By Rona Akbari

Didn’t catch the RNC? No worries, we’ve got you covered. Check out all of NPR’s coverage here and enjoy quick daily summaries from NPR One below.

NPR Intern Renee Klahr helped the NPR Politics Team create these rad animations to bring you up to speed, day by day. 

Follow the team on Twitter to see more of their coverage and tune in to the DNC next week:

• Asma Khalid
• Sam Sanders
• Domenico Montanaro
• Ron Elving
• Sarah McCammon
• NPR Politics
• NPR One

by Joanna Pawlowska

Folks on both sides of the aisle agree: The Iowa Caucuses are a big deal in the presidential election process. So we’re thrilled to announce that we’re heading to Des Moines with NPR’s David Greene, who will host Morning Edition LIVE in Iowa from Smokey Row Coffee during the caucuses. That’s right: we’re hosting two MEGA LISTENING PARTIES, live from Iowa, and we hope that YOU come join the excitement and become a part of the most listened-to weekday show in the country.

Politics nerds everywhere have been counting down the days to this major milestone in the 2016 presidential race. You may be wondering: Why are the Iowa caucuses first, why are they important, and why are they called caucuses? NPR’s own Sam Sanders went to Iowa recently to break it down.

You can learn even more starting at 4am on February 1 and February 2 (yes, AM - which is why we’ll have free coffee from 4-6am). Get the chance to meet David and the NPR Politics team, participate in a Q&A, and feed your curiosity – all while seeing live radio made for broadcast and connecting with new friends as part of NPR Generation Listen’s community of curious citizens.

Live Listening Party // Feb 1 & 2 / 4-11 am / Smokey Row Coffee

Mon, 2/1 and Tues, 2/ 2
Smokey Row Coffee
1910 Cottage Grove
Des Moines, IA

4am – 6am:  Free Coffee and first run of Morning Edition
6am – 8 am:  The main event! Watch a live recording of Morning Edition with David Greene and NPR Generation Listen
8am – 11am:  Have a chance to meet David Greene and hang with other guests

The Listening Parties are open to the public on a first come, first serve basis so get there early and let us know you’re coming here. 

We want to pack Smokey Row with great people so make sure to share the Facebook invite with your friends in Iowa! Not from Des Moines? See who’s down for a road trip. We have a Gen Listen crew coming up from Kansas City already. Drop us a note if you want to sync up with them. GenListen@Npr.org.

See you soon, Des Moines!

by Joanna Pawlowska 

Dr. Kevin Olival from EcoHealth Alliance (left) and NPR’s science correspondent Michaeleen Doucleff lead our NYC discussion on pandemics.

Over 30 listeners filled a rooftop terrace blocks from Central Park to listen to reporting from Goats & Soda. 

As the sun started to set, our group walked over to Central Park to observe some local bats. 

Dr. Olival brought two bat detectors that allowed us to listen to, record, and even identify bat species by their echolocation calls. 

Success! We found bats right as we entered Central Park. 

We detected multiple bat species using the echolocation app. 

We walked over to the bridge near W. 77th, which is known for bats. 

The Manhattan skyline lit up the sky as Central Park grew dark and we wrapped our immersive experience. 

photos: @hopeleigh

Did you know there are bats living in Central Park?!  Neither did we, until Dr. Kevin Olival from the EcoHealth Alliance mentioned NYC as a cool place for an immersive Listening Party a few months back when we started designing this project. 

You may recognize his name from Michaeleen Doucleff’s reporting on pandemics from Borneo. He’s the voice of the virus hunter who guides her and senior producer Jane Greenhalgh through the rainforest, where he and his team work to identify new viruses in bats. 

Yesterday, he joined us on a rooftop terrace on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, just a few blocks from an area of Central Park known for bats. Our group of 30 has gathered for a listening session and discussion around two of Michaeleen’s stories: one about the rainforest in Borneo and one about the Gomantong Cave, also in Borneo, which is full of bats. 

The group was engaged and curious, full of questions about the practical applications of Olival’s research and ideas about future pandemic prevention. 

When the sun started to drop over the horizon, it was time to go look for bats. As we entered Central Park, Olival pulls two bat detection tools from his backpack: one that attaches to his cellphone and one that stands alone. He turns them on and BAM - immediately we pick up the sounds of bats! The device connected to his phone has the ability to record and identity the bat calls. We hear and see big brown bats as well as hoary bats. And we’re not even at the bridge at W. 77th known for bat sightings yet!

Olival guided us through the park to the lake, where he answered people’s bat questions and busted bat myths (they are NOT blind, they actually have great vision). We wrapped the evening with a newfound awe for bats and a continued curiosity around the ways humans interact with the animals all around us. 

