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This is Sound School from PRX and Transom. Rob here. 

I’m taking a little summer vacation to visit family out in the Canadian Rockies. Lucky me! So, I was inspired to hunt around in the Sound School archive and pulled out a really valuable episode from a few years ago about interviewing shy people. So valuable, I suspect you’ll want to take notes. 

I picked this episode because the third season of “The Turning” just dropped. As always, “The Turning” unfolds the true story of people trapped in situations that require extreme sacrifice and devotion – until they turn away. Hence the name of the podcast. “The Turning.” 

The new season is called “River Road.” It’s written and produced by Erika Lantz and Elin Lantz-Lesser. They’re sisters. And this season – the third -- focuses on The River Road Fellowship, an insular community in Minnesota. Although, “insular community” is putting it mildly. The River Road Fellowship was a cult. Erika and Elin take on the story of a young woman who escaped the cult and became a whistleblower. 

I worked with Erika and Elin as a story editor on the first season of The Turning back in 2021. That season -- “The Sisters Who Left”  -- featured the stories of former nuns in Mother Teresa’s order, the Missionaries of Charity, MCs for short.  

I was struck by how adept Elin and Erika were talking to people who, by and large, kept to themselves. After all, silence and self-restraint were central values of the MCs. 

Elin - I definitely think they were hesitant. 

Here’s Elin.

Elin - These were women who were part of a very closed off group that had a standard that you're supposed to be quiet about things. You're not supposed to share, basically, the secrets of this world with the outside world. 

Erika?

Erika - They were instructed… writing letters home, that they weren't supposed to speak negatively about the group or speak even about difficulties or hardships, but just to talk about their faith and God and… prayer. 

Elin - And sometimes some of them we spoke to, you know, hadn't even shared some of this stuff with their families or their spouses or they really didn't talk about it regularly. And so I think they were.. conditioned and socialized to not talk about it. 

And then they were also maybe anxious about how it would come across or whether they would offend the very group that had made them partially into who they were now.

Let’s listen to the opening scene of The Turning. It features Mary Johnson. She’s the main character. Mary worked directly with Mother Teresa from the 1970s on through the ‘90s. 

Clip 1 – Mary plans her escape

Erika is a long-time reporter and podcast producer. She’s worked at “Snap Judgment.” She produced the “Kind World” podcast for WBUR. And she’s filed stories for NPR. She was the lead reporter and host of “The Turning.”

Elin is a documentary filmmaker. Perhaps more importantly for “The Turning,” Elin has a PhD in clinical psychology. She also conducted interviews for the show and sat in on some of Erika’s interviews. 

In terms of building a connection with interviewees in “The Turning,” Erika says she often had several conversations with sisters prior to interviews. She would tell sisters she understands life in the order was complicated. That she isn’t interested in a one-size-fits all portrait. She also underscored how much she valued their perspective. 

Then, during the interviews which were often recorded over video chat, she used a lot of non-verbal communication. 

Erika - I definitely use my face a lot to emote and just show that like whatever they're saying to me, I'm reacting to even if I don't want to interrupt them and sometimes I do interrupt them. What’s helpful as I think both Elin and I have very emotive faces and like very active eyebrows, so we can communicate a lot with our body language and in person, definitely with body language, just like having an open stance, leaning in, really facing them. That's something I love about interviewing in person is if you're holding the mic to them you like are naturally getting very close to them. And I just to try to have a very like open like “I'm-ready-to-receive-what-you-want-to-say-stance.” …

And also, just a lot of reflecting back of what you're hearing as they talk. And this is something I've always, like, tried to do, but actually once I started working with Elin, she kind of blew my mind with the way she would reflect back to people. And Elin, I wonder if you want to, like, talk about that and kind of how you explained it to me.

Elin - The most difficult thing for people who struggle to open up is just feeling like they're heard. 

Here’s Elin again.

