The RegenNarration Podcast
The RegenNarration podcast features the stories of a generation that is changing the story, enabling the regeneration of life on this planet. It’s ad-free, freely available and entirely listener-supported. You'll hear from high profile and grass-roots leaders from around Australia and the world, on how they're changing the stories we live by, and the systems we create in their mold. Along with often very personal tales of how they themselves are changing, in the places they call home. With award-winning host, Anthony James.
The RegenNarration Podcast
212. The Children's Hour Radio Show Becoming a Global Phenomenon, with Katie Stone & Amadeus Menendez
How does a local radio show run with and for children become a global phenomenon - with plenty of adult listeners too? All the more in an age of media disruption and decline, with the ongoing struggle of not only mainstream media models, but public and alternative ones too. In just six years, The Children’s Hour is approaching a listenership of one million people, heard on demand as a weekly podcast and on more than 160 stations in 6 countries. That stratospheric growth started with a pivot – when this local volunteer-run public radio show in Albuquerque, New Mexico, became a not-for-profit organisation with loftier ambitions.
Katie Stone became its Executive Director, having been a volunteer for 17 years before that. Today Katie shares this incredible story with us, as we take a seat in the show’s renewably powered studio, alongside 15 year old announcer Amadeus Menendez. Amadeus started with the show as it pivoted, and has grown with it since he was nine. And as the awards roll in, the next generation’s ambitions become loftier still.
Katie and Amadeus share how the show expanded globally, filling educational gaps and teaching media literacy and civics to children globally. Amadeus recounts his experiences engaging with experts like a NASA astronaut (in space!) and the treasurer of New Mexico. And together they emphasize the importance of positive, affirming messages and actionable responses to current events, ensuring that media educates and inspires without commercial influence, and across political divides.
This episode has chapter markers and a transcript, if you’d like to navigate the conversation that way (available on most apps now too). The transcript is AI generated and imperfect, but hopefully provides greater access for those who need or like to read.
Recorded 16 June 2024.
Title slide: Katie & Amadeus at Sun Spot Studio after our conversation (pic: Olivia Cheng).
See more photos on the website, and for more from behind the scenes, become a member via the Patreon page.
Music:
Green Shoots, by The Nomadics.
Regeneration, by Amelia Barden, from Regenerating Australia.
The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests (thanks to Josie Symons).
Find More:
6-part series on the history of the American south-west
ICKY: A Radio Musical
Deb Haaland on The Children’s Hour (with photo of Amadeus at 9 years of age)
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So I was at a public radio conference and the general manager of the NPR station that carries The Children's Hour found me at this public radio conference and told me he had to talk to me because they'd gotten their ratings back and they couldn't believe it - that Saturday at 7 am turns out to be trouncing other programming, including NPR programming, in their ratings. And he said none of us could believe it. None of us could believe it. And then he said but I know, I could believe it because I listen every week. G'day.
AJ:G'day, my Anthony James and this is the The RegenNarration - Independent, ad-free, freely available and entirely listener supported. So thanks a lot, amanda Amanda Foxon-Hill for becoming such a generous subscribing member this week, and to Douglas, La urie Sarah Ransom on the second anniversary of your memberships. If you're also finding value in all this, please consider joining Amanda, douglas Douglas Sarah, part of a great community of supporting listeners. And if you'd like to become a subscribing member, you'll get exclusive access to behind the scenes stuff from me me,, news, chat space and other stuff. Just head to the website via the show notes regenerationcom. regennarration. com forward support and - and again. Now you might be able to hear the sound of rushing water. That's the beautiful creek we're on just north of Boulder, colorado. Colorado We actually visited the ranch of Hunter Lovins, my guest in episode 61, and a legend in the regenerative space, earlier this morning. More on that later.
AJ:But today, in an age of media disruption and decline, with the ongoing struggle of not only mainstream media models but public and alternative ones too, how does a local radio show run with and for children become a global phenomenon - with plenty of adult listeners too? In just six years, The Children's Hour is approaching a listenership of one million people, heard on demand as a weekly podcast and on more than 160 stations in six countries. That stratospheric growth started with a pivot, when this local volunteer run public radio show in Albuquerque, New Mexico, became a not-for-profit organisation with loftier ambitions. Katie Stone became its executive director, having been a volunteer for 17 years before that. Katie shares this incredible story with us in the company of 15-year-old announcer Amadeus Menendez. Amadeus started with the show as it pivoted and has grown with it since he was nine. A nd as the awards roll in, the next generation's ambitions are loftier still. Here's Katie and Amadeus in the show's renewably powered studio on a regenerative farm in Albuquerque. Katie and Amadeus, thanks for having me back in the studio.
Katie:Great to have you in the Sunspot Solar Powered Studio.
Amadeus:I'm happy to be here.
AJ:Let's start there. How does the Sunspot Solar Studio end up existing?
Katie:Well, this studio was originally built as a studio for my husband's architecture practice some 30-something years ago, and that rolled into many other businesses over the years, and I took this studio over about 20 years ago and started using it for my own purposes and it became the Children's Hour Studio in 2018. And it is solar powered because our entire property is powered by the sun and batteries, and so this is a solar-powered studio.
