Julie Shapiro

And with her, we came up with this theme of letting go.

And this was based on a book that she had written and recently published after spending some time with people at the end of their lives.

So the book was called How to Say Goodbye.

And in talking to Wendy, we thought about a theme that wasn't exactly that, but letting go really touched on the things she was drawing and writing about.

And so this was the theme we brought to the producers to work with.

And Gregory Warner made this piece called The Sound of Silence, which was about a situation he, his wife found herself in and, you know, touches on letting go, but also really dives into a certain time and place and space in their lives.

And I just chose to believe in the former.

That is so important to us to give, you know, we want to give brand new producers an opportunity to do something, but also to give more experienced people the opportunity to do something else than they usually do.

And we felt that with Gregory, too.

I mean, he is a masterful storyteller at all durations, but we really felt like he could get, you know, a little more personal with this and bring his like signature NPR style to this little flux work.

And it's just so beautiful.

Oh, yeah.

We were inspired by the film 32 Sounds by the wonderful filmmaker Sam Green.

And in that film is a scene with Anaya Lockwood, who's this...

very accomplished field recordist, sound designer, composer, sound experimentalists.

And she has this theory of listening with the world instead of listening to the world or at the world.

So we grabbed that theme from Sam's film and invited producers to draw from that theme of listening with as they tell a story and also to think about everyday sounds in their environments.

Well, this piece is actually, it's called In Between Silence by the British producer Talia Augustidis.

And as Talia thought about the story she wanted to tell, she was thinking about the sounds around her versus the sounds that other people are hearing and are maybe forced to hear.

So at the time, the war in Gaza was in full force, and she wanted to think about the situation for people living in Gaza and their sonic environments.