Elin - And people are more likely to open up when you feel or seem interested in what they're saying. And maybe that's kind of obvious. That's just being human. But I think that you can be very intentional about how you're approaching what they're saying and a) really giving them the space to talk and just say what they want to get off their chest. But then b) to reflect back what they're saying without adding to it or without saying a “but” or even sometimes without asking a further question, sometimes just restating what they described in a shorter way to show that you're with them, that you're listening, can be extremely powerful, and then they can almost react to themselves. 

And sometimes I think when they react to themselves, that's actually where you get more of that, like emotionally valanced stuff where they're like “Oh, yeah, I didn't think about it that way.” Sometimes they'll even be surprised by what they said. 

And I think that also a piece of that can also be validation. So beyond just reflecting, also saying “I can understand feeling like that. Wow.” And having that intonation in your voice, that energy and that showing that you really care about what you're saying and you can imagine how they would feel. Not that you have to agree with what they're saying, but you can understand that emotion. 

Giving that space for that deep, true validation makes people feel heard and they can be real with you. 

Rob – Elin, Are you naming specific emotions. 

Elin - I mean, that's huge… In my previous therapy training, we're always taught to name specific emotions, use emotion words, and that allows then the person to either correct you like “No, I wasn't feeling worried, I was feeling angry!” or for them to agree with you. And it gives, I think, the person permission to use emotion, language. It encourages it. 

And while obviously therapy is a different beast and a different goal and has a different set of ethics and priorities, I think that that same principle can be applied in interviews that when you start saying sad, worried, anxious, angry, scared, upset, and even the more specific you can get -- so feeling regret versus just feeling bad -- I think can help elicit more of that emotional content out of people and also for them to use emotional language. 

Rob – I think sometimes producers joke, and maybe shouldn’t, but sometimes we joke and say work is sometimes like radio therapy. 

Elin – Totally. 

Erika – (laughs)

Rob – Yeah, it seems like that sometimes because we’re digging around so much in people’s character and emotions and motivation, yeah, it can almost seem like therapy sometimes. 

I wonder what you think, Elin, about this question: How does it feel in your body? What do you think of that question as a question to ask somebody? 

Elin - I think that's a great question to ask somebody… What does that emotion feel like for you? And even if you're, you know, interviewing about something that happened in the past. Asking “What did you feel in that moment emotionally? What did you feel that moment physically? Where did you feel that emotion in your body? Can you describe that sensation to me?” getting people back there and really describing in specific terms what that actually felt like, I think allows the content to just be more potent and powerful and… just more compelling.

Clip 2 – The discipline, Mary describes the ropes they used when sisters self-flagellate. 

Erika - When you sit down for an interview, the interviews we did for The Turning, we're talking about some really personal things, really dark things like we talked about emotional abuse… sexual abuse, feeling suicidal, feeling depressed and also happy things. But we really are ready to go there with whoever's talking and, like, linger in whatever they're feeling and just be there with them. And when you feel someone is really opening up and being. Just open with you.. there is this feeling that it's like a sacred moment. It feels like magic or it feels like something holy. It's probably some of the holiest moments I have ever is in interviews when I feel like people are just being raw and just willing to be, like a human to human person to person sometimes talking about things they don't they just don't typically talk about. 

And so you, you know, when you're really in that space and you're entering that holy moment with them. You can't help but feel the emotion with them and reflected back to them. I mean, it's like a rare privilege to be able to do that. 

Elin - Something else that I think relates to what Erika just said that I wanted to point out is that something that Erika is really good at is being super authentic, and that's easier said than done for all of us. But I think that when she's talking about having a “holy moment,” I think in that moment everything else falls away in life, like you're just in that moment together with that person. And that's where the authenticity and genuineness lie. Feeling things and expressing things, even emotions you're having…as an interviewer, and translating that physically and verbally. That's something that just has to come out in a real way. You can't fake a reaction. I mean, sometimes actually maybe you can fake a little bit, but I mean, the good reactions, the stuff where people really open up, I think comes from a real place.