AJ:That's wonderful, and you say it started being the Children's Hour studio in 2018. Is that?
Katie:because that's when you joined. No, in 2018, I had already been running the Children's Hour for 17 years as a volunteer on our public radio station here in Albuquerque, new Mexico, called KUNM, and in 2018, I made the shift and started a nonprofit, and the reason for that was because the show had really has a lot of arms on it and it really needed more support than just one producer, and so I needed to raise some money to pay other producers to give me a hand with the audio I was collecting and make us just sound great. And so we, in 2018, started this nonprofit, and the show carried on on our local public radio station we. Actually, one of our first purchases was a transmitter and we would transmit live from here, and Amadeus remembers the days.
Amadeus:Yeah, it was exciting because it went from just being a local thing to hearing people. Other people were hearing us all around the States. I just remember being like wow, and it happened so quickly too. I mean, we were getting like a new station sometimes every week.
Katie:Oh for sure. And today we're on more than 160 stations, and that will change, probably by the time you even go to air with this, because we're now syndicated on a national network here in the United States which is actually international. It's called Native Voice One, it's the Native American Radio Network, and though it's called the Native American radio network, they have syndicated stations in New Zealand and other places in Philippines and other places with indigenous communities, and so they picked us up and they really start syndicating us in earnest on July 1st 2024. So we've already picked up a bunch of stations through them, but we're going to get a bunch more.
Katie:But more of the point is that I learned that there really wasn't anything on public radio for kids that was not just fluff, just music, and there's nothing wrong with just music. But there's so many gaps in our education in the United States and I saw those gaps and felt like I could do something about that and I felt that way for a long time. I've been programming that way for a very long time. We've been teaching media literacy for decades. We've been teaching civics for decades. Crazily enough, these are not taught in American schools.
AJ:Yeah, it is amazing, but it does say something about how we can do it for ourselves, if you will. It's an extraordinary story to think that you were volunteering for 17 years, so what was the trigger that made you think now's the time?
Katie:Well, it was a lot of factors that came together all at once. One was that the Children's Hour crew had grown, and Amadeus remembers this. It had grown very large and the studio up at the radio station was tiny, maybe a quarter of the size of this room, and we were cramming up to 30 kids in this tiny, tiny room. Then all their parents would come and I'd have to make them be in another room and it was a little bit crazy up the radio station. So one part of it was that we had just really outgrown the size of the station and their facilities for us. And then I just sort of started having fantasies about, like my own studio, where every time you come out to your studio it's just as you left it. You know, when you work in a public radio station with a lot of other volunteers, nothing is as you've left it the time before. In fact, things may work, they may not work, and you really have to, on the fly, adapt to that. And I really wanted to have, you know, an easy studio of my own where I could just leave things. The next day, come out and there they were. So that was part of the motivation. And then the other part was it was really time the kids crew had grown.
Katie:I was learning that teachers were routinely using my full length shows as an archive from the radio station to teach certain concepts in the classroom. So I started searching for educators to write curriculum to go with our shows to make sure that those teachers had something to support them so that they could. In the American school system you have to prove that you've met these certain educational standards, and I knew our shows were meeting those standards, but I just didn't know what they were. So I needed professional help for that from educators and that's kind of.
Katie:All of that came together all at once and it's been quite a lovely journey. I remember I was seeking support from our state representatives and I reached out to our state governor who's still our governor, governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and I told her my vision is to be syndicated around New Mexico. I was just really hoping that the content we had that pertained to New Mexico could get out to kids in New Mexico, and within a year we were already coast to coast and it has changed a bit. How I program. I really think about our audience listening in New Hampshire or even Australia or other places, and what could they get out of what we have to teach here? And there's a lot, it turns out. There's a lot of universal learning we all need to do.
AJ:That's very interesting. Could you go on with that? What have you found?
Katie:Yeah, so even you and all your adult listeners were taught things in school that are not true.
AJ:Yes.
Katie:Especially if we look at history. Let's just look at history, because that's an easy one to pick on. When we learn history, we're really learning the colonizer story of history, and that to me. Here in New Mexico we have 13% of our population is indigenous, and then we have Anglo people white people are the minority here very slanted history about our own state that really kind of erased tens of thousands of years of ingenuity and architecture and complex economics and all kinds of things, and so I think that's a really simple place to start.
Katie:When we learn history this is what we teach in media literacy too you're really learning one perspective, one side of a story, Somebody's interpretation of these works that they're going to tell you. Is this definitive history of this place or this thing? And yet you must ask yourself is there another story that someone else might tell of this same story? Could the same story be told in a way that the people who seem like they were the bad people in the story suddenly aren't the bad people?
Katie:Now, this can go in any number of tracks. You can make evil look good, you can make good look evil. So it is really the responsibility of a children's programmer to help teach children to think critically and to think about whether or not you're hearing the whole story. It's so easy for kids to do because you can simply go to your parents and ask them individually for a story in your family. That's like a myth in your family. Like I heard this story that you saved. You know your cousin Joe, and then you find out from your mom that, well, dad didn't really save cousin Joe.
