Whether you’re building a new show or developing a single story, the first question you should ask yourself is always, “Who is my listener?” The second: “Why do they care about this story or show right now?” Spend time with LWC Studios founder and CEO Juleyka Lantigua, and you’ll come away knowing the third question: “Am I doing everything in my power to put my listener at the heart of everything I produce?” Lantigua knows exactly who her listener is. Her name is Kenya. She is a 32-year-old Afro-Latina. She got married last year. She’s a digital native, college-educated, culturally fluid, multi-lingual, and a bridge between generations. Kenya is ever present within the walls of LWC Studios, the podcast and film company Lantigua founded in 2017, after working as a writer, editor and producer in places like TED, The Atlantic, and NPR. She and her staff talk about Kenya’s exploits, her favorite music, and what her mother said to her this time. She’s a friend. There’s just one thing. Kenya doesn’t exist. She is the avatar of the audience that LWC serves with everything they do. That includes 70 Million, the Peabody-nominated criminal justice reform podcast; Latina to Latina, which recently crossed two million downloads; Driving the Green Book; and many other podcasts and films intended to serve not simply a Latino audience—but an audience full of Kenyas. Juleyka and I dissect an episode of How to Talk to [Mamí and Papí] About Anything. You’ll be fascinated by the precise choices about pre-interviews, guest curation, hosting, producing and hiring practices that go into making this show – and LWC Studios – succeed. If you like this episode, you’ll also like Episode 6: A host on a mission with ¿Quién Tú Eres? host Pabel Martinez and Episode 1: Emotional Bravery on Last Day with Stephanie Wittels Wachs.
Juleyka Lantigua is the Founder/CEO of LWC Studios, which received a Peabody Award nomination and won a Third Coast Award “Director’s Prize.” A Fulbright Scholar and Tory Burch Fellow, Juleyka holds a Master’s in Journalism and an MFA in Creative Writing.
Connect with Juleyka at LWCStudios.com.
The episode discussed on today’s Sound Judgment:
How to Talk to [Mamí and Papí] About Anything, Episode 112, “Convincing Mamí My Depression is Not About Her.”
A note about Sound Judgment: We believe that no podcast host does good work alone. All hosts rely on their producers and editors, the hidden hands that enable a host to shine. We strive to give credit to every podcast team member whenever it’s possible to do so.
The team at How to Talk to [Mamí and Papí] About Anything includes:
Producer Virginia Lora
Managing Producer Paulina Velasco
Lead Producer Kojin Tashiro
Scroll down for takeaways you can use from today’s show.
Congratulations to our Name Our Listeners Contest Winners!
Almost 30 of you entered our contest to name our listeners, offering at least twice that many name suggestions.
Congratulations to winners Carolyn Kiel and Áine Pennello, who both suggested our prize-winning entry: “storytellers.”
In the end, sifting through a wide variety of creative and often pun-inspired names, the simplest seemed to us the best. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t all storytellers. Many of you work in sound. Some make films and TV. Others are writers. A handful speak on stage, or want to. And an increasing number work across many media. What holds us all together is a devotion to creating and presenting stories and conversations in ways that magnetize listeners, viewers, and readers.
Carolyn Kiel hosts Beyond 6 Seconds. Her podcast features personal stories from neurodivergent entrepreneurs, creators, and advocates that shatter misconceptions, break stigma and showcase the vibrance of neurodiversity.
Áine Pennello (AWN-YA Pen-nell-low) is a documentary film and radio producer. She recently worked on the Hulu series "Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields," which premiered at Sundance this year.
The other big win for us? You offered up 30 of your favorite hosts as dream guests for Sound Judgment.
Thank you!
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Credits
Sound Judgment is a production of Podcast Allies, LLC.
Host and Executive Producer: Elaine Appleton Grant
Project Manager: Tina Bassir
Sound Design and Audio Editing: Andrew Parella
Illustrator: Sarah Edgell
Juleyka’s Takeaways (To read a more comprehensive discussion of all of these takeaways, visit our blog.)
