FAQ

We appreciate listeners wanting to hear more episodes more often, but please keep in mind that producing a podcast from inside a prison (without internet or phone access) takes much more time than producing one on the outside. This is a learning process for all involved, and while our systems are improving, it’s still a ton of work to get each episode publish-ready.

Every Ear Hustle episode is approved by prison administration as a matter of policy concerning outgoing media of any form from prisons. The administrations we work with have shown great support for Ear Hustle, and we see no indication that they will make it difficult for us to pursue the podcast we’ve outlined from the start, sharing stories about day-to-day life in prison. We are not concerned about this need for approval compromising the content or integrity of the show.

It's true! The day before Thanksgiving 2018, then-California Governor Jerry Brown commuted Earlonne's sentence, and Earlonne was released from San Quentin on Nov. 30, 2018. You can hear more about it in this bonus episode.

Earlonne is now employed by PRX as a full-time producer with Ear Hustle, and is busy reporting on re-entry stories and daily life for formerly incarcerated people, while also documenting his own experiences. He still co-hosts the show with Nigel.

Thank you so much for the interest, but to be honest, most likely, you can’t. It’s not possible to bring collaborators into San Quentin regularly, nor to connect via internet or phone with the men inside. Besides the logistical challenges of collaborating, while there are many people on the outside pursuing excellent journalism and storytelling about prison culture and reform, with Ear Hustle we are committed to producing stories from and giving voice to the people on the inside. And while we have expanded to include stories of re-entry, we are not, at this time, taking pitches related to this subject.

In general, due to the unique nature of our production, we do not respond to outside requests or pitches for material.

Yes! You can find transcripts of each episode on our transcripts page.

Thanks for your interest in this! You can always donate to the show to support what we’re doing, and help keep us Hustling into the future. If you’d like to send a physical check, please make it out to PRX, Inc., put “Ear Hustle” in the memo line, and send it to:

PRX
P.O. Box 382234
Cambridge, MA 02238

Would you or your company like to sponsor Ear Hustle? Just contact Radiotopia and they will hook you up. Want to make a donation through a family foundation or donor-advised fund? Our Director of Development will help you out.

Yes you can. We have T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, and more available. Order yours today!

We donate 25% of all proceeds from merch to San Quentin's Mount Tamalpais College (formerly Prison University Project), the program that Nigel first worked with when she began volunteering there in 2011. Any additional revenue from merch supports the production of the show.

Prison rules prohibit us from passing on any letters, but you can find all the information you'll need yourself.

You can locate any incarcerated person's CDCR number here, and find instructions for how to contact them here.

And you'll find the names of many of the people featured in our stories on each episode page, in the show notes.

Sorry, but we’re not able to relay messages to or within prison facilities.

It's great that you want to start writing letters to incarcerated people! Unfortunately, we can’t provide guidance on specific pen-pal programs, because we simply don’t know enough about each individual one. We encourage you to do careful research and vet pen-pal programs thoroughly before giving them your information.

Right now, music featured on Ear Hustle is not available for download outside of podcast episodes. But, you can find some of the songs from our episodes on our music page.

That's great! Here are a few programs you can look into:
- Insight Prison Project
- Mount Tamalpais College (formerly Prison University Project)
- The San Quentin Trust
- California Reentry Program
- Insight Garden Program

We're so glad you've tuned in for all of our episodes! Have you tried any of the other podcasts on our network, Radiotopia? We recommend starting with the "Doing Time" series the shows produced to welcome us to the network back in 2017.

If you're looking for other shows about incarceration and life in prison, check out our "Summer Listening" bonus episode for some recommendations. And here's a handy list:

- The Secret Life of Prisons, from the Prison Radio Association in the UK
- Birds Eye View, made by women in the Darwin Correctional Centre in Australia
- Uncuffed, produced by men incarcerated at Solano and San Quentin state prisons in California for KALW
- Life on the Outside, produced by Lucy Copp
- Caught, stories about the juvenile justice system
- Decarceration Nation, about mass incarceration and the people impacted by it
- In The Dark Season 2, the investigative podcast looks at the case of a man tried six times for the same crime
- Pelican Bay UNLOCKED, produced by people incarcerated at Pelican Bay State Prison in California
- Prison Bag, a woman tells her story of having a husband in prison
- “Prison Diaries” from Radio Diaries, first-person stories about life in prison
- 70 Million, a podcast about criminal justice reform
- Supervision, a four-part series about life on parole, produced by NHPR
- Unprisoned, a podcast and radio show about the human impacts of incarceration
- With(in) Podcast, a collaboration between the University of Denver Prison Arts Initiative and the Colorado Department of Corrections
- Mass Exoneration, about people convicted of crimes they didn’t commit, in collaboration with the New England Innocence Project
- Suave, a collaboration between Futuro Media and PRX that tells a story of juvenile incarceration, redemption, and the unusual relationship between a journalist and a source.
- Life Jolt, a CBC podcast that examines the lives of women navigating Canada's correctional system.

You can email us or send us a postcard — and keep your ears peeled for “Catch a Kite” episodes featuring questions sent in from listeners via postcard.