Rob – How should this episode of Sound School end? 

Robert - Oh, I think the ending should be a little emotional, but a little funny. It should reflect on all that we have learned, but not in an obvious way. It should have charm. It should probably have music coming up in order to like goose the ending a little bit. And it should linger in people's minds for weeks to come. 

Now you just have to do it. Figure that out!

Rob – (Laughs) – You have to deliver the tape that gives me that ending.  

Robert – (Laughs) Oh, no, it's always the host's responsibility, and you are the host today. 

Rob – No, no, no, no. The weight is on the guest! 

Robert - I hope you don't tell all your guests this.

(theme music)

This is Sound School. The backstory to great audio storytelling. I’m Rob Rosenthal. I make this podcast for PRX and Transom. 

I like the way Robert Smith thinks. He has a mechanic’s mind. Always looking under the hood, scrutinizing how stories work. 

Today, I’ve asked Robert to apply his radio mechanic’s mind to story endings. Which he says are very important to a story but can be a real challenge to land. They have to carry a lot of water. 

Robert - We know from psychology that the last thing people hear is the most important in their mind. It stays in their minds, the recency bias, right? So a lot of times, the ending will determine what someone thinks about the whole story, even if you had great stuff at the beginning. 

And more importantly, these days in podcasting, the ending determines whether someone will want to come back and get more. Or if it's a series, will wanna hear the next part. But if you can't do an ending, then people will be like, yeah, it was pretty good, but it won't stick in their memories. And that's what you want. You want the whole thing to stick.

I bet you know Robert. He’s reported for NPR for years! These days, he’s a contributing host at Planet Money. And he teaches journalism at Columbia University. 

Given how rock solid his writing and reporting is, I was surprised to learn he thinks he’s bad at story endings. 

Robert - It's because I think I'm a eat dessert first kind of person. So whenever I have like a great line or great idea, I like to put it at the beginning. And then when I come up with ideas, I'm like, “Oh, I gotta put it in to my script now. And so I don't leave anything behind.”

Rob – You told me once that when you get to the end of a story you have empty pockets. 

Robert - Yeah, I'm trying to use every trick that I have, I guess.

Now, I should say as a professor, I tell my students like always think about your endings, always like save something good for the end. But when I personally write things, I'm just like, “This is funny, I’m putting it in now.” And by the time I get to the end, I am just, I feel empty. I feel like, well, I've said it all. And I just don't know what to put there. And I'm embarrassed. I'm embarrassing that I don't practice what I preach to my students. 

Rob – (laughs)… So you have this problem. You don't pay too close attention to your endings. You end up at the end of a story with empty pockets. But to sort of combat that problem you created a list of ending types. 

Did you create this list so that it would be a resource for you so that you could just pull it off the shelf. Look at it and go “Oh, you know what? This story would now benefit from ending X or ending Y.”

Robert - Well, that's a very noble way to put it as a resource list. I would say it was out of jealousy because I'm like, oh, other people know things that I don't. So I did go and listen to a lot of endings. And to help me, I'm an analytical person, I put them into buckets and I'm, like, “Okay, this is this type of ending, this type of trick” and “here's another form of ending.” And yeah, I can use this. To think, oh, should I use this particular trick? Maybe there's something that I haven't used yet in the script that I could do this thing. 

So yeah, it's my way of dealing with incompetence and uncertainty is to make lists and categorize things. 

Rob – Why do you beat yourself up? Incompetence? What are you talking about, man?

Robert - Whenever you're writing something you're incredibly fragile and there are moments where you're like, ah, this is so great and it's going so well. And if you hit the end and you're just like I got nothing and you know that endings are so important, yeah, you do beat yourself up I think and you slink into that edit being like, well, I didn't really have time. My ending's not very good. 

Yeah, it an emotional thing. Writing always is. 

 Rob - Why don't we run through some of the endings that you've put into buckets? And the first one I want to talk to you about is “cinematic endings.” What constitutes a cinematic ending?

Robert - So I think, I think one of the nicest things to leave someone with is just a picture. A scene in their head. And this also avoids having to be a little overly didactic about “What does this all mean?” You know, just one little scene… It doesn't have to be a full tape, ambi, description scene. It can just be a little action, a little snapshot of something. 

