Sayre Quevedo is a producer at VICE. “I'm not like a cinephile at all but in a movie nobody says, ‘And then he revealed to me a deep, dark secret.' You discover the deep, dark secret as the main character is learning it. And I just feel like there's something so much more engaging for me as a listener to feel like I'm discovering at the same time as the person who's doing the reporting than feeling like you're just describing the process of discovery. I just need things to feel like they did...

Bianca Giaever is the host of Constellation Prize and a producer at The Daily. "My favorite radio stories are ones that were passion projects to begin with, that would be un-pitchable from the start because the idea sounds so mundane. .... Boy talks about anxiety as I feel anxiety would have been the longline for the Scared is scared. Holy Cow Lisa would've be like I want to make a movie about my heartbreak, like every other f*****g person on planet earth? ... Terrible pitch! But the person...

Wendy Zukerman is the host and executive producer of Science Vs. "There is an expectation that if you have a platform you have an agenda. And whereas — for better or worse — me, personally, I don't have particularly strong opinions about things that I don't know about. It's what makes the show possible. I'm terrible at other things in life, but when it comes to issues, I'm pretty good at knowing, oh, I actually don't know anything about that. I shouldn't be having an opinion. And I just...

43: Nadia Sirota Nadia Sirota is the host and co-creator of Meet the Composer and an acclaimed violist. “I actually feel like somebody being joyful about something in their life is wonderful. ... There's this temptation when you're in college, and definitely when you're in conservatory, to try to find the right constellation of things to hate. That will make other people think you're smart. And it's really tempting, and it's really easy, in some levels, to sort of fall into that kind of...

Avery Trufelman is a producer of 99% Invisible and the host of Articles of Interest. “The literal battleground of interior and exterior forces in your world is what you’re wearing.”

Ira Glass is the host and executive producer of This American Life. “It’s not an accident I made a radio show where I am having intimate conversations with people on tape. ... Like the only person who would go to the trouble to invent something like that is somebody who has difficulty with intimacy, you know what I mean? And I think that I totally was inventing a thing to do in conversations with people on tape that I was having so much trouble doing in real life.”

Julie Snyder is the co-creator of Serial and S-Town. Prior to that, she was the senior producer of This American Life. So the original conceit [of This American Life] was using the tools of journalism to [tell stories from] everyday life but then I felt like we flipped it back. ... Like why can’t we take then the same sort of narrative tools that we have, that people use to just talk ... and apply that back to things that are traditionally topical stories and news stories?

Robert Smith is a correspondent for NPR's Planet Money. "I've done [radio] for 30 years. I don't want to come in and do the same story every time. Like I want things to be challenging. … And it's solely for myself. It's solely so I don't sound like a lot of NPR reporters — they've been there, they've seen it, they've done it. ... Even ones who are really good. They're just like, "I am good at this, I am doing what I always do." And so if the very least thing that comes out of...

Alex Blumberg is the co-founder of Gimlet Media. Prior to that he was a producer for This American Life. "A big lesson for me is that there aren't really rules. If [the radio story] is really fun, and you really love it, it's probably going to work. ... And if it doesn't, if it drags, then you should come in with script. ... In the beginning, I was always asking myself, here's this like 3 minute piece of tape in my story — and every other piece of tape had been like 30 to 45 seconds, and...

Lu Olkowski, an independent radio producer, is the host of CBC's Love Me. "You spend so much time with people and I just think it's so s****y to suddenly — the story airs and you — disappear. ... I think that's terrible. And I just don't want to do that."

Lewis Wallace was a reporter for Marketplace. "I think our listeners and audiences are strong enough to hold that I can have a credible voice in reporting a story, and a truthful voice in reporting a story, and also have a perspective."

Julia Barton is a freelance editor who edits for Revisionist History, The World, and Studio 360. She reports for Radiolab, Marketplace, 99% Invisible, and more. "If people think they might want to be an editor the first step is to pitch to places that have good editors and get edited and really pay attention to that process. ... But also the second thing is to just listen to work — work that you like and work that you don't like — and figure out how are you reacting to it. Like where am I...

Mike Pesca is the host of Slate's The Gist. "There was a time when the most intelligent guy in your town was just the guy who knew the most — he knew the family genealogy, he knew facts. We've gotten away from that. The facts are there on a computer. So I think the definition of intelligence has a lot to do with synoptical connections — the ability to make connections, the ability to make analogies. So I have these conceptual scopes — I find a way to tie seemingly disparate things together....

Sruthi Pinnamaneni is a producer at Reply All. “It’s almost like me and the other person were learning about each other. And I don’t ever think about it like oh this is what makes this person weird or this is a weird moment. It’s just like moments where a thing feels real. You hear somebody tell you something and you feel like they’re telling it for the first time, and you just can’t get that quickly. It just takes time.”

Jonathan Menjivar is a producer at This American Life. "When I started in radio I imagined myself on the radio more. But I've come to a place where it doesn't matter to me. I just want to make stuff."

Emily Botein is the Vice President for On-Demand Content of WNYC. "I feel like as a producer, the whole goal is to have someone become more human, reveal something more personal, say something surprising. So it's your job to make an unrealistically good situation — everything has to be perfect for the host, you want the host to be super comfortable, whatever the host likes. And stupid things, from like what they want to drink, to how they want the mic positioned, to where they want to sit,...

Jessica Abel is the author of Out on the Wire. "The group edit format, while emotionally difficult, actually is an incredibly efficient tool. In an hour, two hours, you can get the intellectual work done on a piece that could take weeks without it.”

Tim Howard is the senior producer of Reply All. "You can do radio stories without stakes they just have to be really fun."

Jacob Goldstein is a reporter for NPR's Planet Money. "I've never been that interested in the classic investigative story — here's this victim and here's this villain, and implicitly, I, the reporter, am the hero. ... They were never the kind of stories I wanted to read, they were never the kind of stories I wanted to write. I like profiles of weirdos and stories about systems."

Audie Cornish is the host of All Things Considered. "I ran a gauntlet of people who underestimated me. Every subject is like, "Are you the intern?" Every lawmaker is like, "I don't understand who you are?" People don't see me so when they finally meet me they're not sure what to think. And I think the only way you can get through this job, or any other job where people will underestimate you on arrival, is to just not on board it. Like I can't collect it. And so, maybe it means I've been...

Sean Rameswaram is the host of sideshow. "On the outside, which I was on the outside for a long time, I thought public radio takes itself too seriously. My favorite moments in public radio are when Scott Simon interviews Ke$ha. We don't need to be highbrow all the time and it's actually endangering our medium."

Note: This episode is explicit. Kaitlin Prest is the host and creative director of The Heart. "My whole thing about making stuff is I want it to *feel* like the thing. If you're making a show about love, I want to feel like I'm falling in love when I listen to the show."

Anshuman Iddamsetty is Hazlitt’s art director and audio/visual producer.* "I stare at waveforms constantly. So like I'm staring at the layout of the waveforms more than anything. There is a sort of visual component to how the show finally comes together, right? I can tell how many — again I understand how out to lunch I sound now — but, if i’m being honest, I can kind of tell, “No, this sounds right because I can see the ratio of the a person’s cut up voice to the music to the sound effects...

David Weinberg, a former Marketplace producer, is part of KCRW's Independent Producer Project and the creator of Random Tape. "I felt so trapped before I found and decided that radio is what I wanted to do. I placed a lot on this as being the thing that was going to save me. And so there was this huge amount of fear that like if I don't do it well then I have nothing. ... And so recording my life all the time was a way to be like, 'Oh, I'm not a bum bumming around with no plan. I have a...