[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Back with The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry.

We're giving you a behind-the-scenes listen at how The Takeaway is made. One very special member of our control room team is Engineer Vince Fairchild. Now, be clear, we are a team of very vocal radio producers, so Vince can sometimes be the quiet one. Of course, that means when he speaks, you better go ahead and listen. In fact, y'all have been listening. Many of the stories that you've heard, like the struggles of Mason, Tennessee-

Speaker 2: Mason Matters because we have been here, the majority of us, all our lives, and we are not just somebody who you can just push over, walk over.

Melissa Harris-Perry: -or this one.

Nikki Giovanni: My name is Nikki Giovanni. I am a poet.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Yes. Those ideas come right from Vince. He fact-checks in the moment like none other. He sound-designs with mastery and he's so good that when our director, Jay, is out, Vince slides right into the director's chair with aplomb.

Vince Fairchild: That is spelled A-P-L-O-M-B.

[bell rings]

Speaker 4: That is correct.

Melissa Harris-Perry: That actually happens a lot, y'all. Vince tends to try to get my pronunciations and my spellings together. We know that that is part of what makes him remarkable. Without further ado, Hey, Vince.

Vince Fairchild: Hey, Melissa.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right. I am in North Carolina and y'all are in the control room in New York, so I guess I don't actually know what it is you do.

Vince Fairchild: Broadly speaking, my job is to make sure that the radio show sounds clear, good, that everything could be heard and understood. Then on a smaller scale, I'm doing things like making sure that someone turns up a volume somewhere or gets closer to a mic. I might clean up some recorded audio just to make it a little bit clearer. It depends on each segment, each show.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Well, you say it like it's straightforward, but when I am in New York and I do look at this control room, whoa, you have this huge equipment in front of you. It really does look like the Star Trek enterprise.

Vince Fairchild: Sometimes I wonder if audio engineers have designed their equipment to be more impressive than it really needs to be, but the idea is that should a situation arise when we need maybe five guests, three hosts, three different live feeds from different satellite channels, a computer over here that has all our sound effects, then we can maybe do that potentially, but really on most days, my big soundboard that I'm sitting in front of, I'm probably only using maybe one-fifth of it.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right. How did you come to work in radio?

Vince Fairchild: Well, I grew up listening to public radio. I studied music in college and audio recording. I had a college radio show for three years in college, which I really loved. When it came time to do a college internship, I looked to the nearby public radio station and did an internship there. That turned into a job where I was working for about seven years. That was in Boston. Then I came to New York to work at The Takeaway.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Wait a minute, in college, what was your radio show?

Vince Fairchild: It changed over time. It ended up being a mix of surf rock music, a lot of old instrumental music. Then my co-host Dan and I would just get on air and talk to each other and do silly improv bits. It was very free-form.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I love that. Now, you've been here with The Takeaway for 15 years on this show for its entire history. Besides paying the bills, what has kept you on this changing team, this changing show for so long?

Vince Fairchild: Well, a big part of it is the team. We've always had great people here working at The Takeaway. It's just been a wonderful environment to work in, very supportive team. The other thing is the mission of The Takeaway. I've always felt that I wanted to be a part of a team and a program that really looked beyond what most news media was doing and tried to find some of the untold stories in the country and bring those to light. It's just always been a rewarding part of my career to be a support person in that mission.

Melissa Harris-Perry: When you think about this team and this show, which, again, has changed so much over time, but it has always been in, as you said, public radio, a medium on which you were raised, what is the 'public' in public radio that matters to you?

Vince Fairchild: I think the word 'public' to me is really important in the sense that it means that this is here as a public good for everybody. Anybody and everybody can learn, can be exposed to new ideas. It is here as another arm of the Democratic mission of the country to make sure that we have an informed public and that we bring to light the many different facets of American life, of the different people that have come here, that have different experiences, the stories that just don't get told that much, and also to shine a light on public policy in this country.