Budding bat enthusiasts, follow Kevin Olival at @nycbat on twitter for the latest on bats in NYC and beyond. 

For more science stories from NPR, follow @NPRGoatsandSoda.

Thanks for joining our #listeningonlocation adventures across the country! Look out for a little video recap coming soon. 

Find all of NPR’s reporting about pandemics here. Check out our other immersive event locations with #listeningonlocation.

by Joanna Pawlowska

Listening On Location in the Carbon River area of Mount Rainier National Park. 

Interpretive ranger Annie Kilby guides us through the rainforest. 

NPR’s Jane Greenhalgh and Michaeleen Doucleff lead the discussion on pandemics.

Photos by @hopeleigh

At 14,411 feet, snow-capped Mount Rainier in Washington State makes a striking impression as our plane descends to Seattle. Seeming to rise up from sea level, its formidable presence feels constant, almost magnetic. And so it was a surprise for our team to learn that many Seattle natives and locals who joined us for round two of our “Listening on Location” event series had never made the 90-or-so minute trip from the city to Mount Rainier National Park. We were thrilled to experience it for the first time together.

Last Saturday, a group of 30 NPR fans gathered in the Northwest Region of the park. We were in the Carbon River Area, which Ranger Annie Kilby tells us is a lesser known region of the park. Named for the coal deposits found in the area, this corner of the park receives consistently high amounts of rainfall, creating the conditions for a rainforest.

We’re here to talk about an NPR series about global pandemics, reported by NPR’s science correspondent Michaleen Doucleff and senior producer Jane Greenhalgh. They traveled to the rainforests of Borneo to find out why pandemics are on the rise, how they start and why they spread. It turns out that forests, specifically ultra bio-diverse rainforests, play a key role in the story. 

That’s why we wanted to bring NPR’s listeners to the forest — to hear the story surrounded by lush foliage, hanging moss, skunk cabbage and variations of verdant ferns.  Annie introduces us to the park, which was established in 1899. For the immersive experience she designed, she sends us down two trails with three tasks:

• Take a picture of something we’re curious about
  
• Name two sounds we notice
  
• Describe an interesting texture of something we touched

After about half an hour we reconvene to share the treasures we’ve found and heard, from a woodpecker to delicate moss to a babbling brook. Annie then guides us through another stretch of the Carbon River Trail before we settle onto blankets in a clearing in the forest for the pandemic listening session with Michaeleen and Jane.

Our discussion explores the challenges of balancing local economic development with the unforeseen problems that changes to natural environments bring. Michaeleen shares anecdotes from her time reporting on Ebola. She explains how important it was for Doctors Without Borders to gain the trust of locals and honor their customs to contain the virus.  Our discussion also looked towards future pandemics. Our global village must work together and respect the dignity of the people affected by the next outbreak.

We wrapped the conversation where we started: thinking about the forest. Jane had recently produced a story about forest baths, finding that spending time walking through the forest lowers blood pressure. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

In usual listening party style, our curious citizens were engaged and thoughtful - and we left the discussion wanting more. So many ideas to still explore! And more Goats & Soda Pandemics stories to enjoy.

For those following along, join us this Thursday, 8/3, as we change gears to #listenonlocation in Central Park and turn our focus more specifically towards bats (who knew there were bats in NYC!). See you soon, New York!

You can hear the story we listened to here  – and find all of NPR’s reporting about pandemics here. Follow along as we head to other locations with #listeningonlocation.

By Joanna Pawlowska 

Reporter Lesley McClurg (left) and David Wolking from USAID’s PREDICT kick off the afternoon at Redwood Regional Park. 

Listening party guests introduce themselves at the Old Church picnic site. 

Dave Zuckermann from the East Bay Regional Park system describes the resilience of the surrounding redwood forest. 

Naturalist Morgan Dill leads the group on a guided nature walk. 

A guided walk through the redwoods. 

The group listens to a selection of stories from NPR’s science desk. 

Michaeleen Doucleff (right) answers questions about her reporting on pandemics. 

A peaceful location for listening to radio stories. 

Guests engage in a thoughtful discussion about human behavior and pandemics. 

photos: @hopeleigh

“This really is an event for millennials!” jokes Morgan Dill as she grabs a La Croix from our cooler.  

Warm, animated and a millennial herself, Morgan is a naturalist for the East Bay Regional Parks, where she leads nature walks and other hands-on experiences to introduce curious visitors to the natural magic of the park system.  

