Happy new year everyone! Lord knows we could use a new year. 2025 was turbulent for audio storytellers and reporters. The layoffs. The closures. In public radio, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was defunded. That put many stations in jeopardy – especially rural ones. Then there was the whole “pivot to video” thing. That really gets under my skin. And what the hell was that announcement by some company saying they were going to produce thousands of AI-generated podcasts? How is that a good idea? So, yeah. 2025 was pretty dismal. But, I’ll tell you this…. Late last year, I interviewed two young producers that made my radio heart go pitter patter. I left our conversations inspired. I thought “Okay. All is not lost. There are emerging reporters and producers who care about craft. They care about mission. They want to explore and poke at the edges.” And that is exactly where I want to start 2026 - on that encouraging note. An antidote to 2025. On the next episode of Sound School, we’ll hear from Kabir Jubram (jahg-rum with a hard j.) He’s twenty three years old and is a reporter in Johannesburg, South Africa. Kabir – Yeah. That’s my city. Shout out Jozi! Last year, Kabir produced a provocative documentary about the problem South African men have expressing emotions which can lead to mental health issues. Kabir – That’s why I love journalism is that I get to, like, learn more about humanity and learn more about what makes people, people. That’s next time on Sound School. On this episode you’ll meet Anna Van Dine. A twenty-eight-year-old reporter from Winuski, Vermont just outside Burlington. Anna – We jokingly call it the Brooklyn of Burlington. In a documentary she made last year, Anna pulled a writing maneuver I hadn’t heard in years. Anna – It was a risky decision… The kind of thing that in retrospect is like “Why would anybody do that?” Theme Music This is Sound School from PRX and Transom. I’m Rob Rosenthal with the backstory to great audio storytelling. Anna landed a reporting gig with Vermont Public Radio in March of 2020. Right at the start of Covid. She was pouring over an online map of Vermont looking for doctors to talk to about the pandemic when she noticed a clinic in Island Pond, a village way up in the northeast corner of the state, close to Canada. Very rural. The clinic had only one medical doctor. Anna – Whoever this doctor is, has got to know everybody… like it was just obvious to me that he was in a unique role as a health care provider. Anna spoke with the doctor. He didn’t end up making it into the story she was working on. But, she remained curious about him. So, sensing a story, Anna reached back out. Just to talk. Anna – So then we started talking regularly over the course of many months and I would record those calls. Think of it as a long-term pre-interview over the phone that she recorded for note taking. And as she was sitting there listening to the doctor talk, she started toying with that out-of-the ordinary approach for telling the story. Anna even ran it by her editor. Anna – And he was like “Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know.” Eventually, the phone chats with the doctor turned into reporting on the ground. In-person interviews with the doctor and people who knew the doctor. Plus, Anna was given permission to record patient visits. A rare opportunity. Anna - That was also an incredible part of working on this piece was that he allowed me to come into his clinic for several days and I was able to go into the exam room with a doctor and a patient with a microphone and watch them have an appointment as a fly on the wall. As she reported, that unique approach to producing the story continued to bounce around in her head. Anna – And, the more I did, the more I was like “You know. I think that this could work.” Clip 1 – Dr. Primeau (in tape) Okay, so I have a patient starting right now. The nurses are just putting her in. Next guy just kind of routine, diabetes anxiety. Next one, interestingly I have two patients with the same name, and I I think this is the one who's a nurse who's got high blood pressure. We'll see. (fades under) Dr. Primeau (narrating) I'm Dr. Bob Primeau. This is my list of patients for the day. I'm the primary care physician in a small town in the most rural part of Vermont. I'm one of the only primary care providers and the only MD for miles around. And I treat people of all ages from all different walks of life with all different kinds of problems. Dr. Primeau (in tape) Next guy's 83-year-old, tough as nails, old farmer, still helping his son on a farm. Next one's a middle-aged woman with diabetes who struggles to control her weight. I'm hoping to get a house call in to a woman that's sort of semi-palliative with heart failure. Dr. Primeau (narrator) I've been working here for 34 years and I've gotten to know most of my patients well. Lately, though, my job has been changing and not for the better. I waste more and more time on the computer that I could be spending with my patients. And I'm getting ready to leave. Before I do, I'd be happy to let you tag along with me for a day at the clinic as I see my patients to give you a window into what I do here. (music fades out). That’s an intriguing choice, right? To have the main character narrate the story. Anna told me she made that choice partly because of her background in oral history which she studied along with journalism and anthropology at New York University. Collaborating with Dr. Primeau and having him tell his own story fits a kind-of oral-history style of storytelling. Anna - I had also always wanted to do something like this. I remember when I listened to… Dave Isay's “The Sunshine Hotel,” his piece about this flop house on the Bowery in New York… Clip – Sunshine Hotel (fades under) Anna - It's.. narrated by a very, very like strong personality kind of character… And ever since I listened to it, I was like, “Why don't people