Ear Hustle
by Ear Hustle & Radiotopia
Ear Hustle is prison slang for eavesdropping, and that’s what listening to the show feels like: a raw, often funny, and always surprising peek into the reality of life inside prison.
Hosts Nigel Poor and Earlonne Woods co-created the show that launched in 2017 while Earlonne was incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison, where Nigel was a volunteer teaching photography. Since Earlonne’s release in 2018, the show has expanded to include stories from prisons across the state, including the California Institution for Women, as well as stories about getting out of prison and starting over, post-incarceration.
From finding romance, to grappling with a life sentence, to trying to parent via 15-minute phone calls, Ear Hustle stories deliver what This American Life host Ira Glass calls a “"very real” and “untragic” take on prison life.
Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent listener-supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at radiotopia.fm and learn more about Ear Hustle at earhustlesq.com.
Episodes
Pockets
44m · PublishedPrisons are built with one thing in mind: surveillance. The architecture is designed to assert control and diminish privacy. But even in these spaces, people find ways to claim just a bit of privacy. In this episode and the next, we explore how individuals adapt to prison architecture. First: carving out pockets of privacy, real and imagined.
Listen to Earlonne guest hosting the podcast Wrongful Conviction here.
As always, big thanks to Lt. Sam Robinson and Warden Ron Broomfield for their support of the show.
Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Find a full list of episode credits at earhustlesq.com.
Some Darkness and Some Light
54m · PublishedStories from our first-ever international reporting trip! From the nightclubs of Oslo, to Norway’s first in-prison Pride parade, to an incarcerated Danish guy who wouldn’t take no for an answer: Ear Hustle goes abroad, mics on, baby.
Each episode this season will feature new artwork by an incarcerated artist. You can see their illustrations on our website.
Hear the full episode of the “San Quentin Prison Report” that we mention in this episode, here.
Is this your first time listening to Ear Hustle? Are you trying to convince a friend to start listening? For our tenth season, we’ve chosen 10 essential Ear Hustle episodes. Find those here.
As always, big thanks to Lt. Sam Robinson and Warden Ron Broomfield for their support of the show.
Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Find a full list of episode credits at earhustlesq.com.
Actual/Factual
44m · PublishedSam Brown spent 24 years in prison not just denying his crime, but lying about it, over and over again. Finally, he decided to come clean. Would the parole board believe him?
Each episode this season will feature new artwork by an incarcerated artist. You can see their illustrations on our website.
Is this your first time listening to Ear Hustle? Are you trying to convince a friend to start listening? For our tenth season, we’ve chosen 10 essential Ear Hustle episodes. Find those here.
As always, big thanks to Lt. Sam Robinson and Warden Ron Broomfield for their support of the show.
Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Find a full list of episode credits at earhustlesq.com.
The Five Senses
36m · PublishedLife in prison can mess with your senses. There are smells you can’t unsmell, and sounds you long to hear. Some tastes you forget about entirely, and some forms of touch are almost too evocative to bear. Five San Quentin residents reflect on the sights, tastes, touch, smells, and sounds of prison life.
Each episode this season will feature new artwork by an incarcerated artist. You can see their illustrations on our website.
Is this your first time listening to Ear Hustle? Are you trying to convince a friend to start listening? For our tenth season, we’ve chosen 10 essential Ear Hustle episodes. Find those here.
As always, big thanks to Lt. Sam Robinson and Warden Ron Broomfield for their support of the show.
Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Find a full list of episode credits at earhustlesq.com.
Ear Hustle Presents: Uncuffed
25m · PublishedA special episode from Uncuffed: During the COVID lockdown at San Quentin, Steve and Darren both got unexpected letters that changed their lives.
This is the second episode of the new season of KALW’s Uncuffed, a podcast training program at San Quentin and California State Prison, Solano. They’re in the middle of an emergency fundraiser right now, trying to keep their training and broadcast programs going after their main funder rescinded a grant because of a bureaucratic error.
You can learn more and support Uncuffed’s work here. Uncuffed is a production of KALW public radio in San Francisco.
Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX.
Ear Hustle Presents: My Mother Made Me
33m · PublishedThe Ear Hustle team is hard at work on our next season, which launches September 7! In the meantime, we’d like to tell you about a new podcast, hosted by Jason Reynolds. Reynolds is a New York Times bestselling author, and the Library of Congress' national ambassador for young people's literature. He’s ambitious, he says yes to everything, and he’s feeling overwhelmed. On the first episode of My Mother Made Me, his new podcast with Radiotopia Presents, Jason turns to his mother for advice, and discovers that overwhelmed is a feeling she knows very well.
Find out more about My Mother Made Me here.
Also mentioned in this episode:
The latest season of Motive, from WBEZ Chicago, explores the culture and secrets of prisons in small-town Illinois.
And the podcast series Deliberate Indifference examines how the Alabama prison system became one of the most dangerous in the country.
As always, big thanks to Lt. Sam Robinson and Warden Ron Broomfield for their support of the show.
Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Find a full list of episode credits at earhustlesq.com.
Last Memory: Ryan and Earlonne
50m · PublishedThe jig was up for Ryan, so he told police he’d turn himself in. His mom had one request: a final family meal at Applebee’s. Plus, Earlonne and Nigel head to the intersection of Firmona and Marine Avenues in Lawndale, California, the scene of E's last memory before being locked up.
As always, big thanks to Lt. Sam Robinson and Warden Ron Broomfield for their support of the show.
Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Find a full list of episode credits at earhustlesq.com.
We did it! Thanks to your generosity, we reached our goal of 1,000 donors and unlocked the $25,000 matching gift. Thank you! If you wanted to donate but haven’t yet, you can still chip in and help us explore more beyond San Quentin.
Last Memory: Michael
29m · PublishedThe day before committing the crime that sent him to prison, Michael stood in a parking lot in Bakersfield, California, and looked up at the sky. Twenty-two years later, Earlonne and Nigel visit that same parking lot, then return to San Quentin to tell Michael what they found.
If you need help for yourself or someone else, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or suicidepreventionlifeline.org.
As always, big thanks to Lt. Sam Robinson and Warden Ron Broomfield for their support of the show.
Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Find a full list of episode credits at earhustlesq.com.
We’re more than halfway to our goal of 1,000 donors! Donate to help us get there and unlock a matching gift of $25,000.
Catch a Kite 7
37m · PublishedThis season we're flipping the script on our traditional Catch a Kite episodes, exploring questions asked and answered between San Quentin State Prison and the California Institution for Women. Do men in prison form unofficial families the way incarcerated women do? Do women sentenced for killing an abusive spouse receive fair sentences? Which candies from the prison package catalog appeal the most in both places? All of this, and more, in Catch a Kite 7.
As always, big thanks to Lt. Sam Robinson and Warden Ron Broomfield for their support of the show.
Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Find a full list of episode credits at earhustlesq.com.
Give us a boost and help us reach our goal of 1,000 donors by June 8! Learn more and donate today, at https://on.prx.org/3KMxzRw. Tell us what Ear Hustle has helped YOU explore and why you're supporting the show. Leave us a voicemail at 1-510-906-1569, or send a voice memo to [email protected]. Thanks!
What Is This?
38m · PublishedLife in prison, without regular sex and intimacy, can cause all sorts of emotional and physical issues. Yep, we're going there — to explore the impact of this constraint inside prison, and for men and women seeking close relationships after they get out.
As always, big thanks to Lt. Sam Robinson and Warden Ron Broomfield for their support of the show.
Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Find a full list of episode credits at earhustlesq.com.
Support the show and become one of 1,000 listeners to donate before June 8. Learn more and donate at https://on.prx.org/3KMxzRw.
Ear Hustle has 129 episodes in total of non- explicit content. Total playtime is 81:16:26. The language of the podcast is English. This podcast has been added on February 22nd 2023. It might contain more episodes than the ones shown here. It was last updated on May 11th, 2024 14:41.