The Big Shed Podcast

After a particularly colorful Thanksgiving feast, or was it a a drunken night at the bar (?), Independent Producer Amanda Thieroff and her friend Sean Berman challenged each other to embark on the ROYGBIV diet. This diet isn't about losing weight or being nutritious - it's about spending a week eating only one color of food per day, according to the colors of the rainbow.

Stacy Bond's youngest sister died in a nighttime car accident while driving from Mozambique to South Africa. Robbers took her shoes, but left her purse. A year after her death, Stacy met her mother and other sister in New York to attend a seance conducted by Medium George Anderson.

(Produced by Laura Herberg) Director's Choice! Laura Herberg won Director's Choice in Verite + 1, our first-ever audio competition. Laura's story is about her friend Rachel Parsons, an aspiring actress who landed the lead role in a low-budget, independent film. The only drawback was that it required a sex scene in which she would have to be topless, something she wasn't sure she wanted to do. The role was too good to turn down, even though she worried it might jeapardize her relationship with her boyfriend. The story is told almost completely as verite. Rachel has been working on a narrated version of this story off and on for years. She thought the Verite + 1 competition would allow her to experiment with a new approach; maybe shaking loose the producer's block and indecision she's been wrestling with. We think it worked.

Producer Sara Curtis brings us the story of Benuel Esch - an amish man from Lancaster, PA who has lost his family, his home, and his mind. Benuel started questioning his lifestyle 20 years ago. Now he's returned to Amish living with a new community in Unity, Maine. There, Benuel is trying to make sense of where he's been and where he's going.

The winner of Big Shed's first ever Audio Verite +1 Competition is David Weinberg. The piece is called One for the Commandant, a short story set in downtown Seattle, featuring Edgar, Catfish and Hans, who David hung out with on his breaks from a restaurant job. David recorded the goings on one evening and crafted this story, which is apparently made entirely from audio verite.