Journalist Ashley Ahearn has taken listeners for a ride – often aboard a horse or pickup – in her must-hear podcast Women’s Work. More specifically, Ahearn says the episodes are “visits.”
“I think there’s an art to a good visit, as any country person knows,” she said.
Prior to her participation in this year’s Storyfort, Ahearn pays a visit with Morning Edition host George Prentice.
“To visit someone is to show up for an indeterminate amount of time,” said Ahearn. “Usually, it involves sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck after some hard work, maybe some Coors whatever beer too, and chatting without an ultimate goal, or direction.”
“I love doing live speaking events about the work. I think that that's the coolest opportunity.”
Read the full transcript below:
GEORGE PRENTICE: It is Morning Edition on Boise State Public Radio News. Good morning. I'm George Prentice. In the last several weeks, many of us have been to one of the region's last best wetland habitats for birds. We've met a 14-year-old sheep rancher. We have rethought that debate over wolves and livestock, and many of us have taken another long, hard look at the beef on our dinner plates with a new appreciation, by the way. All of this thanks to Ashley Ahearn, who has taken us along for the trip that we never would have expected in women's work. And if you have not listened to or subscribe to the Women's Work Podcast yet, you're about to experience something really special. But for now, let's say good morning to Ashley Ahearn. Ashley…hi.
ASHLEY AHEARN: Hi, George.
PRENTICE: So, truth be told, I wanted to wait a bit to visit with you until we were reaching some of your penultimate episodes. I'm really interested in some of the conversations that you've been having since you've been sharing this work.
AHEARN: Well, I've been hearing from the ranchers, and I think that overwhelmingly there's a feeling among especially these I handpicked smaller operations. I didn't interview any kind of large-scale ranch operations. And I think that there's a feeling among smaller livestock cattle producers in this country that they've been sort of forgotten or not really engaged in the conversation around beef and what kind of beef people are choosing to eat or whether or not they're choosing to eat beef. And I guess the big learning for me in making this series is that no two ranches are the same, just like No. Two ranchers are the same. And so, I think as more of us move toward vegetarianism, myself included, I was a vegetarian for years before I moved to a rural community. I think that it's very easy to lump all ranchers into one bucket and write it off from a carbon standpoint, from an environmental standpoint. But the truth is there's a whole lot of gray area and a whole lot of people out there who are doing their very best on some very tight margins to steward the land, steward livestock in ways that look different than perhaps the factory farming imagery that many of us have in our minds now about beef production in this country.
PRENTICE: So let's talk about that. You used to be a vegetarian. Was there an event or was it organic? Pardon the pun. Why did you make the choice not to be?
Louise Johns
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Louise Johns
AHEARN: Well, so a few about five years ago now, my husband and I left Seattle. I'd been living there for about seven years and moved to a rural community in north central Washington, sagebrush ranching mountains, a lot of snow, and a ranching community that still survives. And it's not as vibrant or big as it used to be. But there are ranchers in this community, and I had grown up riding horses, but I hadn't written in a long time, and I just kind of put it out there that I wanted to be around horses and started mucking stalls for this woman in the community, and she ended up giving me a horse and pistol. My mare, I tell people, is she was sort of my entry into the world of ranching. And she she didn't come to me perfectly trained by any means. We sort of figured a lot out together. And I started just volunteering to help local ranchers move their cows around from pasture to pasture and help with branding and things like that and got to meet people and got to understand a little bit more from how things look from their side of the fence line. I think for many of us, we drive by cattle ranches.
If we're going on road trips or we get out of the city for the weekend or what have you, and it's really easy to see a lot of overgrazed pasture or trampled creeks and riparian areas. And there's a lot not to like about what many of us see. And I think what changed for me was just seeing firsthand how hard this work is, how day in, day out, 24, seven blood, sweat and tears it is to raise livestock. And how tight the margins are that these folks are, they're persevering. And I think ultimately kind of what became really apparent to me is if these folks don't take care of their land, if they don't steward it well, they can't make a living. They can't continue to produce the beef that they're doing, that they're producing. And so I had to see that firsthand to believe it, because I was certainly skeptical of it when I was a vegetarian living in the city and just kind of had frankly written off the cattle industry as not something I wanted to be a part of and didn't want my dollars supporting.
PRENTICE: From a listener's perspective, I can tell you that through your podcast it busted all of these stereotypes and how that beef gets onto my plate and quite frankly, who I choose to get that beef from.
AHEARN: Well, I think that's the key, George. And I would never want to come across as saying we should all eat more beef or whatever you can buy at the grocery store. That was certainly not the goal. And I should say, if you're a vegetarian, I totally support that. You know, like you do you for me, it was just a little more there was just a little more nuance to the story. And I think really getting out there, getting on horseback, bringing my microphone into the back country, you know, recording wolves outside of camp with the ranchers that folks heard in episode five of the series that was recorded there in Idaho. Yeah, I wanted to bring people with me. I think that's what I love about the work that I do and what we get to do with in radio. If we're carving out the time in the space to do this kind of production, is that we can really take people with us through their headphones, through their earbuds. And I mean, I think that listeners should know, too, that Boise State Public Radio is pretty unique. You know, I'm an independent producer. And to find a home that is going to bring their listeners this kind of content that's produced by an independent producer, I think is it stands out in the industry right now.
