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Daily Vox podcast ‘Today, Explained’ brings deeper context to news stories

UCLA alumnus Sean Rameswaram hosts the daily Vox podcast, “Today, Explained.” The podcast follows Vox’s model of providing context for current events, and Rameswaram said they try to cover a variety of breaking news events and perennially relevant topics.
(Courtesy of James Bareham/Vox Media)

By Olivia Mazzucato

Oct. 28, 2019 9:49 p.m.

Crafting a “Today, Explained” episode can take anywhere from one month to a few hours.

The daily Vox podcast unpacks big stories from the day’s news, explaining both recent events like impeachment developments as well as evergreen topics like environmentalism.

For example, in an episode that was a deep dive into the realities of recycling, the production team spent about a month researching how materials are sometimes incinerated rather than recycled and sending a reporter out to an incinerator. However, breaking news like the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy necessitates a challenging two- to three-hour turnaround, said Sean Rameswaram.

The UCLA alumnus hosts “Today, Explained,” which follows the model of Vox’s explainer articles that seek to add context to the information-saturated media environment. By covering a range of breaking stories and perennially relevant topics, Rameswaram said he strives to connect with his audience and help clarify the sometimes confusing and fast-paced realities of the world we live in.

“Any number of controversies come and go and then are forgotten, and it’s hard to stay on top of it,” Rameswaram said. “But I think one of the privileges of making our show, and the great responsibilities we have, is to tell the most important stories every day to help you understand your world.”

[Related: Professor’s podcast unmasks science behind superheroes and sci-fi]

Rameswaram began his career in auditory journalism working in public radio, which he has listened to since moving from Canada to the United States just before 9/11. Public radio helped him make sense of a challenging political time, he said.

“I found public radio to be this really comforting, sort of guiding light through all of that,” Rameswaram said. “It was respectful, it was thoughtful, it was meaningful and wasn’t about partisanship. It was about the facts, and it was about the truth.”

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Rameswaram strives to bring the same sense of emotional resonance to “Today, Explained.” The podcast medium is particularly intimate because it offers the news in a distinctly individual experience – one in which someone sits down and puts on headphones – that minimizes distractions, he said.

“You’re going to put my voice or the voice of our reporters or the voice of our esteemed colleagues in journalism into your brain,” Rameswaram said. “You’re going to plug them directly into your head and they’re going to talk to you, and I think that gives you an opportunity to really strike a chord to make a meaningful sort of journalistic experience for the listener.”

The process for creating an individual episode of the podcast varies depending on the timeline and subject matter. For longer stories, the process begins with a pitch, either from Rameswaram or one of the show’s producers. From there, they’ll map out the story, select guests for interviews and brainstorm different edits, such as including music clips in the podcast, said reporter and producer Noam Hassenfeld. For example, a recent episode about William Taylor, the senior U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, included short clips from Taylor Swift songs interspersed throughout an interview.

Stories like the one about Taylor are part of the unspooling impeachment proceedings that dominate the news cycle and demonstrate some of the inherent tensions in a fast-paced media environment that constantly draws attention to new topics. Though the team plans episodes weeks in advance, it also responds to new developments, said executive producer Irene Noguchi. Because the news can happen so rapidly – White House figures can be fired, wars can be declared, sudden acts of violence can occur – Noguchi and her team consider what additional insight they can bring to a breaking story.

“(We consider) whether we can explain something more than what people can just glance (at) on Twitter or just read from one article,” Noguchi said. “What sort of analysis or new things are we teaching people about this particular bit of news?”

[Related: Podcast focuses on creative sustainable solutions to environmental issues]

The current political context makes reporting additionally challenging – controversies come and go at an unprecedented rate, and people are quick to forget stories as more news breaks, Rameswaram said. However, helping people make sense of the jumble of news is part of the podcast’s mission. Though Hassenfeld enjoys working on stories that aren’t breaking news, he said he recognizes the necessity of keeping up with the latest developments on “Today, Explained.” While he doesn’t want to cover President Donald Trump or the impeachment all the time, he knows he’s reporting on a historic time in politics, he said.

“Today, Explained” ultimately acts as a concise primer on broad topics – the context you need to understand the latest news push notification on your phone, Rameswaram said. By boiling down the story, providing easy access to experts and injecting the stories with a bit of humor, he said he hopes to make stories more accessible and comprehensible.

“I think it’s really easy to pretend like you have all the answers in journalism, and (that) you should be ashamed of yourself if you don’t, but I think what’s really cool about Vox’s explainer model is starting at the point where we really want to understand this news,” Rameswaram said. “There’s no shame in saying we don’t have all the answers (and) in fact, I think starting there is a great way to help people understand the full story.”

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Olivia Mazzucato
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