[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: I always feel, Vince, you have these bits and bites and deep recesses of information that will show up in surprising moments. We'll be recording a segment on one topic and you're like, "Oh, but actually--" and then tell me something about the Ming Dynasty and how it connects back or something. I'm wondering, is that from being the deep listener that you are? Is it because you're staying up late at night reading the encyclopedia? Where do you think that deep platform emerges for from you?

Vince Fairchild: Well, I just love details. If I'm watching any kind of documentary, I see multiple different points in the story where I say, "Wait. Pause. I want to know more about that." I just love going deep on any topic. I like to remember a quote that I've heard from the writer John Hodgman. He says, "Specificity is the soul of narrative." To me, that reminds me that to really land a story, you want to make sure that there's something real in it that people can connect to, to not keep things too abstract and broad. Also, certainly, the gravity that I feel pulling me towards details can also be a little problematic because I can get mired down in that and forget to do things like the laundry or do the dishes. I have to make sure that I don't play Trivial Pursuit too much because I would just get way too intense with it.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Although I imagine if you do the dishes, you get every single spot because the details matter.

Vince Fairchild: To me, it's not clean if it's not clean. "I see a spot on there, do it again. You haven't finished."

Melissa Harris-Perry: Are there stories that you've told throughout the year has been part of telling, maybe moments with a guest who was either in the studio or even remote, where you were like, "Whoa, I am not going to forget this one."?

Vince Fairchild: Well, as a sound person, I just love working with sound. Any story that we've done that talks about sound and the world of sound around us, I've really been excited about. I remember one story that looked at disappearing spaces where there is only natural sound and no man-made sound. Humans are extraordinarily vocal musically creative species. We're one of evolution and culture's great triumphs of sonic communication, but paradoxically, we're also the great destroyers of sound out in the wild through the noise we make and through our clearing of habitats.

Some of the stories that have stuck with me the longest are the more personal and intimate ones that come from people who don't really have a platform or a megaphone. I remember a series of stories from three Black women who were dealing with breast cancer and they were willing to record audio diaries for us. They were really powerful, riveting, intimate stories that you just couldn't look away from.

Speaker 5: I don't consider it a C. I consider it a T which stands for a test for me. We all go through tests in life, and this is my test. At the end of passing my test, I will have a story to tell somebody.

Vince Fairchild: Another case is our stories on maternal care or home health care, where these are stories that are behind closed doors, that are very private, but affect so many people, and are affected by some of the policies that are created in our government. These are the stories that expand, I hope, my sense of empathy. When I encounter somebody on some day, and they're having a bad day clearly, I try to remember, "I don't know what's going on, at home or at work. I don't know what they're dealing with." If I'm sensing some negative energy from them, I don't have to take it personally. I can try to practice that empathy and say, "Everybody has the stuff that they're going through, and I hope they can get to a better place."

Melissa Harris-Perry: What will you miss most about The Takeaway?

Vince Fairchild: Melissa, for sure, I will miss working with you. It's been wonderful having you as host of the show. There's going to be a big empty space once the show's gone without your voice on the air. I will also miss playing around with sound design, which is, I will say, a term that wasn't really applied in radio when I started in radio. I was just an engineer, but as time has gone on, and shows have developed their different sounds, we've listened to other radio shows, I sort of became a sound designer, and Jay and I have really got to play around with adding music and different sound effects and clips to the segments of the show. I do hope that I'll be able to get to do that, but on The Takeaway, I had a particular freedom to practice that and try different things that I may not have in the future.

Melissa Harris-Perry: If there is any justice in the world, Vince, I believe that you will, because your sound design, your steady hand, your careful ear, those are real and rare skills. I'm going to miss hanging out with you every single morning. It has been quite a ride for the past couple of years. Thank you for being part of teaching me what this radio-making thing even is.

Vince Fairchild: Well, thank you, Melissa. It's been wonderful working with you. I feel lucky to have been a part of this team working with you to bring our great show to the public airwaves.

[music]

[00:12:52] [END OF AUDIO]

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.