Rob – Can you think of an example when you had a “holy moment?” 

Erika - I think there, were a lot of moments like that with this series… Sometimes they just kind of happened upon you and you don't expect them. And again, I'm talking about all these like traumatic events. The “holy moment” does not have to be about trauma at all. But I do know that when we were interviewing Sue and Joan, we did not know what was coming with Joan’s story. 

Clip 3 – Clip of Sue and Joan introducing themselves and joking about how they’re sisters – blood relatives. (fades down and under)

Elin - So we showed up for our first interview with them. Both of them. Both of us. And I think it was kind of fun, like it actually started out a little bit giggly… we tried to kind of like mirror some of their relationship and our own in front of them. And I felt like they could just feel like they could be real with us.

 Clip 3 – (fades up) Sue and Joan verbally poking at each other about their personalities. 

Elin - And then immediately after that, Joan, I believe, went straight into an individual interview with us where she really opened up and talked about when she seriously considered suicide exactly what happened as well as, you know, ongoing emotional abuse she experienced while in the community, as well as talking about what she described as a bad marriage she was in. So we got to, I think, a really powerful place by just being open and just being ourselves.

Erika - One thing I'll add about Joan opening up is like once she started… she just like talked and talked and talked and it's like she had to get something out and we didn't know what it was, but she was like, just going 

Elin – It was like her story was erupting from her. 

Erika - Yeah. And sometimes you do kind of just like when someone's just going and going, like letting them go and not knowing where they're headed it's because they are headed somewhere. You just don't know it yet. And letting them do that leads you to things that you don't know about. You don't know what to ask because you don't know. 

Clip 3 (end)  – Joan talks about several bad things that happened that led her to consider suicide. 

Rob – I want to talk about the idea of speaking with someone who is seems emotionally guarded and then you actually bring that up to them. Erika, I’m thinking about some of your interviews with Mary, the main character in “The Turning” where she never really cries. In fact she often laughed at serious moments. Can you talk about her emotional state in those interviews and the moment you said to her, in so many words, “Hey, I want to talk to you about you’re responding to me emotionally.”

Erika - Yeah. It was really interesting because I interviewed Mary more than I've interviewed anyone in my life. I recorded 14 interviews with her. And of course, we talked many times outside of the recorded interviews as well. And we're used to making stories about very emotional topics, personal stories, that kind of thing. So it is very normal for people to cry or get emotional during an interview. And it's not like I look for that, but it just happens regularly. But here, like 14 interviews are passing, and… she intellectualized a lot of what she was talking about in this incredible way that was like, so mind opening and amazing. And she's a writer. And so she, like, analyzes everything and thinks about it deeply. So, I mean, the interviews were hugely rich, but I did notice that like, she would talk about something very serious and then be laughing about it or smiling. 

For example, at one point she was talking about how after she left the Missionaries of Charity, at one point she asked her boyfriend, now, who's now her husband, to beat her because she just felt so much guilt for leaving. And she was used to beating herself with the rope, “the discipline,” like the nuns do but she didn't have that outlet anymore. And so she just, like, cried out to him one time, like, “beat me, beat me” and Mary’s telling me this story, and she's kind of laughing during it. 

So I finally at one point posed this to her… and. It was it was great because we could talk about why that was the case and I sort of put to her, “Is it possibly because as an M.C., as an M.C. sister, you're trained to smile and be cheerful through everything?” And she instantly, like, told a story about that that we ended up using in the series. And then she also just explained, like, this happened a long time ago, and I was a different person back then. And so I think we kind of found that both were true. Like, part of the reason is it just isn't her life now, and that's okay. And like, maybe that's a good thing that she doesn't feel everything all the time. Like, she can look at it from a distance and that's a lot of what she was doing, even though it did affect her. 

Rob – And so, saying to someone, in so many words, you’re not being very emotional, that really worked. 