Katie:He just happened to tell the lifeguard cousin Joe was drowning you know, I mean, you find out that like maybe the story isn't quite what we thought.
Katie:And these stories that we tell ourselves are the stories that we hear inside of ourselves as we go through our lives. So I keep thinking what is my responsibility? To make sure that the voices people hear in their head about whatever we're learning about on the Children's Hour are positive, affirming, cause people to question even more about the topic at hand and think bigger than what they thought before. And I hear from listeners a lot of all ages about different shows, just fascination about things that to maybe to Amadeus or me, are things we've learned with our experts that just seem so cool. And then I hear from a listener who realizes I was taught this other thing all along and I really believed it and I now I had to fact check you, katie Stone, I love that.
AJ:Yeah, fact, check me All you want.
Katie:I love that. So, it's a responsibility that we have in the media to think about what our media is doing after we're done with our blabbing on and on, because people are thinking about the words they heard us say and those words become internal words inside of them. So I feel very much like my role is a few things In public radio and in radio and in the news there's a lot of bad news all the time.
AJ:Yeah.
Katie:And we often focus on the bad news. It's so sensational, it's so huge.
AJ:Omnipresent. It's just always there in your face. It's like the MO of the mainstream media. So it's just always there. It sells. It sells, sadly.
Katie:And that's a huge piece of it.
Katie:Public radio and public broadcasting and public media for children is one of the few little realms ideally, that is not for sale, so we aren't trying to sell anything. We don't care if you buy the latest product, because that's not what we're working on. We want you to know the evolutionary history of a particular animal, because you share 89% of their DNA. Maybe it's about you and we want people to know that it's possible to intentionally perform acts of kindness, for example, and change your own life and your own attitude because you decided to just make this step. We want people to know when they hear really bad news, there's something you can do. There's always something you can do. I was heavily influenced as a child by an American public media broadcaster named Mr Rogers. He was just wonderful, he was very gentle and he had a formula. He'd come into his show singing the same song every time. He'd take off his his suit jacket and hang it in a closet as he was singing, and he'd put on a sweater and zip up his sweater as he was singing.
Katie:And then he would sit on a bench right by his front door and he would take off his work shoes and put on his tennis shoes, all while he's singing this intro song. And as a child I would watch that and I would see so many things I would see. This is I didn't have a very involved father and so this is a father, this is a man who cares. This is a man who's slowing down, who's taking the time to be with me, a tiny child, to be with me, a tiny child.
Katie:I was influenced by his use of public media to make serious social commentary without ever saying a word, and one of the most beautiful examples that Mr Rogers did is in the early 70s. Racial segregation in the United States is still a problem, but in the 70s it was post the 60s civil rights movement and things were changing in the American landscape. It was black and white people were getting married and that was not allowed in the past and things were changing, kind of like today, divided about these changes, mr Rogers did one of the most simple and beautiful things In his casting. He intentionally chose a very diverse cast His mailman who would come to the door pretend mailman. Obviously turns out he was an opera singer was this black man, and one day there had been some serious civil rights tension in the United States.
Katie:In that month that this episode was recorded, mr Rogers did an episode where the mailman comes and he says oh, it's so hot, isn't it? To the mailman it's so hot, would you like to sit with me? I'm putting my feet into this little children's swimming pool. And he was sitting by the side of the swimming pool with his bare feet in there and the postman said oh, I would love that Let me sit with you for a moment.
Katie:Now we all know postmen don't have time to do this, but anyway, in this episode he sits with Mr Rogers and after they soak their feet, mr Rogers gets down and he dries the feet of the mailman and then gives him back his shoes and socks and he's putting on his shoes and socks and Mr Rogers is there with his feet, drying them in his own hands, and I don't know if you know the illusion he was making. Mr Rogers was a Christian and he was alluding to Jesus washing the feet, and it was just so simple. It wasn't like he was saying white people should wash black people's feet because we owe them a heck of a lot in this nation. They built this country. No, he was saying I am going to model for you, children. Harmony, harmony between people. It was not overt. This was incredibly controversial when it happened in real time. Really, mm-hmm.
AJ:It's so fascinating in so many ways because I think, in not having the didacticism about it, it carries more power away, because you normalize it. There was no fanfare, it just there it was. But of course, yes, the controversy of course came afterwards. Let's come back to some of those threads we've put in play here, but turn to you, amadeus, for how you came to be involved.
Amadeus:So initially, I met Katie at a local music festival in 2018. She handed me a bumper sticker of the children's hour and said you want to be on a public radio station? And I thought why not? Right, I'll give it a shot. I probably won't like it, but I'll do it anyway. Did you know?
AJ:each other already.
Amadeus:I think we'd met maybe once or twice in the past, but not really no, so you saw something special, or it was just kids come.
