Inspired by NPR’s StoryCorps oral history project, the EH Portable Sound Booth was used over the course of the 2024-2025 academic year to record a diverse cross-section of the Bard community about the 2024 election. Interviews or self-recordings focused on the ways media shapes, informs, and produces conditions for listening (and not listening) around politics and issues of democracy, building up to the election, the inauguration, and its aftermath. Pop-up events throughout the academic year were organized in collaboration with campus partners such as the Center for Civic Engagement, Rethinking Place, the Stevenson Library as well as connected to several cross-listed EH courses. These “community sound portraits” will be made available as part of an archive reflecting the current political moment. Interviews or self-recordings will all remain anonymous and to date we have over 80 interviews.

Sound Booth designed and fabricated by EH Media Corps member, Inju Keum.

Season four was supported in part by an inclusion grant from the Office of the Dean.

 Teaser 1: Election Playlist

Welcome to season four with host Owen Setlik and students in the Bard College Conservatory.

Teaser 2: Three Words

What three words pop into your head when you hear the word democracy?