S10E17 Cheryl Green & Thomas Reid | Pod Access
TTim VillegasFeb 22, 2023 at 9:12 pm58min
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00:00Tim Villegas
From MCIE. Inclusionists. Here is some advice. Listen to more podcasts by disabled podcasters. And I've got two I want to introduce to you right now. My name is Tim Villegas from the Maryland Coalition for inclusive education. And you were listening to think inclusive, a show where with every conversation, we try to build bridges between families, educators, and disability rights advocates to create a shared understanding of inclusive education and what inclusion looks like in the real world. You can learn more about who we are and what we do at MCIE.org. For this episode, I speak with Cheryl green and Thomas Reid, both fantastic podcasters Cheryl Green has worked as an access artist making creative and immersive captions for 10 years. In audio description for five years, she brings her lived experience of chronic illness and invisible disabilities. To her access work with independent content creators and awesome disability focused organizations including Superfest international disability Film Festival, Disability Visibility Project and kinetic light. She has made several documentary films and produces and transcribes her podcast pigeonhole. Shortly after becoming blind in 2004, Thomas Reid decided to reignite a dormant interest in audio production. After years of combining his interest in audio with advocacy. He was selected as an association of independence and radio new voice scholar in 2014. During that same time, he began to produce his podcast, Reid My Mind radio, featuring compelling people impacted by all degrees of blindness and disability. Occasionally, he shares stories from his own experience as a man adjusting to becoming blind as an adult. Thank you so much for listening. And now, my interview with Cheryl green, and Thomas Reid. I don't know who wants to go first Cheryl Thomas, but, Cheryl? Tell our audience, tell our audience about your podcast. What is it about? And why is it important for you to produce it?
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02:29Cheryl Green
My mic was muted. Otherwise, I was gonna say Thomas is gonna say I want to go first. Beat you do a podcast is that's what I get for muting my mic. My podcast is called pigeonhole. And I started as doing a streaming radio interview show many years ago, you know, unedited, just automatically uploaded. Just talk. And now pigeonhole is much more focused and it's edited, pigeonhole is kind of came from the idea of the way, I feel like a lot of people in disability community are pigeon holed and put into a slot by mainstream non disabled community and told who we are and what roles we should serve. And so it's kind of a commentary on that. I've got some interviews on there. Mostly, those are like re edits, and refining of earlier episodes, but it's a lot of storytelling, and not so much straight interview. I try to keep the episodes super, super short. And sometimes it's amusing on something that I'm going through and experiencing and want to chat about or make jokes about. But it's primarily storytelling. I don't have non disabled guests on the show.
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03:52Tim Villegas
All right, Thomas, you're up.
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03:53Thomas Reid
I'm up. So yeah, my podcast, Reid my mind radio. It actually started in a way. With my blog, I had a blog that was called read my mind period dot com. And I started I was doing a lot of audio work with a advocacy organization. And yeah, and so at one point, I was introduced to someone who let me know that there were opportunities to create new pieces of audio for a an existing radio reading service. So if you don't know a radio reading service is specifically for those who are blind, and print, print disabled. And usually what they do they have readers who read like newspapers and things like that magazines, and it's a sent on a radio signal. So you have to have this specialized radio. And so what they wanted to do was to make really, you know, new new pieces, new sort of stories, and this was gateway radio in New York City. And I started making the pieces for them. And I was like, hey, you know, no one can hear this no one that I know, at least because no one I know was, you know, using this service. So I decided to just place that on my blog at the time and called it Reid My Mind Radio, says it was audio sounded better than read my mind, audio. And at first, I wasn't really interested in creating a podcast. But then as I continued to make these stories, I was like, You know what, let me make this into a podcast. And so that's how the podcast started. And really, the podcast is, you know, it's what I like to say is I feature compelling people impacted by all degrees of blindness and disability. And occasionally, I share some of my own experiences as a man adjusting to becoming blind as an adult. And, you know, I've branched out and I kind of focus on certain topics. Now, I'm like, a seasonal sort of approach. And I'll have a theme. But I'm kind of known now for doing a lot of a lot on audio description. That's one of the things that I kind of try to cover a, you know, a fair amount of the topic of audio description.
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06:13Cheryl Green
Can I jump in here? I just want to say that when I started, I did not want to do any personal stories, it was all interviews. And it was actually I believe you heard of the podcaster. Thomas Reid, it was Thomas, you were the one who inspired me to do some personal stories on there. Because on your own show, you started occasionally doing some personal stories. And you would say things like, this is before. These are, these are episodes that came out from before I met you. But you would say like, you know, I don't usually talk about myself, but I wanted to share this story. And I found them as compelling as the ones where you interviewed somebody else. And that made me think, oh, gosh, maybe I could do that, too. And then, when I've been felt too embarrassed to do it, I'll tell you, and you were like, no, that sounds interesting. You should, you should put that story out there. So I want to thank you for that. Because I don't know if you know how much of an impact that had on me. You just kind of being a model for me in how to have a show that is primarily interviewing and gathering stories from other people. But then sometimes doing a whole episode. That's only you. And then also, you always find really interesting and unique ways to relate your personal story to your guests when it makes sense, right? You don't take over people's people's stories. But when you have something that you can genuinely share with them something in common. You bring your story into it without taking over their story. It's just great. I just I can't I can't say enough great stuff about your podcast.
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07:53Thomas Reid
Oh, thank you so much. I never knew that. Wow, that's really cool that that influenced you. That's that's really cool. Thank you for sharing that.
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