* * *
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:00:00
Juleyka Lantigua, what a delight to have you here.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:00:04
Thank you for inviting me. This is my first interview of 2023.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:00:08
Oh, yeah, yeah, very. I feel very fortunate and privileged.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:00:13
I love talking shop.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:00:15
Oh, that's great. Well, in every episode of sound judgment, we dissect an episode of my guests show, either one that was a favorite or one that they found particularly challenging to make. We're going to do this episode a little differently. We'll start by dissecting episode number 112 of the show. I know you've done so many of the show that you created and that you host, How to talk to [Mami and Papi] about anything. The episode is titled Convincing Mami My Depression is Not About Her.
Juleka, before we get into this episode, just tell me quickly what the origin story of How to talk to Mami and Papi about anything is.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:01:14
You're going to love this story. So many things in my career have started because something pissed me off, and I couldn't let it go. And I sat with it and I flipped it around in my head, and I was trying to figure it out. And so what happened was, right when the pandemic became real and maybe a week before New York City shut down, I was in constant conversation with one of my great friends. She is the godmother to my children. I've known her for 25 years. She's like my sister from another mister. And what was happening was that her mother, who was retired, living comfortably in Florida, had informed her that she and her also 70 plus year old husband would be driving up to New York City to get to New York City before the state basically shut down because of the pandemic. So she and I, literally, for three or four days, are texting and calling and trying to figure out what is the right thing to say to convince this person not to do something that is clearly a danger to her health, given that she is elderly and she is in the highest, highest risk group of any of the groups. And sure enough, mom showed up in New York City.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:02:35
Wow.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:02:37
Right. So as my friend and I are having these conversations, I realized there have to be millions of people around the country having these intergenerational wars, basically, about how to keep our loved ones safe. Right. And so right around the same time, we had been invited to participate in … a 24-hour fundraising event organized by very brilliant podcast innovator. And we originally were going to create a new episode of one of our existing shows. And I thought, oh, this is the perfect venue to do to the show, because the fundraiser is to help COVID impact the families. And my friend had agreed to be in the pilot, so she was the first episode. If you go back to that episode, it's very raw because I didn't know what I was doing the show, didn't really know what he was doing. We had an idea and we thought, we'll pilot it, we'll run with it, and then we'll see what happens. And I was honestly perfectly prepared to do six episodes and then quietly put it on the shelf if it bombed. I really was. I was perfectly prepared for that. But it really was one of those ideas that when I ran it by our producer, Virginia, I ran it by the team, they were like, oh my God, so many people need this. And so getting that feedback from the team was really reassuring that, yes, there are lots and lots of people in the country who could utilize this sort of bridge to work on this gap in communication. So that's how it started. I just couldn't let something go. And podcasting seriously started out similarly in that during the pandemic, when we were all stuck at home, I still felt like we needed community. I still felt like creators really wanted a place to come together, and I couldn't let it go. And so I basically hired an amazing event producer. She had produced Werk It multiple times. And so I made myself the test dummy. And I was like, if it bombs, it'll be on my watch. If it bombs, it'll be because I suck. And it didn't bomb and it didn't suck again. Could not let go. Had to figure out a way to solve something.
6:35
Elaine Appleton Grant
Okay, I am going to play a clip for you. Let me set this up. So, as I said, the episode that you chose is episode number 112. And it is this question of why is it so difficult to talk to our parents, particularly in the Latino community, about therapy? And you featured a woman, her name is Ashley, and you have her introduce herself. And here is that clip.
Ashley Nadine Lopez (clip)
00:06:52
I'm Ashley Nadine Lopez. I am an actor here in New York City. I am Puerto Rican and Cuban. But I was raised Puerto Rican and Ecuadorian. I am originally from Pennsylvania. I moved to New York City about ten years ago for school, and then I ended up loving it and stayed here. Growing up. I called my parents Mommy Bobby when I was entering college. My parents were going through a divorce. I tried therapy when I was in school, and I kind of did it for two months and stopped Jamaica.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:07:35
Why did you choose this particular episode to talk about?
