month. Champika -Congratulations. Yeah. Wayne - And turn around, I told my story. And sitting there watching people's jaw drop. And after the meeting and everything else, my sponsor and a few other old timers, okay Wayne, you got it out. Now leave that out of your story from now on. You're striving for a new life. Champika - Wayne checks his watch. It's ten AM. Time to open up. We walk down the path to open up the gates. We pass by the small patch of wildflowers he's planted. Wayne - Take the the ha hemlock tree down and next year. I'm gonna plant the peonies into it and put dahlias in around it. Champika - We get to the gate. There's already a lineup of eight cars waiting. Tuesdays are busy, he says. People have been waiting all weekend to throw this trash away. Wayne opens the gates. Cars start flooding in. Wayne blares his Johnny Cash C D over the loudspeakers. The dump comes to life instantly. Wayne - Hey for what you tell me that I'm doing pretty good. How much longer would it be to be crossed that page? Champika - An old lady tries to throw a small plastic bag filled with bottles into the cardboard compactor. Another man tries to throw a couple of eight-foot strips of wood that he must have ripped out of his house this weekend. Wayne yells, You can't throw that into the compactor. The man turns to walk away. Then Wayne says, Well, you came all the way here with it. Now you might as well throw it in. I'm standing next to the compactor, watching it all unfold. The stench of everyone's fresh trash is mixing with the hot, humid air and getting stronger. The sounds of bottles breaking, bags of trash being crushed, people laughing and greeting one another are getting louder. Wayne - April, April, it's getting light outside. The whole train is buffet's low gonna have a strain. Champika - The stuffed dog is sitting on the bench looking up in the tree at the cat. The cat is looking at the bird, the bird is looking down at me, I'm looking at the resurrected garden Buddha on the ground by the trash, and he is looking back. A Johnny Cash song I've never heard plays over the speakers. A rusted sign Wayne pulled out of the trash and nailed to the tree reads, Life is good. Wayne - Yeah. Life is good. Why from the way? It's a good saying. Champika - For the Transom Story Workshop in Amherst, I'm Champika Fernando. Rob – I think what attracted me most to the story was the ending. What can you tell me about how you came to that ending? Champika - I've gotten really into like magical realism in in a lot of the things I'm consuming recently, whether it's like audio stories or books or films. One of the things I appreciate about that is just this like blending of reality and fantasy and… spirituality… And… the dump had opened… I was just standing there and I had this feeling of like I was like, wow, it's like such a wonderful place. I was really enjoying being there. And then the s that song came on, the song that I use at the end…. it's an old gospel song that Johnny Cash covers. And I ha I was standing in front of, you know, the statue, and it was just to me it it felt like a spiritual moment for me. And… I tried to put it together in this way that captured this idea that there is something bigger or you know not so easily explained and a little bit sort of magic in all of those things. Rob – What was that that you detected? Champika – Um. It’s a good feeling. It's a complicated feeling, but it's not a literal thing. It's magic. (Laughs). Theme music This story from Champika got me thinking about other stories made at Transom workshops. So, for the next Sound School I dug into the archive for an episode featuring two a-MAYzing stories produced in a week in Nashville back in 2019. A touching piece about an adult learning to read and another about a famous west African musician who immigrated to the States and worked in a nursing home where no one knew he was a singer. After time away from the stage he was looking to kickstart his career. That’s next time on Sound School. In the meantime, interested in a workshop yourself? Applications just opened for a Transom Traveling Workshop on Catalina Island in April 2026. Next year Transom will also hold a workshop in Bloomington, Indiana. And, they’ll be circling back to Amherst, Massachusetts, and Interlochen, Michigan. I should mention – the workshops aren’t just for beginners. People who already have some experience will find the workshops helpful, too. All the deets are at Transom dot org. This is the Sound School podcast from PRX and Transom. I’m Rob Rosenthal. I produce the show with help from Genevieve Sponsler, Jay Allison, and Jennifer Jerrett. Thanks for listening. ##