PRENTICE: So, it's one thing to have the equipment, the technical right. And then but talk to me about the intangibles and you just touched on it. I'm curious about the trust that you had to win or earn to be able to have a microphone, right? Yeah. Yeah. Where people live and work. And it sounded as if we were invited. These front porches in the saddle riding shotgun in the truck.
Ashley Aheanr
AHEARN: Yeah, I think there's an art to a good visit as…as any country person knows, a visit is unlike… I think I feel like in Seattle, you know, I catch up with friends, you know, you go and you have coffee or dinner and you'd find out what was going on in their lives. You talk about work, you talk about all that. But a visit to me is a different thing. To visit someone is to show up for an indeterminate amount of time. Usually, it involves sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck after some hard work, maybe some Coors whatever beer to, and chatting without an ultimate goal or direction. And I've tried to bring that to the way I conduct an interview. I think that when folks like us are trained to do interviews, it's not about you, right? So, you don't share much about yourself and you have usually some sort of a goal or a narrative arc or direction that you're trying to take the conversation, right? You think about some questions beforehand. And to me, the art of a good visit, like you said, is if you're bouncing along in the pickup truck and maybe I have one idea of where this conversation was supposed to go or what I want to talk to this rancher about, but she opens up and tells me some other really fascinating story.
I'll be good god darned if I'm going to interrupt her or change that conversation because then it's not a visit anymore, then it's a controlled conversation. And so, I think that that was really the spirit with which I approached this whole series. And ranchers are not the most publicly facing people. They work. A lot of it is work that's done alone in pickup trucks, feeding cows and with family members. And so, they're not the kind of folks that are sending out press releases about their agenda, like many say environmental groups are, and wanting to communicate their message. You have to kind of ease them into it and approach them with a certain degree of humility, curiosity, and in my case, you know, a limited understanding of their world, but enough to sort of speak some of the language or the vocabulary of what they're doing or trying to do, and just with the real affinity or curiosity about how they do it and wanting to bring that to listeners that maybe don't get that lens into that life and what it looks like on the ground.
PRENTICE: You also help others produce podcasts or consider producing podcasts. It's an interesting industry. I'm curious what you think podcasts could be or should be, where you think they might be going, where they haven't gone yet.
AHEARN: I mean, that's the $1,000,000…great question, George. I think that what I where I start when a new client approaches me because it happens a fair bit, you know, hey, I have I want to make a podcast. And the truth is this. I don't know how many a million plus podcasts on iTunes now. So, you know, the blessing and the curse of podcasting is that anyone can make a podcast like pretty much anyone. If you have a computer or even an iPhone, you can make a podcast. Sure, seems like it. Yeah. And I think that, you know, as I was in the business for longer and longer, I realized that, you know, just because you can doesn't mean you should. And I think that standing out or finding ways to sound different in this industry is becoming harder and harder. And, you know, I just I'll give the example of even like, you know, everybody makes a trailer for their podcast, right? So, it's like the two-minute sizzle reel to get people to listen to your show. And they all started to sound really similar to me where it's like a driving bassline and a couple of sound bites that are super sexy to get you to, like, subscribe. And I was sitting in my on my horse one day and I was like, well, my show doesn't sound like any of those shows. It's not going to sound like any of those kind of I think of them as sort of talk studio shows, and I don't want my trailer to sound that way either.
So I took out my iPhone. I just started recording while I was herding cows one day and like talking about the show I wanted to make. And I ended up using that for the trailer of the show. So, I think that the goal from the very beginning for me was to make something that sounded really different. And it's not to say that other producers aren't doing amazing field recording, including the folks that work at your station. They're getting out there and talking to people in the field. I mean, albeit when it's safe with the pandemic that we've experienced. But I do think that that's kind of been the hallmark for my career as an environment reporter, is wanting to be out experiencing things in nature, in the environment, with the. People that are stewarding it. So that's really what this series is all about. And I would love in terms of the broader podcasting industry to to see more of that when it's safe to do it. I think that why I got into radio was because as opposed to as a print journalist where you can pick up the phone and get some quotes and put them into a piece, I want to visit with people. That's how I make a living and that's what I love about my job. So, it's worked out pretty well.
PRENTICE: Talk to me about Storyfort.
AHEARN: Oh, I love doing live speaking events about the work. I mean, I think that that's the coolest opportunity. To your question about how people responded, I want to see listeners, I want to meet listeners. I can't wait to be in Boise next weekend. So Saturday at 3 p.m., this coming Saturday, the 26th, I'll be at the Cherie Buckner Web Park from 3 to 4, and I'm going to play some behind the scenes audio and talk shop, talk about camping in the back of my pickup truck on ranches across the west and what that means. And being worried about not having enough batteries in the Idaho backcountry where there wasn't a power outlet for miles or let alone a paved road. And so, yeah, just wanting to take listeners with me in person and meet folks to really visit with them with you folks in Boise. So, I hope I see I see a lot of people at the event on Saturday. It's going to be a lot of fun.
PRENTICE: Saturday…Cherie Buckner Web Park. It's 3:00 PM story for an opportunity to meet Ashley Ahearn. In the meantime, you can get this podcast on Apple and of course here at the Boise State Public Radio’s website: BoiseStatePublicRadio.org. It is Women's Work, and she is Ashley Ahearn. Ashley, good luck on Saturday and thanks for giving us some time this morning.
AHEARN: Thanks for having me, George.
Find reporter George Prentice on Twitter @georgepren
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Women's Work host Ashley Ahearn joins Morning Edition to talk about Storyfort and 'the art of a visit.' - Boise State Public Radio
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