Juleyka Lantigua
00:07:39
That's a really great question, because, honestly, I love the show. And Virginia, the producer, and I talk about how we have gotten so much free therapy as a result of doing this show and how it has helped us personally so much. But one of the threads, after 100 plus interviews, one of the threats that always comes up is navigating that separation between who we are as hyphenated Americanized children of immigrants while avoiding alienating or judging or disparaging our parents. And I thought this episode really captured that. And it's a theme that recurs. We could be talking about money, we could be talking about education. We could be talking about gender identity. We could be talking about almost anything. And this issue of how do I emerge as myself while honoring who you are without making you mad or feeling diminished? Right. And I think this episode really captures that well.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:08:55
I agree. It does capture it well. And it's interesting. I don't know if you know the show Quien tu Eres with Pabel Martinez? Oh, listen to my episode with Pabel Martinez, because we talk about that. We talked about a lot of things, but his show is about the Latino community in the professional world and how to be authentic. But the whole issue of intergenerational communication came up. So it's a theme I'm, I'm extremely familiar with, actually, beyond even beyond that show. And it did. This episode really does do that. What I noticed from a hosting and producing point of view, it's fairly obvious to you, is that you have Ashley introduce herself and tell her story, and it's like five or six minutes long, but it's completely non-narrated. Why did you and your team choose the non-narrated approach for all of your episodes?
Juleyka Lantigua
00:09:58
Thank you for noticing that, because that's very intentional. So our model at LWC Studios is erasing the margins. We really believe that once we take away these artificial dividers, and once we take away these sort of gerrymandered notions of who people are and where we belong, what you end up is with the possibility of really engaging with one another. But in order for us to facilitate that, as a production studio, we have to center the person whose story we're telling. So removing the narration from the introduction and from what we call the testimonial, that first part of the piece is the testimonial. Removing the narration centers exactly the person who needs to be centered, the person who came to the show to share their story. Here you are. Tell us. Right. And we ask very few guiding questions as we're tracking that. And we tend to wait to see where the follow up question might occur, instead of having twelve questions that they have to answer. Like, Virginia is excellent at getting these because she is so judicial, almost surgical in giving openended questions and openended prompts to our guests that will yield a pathway to understanding why they came to the show.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:11:31
You know, you went exactly where I was headed, which is that to do a non narrated segment, anything non narrated is much harder than it appears.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:11:44
It is.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:11:46
Deceptively difficult because as a listener, if it's done well, it sounds like we're just listening to somebody talk, but nobody tells a good story that way. So I was positive that you had some prompts there. I mean, obviously there's a first prompt, but I heard some prompts like I heard, what did you call your parents growing up? Is that one of your prompts?
Juleyka Lantigua
00:12:12
Yes. So that is definitely a thing that we love people to say because there are so many loving little names from throughout different cultures. And so it's such a nice tie in to the broader themes of the show that in the end, we all have some sort of nickname or fun name that we call our parents. And so it just brings us back to that shared space that we have with all of our listeners, which is that in the end, we're somebody's kid, right? That's who we are.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:12:48
But listen to that, the shared space that we have with our listeners. How do you think about creating that shared space? What are some of the very specific things that you do to make it feel like an even playing field, an accepting community?
Juleyka Lantigua
00:13:06
This is where the methodology has to be explained. And you're like, is it a methodology or are we winging it? Okay, so the answer to that question is that Virginia Lora, who's the producer, is exceptional at prepping for interviews. So that's the true answer, right? The answer is that because she has selected, pre interviewed and interviewed 95% of our guests, so she knows everybody's stories intimately.
And she also is the one who's responsible for making sure that the throughlines for the broader themes in the show are present.
And so there are always questions about communication. There are always questions about the role that other people, whether it's siblings or aunts or uncles, play. There are always questions about where mobility might have influenced the communications. Did you move away? Did you go away to college? Those kinds of things.
And so part of the intentional creation of community with our listeners has to do with reflecting back to them some part of their experience, right? So if you are a first generation, second generation American, you have experienced 30, 40, 50% of the things on average that we're talking about to some degree. And so we try to make sure that those things that we have in common show up very consistently.
And sometimes when I listen to a testimonial, I'll send Virginia a note and say, okay, but what about that person is the middle child? How did that impact? Did she say anything about that? And then would you never go back into the table and say, oh, she actually did say something really important about that. Let's pull it back in here, right? Because the experience of a middle child is different than a first child, than the baby in the family. So those are the kinds of things that we look for.
The other thing that we do really well is we go in and say, when I'm interviewing the experts, oh, we've talked about this before. I remember that we have this episode where we talked about this, et cetera, et cetera. So we reference the other stories that have surfaced so that we say, and this is related to this other thing because or this has echoes of this other theme because and then we're also pretty ballsy in that in the episode notes at the bottom, we say, if you like this episode, listen to these three other episodes. And so we are always upcycling our material to the listener and saying, hey, if you like this, you're also going to like these other ones.