Katie:I see kids and when kids had an indicated interest I always invite kids. I invited Amadeus, like I invite many children, but I knew with Amadeus I had seen him around. He doesn't know he had been at the museums that I went to with my children and I had seen him there.
AJ:I'd already had a radar on. Am this actually yeah?
Amadeus:and so I immediately, when I started, I thought well, this is something that's really different, because what was cool about the show was that it let me, as a young kid, ask questions to these experts. And you know, normally if kids ever do get to ask questions to experts it's through a process where they have to write notes to someone else to. Then the interviewer has to pre-read all of those notes and then from there they can tweak the answers and questions that they want to ask. So kids oftentimes don't really get the opportunity to directly ask questions in an important setting to important people, and so what was cool about that experience in the studio was I was let, on my own, ask whatever question I wanted to to these really interesting experts about whatever field and about fields I'd never heard about Immediately. One of my first shows we interviewed the treasurer of New Mexico, which I didn't even know existed or what a treasurer was, how they worked, and I was so curious about it that I'm sure a lot of other kids were wondering. And then get those questions onto a national stage was such a cool opportunity and such a unique thing, and it's something I really didn't think I'd get the opportunity to do, but I was so thankful for I mean, there's really not a lot of other programs that treat kids this way, but beyond even just the interviewers' kids who are on the kids' crew, I think the Chilton's Hour does something great that it really treats kids with complexity and it really doesn't dumb down a lot of the information that we hear from our specialists for them on the show.
Amadeus:We make sure it's palatable enough for kids to understand. But we realize they're intelligent, they want to learn and they're open to hearing complex subjects if it's put in an interesting format, and so we really take a lot of time to make sure that it's accessible. But also we want to make sure that kids really do get the full picture about what they're hearing, and that's something that's really unique in a kid's programming field and a lot of shows don't take that time to think about. Well, kids can understand this and they want to hear it. Even if it's difficult information or hard to hear or if it's just plainly complex science information, kids are going to listen and they will understand it, and so that's something I think is so unique about the Children's Hour and helps it be such an interesting and useful educational show.
AJ:What's the age range? We're talking about? The children that would be listening. How old are they?
Amadeus:Well, we really think from zero to 99 is our audience range. Well, I was going to say exactly, it's almost irrelevant, isn't it? Yeah.
AJ:Somehow aiming at that general demographic becomes universalizing, as you were saying, David.
Amadeus:Because, you know, I actually hear probably from mostly old folks who say, oh, I hear you on the radio, because a lot of the kids you know they are maybe not as confident to say, oh, I know you from the radio, but I hear a lot of people really do listen to the show because even though, yes, it's targeted to an audience that is younger, it will be able to understand it we really do talk about interesting and important subjects that are educational to a lot of different adults as well, especially if we do, say, a show on animals we did one recently on lungfish, which is our really unique type of animal that have existed on Earth for hundreds of millions of years without change, and then an example of a living fossil and it's something that is an important part of biology that is oftentimes skipped over, that a lot of adults don't know about, and they're really fascinating animal and they're an important part in Earth's history and how biology takes place.
Amadeus:So it's a cool lesson that both kids can learn, but really, if you're an adult, you can gain a lot of information out of the episodes as well. We try to talk about a lot of unique things that aren't covered in other places and so in that way, I think the show really appeals to a big audience.
AJ:I wonder is there a moment where some of what you talk about has crystallized for you, where you felt even perhaps particularly emotional or changed by an encounter you've had?
Amadeus:I mean, I think a lot of them have sort of built up that feeling about, wow, this is so incredible that I get to do this.
Amadeus:I mean, one of the big ones for me was it wasn't too long after I first started, but we had the opportunity to talk to a NASA astronaut who was in the International Space Station and we got to talk to them here on Earth. With the conversation over Zoom and getting to talk to someone who was floating upside down and getting to honestly ask questions right to an astronaut, I thought, wow, how many kids get to do this and what an experience this is of a unique experience to gain this information that I really would never hear elsewhere. And it's such a cool thing that I get to ask all these questions I'm wondering, but share it to a big audience of kids around the world who also want to know these things, that have a similar mindset as me. And so it was just such a like stopping moment of like, this is such a thing I'm lucky to be able to do and we've done a lot of those shows since then that are like that that I'm like I just can't believe this.
Katie:We do get to talk to pretty cool people. We're pretty lucky and I never. I mean, I set up these interviews and I never think there's a limit.
Katie:I mean, I always feel like everyone should want to talk to the children's hour because we do actually have a universal appeal and also, if you can explain your world of expertise to a seven-year-old, then you can explain it to anyone. And in that we for a while were a site that the University of New Mexico, which is here in Albuquerque, their biology department, used to send us their PhD candidates to explain their research on the air to all the kids. And we had some pretty. Do you remember? We had some pretty complex. We had like really complex things come on the earth.