do more of this? I really want to try this!” Clip – Sunshine Hotel – (fades up then under then out) Anna - And then with this story specifically, I had all of these transcripts from these phone calls with Dr. Primeau from the time when I was just regularly talking to him. So I had all of these words and these thoughts that he had said. And I thought, you know what, maybe I could put this to good use in some sense and not just have it be notes… So I used those transcripts to write the narration for him in his own words. Clip – Dr. Primeau (narrator) - Being a doctor in a place like this isn't like being a doctor in the suburbs. Because of its unusual degree of remoteness, we provide a range of care that's a lot wider than that of the average primary care clinic. Dr. Primeau (in tape) - So t-shirt off and then get yourself comfortable there. Patient - You wanna me to take off my sneakers or Dr. Primeau - No, no, fine. Patient - Okay. Janet Osborne - Nowadays most of the doctor's offices around you go in fifteen minutes and whoosh you out the door. Dr. Primeau (narrator) - Janet Osborne was the nurse manager at Island Pond Health Center for thirty eight years before she retired in twenty fifteen. She is perhaps the most dominant force that shaped the clinic. Janet Osborne - When you go to the other places, you basically have to go somewhere else, whatever they're ordering. Like if Dr. Primeau orders a blood test, nurse comes in, draws the blood. If you need some medicine, if you don't have a special coverage for it and we can do it, you can fill your medicine. If you need a cardiogram, we can do your cardiogram. Dr. Primeau (narrator) - I love this aspect of my job. If I was in a typical suburban outpatient practice, I would blow my brains out. Primary care docs like me are supposed to take care of hypertension and diabetes, but as soon as someone says the word heart, they're supposed to walk down the hall and see a specialist. Dr. Primeau (in tape) - So when can you get this wet? Patient - You said forty eight hours. Dr. Primeau - Right. When do the stitches come out? Patient - You said a week. A week. Dr. Primeau - Yeah. You can do it yourself at home, it's just like taking the hem out of pants or you or you can walk in here, either one. Okay. All right. (fades out) As Anna wrote the script, she’d sometimes find holes in the story. That was an easy fix. A little more interviewing. Then she’d use his own words or something close to them to fill in those holes. Next, she shared the script with Dr. Primeau. Anna drove up to his house. And they sat down and went through it line by line to make sure he was comfortable with the way she wrote for him. Anna - There were a few moments where he was like, “Oh, I wouldn't say this, or could we change the wording of this?” And there was one section, the section where he was talking about his reasons for leaving that we went back and forth on for a really long time. We had conversations, we had email exchanges…. And I was so glad that I had done the story this way when we were negotiating that stuff because I had written these words, you know, for him to read. And he was like, I don't, that doesn't feel like what I mean. That's not how I want to say this… And so we had what were like somewhat challenging conversations trying to figure out how exactly to frame things. Rob – I want to dissect a little bit this moment where you and he tussled a little bit over a particular section of the documentary. What was it that you were trying to say? Anna – Yeah. Um. It was the section where he was talking about why he was leaving the practice. And this was a decision he made while we were making this story. So it was pretty fresh. And he felt pretty strongly about some of his reasons for stepping back from his job as the doctor in this town. And also like some complex feelings about what it meant to leave and what that would mean for him and for the community. And I felt an instinct, and I think this was wrong. I felt an instinct to water that down pretty significantly. Rob – Can I interrupt you for a second? Anna – Yeah. Rob – Are you talking about the section where he’s complaining about modern medicine. Anna – Yes. Rob – Okay. So he’s complaining about modern medicine and he’s saying in essence, and I don’t have the transcript in front of me, but he’s saying in essence he’s sick and tired of sitting in front of a computer and taking notes and he’d rather spend time with his patients. Anna – Hm-hm. Rob – And it sounds like you picked up on that but your version of it sort of watered things down a little bit? Anna - Yeah, the way that I wrote that initially… was… a lot softer, I would say. Rob – Why was that your inclination? Anna - Well, I think that his inclination at the time was to be really strong. Like using language that… was so strong that it felt incongruous with the tone of the rest of the piece. And I was inclined to make everything be kind of the same tone throughout. Rob – And then so he reads the script and he’s like “No, no, no, no. I don’t feel soft about this. I have some really strong opinions about this.” And so you guys re-wrote that section. Anna - Yeah, we went back and forth about it. You know, when we were sitting together in person with the script, and then, you know, we continued to talk about it over email for a while and eventually landed on language that for me didn't feel like it took the tone in a completely new direction. But for him… expressed what he wanted to express in a way that felt authentic. Clip – Dr. Primeau (narrating) - These days it feels like the healthcare system has begun to disregard the most essential part of what it means to be a doctor. And things are shifting in ways that frankly I find to be in complete opposition to the work I'm here to do. This takes a few forms, but one of the most infuriating is the amount of time I waste on data entry instead of talking with my patients. I have to check