And then I get personal on the show, like I'm constantly oversharing. And so I think that helps a little bit because my experience in many ways is very typical of a first gen. And so I bring that to bear, especially if I'm going to disagree with a guest, which I always try to do very lovingly. But sometimes you need a little bit of that pushback to make the conversation really, I would say really engaging and dynamic.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:16:36
Well, and Juleyka, you have amazing journalism chops and years and years of experience. So of course you're going to push back. I think of loyalty as I'm curious about this with you, loyalty of a host or a producer, anybody really making the content of the show as being to the listener 100% and the guest is second. We want to be nice to our guests. We, of course, are thrilled that they're there, if we happen to have a nice positive show. Not always the case when you're doing other kinds of reporting, of course, but I think of a good host as being an informed guide for the listener, as a stand-in for the listener. And if you don't push back, sometimes you fail in that duty. What do you think?
Juleyka Lantigua
00:17:26
Oh, I agree. I agree completely. I talk to my team all the time about being advocates, and when I put teams together to work on shows, client shows or original shows, I talk to them this way. I say the editor in the room is the listener's advocate. Your job is to make sure that the experience is not just enjoyable, but fortifying and edifying, and that it doesn't create any confusion. The minute that you confuse your listener, you've lost your listener. Right?
So in the room, the editor is the listener's advocate, right? The producer is the sound advocate. Right? So the producer is the person who has to make sure that because we've chosen the medium of sound as the conveyor for the storytelling, they have to push for the best sound possible. They have to push for the best composition, for the best sound design. They have to push for organization and elements in there that guide the listening right in as much as we're using audio and sound to do that. So once you've got those two advocates in the room, you can do anything if they have that clarity of mission.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:18:53
I like that. I wonder when you say the advocate for sound, the producers advocate for sound. Some people may take that as meaning simply sound quality, technical sound quality. But that's not it at all.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:19:07
No. It means things like, don't put a clip in there that doesn't sing right. Say it in two lines and narration, but don't waste 12 seconds if the clip is not really going to do anything right.
It means if you have two false endings, get rid of the two false endings. How many times have I heard a podcast that could have ended seven different ways and they left all seven different ways in there, right?
And so that is the advocacy that needs to be happening, right? Like, you have to be really judicious about the sound and the story that you're telling with sound.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:19:54
Completely to get back to the episode. By the time we came to the end of what you're calling a testimonial, I really wanted to hear your voice. And when you came back, I was like, oh, here's this voice that I love. And I was so delighted that you were back to be my guide through this conversation. I'm going to play a little bit of this clip.
Juleyka Lantigua (clip)
00:20:20
As I listened to Ashley's story, I wanted to cheer for her. Not only did she get her mom to understand her decision to get treatment, she did it in such a way that she allowed her mom to see that maybe she could also benefit from therapy. Yes, Ashley. That's a win. Ashley's story also made me curious about her own hesitation around seeking mental help. How could understanding our doubts as first gens and especially as Latinas, help us better address our parents’ concerns? To help us figure it out, you can guess what I did. I called in an expert.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:21:04
Talk to me about the writing of this segue and what you were trying to accomplish. And of course, I don't know whether you're writing your own narration or your producer is writing narration for you, and then you're editing in your way.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:21:19
It's a collaboration. So Virginia, again, who knows the show inside out. She drafts these and I always change them.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:21:30
Of course you do. Of course.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:21:33
But I really tried to keep the spirit of what she gave me, but sometimes I just have my own idea of what I want to say and how I want to respond. I think in this one, there was a really healthy mix of both what she gave me and what I improvised. I tend to be more exclamation marks. Exclamation marks everywhere. And she tends to be more like, “semicolon, continue.”
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:22:02
So it's a tone thing, is what you're saying? Yeah, exactly.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:22:07
So no. So the segment here is this is the segue into the formal, sort of more useful, nuts and bolts part of the show. And so what I try to do is acknowledge the gift of the story that was just shared with us. And sometimes it's also important to acknowledge the bravery that took. It's sometimes really important to acknowledge the thoughtfulness with which some people are really engaging with material in their lives that can be very difficult. So it's really important for me, as the guide, as you say, for me to acknowledge that and to be thankful for that before we move into, “Let's dissect it for all the pearls of wisdom that we can gain from it.”