Katie:I wasn't sure I completely understood, but it was such great practice for those students to learn. Like you know, it's one thing to know about your super niche, weird little field, but if no one else can understand it, you might as well just be living in a silo. I mean, the point of science is to share your science and expand everyone's knowledge and create a wider base. I really love how we're able to have kids. I never script the kids. Well, I shouldn't say never, because every now and again I write something and I make everybody say it, but it's normally when we're interviewing experts. We never, with a few exceptions. When we interviewed Dr Fauci, they insisted on the questions in advance, and there are some other people that we'll be interviewing this fall that will insist on the questions in advance.
AJ:Can you say who they are, by the way?
Katie:Well, we're still in progress, working on some fairly high-powered interviews. But a good example recently is we got to speak with the astronauts who are going back to the moon, the Artemis 2 astronauts, and NASA insisted we give them all the questions in advance and we not stray from our questions. Well, it turned out the astronaut we were supposed to speak with suddenly the hour of the interview was not available, so instead they gave us the commander of the Artemis II project, commander Wiseman, who had no idea what the questions were. So he's going on and on about things that I know NASA doesn't want him to talk about. One was peeing in space. He goes there.
Katie:I turned to the kids crew and I said, okay, are we going to ask it? Because we all wanted to know about farts in space. And like they, nasa always tells us we're not allowed to talk about bodily functions, but like, don't you want to know about farts in space? So we learned from him and it's in our show on the moon that it turns out. Not only is it what you like, the horror story that you imagine you fart in space and it's with you forever, but also you fart more in space, like who knew that? Like they actually measure it and they know that, like in a normal day, you fart a quarter, a quart of gas, but in space you actually fart more than that and, yes, it's with you the whole time. And yes, if you fart in your space suit and you're out there on a spacewalk, oh, it's with you the whole time. It's actually like little gas particles that can't go anywhere, so they're just floating around you. Also, the farts of your fellow astronauts are too.
Katie:So anyway, the point being, it's a beautiful opportunity to give both the experts and the kids this chance to come together, and I remember when we interviewed Dr Fauci he was really grouchy not that it rhymes, because this was at a time that there was incredible tension in the United States about him.
Katie:And he was quite the target and remains so, unfortunately today by some people. And I really felt like I had seen this interview where a child had finally spoken to Dr Fauci and the child asked something along the lines of what are you doing for Christmas? And I was like no, kids are like locked down right now. They really want to know about the pandemic. It was in the middle of the pandemic, so I reached out to his team and got an interview with him. He comes on the interview.
Katie:He's very grouchy when he first started the interview and so I intentionally had our four-year-old kids crew ask the first question, which was why should we be scared of COVID-19?, and all of the tension in his face instantly left. For one thing, the kid was really cute and her little voice was really cute. Secondly, you could just see him kind of go into this grandpa mode and sort of realize that like that's kind of the question that skeptics were having too why should we be afraid of this pandemic and he was just fantastic. He really came around by the end. I felt like we were dealing with Grandpa Fauci. He was so sweet and smiley and I think it really lightened his day.
Katie:I heard later from his team that he loved, loved the interview, and that's often what we hear that the guests themselves feel very empowered by these interviews because of the spontaneity of people like Amadeus, who are listening as they're answering the questions and then following through and saying, but wait, you just said. And it's just fantastic. Often we see interviews that are on television or whatever, that they don't follow up. Something gets said and you're sitting there at home and you're thinking, wait, what? And then that's just sort of dropped forever. And what I love about kids is they don't not follow up, they follow up. That's the instinctive nature of children.
AJ:I am struck by the enormous growth in that syndication that you mentioned earlier and the attraction of everything you've just really outlined there, both of you, in a context too, where I know so much media is collapsing what you call the alt-weeklies here in the States, major collapse of outlets that had been around for decades, just that tear under the mainstream. But they've been around for decades, been really parts of the furniture, but they're sort of gone en masse and, conversely, we know some of the really angst-building and angst-driving media has been incredibly artful in their networking, but not in a way that more positively oriented and depolarizing and arguably enchanting media like this has been able to do. So what is it about this, or you that has managed to pull this off?
Katie:Well, I think part of it is the nature of our work. It's non-profit, so no one here is trying to make a million dollars. We fully acknowledge that public radio is sort of a life of poverty. I mean, you don't really make any money in public radio or podcasting, really, unless you're one of the 10 who make a lot of money. It's not a money-making enterprise. So when you remove the desire for money, suddenly everything is possible. Suddenly there are no limits. That is really the secret right there. All by itself, we still have to raise money. The Children's Hour operates. I don't know how well this will translate in Australian dollars, but maybe you can help me. Our annual budget is about $125,000 a year. I am paid a token salary, so most of that money is going to producers, my live engineering team, our educational writers and I have. I have really kept a lean, mean machine where does it come from?
AJ:I raise money from lots of different sources. I write grants.
Katie:I raise money from lots of different sources. I write grants. That's a lot of the time I spend not in production is dealing with fundraising and that's kind of a pain, but I write grants.