a growing number of boxes and a growing number of poorly designed systems. The systems feel to me like they are designed to deliver data to managers and insurers rather than designed to help me do my job. When there are hundreds of items to check off a list, there is little hope of making time for the complexity and surprises of people's lives. Finally, though I could go on for much longer, the systems reflect a great deal of wishful thinking that if we harangue patients enough, they will change their lifestyles. A doctor who knows Dr. Primeau - So much of the patient doctor relationship has to do with intimacy, trust, knowledge of the things that aren't on the problem list, in which the lives that they really lead. And that's the part that is never going to show up in the medical record in a you know a concrete description. And it's certainly not going to show in the productivity stats that the administrators are interested in. But I think that is the essence of caring for people. Dr. Primeau - These changes are harmful to the people I've spent the past 34 years taking care of. I'm disappointed that outpatient medical practice is going in this direction and I don't want to participate in it anymore. At the end of the summer, I'm leaving the primary care practice. I'll still be working in the area, but only doing inpatient care at the hospital in Newport. I'll have more time to devote to our local trail network, to play music, maybe even do some work overseas or teach at the high school. None of that will be as important as the thirty-four years I spent as the doctor in Island Pond. Rob – If you had narrated this story, do you think it would have been a different story? Anna – Yes. It would have been a really different story. I think that that you would, you know, hear a lot more about Dr. Primeau as opposed to perceiving him. Rob – What’s that mean? Anna – Well, If I were narrating, I would have told you, you know, kind of what he looked like and maybe something about how he interacted with patients and maybe some omniscient thoughts about or statistics about doctors in rural places and things like that. I think it would have been the it just the flavor would have been very different. Whereas… he's saying to you something in his own words and in his own voice and like you come to understand something about him through this encounter with him. Clip – Kenneth Whitehill - When Doc started out he used to come and see my folks and he came on his bicycle. And my dad used to say when he saw him coming at noontime, here comes that young idiot. (laughs) He didn't know what kind of a doctor he was. Dr. Primeau (narrator) - This is Kenneth Whitehill. He's ninety-three, and his family's like royalty around these parts. I took care of his father Lucian as he got old, and now I take care of Ken. Ken - I can remember he and my wife used to argue and he said if you don't like it, go to somebody else. But she thought she knew more than he did at the time. He was real young then. Yeah, he's let's put it matured. Of course he still I guess rides his bicycle from Newport to Island Pond rather than take his electric car. So yeah, he's he's still a healthy boy. And we don't want him to retire. I think he needs to wait till I'm gone. Dr. Primeau - Why have I stayed so long? I feel such a sense of wonder every day. As a doctor, I have a front row seat on people's lives, and I love it here. I am deeply in love with the outdoors and this landscape. I can walk out my door and ski or bike in a beautiful place. My wife Ellie and I raised our two kids here. And I think there's a lot of ways in which rural areas are better places to live and raise a family. Not always, but a lot of ways. Everyone knows each other, and the lack of anonymity means that the social fabric is more genuine. Ken - You know, that that makes a difference if you really get to know the person or you get to know your own doctor. And he helped me out when my wife was real bad. She had strokes. And so I kind of listened to him and what he thought was best for her. And so I get to know him real well through that. No, I I think Bob really knows what he's doing now. Rob – Do you think this was successful in the end? Anna - Oh my god. I don't like it. Does anybody like what they make? Rob – What do you mean you don’t like it?! Anna – No, I have, I have mixed feelings about it. I've never made anything like this before, right? And so like I was really like flying blind, and it's the feeling of like, you know, I did something really new for the first time… It's just a different way of making a radio story. And I think like every creative choice you make is has a trade-off. You get something and you lose something with everything you do… there are always trade-offs. And I think something I would love to hear more of in radio and audio storytelling is like people experimenting with making more of those trade-offs instead of just doing the tried and true… I think we could all experiment more. Can that be our mantra for 2026? “I think we could all experiment more?” Anna Van Dine is an independent audio producer in Vermont. Theme Music Did you catch the article making the rounds last month? The one where Fiona Sturgis who writes about podcasting for The Guardian laments the bad sound quality in so many podcasts. She attributes the problem to the “pivot to video.” Producers are spending more time on visuals than they are the sound. 
Fortunately, Jeff Towne at Transom has written more articles about good sound than you can shake a stick at. Need tips on mixing better? What about recording cell phone calls? Maybe you’re on the hunt for some new gear? I tell ya, if you have a question about how to sure make your audio sounds good, there’s a good chance you’ll find an answer at Transom.org. I’m Rob Rosenthal. I make Sound School for PRX and Transom with help from Genevieve Sponsler, Jay Allison, and Jennifer Jerrett. Thanks you for listening. ##