And then sometimes I also bring to bear some really relevant experience. This is a moment for me to also say, I get it. I've been there, like so many of us have been there. And I'm so happy that we get to have this conversation. Let's go have this conversation.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:23:09
Yeah. And I hear a lot of things just in that one answer that I want to ask you about. I did notice your delivery, as you said. You just said, I tend to be exclamation points. What I noticed about your delivery is it's very clear, it's simple. There's just so much clarity. It's very warm, it's very expressive. And my belief is this is a skill also. We don't just roll out of bed and talk. It's very rare.
So tell me about the ways in which you think about your delivery, the tone of voice you want to have for, say, this show versus some other show you might be narrating.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:23:49
So you are really paying attention!
Elaine Appleton Grant
It’s what I do.
Juleyka Lantigua
So this is how I think of that segment because it's super short. It's sometimes 1 minute, 45 seconds. Right. So the way that I think about that is if I were leaving a voice memo for someone right. So instead of texting you and I knew that you were having a tough day or you were about to do something important, I might press record and then put the phone up to my mouth and then leave you a voice memo. Right. So that's the energy that I want to have in that segment, where it's intimate, where it's cheerful, where it's reflective, where it's brief, and where there's no jargon. I'm not using jargon or clinical terms to leave my friend or beloved colleague a message. I'm not doing that. I'm going to be very plain spoken. I'm going to have a lot of emotion and context in that message because.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:24:52
You know that one listener really well. Do you do you have an avatar? Do you imagine somebody oh, we have an avatar, yeah.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:24:58
So the whole company has one avatar. Yeah. Her name is Kenya and you can see her picture on our website. She is gorgeous. She's Afro-Latina. She started with us when she was 26. I created her because I needed to have someone to focus on because I knew that at 42, when I started the company, I was not my ideal listener. And so I needed to create an ideal listener who was much younger than me and at a different place in her life. So Kenya has been with us five and a half years. So she is now 32. She is married. She just got married. She's thinking about having her first child. But when we met, she was the first she was the oldest of three, the first one to go to college.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:25:41
Wait a minute. Kenya is made up?
Juleyka Lantigua
00:25:43
Kenya is made up, but based on statistics. Okay. So I spent months combing through statistical data from all kinds of places to come up with an avatar of the most representative Latina listener that I could find. And so Kenya has been her avatar for five and a half years. And everything we do on the original side, we ask two questions will Kenya listen and will she share it? And based on the two answers to those questions, we proceed. So everything that we do is for Kenya.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:26:18
That is absolutely fascinating. And so the rest of your team, how many people on your team now?
Juleyka Lantigua
00:26:23
Oh, it actually is between five and eight. Yeah.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:26:26
They all know and love Kenya.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:26:28
We talk about Kenya all the time.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:26:30
Like you're inviting her to dinner. Yeah, I love it.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:26:34
Like, it's a group text and she's in the group text.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:26:36
Oh, my God. That's fantastic. How do you know whether Kenya will listen to a new show and share a new show?
Juleyka Lantigua
00:26:45
So that's a really smart question. Right. And this is really important for people who are thinking about starting a show. And I know I'm going to break some hearts when I say this. You are not your ideal listener. Sorry. But you are not actually sorry. Not sorry. You have to understand that and you have to accept that for you to actually make a show that can extend well beyond your taste and well beyond your interest. And so it was a necessity for me to create Kenya so that I could separate the things that I, quote unquote, light the things that I wanted to listen to from the things that I actually wanted to put out into the world. And it was also a necessity so that I could understand the growth trajectory of the work that I intended to do five and a half years ago. And so I really, really encourage you to do that. Now. The way that you know if your avatar, your Kenya is listening to your show is you go online, you see the comments, you read the DMs, you see who they're sharing it with, you see what lists people are putting your show on. You check what the audiences are for those shows. You see what other shows people are listening to on Apple or wherever who also listen to your show. There are multiple ways for you to ascertain whether or not your intended audience is actually the actual audience that your show is finding.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:28:15
That's for an existing show.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:28:17
For an existing show. Yeah.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:28:19
What about something you've got an idea for? And you're running through this test.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:28:24
So you have to get five people in the room to listen to your pilot. Right. So I always believe in the power of odd numbers, and I'm a big believer in the power of odd numbers, probably because I was born in an odd numbered year and because most of the big things that I've have happened in my life that are significant and long standing have happened on odd years. And invariably odd years are always good years for me. And even years suck.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:28:52
Well, happy 2023, girl.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:28:55
Girl. I crawl that of 2022. Anyways, get five people in a zoom after they listen to your episode and get them talking, right. And have those five people be your ideal listener and see what happens.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:29:19
Very simple. So how many pilots, how many shows have you been excited about? You've made a pilot and then you've actually killed it.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:29:28
Oh, there've been at least two.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:29:30
Yeah. That hurts.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:29:33
At least two.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:29:34
Yeah, it could be, but it could be more. It could be more, but that's not bad.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:29:39
At least two for now. Okay.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:29:43
Got to ask about the failures, right?