Katie:That's government grants to listeners directly in a pitch right now with some of our donors who have greater capacity, and I'm going to be super brave and take some of them out to dinner and tell them we really need your support because the Children's Hour is such a unique institution and so removing money changes everything. So when your mission and your goal is about something non-commercial if it's, my mission and goal is about uplifting children, uplifting my community and partnering with my community to make excellence in public broadcasting, that's it. It has nothing to do with we will make an institution here. We will have a huge building here. You're sitting in my solar-powered studio, which was hand-built by my husband. So we aren't seeking the big time being the big time, and I definitely wish.
Katie:If there was one thing I would do with extra money, it would be to market us better, you know, for the podcast piece, so that more teachers know about us, really get us in the hands of teachers and schools.
Katie:But we chug along, we quietly grow. We have a steady social media presence. That's thanks to actually a hired social media manager who is a professional young person. I sound young, I'm older than I sound, and so I fully recognize that people who are under 30 really get it with the most social media piece in a way that none of us old people can. So I have turned over all these hats to other people, and so that's really the point of how you make public radio. That's excellent. I think that when I hear about the collapse of public radio stations, which is very concerning to me as a public radio producer, I often look into those stations and you know what they're spending on programming and what they're spending on their CEO and all these different things and I understand it would be great if we could make a doctor's salary in public radio.
Katie:We don't. You know, the children's hour is actually distributed Um by and large, with the exception of of our syndicated stations, who are paying their syndicated network fees. We are free for public radio stations, so we're not seeking payment. What we're seeking is the payments of let us take an hour on your air, transform that hour into something you've never heard before and see what happens. And I'll just give you an example. We're on the air in a little town. It's not that little, it's called Chattanooga, tennessee. It's a little city in Southern Tennessee. You maybe have heard in Australia about the different states, kind of like some states are really conservative and some states are really liberal. Tennessee is super conservative, like super, super, super conservative.
AJ:Which is interesting because I also know it as a great music state.
Katie:Of course yeah, nashville and Chattanooga is actually a pretty liberal little bastion in.
Katie:Tennessee as well. So I was at a public radio conference and the general manager of the NPR station that carries the Children's Hour found me at this public radio station conference and told me he had to talk to me because they'd gotten their ratings back and they couldn't believe it that Saturday at 7 am turns out to be trouncing other programming, including NPR programming, in their ratings. And he said none of us could believe it. None of us could believe it. And then he said but I go, I could believe it because I listen every week. Now I understand what he means by that.
Katie:We are a different kind of program for public radio stations to carry. We're not Terry Gross, we're not all things considered, and yet we have this niche. We somehow make people feel better after listening to us, and I know this and I think of this a lot as we're programming. I am thinking there are people listening to this show who are on a limb. Maybe they're barely making it financially, emotionally, mental health wise. They could hear this and it could just be this momentary pause from the dark thoughts, the dark news of our, of our climate crisis. Now, we're not avoiding talking about the climate crisis.
Katie:We most certainly talk about the climate crisis, uh, but you know, there's ways to talk about the climate crisis that remind you that a lot of good is happening right now and it's really how we take our minds and focus Now. Does this mean that I am a Pollyanna person and forever? In this like, yay, everything's wonderful. Not at all. Sometimes my husband says someday I'm going to tell people what you're really like but the reality is is that people need the uplift.
Katie:People need to feel like there is hope and there is potential. And I'll tell you one other quick, quick story. There is hope and there is potential. And I'll tell you one other quick, quick story. I just was at a park and listening to a band and a lady came up to me and she said are you Katie from the Children's Hour? And I said yes, I am. And she said I want to tell you what happened to me two weeks ago.
Katie:I had to go to the emergency room and I get my car and it's 9am on a Saturday morning, which is when we air here in New Mexico and I turned on my car and there you were and I was. She had like kidney stones or some horribly painful thing and she had to schlep herself to the emergency room. And this woman lives in the mountains, so it was a really long haul to the emergency room and she didn't know if she'd actually like have to pull over and call an ambulance. So she was very nervous and she said she listened to the children's hour and she heard us. She heard us talking and she was learning and the next thing she knows, she was at the front door of the emergency room and she said you know, you carried me all the way down the mountain and I practically cried. I was thinking that's really I want to carry people through this hard time. This is my goal.
Katie:When COVID came and it was so rough on so many kids, they were really struggling. We saw our kids on our crew. Some were doing great. Amadeus here did fine during the pandemic, I think for the most part.
Amadeus:Yeah, it helped that I was homeschooled, so a lot of my connections, which were already somewhat more online, were there. But I saw in a lot of my friends and a lot of other people it was a big effect, you know, a big because it was so stopping of everything when you're a kid, being outside and going to places and seeing other kids, that's your life, it's. You know you're not thinking about next week or what do I have planned in the future. I'll get this semester done. No, it's. What am I going to do with my friends tomorrow or the next day? So it felt like your whole life I know for a lot of people just sort of collapsed. It was just fell out from under you and there was nothing to do and even AI, who dealt with it pretty well, felt just so, so bored in a way it just felt hopeless for a long period of time.
