The Podcast Made From Inside Prison
Two brothers, Eddie and Emile, sit in the small room they share, each on his own bed. Emile wants to watch a soap on TV. Eddie, a devout Seventh-Day Adventist, asks him to use headphones so he won’t have to hear the TV on the Sabbath. Fine—in theory. But the headphones are too short to use while on the bed, so Emile takes them off. Eddie, who remembers soap operas playing in his violent childhood home, turns off the TV. Emile turns it back on. The tension continues for days, escalating beyond electronics: Eddie stops showering in protest. Emile starts smoking on his bed. “You’re gonna kill me with cancer!” Eddie shouts at his brother. “Fratricide! Fratricide!” their next-door neighbor yells.
Emile and Eddie aren’t just brothers sharing a room; they’re also inmates sharing a cell. The scene is recounted—by the brothers themselves—in the first episode of the podcast network Radiotopia’s show , which launched in June and will run through October. The brilliant series is a collaboration between the inmates Earlonne Woods and Antwan Williams and the prison volunteer Nigel Poor, and it is conceived, recorded, and produced from inside of San Quentin State Prison. The show addresses legislative issues through the personal narratives of inmates and highlights the universal experiences shared by those
