“Insane.”
“This can’t be for real.”

These were the first thoughts I had while listening to “Santa Fight Club”, by Josh Bearman on This American Life. Imagine a group of Santas, the first national Santa convention, a coup, and Santa fights caught on camera. Sounds absurd? This is the story of Santa Nick and Santa Tim, two bearded Santas caught in a political schism. When all the power of Christmas goes to one man’s head, chaos ensues... I was completely enraptured, listening to it.

We don’t usually talk about movies on this blog, so roll with us on this one: sometimes it helps to venture outside your medium to find new inspiration/perspective.

In my freshman year of college, I learned about this thing called the Kuleshov Effect - it’s a Russian experiment from the early days of cinema, and it’s amazing.

I have a 3” binder of creative nonfiction stories, and I open it up every time I need some inspiration. There are so many amazing stories in the world... the binder is gluttonous. Well-organized and gluttonous.

Many of these stories cry out to be adapted into radio stories. One example is "Final Salute", about the families whose loved ones will never return from war, and the Marine officers whose job it is to tell them.

Last May, my boyfriend Jon and I drove from Guatemala City to Petén, the northernmost region of the Guatemala. When you reach Petén, you instantly become swallowed up by the jungle. The air is thick and humid, animals and insects cry out in the night, and everything is green; the moon is barely visible through the thick branches and leaves of the trees. At one point, we stopped at a dingy gas station and got out of the car. I remember staring into the immense darkness and thinking, this is the jungle, and it has so many secrets.

A week after I got back to California, I heard episode 465 of This American Life, "What Happened at Dos Erres.” Produced by Habiba Nosheen and Brian Reed, this podcast tells the horrifying story of a military orchestrated massacre that took place in 1982 in the area I had just visited. The amazing thing is that his story, while horrifying, finds a way to inspire listeners.

To my ears, Love + Radio has one of the freshest sounds of any radio show around. The episode "The Wisdom of Jay Thunderbolt" (warning: not kid friendly) is a perfect illustration of how to make radio that feels immediate. It's an interview with a man who runs a strip club from his house, and it's a lot more.

This piece does a lot right, especially in its use of music, and in the intensive re-shaping of recorded sounds, through editing.

There’s one neat trick in particular I want to focus on: This piece makes excellent use of a difficult/awkward interview, and it does so by keeping the producer in the story.

I love listening to Jad and Robert laugh on the radio, because it brings out the smiley, laughey part of myself, and I like that part of myself. I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way. Consider Car Talk. It’s a nonstop laugh-a-thon, masquerading as a car repair show. And for a while it’s been the most popular show on NPR. It feels good to laugh with the people on the radio.

If there’s one lesson radio producers can take from this, it's this: apply generous portions of laughter, especially when engaging in some kind of back-and-forth. Now, to discuss this further, let's look at the “Laughter” episode of Radiolab.