Katie:The Children's Hour was one of the few children's programs meaning not just radio program but like after school programs that didn't stop. We didn't even stop for one week. We shifted from live programming on Saturday mornings. We used to be live on Saturday mornings on our local station and I would immediately turn that into a nationally released show. So this was my life and this was my weekends Saturday morning, live at 9 am and by Sunday afternoon that show was out for distribution to the world. Covid came that stopped our live shows. Um, COVID came, that stopped our live shows and I knew we couldn't stop. I knew that the kids needed to have the consistency hey, I needed to have shows go out the door but B I could see the writing on the wall that every other thing was going to close and I knew I had the technical expertise to turn everybody into online producers, which is what we did.
Katie:It was spring break, so we had a lot of kids from school who were home. I taught the crew how to use Zoom because it was like so new for them, and we all worked really hard. We never shut down, not for one week, but within a few weeks, months, probably by summer. End of summer, I realized that for summer in 2022, the crew seemed to have half the crew was depressed. I could see it through the Zoom Half the crew was thriving. I could see that through the Zoom half and half, and I could see the depressed kids were just getting sadder and sadder and sadder.
Katie:And so I decided to make a musical and I know this is like the dumbest thing ever, but I was like we have to do something and so I created the second project In addition to radio. I decided we're going to make a musical about the pandemic and it'll be a musical from the kids' point of view, about what this is like right now. So we workshopped. About 20 kids signed up for the musical. We workshopped with them online. I hired unemployed theater people, mostly people of color. It was very intentional to try to find unemployed young theater people, bipoc theater people and indeed we did. We had a composer, we had a lyricist, we had a librettist, we had a music director, we had a screenplay writer and we even had a full band ultimately in the end and we ended up having, when we first started, the pandemic musical. Of course I thought we would be able to record this in person and the pandemic would be over. Of course, we all know what that happened. The pandemic never end. So we ended up having to record here. And yet in New Mexico you weren't allowed to have more than five people gathered in one place, and yet I had 20 something people on this crew and cast and all these technical people. So we ended up doing this crazy.
Katie:You should really check it out. There's pictures of how we recorded it with wireless microphones every kid in their own car, parked on my I'm a hobbyist farmer and parked on one of my fields where all these cars in a grid, and that's how we recorded the kids. That's how we recorded the musical people singing in their cars. And then we took that audio and sent it around to different bands, different musicians. They each recorded their own parts separately. So all of this was mixed in post-production. We actually never performed the musical with all of the music and the band and an audience. It all was done this way and yet we did it. We pulled it off and we actually did it. We pulled it off and we actually did make a musical about the pandemic from a child's point of view, and it's an odd length. It's 36 minutes or something. It's a strange little pandemic musical, but we definitely. That's just one example of how you know I see a need and I think I could do something.
AJ:And again you could, and this mechanism is just so available to it as well. So, as we wind up Dias, I come back to you and I wonder what does it make you imagine, Perhaps for yourself too For media Like, what do you think about in terms of its potential and what you're seeing and feeling?
Amadeus:I think its potential is really really great because, like Katie's been saying, it's such a unique program and particularly on public radio, you don't really get stuff that sounds like this and is structured like this, and it's something that is so brilliantly done to appeal to a wide audience but also, you know, appeal to the very young, little kids. It's such a show that really everyone can enjoy, which is a really sort of unique thing. You can gain a lot out of it. If you're an adult, hear information you thought you would have never heard in your life, and the same way, as a kid, you can discover new subjects and things you've never even heard mentioned and you can get so much information out of it in a short period of time and it's such a positive thing. It's something that I really hear a lot of people they don't just enjoy it as a little side thing, it really brightens their day and it really is something that they walk away from happy and thinking, wow, I never knew that. And I have people come up to me saying that's such an interesting episode. You know, I never thought about that lungfish in my life and how they work, and I didn't even know they existed, and so in a lot of ways, you know, it just reaches out to people in a way where they remember and it changes their day and it's so unique in that way and I really love it for doing that. And I see, as we go on to interviewing bigger people, we get on bigger stages. I really think it has potential to really grow into something even bigger than it already is and to really just make it self on a very big stage and have it to where we can get, I mean, you know, hopefully millions and millions of people listening a week. That's a high expectation, but I really think it's possible and it's something to shoot for because it's such a brilliant show and I feel like it's so universally enjoyed.
Amadeus:People tell me all the time what a highlight it is. They listen in every single week and in that way I really want to keep it going in that way and keep it for the kids who want to ask all these questions, like I get to do. And I think it's such a special thing, all these things that I wonder, that I'm sure so many other kids wonder. Like, talking to astronauts is something that when I was reading about them in history books, I thought, well, hold on. They don't talk about farting in space. I want to know about that. And so from there I thought well, maybe you know I can get to ask about this type of stuff on the show, and getting to do that and then getting to share that information with other kids is such a special thing. And I see the impact of it, I see its positivity, I see how it's growing and I just see such a bright future for it. I mean, I'm really excited to see what's around the corner for it and I think a lot is.