She’s joined the Generation Listen team at the Old Church Picnic Site at Redwood Regional Park in Oakland, California on a Sunday afternoon in July to offer her expertise and energy to our first “Listening On Location” event with NPR’s science desk and Member station KQED. For this immersive take on our listening party model, we invited listeners to join us in the field to experience some of NPR’s reporting in its natural habitat. 

The concept formed earlier this year when the folks over at Goats & Soda, NPR’s global health and development blog, wanted to explore ideas for listening parties around their series on pandemics – where they come from, how they start, how they spread. 

It turns out that the answer is somewhat clear: us. How would it feel to hear and discuss these stories out in nature with NPR reporters and experts? How would it feel to be reminded that natural ecosystems exist, often silently, in and around our urban environments and play important roles in how human life unfolds? So we took the Listening Party model to the next level.

By the time about 50 have people gathered at Old Church, we settled onto the wooden benches in the amphitheater area to kickoff the intimate afternoon. Dr. Ana Alvarez, the Deputy Manager of the East Bay Regional Park system, describes the history of the parks. She shares anecdotes of concerned and engaged citizens who came together to protect the wild, beautiful area in the region – an area that brings joy to residents while simultaneously playing an important role in curbing the impact of changing climate. 

Dave Zuckmann, who has worked with the park for over 30 years, shares some stories about the resilience of the Redwoods and reiterated the role citizens played in the preservation of the lands. 

Morgan, the naturalist with EBRPD, invites the group to jump up and follow her into the forest.  We don’t go far during the 30 or so minutes of the guided walk (maybe about a quarter mile), but Morgan opens up worlds hidden in plain sight. 

We learn that the Western Coast of the U.S. is one of the only regions in the world that houses redwood trees: towering, fog-absorbing giants. The trees, which can grow up to 300 feet tall, don’t have any predators and feature shallow root systems that interlock with those of their neighbors. This helps the connected trees stand – but also allows them to distribute resources via their connected root system to a tree in need. Wild!  

Morgan fields questions like a pro, and leads us back to the benches at Old Church, where a portable blue tooth speakers now stands in the center of the clearing ready for our radio listening session. 

We meet NPR’s Science Correspondent Michaeleen Doucleff, KQED’s health reporter Lesley McClurg and David Wolking, who works on USAID’s PREDICT project out of UC Davis. Michaeleen explains the Pandemic project and sets the scene for her reporting trip to Malaysia, where she ventured into the rainforest with an expert looking to find new viruses that might lead to the next pandemic. We listen – and then our engaged group helps drive the discussion with questions and ideas that span the gamut from the physical process of virus collection to what we can ask our senators to do to help protect and prepare us for the next pandemic (hint: protect science and research funding and support organizations like the CDC and USAID). 

To ground the global discussion locally, we listen to Lesley’s reporting for KQED about Zika in California. The good news?  Screens and AC help prevent its rapid spread by mosquito in the Golden State. 

Afternoon light cuts in through the branches shading our listening clearing as we begin to wrap our discussion. We’ve spent three hours in the park, learning from rangers, naturalists, scientists and journalists – and making new friends among trees that have been around longer than any of us. It is exciting and calming all at once. One Location On Listening experience down, three more to go. Wanna join? More info on those here. See you next weekend, Mount Rainier National Park! 

You can hear the stories we listened to here and here – and find all of NPR’s reporting about pandemics here. Follow along as we head to other locations with #listeningonlocation. 

By Joanna Pawlowska

Summer is for adventures. With our wanderlust kicking into full gear, we decided it was time to hit the road again - and take NPR Listening Parties to the next level.  We’re excited to invite you to join the ride!

Introducing: #ListeningOnLocation. With our friends over at NPR’s Science Desk and local Member stations, we’re packing up our portable speakers and heading out to meet some friends “in the field” for immersive listening sessions.

Now what is that, you ask?  It’s a chance to experience stories in the natural environments explored in the reporting – or as close as we can get without going to Malaysia, as our reporters did for the important series from Goats & Soda: Pandemics.

We’ll sit among towering Redwoods, walk on Rainforest Trials, and search for Bats. Because what can make a story come alive and spark discussion quite like living it?

In each of four locations, we’ll be joined by a subject matter expert to lead us through a hands-on activity, like a walk through the rainforest.  NPR Science Correspondent Michaeleen Doucleff will then tell us about her work and we’ll listen to reporting on the connection between changes to the environment and human health.  Here’s where you come in: add your voice to an interactive discussion on all of the above, and what we can do to prevent the next pandemic. Science meets storytelling meets impact. That’s right up our alley.