Juleyka Lantigua
00:29:47
No, you can definitely have to have those, though, because if you don't fail, you're going to have a really warped sense of your own abilities. Like, you have to fail. You have to get rejections. You have to think about rejection and failure as documentation that you showed up prepared to do the work, right? When you get a rejection email, save it. When you get a rejection letter, save it. Save all of those. Because you will literally have a roadmap of all of the times you showed up prepared to do the work. Right? That's what matters. What matters is the showing up. That's 100% of success.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:30:44
I love that.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:30:46
So we have literally hundreds of rejections in our emails because we also make films, and we send our films out into the film festival circuit every time we have three films. And I can probably tell you we have 300 rejections for all of those films, right? And we have sent pitches out to potential clients. We have replied to RFPs. Rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection. Right? It is part of doing what we love. Right?
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:31:23
That is terrific advice. And I'm glad that you went on to say, here are our rejections.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:31:29
They're absolutely constant. Because if we don't show up ready to do the work, how will anyone know that we're ready to do the work, right? It is not always our project to win, right? But many times, having shown up with a proposal, gets us another lead, gets us an introduction, gets us an invitation to something else, right? So this is the other thing about the quote unquote rejection. It was really not a rejection. That was an introduction to some other thing that came another way. Three months later. Seven months later. It's so important to understand that you have to show up, right? You have to show up. And here's the thing I want to say, especially to women of color, it is not your job to decide if you're qualified. You're not on the committee. You're not on the committee. Nobody appointed you to the selection committee. So how dare you preemptively say I am not qualified? How dare you? You have to show up.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:32:43
Juleyka, you have a big presence. I mean, your stage presence is undeniable
Juleyka Lantigua
It’s the hair!
Elaine Appleton Grant
However, in this particular show, how to talk to Mommy and Poppy about anything, you have chosen to be a pretty minimal presence. I got the sense that that is also an intentional choice. Is that an intentional choice? And why?
Juleyka Lantigua
00:33:18
Of course it is. Because this is not my story. Right? We put the story, the person's story, right at the front of the show. It's not my story. And secondly, I'm not the expert. We brought an actual expert, someone who knows what they're talking about, who studies this, who researches this, right? So my job is to facilitate, right? That's it. My job is to, in my mind, hold the mic to the audience members, aka our listeners, and get the questions that they would ask answered. So I'm running around in the auditorium with the mic, okay?
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:33:54
And being warm and. Encouraging while you're doing it.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:33:58
That's the Libra in me. I'm a hostess. Right? The Libras. We love hosting. We love entertaining. We love making beautiful spaces for people. So that's the library. That's what you're getting, libra and energy.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:34:11
But it's really important because I do believe, actually, in hosting as invitation, that you're welcoming somebody into a space that has to be a safe space for them, again, depending on the kind of show you have. But what I also find is I do a lot of coaching of corporate people who are having shows that they struggle to know how much of themselves to put in, and a lot of people, newer hosts struggle. Am I completely removed? You know nothing about me. I'm that sort of anchor personality that we're the old traditional broadcaster, or am I over sharing all the time so that I've made it about myself? How do you think about or coach other hosts? Because you're hiring hosts about finding that balance where we're coming back to your show because oh, that's Juleyka’s show.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:35:12
Yeah. So so here's what I always recommend, and Alicia and I sort of, like, perfected this.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:35:18
Alicia?