And much like the last scene in a movie it can be evocative of the piece but not, you know, literally a character saying this is what it all means.

Rob – As an example, you point to Scott Carrier’s story “Running After Antelope.” 

Robert - This was one of the first stories that I heard that I was like, whoa, like everything about it was I didn't know you could do this in radio. And it was radio at the time… 

Clip – Scott Carrier (in tape) - Yeah, there they go. 

Scott’s brother - What? 

Scott - There they go, you see him crossing over there? 

Scott’s brother - No. 

Scott - Over to the right. Quite a ways away, in fact. Way out there. 

Scott (narrating) - A couple of years ago, my brother and I went to Wyoming to run down an antelope. 

Scott (in tape) I only see three over there. 

Scott’s brother - Well, there were about eight down there. 

Scott (narrating) - It was August, and our plan was to chase one animal until it overheated and collapsed. 

Scott - It just took off running. You want to follow it? 

(running sound, fades under) 

Robert - Scott Carrier has this theory that a long time ago, I guess, millions of years ago humans would hunt antelope by running after them. And they wouldn't catch the antelope because they're too fast but they would tire the antelope out. 

And so he and his brother… chase antelope all day…. 

It's just a great piece. And Scott's of course an amazing writer. But the ending of the piece is just one little scene. They've already, I should say, failed to catch the antelope for various reasons but he has just one last scene of the antelope.

Clip – Scott (narrating) . I haven't gone back to Wyoming for the purpose of chasing antelope, but I drive through there sometimes on my way somewhere else, and one time last spring I was going east, and there was a train along the highway also going east at about the same speed, and suddenly there were three antelopes running alongside the engine, chasing it. It was incredible. It was even more incredible to see the three of them simultaneously speed up, pull out in front of the engine, and fly across the tracks. I pulled over and waited for the train to go by, and there they were, three young males, looking back at me with those same black eyes, and hardly breathing at all. 

Rob - So listening to that, what is it that stands out to you about his writing and the usefulness of this as the last moment in a story? 

Robert - Well, it's taken me out of my thinking mode and into just sort of the visual feeling mode. And it's this like symbol a little bit of the power of the antelope versus the sort of power of humans in the train. And it also the kind of thing that like you can imagine being sort of alongside the road and seeing. And it just gives me this feeling of like. Like the world is bigger and more amazing and harder to chase in this case than you thought. I think they cross over. Yeah, if I remember correctly. Yeah, and I think he's nodding, he's nodding to the power of nature.

Okay so that’s Robert’s idea of a “cinematic ending.” From there, we moved on to another category of endings. One Robert calls “Just the Facts.” 

Robert – It’s usually just a deadpan recitation of some extra facts in the story. 

He told me his favorite example of this maneuver can be heard in a two-hour documentary on This American Life called “Harper High.”

Clip - Ira Glass - Harper High School, South Side of Chicago, first day of school this year, first thing in the morning, everybody gathers in the gym for a beginning of the year assembly.
[GYM CHATTER]
The School's principal, Leonetta Sanders, is at the mic.
Leonetta Sanders - I need us to begin to quiet down.

Ira Glass - Sitting all together in a group are the freshmen, looking the way that freshmen do on the first day of school, like they barely know who they are—

Leonetta Sanders - The Class of 2016, where you at? The Class of 2016, where you at?

[CHEERING] (fades under) 

Back in 2013, This American Life embedded three reporters for five months at Harper High. They had incredible access. To teachers. Students. Families. It’s easily in my Top 10 radio documentaries. 

Ira Glass - The program is 1/3 pep rally, 2/3 business, introductions, and rules. Exactly the kind of first day stuff you'd expect at any school, till it's not.

Leonetta Sanders - Last year was a difficult year for most of us, for all of us in the Harper community. You know, and the freshman may not know, but we lost three students last year.

Ira Glass - This is actually underplaying the bad news. Last year, 21 kids, current and recent Harper students, were wounded by gunshots. Five recent students died. And that is all on top of the three current students that Miss Sanders mentioned. Total, 29 shot, eight of them dead.

