Matthew Moore: We start today by talking about a brand new podcast series produced out of Little Rock Public Radio. Joining me this morning from her office in Little Rock is Josie Lenora, the host of Track One. Josie, thank you so much for being with us today.
Josie Lenora: Thanks, Matthew, for highlighting the podcast. I'm happy to be here.
Moore: Tell me a little bit about how you came up with the idea for doing a podcast series. First of all.
Lenora: Yeah, when you look at other NPR stations of our size, New Hampshire Public Radio, WBUR, they all have these kind of episodic investigative podcasts where each episode isn't super long, but it's investigating a bigger, larger issue. I started realizing I have a ton of unaired footage or audio on my hard drive and a lot of stories that have never been told. And I think what radio is really magical at doing is kind of taking that audio and putting it together and making a story out of it, using me as the host to kind of tell the story. And so I was super excited that we finally got to make a podcast like that for Little Rock Public Radio. So it's called Track One, and it's our investigative episodic show.
Moore: And so the first story that you tell is in two parts, and it's and it's a bit of a dichotomy in part one and part two talking about, uh, the kind of uprising of book bans throughout the state of Arkansas. Let's talk first about episode one, where you're spending time in Saline County.
Lenora: Yeah. So the first episode is the librarian has asked to remove books or put them in a restricted section, and she says no. And so I decided to pair that in the first episode with the second episode where she's where the librarian says yes. So the first episode follows Patty, and she eventually loses her job and is currently suing because she refused to remove books. And it's kind of about her sort of against the entire community of people that want to move books.
Moore: And as the story kind of unfolds here, it's one of those things where this happened a few years ago, but it feels just as prescient now as it did then.
Lenora: Her and I have talked a bunch as that was unfolding. And then now that she has the ACLU and she's, she's suing the county. So, that part of it will unfold. And that was part of the reason it took so long to make it. I kept waiting, like, is it done? Is it done? Is it done? Um, because this keeps going on, um, these book relocation debates keep going on. They may go on forever. I picked these two stories, though, because I think they're very interesting what-ifs. You know what if you give in and what if you don't give in? And so that's why I picked the dichotomy of the two stories that I tell are parallel.
Moore: Let's talk a little bit about making this to begin with. Um, you know, I think one of the things that a show like ours that happens daily, you know, the kind of work that you do in Little Rock is, is often very like timely news. But this sort of work, as you mentioned, takes a lot of time. And we're looking at 2+ years of reporting that you've been doing here. Right?
Lenora: So much of it is just waiting for the story to play out. But even just writing the scripts, I'm working on episode three now, and I'm going through line by line, every single piece of the script. It's taking me way longer than I expected just to write the script. So there's that. We have a lot of edit meetings. Having Sarah, our operations director, is helping with audio production. Maggie, our executive producer, is also my fact checker. Maggie Reiner, afternoon host, goes line by line and checks to make sure every single thing is accurate. Uh, we're doing digital promos, so that's Nathan's job. Our morning host. So there's all these just little components. Um, and it's becoming so much of my life and personality. So it's a lot of fun to put all this together. But it takes hours and hours and months of work.
Moore: Absolutely. And, you know, this work is possible through some funding that Little Rock Public Radio got as well.
Lenora: Yeah. The Arkansas Press Women were very generous. They gave me the first mini grant that they've ever given, and I used it to pay Maggie Ryan, my executive producer and fact checker. So that made me feel a lot better about giving her a very tedious job of going line by line and double checking every single thing I said. And she caught one or two errors, too, and so she really saved me.
Moore: So this is not just going to be a series about book bans and book relocation. You're going to be working on other stories. What can people expect in the future from your work?
Lenora: Yeah. So episode three and we hope to have that done hopefully by February, is about crypto mines, which are these giant supercomputers that are showing up in these rural areas. Again, it's something I reported on a bunch, and I would love to put all my reporting in one place and kind of tell this larger story about the kind of discomfort people feel about these computers showing up in their communities. They're loud and they're mysterious, but they might not actually be that mysterious. And so then I also want to do a lot of reporting on LEARNS and how that bill became law. And then there's also a lot of research I'm doing into a piece, maybe some episodes about the governor, about the podium. So I'm going to go back through and sort of rereport on a lot of issues that we've covered and put them kind of in this packaged, glossy podcast. And that's that's the plan for now.
(Following this interview, an excerpt of “Shelved, Episode 1: Patty”, reported by Josie Lenora.)
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