Juleyka Lantigua
00:35:19
Alicia is so Alicia Menendez, who is brilliant, beautiful, and amazing, who started Latina to Latina and then brought me on, and now we co-own it and executive produce it together. She hosts it. So when she started out, that was her first podcast. That was her first no-video, audio-only interviewing gig. And I used to get on her all the time about how she would just treat it like a volley. And she'd ask, “question, answer, question, answer, question, answer.” And I'd be like, “Where are you? Why am I sitting here for 30 minutes? I am not getting anything from you.” And so what we started doing is we, in the prep, would, in brackets, put in the story that she would share from her personal experience.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:36:01
Wow.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:36:02
So as we did the interview prep, we have the whole sheet. Maybe we'd have 30 questions segmented into different segments. And then in there, we would literally put Alicia talks about this, Alicia mentions this. And it worked. Right? Putting it into the prep initially until she loosened up and really started to open up, really worked to have her know exactly where I was asking her to bring in a story that was relevant and that would help her connect to the listener and help her connect to the person in front of her. So I don't have to do that for myself, but I know exactly when I look at the prep, what story or what part of me I'm going to bring into the conversation. So I usually pick three. I try to keep it to three places, because otherwise it does become about me, and I never want it to become about me.
But the story that I'm telling has to really bring insight, right? Or has to offer an alternative or has to create a question. If it doesn't do one of those three things, I'm not going to bring the story to bear.
There has to be a service that the story that I'm sharing from my experience has on there, because I find that it's better sometimes to say things like, really? You think so? Right. Like, if you do that in a non-threatening way, you really open up for the expert to say, well, in some instances, X, Y, and Z. Right?
And so I prefer to be that person who kind of raises an eyebrow, and the person then has to rethink what they're saying. And then other times I'll very simply go, “I'm going to push back on that, and here's why I'm going to push back on that.” Right. And people actually love it when you say, “I'm going to push back,” because they're going to get pushed into a space where they really have to interrogate what they're saying in the context of what we're talking about. And if you're someone who is intellectually honest, you invite that.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:38:11
I could not agree with you more. And that's where it gets really interesting. You said something very interesting that you picked up on before. I do listen very closely, and in this clip from the interview, you ask the expert, this researcher, about talking about medication.
Juleyka Lantigua (Clip)
00:38:33
I want to talk about the medication part of this because I feel like that's a secondary step to overcome in many instances with intergenerational conversations about therapy. So first there's the, “Mom, I feel like I need to go to therapy,” but then there's, “Hey, mom, I'm in therapy, but also I'm about to start on this medication, or I've started on this medication.” How can a first-gen prepare to have that conversation with their parents so that their parent doesn't immediately go, “Oh, my God, something's really, really wrong with my kid?”
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:39:08
What I picked up on from this clip, Juleyka, is that this is your lived experience. You were speaking totally as if this is a familiar thing. It's either your lived experience or people you know. You know, there is truth here. And that is incredibly helpful because you're, again, taking that point of view of the listener.
How do you think about hiring people to work on shows? Do they have to share that lived experience? If I'm working on, say, a branded show about the environment, do I need someone who has already got experience as an environmental reporter, necessarily, or a show that is about identity? Do I have to have absolutely everybody on that show share that same identity? How do you think about this?
Juleyka Lantigua
00:39:57
That's a loaded question.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:39:59
It is, sure.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:40:00
So in this show, the answer is yes, right? Because this show is about the generational communication gap between immigrants and their first gen kids. Right. So on this show, you have to have the relevant experience because otherwise you won't be able to pick the right. Stories on the right experts.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:40:17
Right.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:40:19
That's it. You know, this is not something I can teach someone else.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:40:26
No.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:40:28
I can teach many things. This is not one of them.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:40:31
No, of course not. Of course not.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:40:33
But to the larger question of what some people call cultural competence or having a shared cultural framework to begin with, I think it is very important. Right? I think it's important because it is in the seams where we lose people. Right. So I'll give you a really concrete example. If I go as a Spanish speaking reporter to someone's home to do an interview, and I address them in the informal tu, I'm DOA, dead on arrival. Because I cannot culturally address an elder as tu, I have to address them as usted. Right. So if I don't know that, there's no way I'm getting any interview from anybody, I will be very politely escorted out or I will be given one-word answers that I cannot use.
Right. And so when I talk about cultural competence and I talk about having some percentage of shared experience, it is because it is in these minutiae moments that you lose the ability to really get the story.
