Podcasting An Institute

The conversation around Audio × Democracy is expanding, and on this episode of Podcasting An Institute, I’m joined by the first guest representing the audio side of this work. Arielle Nissenblatt has spent the past decade helping shape the podcast industry as a strategist, writer, community builder, and advocate. We talk about what she has learned from watching podcasting grow from an emerging medium into a global industry, w...

On this episode of Podcasting an Institute, I sit down with trailblazing comedian, actor, producer, and podcaster Michael Diaz, better known to many as Juan Bago. Our paths first crossed through the New York Latino Film Festival and later through Latinos Out Loud, where Mike gave me the opportunity that helped shape my professional journey in audio. From his early days in Washington Heights and public-access television to Room 28, ...

On this episode of Podcasting An Institute, I sit with Laura Lemus, Nonprofit Partnerships leader, one of my first colleagues in movement-building work, and someone who unexpectedly set off my podcast career. We go back and trace her path from organizing into a successful career in philanthropy and her pivot into tech, where she continues expanding her work rooted in her values around community. What she shares is what she learned ...

On this episode, I sit down with movement builder and social entrepreneur David Lubell to unpack the origins of Welcoming America, the national initiative that helped bring the idea of “welcoming communities” into the mainstream. What began as a local project in Nashville eventually spread across the United States and inspired a global network through Welcoming International. David reflects on how the early movement too...

At Podfest Multimedia Expo in Orlando, a screening of the documentary Age of Audio stirred a set of questions I couldn’t shake about where podcasting actually is today. Watching the film as someone who has spent years building audio inside nonprofits and movement spaces, I found myself both focused on podcasting’s origin story as well as its current phase. During the Q&A, I asked whether the film’s ending was ...

On this first guest-featured episode of Podcasting An Institute, I welcome Maria Javier—a longtime friend and builder whose career spans city government, immigration advocacy, national campaigns, and democracy institutions—for a conversation that does something very specific: it publicly declares an institute before it exists. We say the words Audio × Democracy Institute out loud—awkwardly, imperfectly, without a ...

In this episode, I reflect on how Podcasting An Institute came into being—and why now is the moment to build it. After fourteen years working across nonprofit and social justice spaces, I trace the threads that led me here: a three-month sabbatical, time spent in Portugal opening up my thinking, receiving the Frank Karel Scholarship at ComNet, and realizing—again and again—that audio does something democracy work ...