Leonetta Sanders - But we know that their spirits are with us. So right now, I just want to ask for a moment of silence and prayer as we think about and remember the students that have fallen. So at this time, I'm just going to ask that we take about 20, 30 seconds, just for a moment of silence for Marcus Nunn, Cedric Bell, and Shakaki Asphy, right now.
(fades under)

For two hours, listeners are ensconced in the school and the surrounding neighborhood as the reporters delve into the repercussions of the previous year’s violence. No context about violence in schools nationwide is provided. The story never zooms out.  Until the very end. That’s when Ira Glass delivers a devastating “just the facts” ending.

Clip - [SCHOOL BELL RINGING]
Marcel Smith - All right, be safe.

Ira Glass - Last day of the semester. This is the day that we ended our reporting at Harper. Marcel Smith, saying goodbye to kids who are on their way home.

I saw that somebody tweeted after our first episode about Harper High School was broadcast. Somebody said that we found the most violent school in America or in Chicago or something. And I just want to say, that is not true.

Nobody keeps statistics like that. We just found a high school-- a high school that's seen a lot of shootings. And there are others.

Liz Dozier - Hi, I'm Liz Dozier, the Principle of Finger High School on the far South Side of Chicago. We've lost nine students to violence in the last little over three years.

Shontae Higginbottom - I am Shontae Higgenbottom. And I'm the new principal here at King College Prep High School here in Chicago. And this year, I've had two students who were shot during our Christmas break. And then we had the last case with Hadiya Pendleton. And she died.

John Lynch - My name is John Lynch. I'm the Principle of Castlemont High School in Oakland, California. So I've been at Castlemont High School for the past two and a half years. And in the time that I've been here, six students have been shot. And two of those students who were shot were actually killed.

Bertie Simmons - I am Bertie Simmons. And I am the Principal of Furr High School. And it's located on the Far East Side of Houston, Texas. In the last two years, I could name five students that were shot and killed.

Rahel Wondwossen - My name is Rahel Wondwossen. And I am the Principle of Cohen College Prep High School. We are located in Central City, New Orleans. At Cohen College Prep High School last year, we had two students who were shot. Both, thankfully, survived. And in the city of New Orleans, we had more than 10 students who were shot and killed.

Laquanda Jackson - My name is LaQuanda Jackson. I'm the Principle of Simon Gratz Mastery Charter High School in Philadelphia. This year, we have lost one student to gun violence. Last year, we lost two students to gun violence. And the year before, there were six.

Alberto Carvalho - My name is Alberto Carvalho. I am the Superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools right here in Florida. Over the past four and a half years, I have buried or attended viewings for 44 children who have died violent deaths right here in our community.

Music – fades out

Robert - When you think about how we traditionally evoke emotions, it's we have characters that we get to know and they're facing challenges and you empathize with them and you go through their emotions. 

And in “Harper High,” it was, they must've faced a challenge. Like they could have just had the school bell ring and be like. That's the end of the semester. You could certainly do that. And you might be left with the feeling like, wow, that's a bad school. Going through the ringer. 

And so by having all of these other principals and teachers from all of these other schools who have had shootings in a pretty like straightforward way, just say there's students who were shot or killed in their schools since they've been principal, since they been a teacher it's just like with each one, the camera sort of goes back and back and back and you have all these extra facts and you don't remember any of the facts in particular, but it's the aggregation of the of the facts which just like, I thought, it really just took my breath away because I'm like, “Oh. Everything I put into this Harper High listening for the two hours, this is everywhere. This is a lot of schools,” and it just is so effective. 

And I think about this one sometimes and I often say to my students, is there, are there just a few facts that you haven't been able to get in that really just moves us into a bigger context and you can just deliver in a kind of like. “Hey, just so you know, like this, this thing,” you know. “Take this with you. Put this fact, this real thing about the world in your pocket.”

Here's a third type of ending to put in your pocket. “The Quote.” Robert says consider ending a story on a quote. But, not a piece of tape. Instead, write out the quote. 

Robert - Yeah, maybe I'm a little bit old school in this, but I was taught, because I was told in public radio and at NPR that you should not end on someone else's quote. You owe it to your listener as the host, the tour guide to round out the story. Like, you know, you sort of attach in a story to the first character you hear this sort of a law of narrative, right? But really the first character you hear is the reporter, the host. And these days, the reporter of the host is often saying, “I found this story,” “This is why I wanna tell you this story,” “This is why this is important to me.” So the host has a real presence. And to end a story on someone else talking, I feel like it leaves you a little unsettled. You know, they're like, where's my guide for this whole thing? What do they have to say? 

