Audio · Narrative · Series Concept · 2024

Inheritance

What do fathers pass to sons? Not the things they say — the things they can't. A podcast series built around that silence and what lives inside it.

SERIES CONCEPT

Every father passes something down. Some of it is spoken. Most of it isn't. Inheritance is a podcast that goes looking for the unspoken part — the values, the silence, the wounds, and the survival strategies that move through families without anyone choosing to send them.

Overview

This project started with a trip. Twelve days in Philadelphia with my father — and I had a recorder running for most of it. Notes, conversations, ambient sound, moments I didn't want to lose. I didn't know exactly what I was making yet, but I knew I was capturing something.

That summer I took a podcasting class specifically to figure out what to do with all that audio. The question underneath it — what fathers pass to sons, and what sons do with it — turned into Inheritance. Not as a tidy concept, but as something I was actually trying to work out.

Process

The class became the container. I sorted through the Philadelphia recordings, found the through-line, and built a first segment: eight minutes of produced audio that ends with a bump to a commercial break — the structure of a podcast opening act. It was presented as a class deliverable, but it's also the real beginning of the first episode.

There's more to the episode. The segment that exists is a strong opening — it establishes the voice, the question, and the stakes — but the full first episode isn't finished yet. That's the next phase of this work.

Where It Stands

Eight minutes produced, mixed, and presented. First episode in progress. The raw material from Philadelphia is all there. What remains is the editorial work of shaping the rest of the hour from what was captured.

This is some of the most personal work in this portfolio, and the project most likely to keep going after the class ends.