And so it's really important for someone not to parachute in right. Thinking that simply having the reporting chops and the journalistic skills is enough, it's a great place to start, but it is simply not enough to do that. Right. Not especially if you want, like, we want to have a long-running conversation about these things. Right.
I need someone who can connect the dots between what we said in episode 17 and episode 77. I need someone who can go back to an expert and say, “Hey, you talked about how we do last will and testaments. Well, now we've got this other legal matter. Can you come back and talk to us about it?” Right. I need someone with that level of fluidity so that I can be free to just go into the prep, get into the headspace, and do the best possible interview that I can. [I’m] fully confident in what Virginia gives me, which is Virginia gives me full confidence that she is such a thorough vetting of the guests and of the expert.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:42:55
Right. And I think a lot of people don't really understand how much prep goes into curating those guests. And any interview shows the success can rise or absolutely be killed on the quality of the guests that you choose. Because you can only coach guests so far.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:43:12
Absolutely.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:43:13
In the short time that we have left, Juleyka, what I want to do is run through a lightning round of questions that I ask everybody and then hopefully get in one more question about where you and your now multiple organizations sit in this crazy industry that seems to be ever-changing. So let's do the lightning round. What does it mean to you to have hostiness?
Juleyka Lantigua
00:43:43
I think it means welcoming and utilizing creative conflict to bring elasticity to your interviews.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:43:54
Fascinating. What do you know now about hosting that you didn't know when you started hosting?
Juleyka Lantigua
00:44:04
Speaking softly is more powerful than shouting.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:44:09
Love it. How has hosting this show changed you in ways that you did not expect?
Juleyka Lantigua
00:44:15
Oh, my God. Free therapy every week.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:44:23
Why we really choose our shows. And who is your dream guest? For Sound Judgment, another host you would love to hear talk shop Laurie Martinez.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:44:42
Oh, you have to get Lori on. Laurie. I am the founding president of the Lori Martinez fan club. She is the founder of Ochenta Studios, based in Paris, but they make global podcasts in over 27 languages. So I think she's a huge innovator in the space. So she created the first choose-your-own-adventure podcast. And it's incredible. So she's just always doing things that just kind of make you go, “Oh, my God, that's so smart.”
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:45:17
Right now, as we speak, there's a lot of press about the downturn in the podcast marketplace, and yet your organization is growing. You have a lot of plans for this year, and you're one of who I would consider to be a handful of women who are known, who are considered to be powerful within the industry. What's your take on the economic forecast of 2023 and also your place in that?
Juleyka Lantigua
00:45:58
So, here's the thing. When we see the headlines, we have to be very aware that the headlines are only really speaking about the top 5% of podcasters. It's really important, right? I'm not saying that the headlines are not true. I'm not saying that you have to take them with a whole bucket of skepticism. But what I am saying is that they only really reflect 5% of podcast creators in the space.
There are hundreds of thousands of us in this space. And unfortunately, as happens in every other entertainment industry, only the big players are ever measured. Only the big players are ever sort of utilized as the temperature gauges and the litmus tests for what's going on. And so had I sort of made business decisions and creative decisions based on the headlines, I would not be here, right? I simply would not be here. And there are many, many other mid-level, small to medium size studios that would also not be here.
So what we decided instead is to focus on our audience. What we decided instead was to focus on overserving the Kenya in the world. And that has brought us success, because we didn't worry about the barometers or the false temperatures that were being taken. We worried about how are we growing for this particular audience?
And so, yes, it's a market like any other market, so it will even flow. But if you are someone who is driven by other things than shareholder returns, then I think you are free to think about your place in the space quite differently.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:47:56
Last question. What's one thing you're super excited about in your business this coming year?
Juleyka Lantigua
00:48:03
Oh, my God. So I'm not excited about this, but I'm going to say I'm excited about this because my team is going to get a kick out of hearing me say that I'm excited about this. I am so excited that we're going to start taping me and putting our video broadcast on YouTube.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:48:23
So are you doing it?
Juleyka Lantigua
00:48:24
Because I have to because yeah, my team outvoted me.
Elaine Appleton Grant
00:48:30
I got it. Juleyka, you are a true delight. I have learned a lot, and it's just been so wonderful to talk with you. Thank you so much for your time.
Juleyka Lantigua
00:48:41
Oh, my God. You're such a good interviewer. Seriously, that was so good. Good. Thank you for having me on.