Amadeus:And for you personally, For me personally, I'm just going to keep on with it for as long as I can Borderline I'm not on kid here, but if I can stay involved, I sure will, Whether that's through producing or editing in some way or, you know, staying on the board of the show. I definitely do want to stay involved and it's just been such a cool impact and something that I get to do and I think it's also made me a little better as a conversationalist and and it's matured me a bit more having to, you know, be in a professional setting like this and getting to talk to professional guests, and I think it's been really beneficial for me in general to have this opportunity and to be in this professional environment. You know it's not a job or anything like that, but in a way it almost feels like it. You get the, you get the feeling of having to work and, you know, really keep up certain standards, and so for me I think it has done a lot just to it, really just to mature me.
Amadeus:I feel like I've grown a lot with the show and it's helped me grow as a person and I've learned so much stuff. I mean you know I love biology, but I didn't know that much about longfish either and it's so cool getting to was bringing in Western influences into Indian classical and she was talking about the system of how Indian classical music works and how differently it's structured and how you can combine that with Western music and this really cool fusion that she was doing that almost no one else in the world was doing. I thought, wow, what a fascinating opportunity to get to talk to these international musicians who have such a different perspective on the world of music and stuff I've never gotten to hear about, and then get to incorporate that into my life. Every week I get a punch of something that's so exciting and new and I just love it for that. I mean, it's such a special program.
AJ:Wow, you've almost said it perfect. I couldn't say it better. My personal experience, you know, speak about a universalizing thing. This is everything I'm feeling about the podcast, too, you know. It's interesting when you say it's not a job. I don't even know if we want jobs anymore. You know that was one of my favourite films. Sort of key protagonist said that's a 20th century invention. I don't want one. I'm not destitute. I don't want a job that you can have a different motivation that you're outlining, katie, and still find a way for money to work, but it's not the objective. And still find a way for livelihood, but money's not your objective. And then nor is it your barrier. And you guys are a case in point for me, hearing you speak and being able to meet you and learn of this that I didn't know about. So thanks a lot. But before we go, I'd love to hear about a piece of music that's been significant for each of you in your lives.
Katie:I work with so many musicians, I feel like I would hurt people's feelings if I picked one over any other. So I will go back to my childhood and I'm the first generation here in the United States that watched Sesame Street. And this is this public television program. I don't know if you have it in.
AJ:Australia, a highlight for me as a kid too.
Katie:Oh, I'm glad to hear it.
Katie:And I was very influenced by Jim Henson and I had dreams of working with him as a kid and I really, really thought I would end up on Sesame Street when I was a kid.
Katie:And in Sesame Street there's this wonderful little song called People in your Neighborhood and it's just such a great reminder that there's all these great people around you. All these wonderful people doing different things. You may not agree with them on politics, you may not agree with them on you know this or that, but they're doing something in your neighborhood and in your community and they make up your neighborhood and your community. This is our community. We are one planet, we are one species, all together. And the People in your Neighborhood song it just reminds you of all the things that we take for granted the small jobs we take for granted and the big jobs we take for granted, and the people who sweep the streets so that you can ride your bike without getting nails in your tires, and we're just so lucky that this is the beautiful planet we live on. And that would probably be one of my most influential was thinking about my community and my place in it, and where is my role in my community?
AJ:For my kids' show.
Amadeus:Yeah, for me Again, similarly to Katie, it's hard for me to think of just one that sort of is one that's been so influential, because there's been many. But I think of one that I particularly enjoyed recently, and then, as I grow older, I appreciate the meaning of more is the song Let it Be by the Beatles, and just the feeling of letting life roll and seeing whatever is in front of you, not worrying too much about it, taking time to relax, but witnessing all that's there and making sure that you just sit in the moment and I appreciate that more as I get older and just enjoying the present wherever I am. Don't have to worry too much about the future. We'll get there when we get there, but enjoy right now. And so that's something I've been thinking about recently a lot, and I think that song encapsulates it well.
AJ:I think it does too. Thanks, Amadeus, thanks Katie. It's been so good speaking with you.
Katie:Thank you so much for having us.
AJ:That was Katie Stone with Amadeus Menendez in the Sunspot Solar Studio at Katie's place in Albuquerque, New Mexico. See various links in the show notes, including to an outstanding six-part series on the history of the American Southwest, a series we've been relishing over here. And if you're a teacher, school or indeed radio station interested in connecting, please reach out to Katie through the website in the show notes. There are a few photos on the website too, and more, as always, on Patreon for subscribing members. With great thanks to you, generous supporting listeners for making this episode possible. If you'd like to join us, just head to the website or the show notes and follow the prompts. Thank you, and thanks also for sharing the podcast with friends.
AJ:And a shout out to Zen Menendez too, older brother of Amadeus, no longer deemed a kid by some any way, but immortalised in the musical Katie talked about. That link is in the show notes too, along with one to an episode with Deb Haaland, one of the first two Native American women elected to the US Congress and the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary. She's the current secretary of the interior. You'll see Deb photographed with both brothers in the top left, back when Amadeus started with the show at nine years of age. The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden, and at the top it was Green Shoots by the Nomadics. My name's Anthony james. Thanks for listening.