Erika – Yeah!

Rob – Just holding the mirror up to them to see what they had to say. 

Erika – Yeah. Absolutely. 

Rob – Elin, do you have any thoughts to add to that?

Elin - I feel like it is almost a form of mindfulness in that it's like being able to step outside of the situation and look at it while you're in it at the same time… I remember when I was being trained in therapy, that's something that this incredible therapist, my supervisor is telling me… a really good therapist… is constantly having two things happen in their brain at once. One is what's happening in the moment, moment to moment, being in it, speaking, you know, making a plan in the moment. And the other part of yourself is sitting outside, noticing what's happening, noticing what's happening emotionally, what that person needs in that moment, and also your reaction to it. 

And I think that's what allowed Erika… to come forward and say, like, hey, I'm noticing this happening. Can we just talk about it? I think.. you can apply that principle in different ways, whether it be explicitly asking about it or whether it be adjusting what you're doing to give that person what they need in that moment.

Clip 4 – Ceremony where all hair is cut off and burned

Rob – What do you say at the end of an interview but let them know you might have to talk them again down the road which might not be something they really want to do. 

Erika - A couple of things. First of all, we always leave space at the end to ask them, “What do you wish I had asked? Anything come to mind?”… And often we get like great tape. And that moment, sometimes we get nothing. That's totally fine too. 

One reason I ask that, and I know a lot of people ask that, is I remember one time I was recording a tape sync for an NPR show and the host was interviewing someone, and after they hung up the phone, the person said, “Oh, they didn't ask any of the right questions” or something like that… And so I, I don't want to have anyone get off the phone with us and think that way. So we definitely ask that. 

I also think when we had interviews that were about more traumatic subjects, we also would like spend a little time just like chit chatting and like, “So what are you going to do after this? Like, talk about what they're like, what they're going to do for fun today. And just kind of like exit that space of darkness and intensity and just like transition into normal human conversation. (laughs)

Elin - I'll just add that I feel like people are always down to talk again, if you set it up right. if you show that interest, if you feel, if you make them feel like they matter.. and that you want to know more and you want to understand and you want to learn from them, they're going to be down to talk to you again… And I think even for often these closed-off, former nuns, there's something appealing about that. We all want to be heard. 

Erika Lantz and Elin Lantz-Lesser are reporters and producers for “The Turning.” I spoke with them for Sound School in 2022.

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Erika and Elin had even more excellent tips about interviewing people – shy or not. You can get them all at  Transom dot org.

My friend Sean Cole has returned to Transom. Thank goodness. He’s always got something interesting to say about the craft of audio storytelling. This time, an essay about his inner struggles. On one hand he’s a poet, an artform that celebrates the abstract. On the other hand he’s been an audio producer since 1997 including a lot of years at This American Life. And, as you know, the abstract is frowned upon in audio storytelling. Sean writes about how he navigates his two opposing sides. Read his essay at Transom dot org. It’s called “My Own Versed Frenemy.” That’s classic Sean! 

This is Sound School, the backstory to great audio storytelling. I’m Rob Rosenthal. I produce this show for PRX and Transom. I have help from Genevieve Sponsler, Jay Allison, and Jennifer Jerrett. My thanks to WCAI, the public radio station in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the radio center of the universe. 

Rob – Elin, did you know you have expressive eyebrows? 

Elin - Yeah. Is the thing we talk about in our family. Everyone makes fun of my eyebrows. I can do the eyebrow wave. I can't believe I'm describing that here. But yeah, I mean, that is the thing. But you don't need. 

Rob – Wait, I’m stopping you. I’m stopping you. What’s the eyebrow wave?

Elin - We're like, you know, like a wave in a in a stadium

Erika – A football stadium. 

Elin -  or like an actual wave… but I can move my eyebrows from one end to the other. 

Rob – Oh my god!! You can!! (Laughs)

Erika – (Laughs)

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