A new radio show will expand and change your view of humanity
By Sami Alcedo
A good story has the power to take you to a place you didn’t know existed, or upend your assumptions about humanity. This new radio show will find those stories and bring them to you across the Spanish-speaking world.
Daniel Alarcón has just added “Executive Producer” to his impressive resume with the launch of Radio Ambulante, a new Spanish-language podcast. For anyone wondering about Daniel, he’s best known for his books “War By Candlelight,” “Lost City Radio” and “The Secret Miracle,” and, of course, for being a proud representative of Peruvian talent in the US. Currently, he’s working with a seasoned team of journalists and radio producers, including editor Annie Correal, in an innovative approach to radio: a Spanish.language program showcasing compelling human stories from around Latin America and the United States.
But where did the whole idea come from? It seems that inspiration just knocked on Daniel’s door. In 2007, he published a novel called “Lost City Radio,” which tells the story of a radio program for missing people, based on a real show—Buscapersonas—which he used to listen to all the time. Not long after the book was published, he got an invitation from the BBC to produce a documentary about Andean migration to Lima. As he says, “It was just an incredible experience—the only downside being that some of the most interesting voices were in Spanish, and had to be translated on the fly, losing nuance and personality. So a question just stuck with me—what could be done with that tape if there was a Spanish language outlet for those voices and their stories?”
The aim of the project is to get to know surprising pieces of stories – those that take an idea, an event, or even a gesture, and demonstrate over the course of 5 to 15 brilliantly-produced minutes that a story that is able to contain entire worlds. Daniel and the production team are looking for stories where reporters take listeners to places they didn’t know existed, and upend their assumptions in the process.
So why can’t a Mexican listener, for example, be interested if there’s a piece about Uruguay, or Puerto Rico? Or, why wouldn’t Peruvians enjoy stories about Dominicans in New York, and vice versa? The producers have the strong conviction that there is a large community of listeners out there, who are curious and whose interests cross borders. Therefore, the next step in the project is to broadcast the pitches on large national stations as well as community radio stations.
Stay tuned! More info, here.
Listen to the first podcasts!
