Randy Scott Carroll is a Pennsylvania-raised musician, radio producer, and audio engineer who joined the ranks of Fleisher’s teaching artists last year. Carroll brings his unique perspective to Fleisher for his Storytelling for Podcasting and Radio workshop.

While most Fleisher students associate our offerings with mediums that are strictly physical or tangible, Carroll makes a good case for his class being taught under the same roof as painting and drawing classes.

“Any good art tells a story,” he says, “and podcasting as a storytelling medium has a great home at Fleisher.”

Podcasting has dramatically increased in popularity in the past few years, and it spans a wide array of genres. Podcasts are almost always free to listen to and easy to access online. Nielsen reported more than 248 million people ages 12 and older listen to podcasts every week and lists podcasting as the number one medium for reaching audiences in 2019.

Carroll first led the workshop in spring 2018, and it quickly formed a tight-knit community. As the workshop came to a close, Carroll says, “we all sort of felt like summer camp was ending.” For a lot of his students, the workshop was their first experience editing audio and developing stories. Regardless, Carroll says he found himself floored by the work they had created. Listen to works by Alexandra Moore and Laura Storck.

Carroll’s insights on audio editing come from his work as with WHYY, RadioLab, Vox, Gimlet, and other popular networks. However, he believes his background as a musician sets him apart from other editors because he’s always thinking sonically how things fit into a story before he gets to the words. He also has a laundry list of tips and tricks for producing good audio and telling meaningful stories.

Suggested reading for Carroll’s workshop is Out on the Wire by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts teacher and cartoonist Jessica Abel. The book is a nonfiction graphic novel, written with the help of This American Life creator and host Ira Glass, that Carroll says helped him a lot when he was beginning to freelance radio stories for WHYY.

If you’re ready to tell your own stories, register today for Carroll’s workshop.

This story was written by Kailee Walsh, who is interning with Fleisher’s communications department this fall. Kailee is a senior journalism student at The College of New Jersey. She thinks Philadelphia is the center of the universe and loves to watch movies.