So I think what you can do then is sometimes there's a quote or something that maybe even wasn't good tape, wasn't delivered well, or you couldn't use. And this is a little bit of a cheat, but it allows you in your voice to say, you know, “I remember as I was reporting this story that every time this thing would come up, so-and-so would say something and would say this.” And... And even though you're ending on someone else's quote, it's me saying that, if that makes sense. It's just a form of ending that people have used. And I think like, if you're really stuck, it just adds a little extra something. 

Here's an example. In 2011, NPR reporter Kelly McEvers spent an evening with an anonymous activist protesting against the Assad regime in Syria. At one point during the protest, government thugs show up to chase the protesters away – including Kelly who is recording everything with a microphone in the sleeve of her shirt. 

Clip – Kelly (on location) - Then you hear the cars. The activist says that's a warning sign. The security forces are coming. 

The protesters surge back toward us. Everybody's running down the street. Everybody's running like crazy. We're leaving. [BANG!] Oh, jeez. 

The activist calls me mama and grabs my arm. We're trying to look like we have nothing to do with the protest. The activist says they could arrest us at any minute. So we do our best to stay calm. 

We make it back to the car. Okay. That was fast. That sound was a sound grenade. We saw the flash just to our left as we were running back through the alley. Now things are, you know, acting normal. So when you go around Damascus and everybody says, “oh, look, it's normal,” it's like, well, sort of. 

Kelly (in narration) - Later, after I left Damascus, I talked to the activist on a secure line. I've asked him to check in with me, so I know he's all right. Every day one of us is arrested and tortured, he says. One day my time is coming. Until the world realizes what's happening in Syria, he says. They will try and get us all. 

Kelly McEvers, NPR News. 

So there you have it. Three examples of endings as defined by Robert Smith: 

“The Quote,” which we just heard masterfully deployed by Kelly McEvers. 
“Just the Facts” and “The Cinematic Ending.” 

I know for certain you want more. Robert has another one. A good one. Called “Turn the Page.” You’ll have to visit the webpage for this episode of Sound School to hear about that. Transom.org is where you’ll find it.

Before I wrap up this episode, as I was talking to Robert, I noticed an obvious ending that was missing from his list. 

Robert – Oh no. 

The bookend. Returning to the beginning of the story. So I told Robert, this is his moment to shine. An opportunity to give me the ending. One that will stay with listeners not just for weeks, but for months and months! 

Robert – (Laughs then sighs.) 

Music – Blue Dot Sessions – “Home at Last” (very sappy) 

Robert - And then Robert Smith looked up at the ceiling of the studio. Sweat beaded on his brow as he worried that his insecurities, his incompetencies at ending stories had now come back to haunt him in front of the mic. Everyone was watching to see if he could come up with something, something. And then he looked out the window and he saw two antelopes. Running through the fields. And he thought, they don't have an ending. They just keep running. Forever. Robert Smith, NPR News, New York. 

I don't know. This is your job! This is YOUR job! 

Music – “Home at Last” fades out

(theme music)

Remember to visit Transom.org for Robert Smith’s “turn the page” style ending. Plus an ending he thinks we should try to avoid. 

Transom embarked on a really interesting project here in Woods Hole – storytelling with scientists.  Maybe you know this, but Woods Hole is very much a science community. There’s Marine Biological Laboratories, Woodwell Climate Research Center, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The scientists may be excellent at communicating their research to other scientists, but delivering a story to the general public – that’s another thing. 

Meg Bowles who worked at The Moth, and Viki Merrick from Transom ran a storytelling workshop for several scientists. Who then told stories in front of a live audience. Wanna hear – and see them? Visit Transom dot org. Search for “Making Waves.” 

This is Sound School, the backstory to great audio storytelling. Thank you very much for listening. If you have a sec and want to write a review, I’m thanking you in advance. 

Genevie Sponsler, Jay Allison, Jennifer Jerrett, and WCAI all pitch in to help me produce this podcast. 

I’m Rob Rosenthal.  
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