Here’s what’s on deck:

7/23 – Redwood Regional Park in Oakland with KQED
7/29 – Mount Rainier National Park in Washington State with KUOW and KNKX
8/3 – Central Park in New York City
8/5 – The Cary Institute in the Hudson River Valley with WAMC

Are you nearby?  Come meet us in the field!  Too far to join? Follow along with #listeningonlocation and tag your friends in the cities we’re visiting.

Or, host your own listening party in a cool location and show us how it’s done! We’d love your ideas for new places, new ways and new reasons to listen this summer. 

By Joanna Pawlowska

Last week, TechWeek invited us to the West Side of Los Angeles to host a Listening Party as part of their week of programming in Santa Monica. With our friends over at KCRW, we wanted to get creative on how to spark an interesting and meaningful conversation for our guests (also attendees of TechWeek’s conference) at the intersection of our two worlds: public media and technology.

Journalist George Lavender recently wrapped “Off The Block”, a five-part series for KCRW’s Independent Producer Project in which he explores the impact that incarceration has - not just on individuals but on the wider community. Through powerful audio storytelling, he traces the path from city block to jail block and back. The thought-provoking stories defy stereotypes while illuminating the humanity in the issues George explores. In other words, his work offers excellent fodder for a Listening Party discussion that invites our guests to consider how the smarts, strategies and energy of Silicon Beach and the tech space could be applied to drive innovation in solving big social issues in Los Angeles and beyond.

Thanks to everyone who joined us! And for those at home, you can Host Your Own Listening Party around the story at the heart of our discussion. 

By Joanna Pawlowska

Earlier this fall, we hit the road with NPR’s Kelly McEvers for two live conversations about a public health crisis that’s impacting countless families across the country: opioid addiction. In Atlanta and Chicago, thoughtful and compassionate listeners joined us for intimate, in-depth listening parties and conversations about the human face of this epidemic and ideas for how we move forward.

These were powerful, personal experiences that can be hard to describe. So we’re excited to bring you deeper into the experience and show rather than tell.  

Watch the video – and if you’re moved to do so, snag our Host Your Own Listening Party Kit to bring this important conversation in your community and/or living room.

Thank you to everyone who attended these events and shared so openly. Thank you to our Member Station partners – GPB, WABE and WBEZ – and thank you to Cigna for the generous support that brought this whole project to life.

And last but not least, thanks to YOU, our community, for moving this conversation forward, one living room and listening party at a time. Happy hosting.

By Joanna Pawlowska

A friend once said: when we listen to stories, we breathe life into them.  

A story’s characters, situations, and key questions take on shapes and colors in our minds and memories as we listen; the story takes on a new life, extending beyond its original parameters. And this happens a little differently each time we listen, even to the same story.

This idea that listeners give stories life was top of mind as we gathered in Chicago on Monday, September 19 with member station WBEZ for an intimate listening party about America’s Opioid Epidemic. The flow of the program was nearly identical to the first of two conversations on this topic that we hosted in Atlanta early this month (in-depth recap here): we sat in the round, Kelly McEvers introduced the state of the Opioid Crisis in America writ large, we listened to a powerful story from Indiana about a woman’s struggle to get treatment, we learned about addiction and the brain from author Maia Szalavitz, and then we opened the floor for our guests to share their reflections, experiences, and questions.

Yet gathering in a different city and space with a new sea of faces – each with their own unique experiences – gave this night of storytelling a whole new life.

A young woman shared a devastating story about loss to addiction in her own life. Another young woman shared her personal journey into and out of addiction after some painful health problems. A dental student posed thoughtful questions about how professionals should be trained to prescribe pain meds. An addiction doctor weighed in on her experiences on the job and policy wins the city of Chicago has seen over the last year. And the group collectively wondered how we might show more compassion and empathy for those in pain – both physical and emotional – as a pathway to understanding where addiction starts and how to tackle it.

While our second listening party about America’s Opioid Epidemic charted a different course and gave Joy’s story new life, we were guided towards a similar conclusion: conversations about complicated, nuanced topics with real human consequences must continue to happen if we aim to create understanding and ultimately arrive at thoughtful ideas for how to move forward. Even if the stories are the same, we breathe new life into them each time we listen. As in Atlanta, we asked our guests in Chicago to take a few moments to write some thoughts on our Reflection Cards to share with someone outside of the room.

And now we invite you to join this conversation, too, with our Host Your Own Kit. Listen with friends or listen alone – just please listen.  Listen to Joy’s story and other stories about those struggling with addiction and stories about how our society is dealing with the crisis and evolving the cultural narrative around addiction.

If you have reflections, ideas or stories of your own to share tag @nprgenerationlisten #nprlisteningpary, or drop us a note at genlisten@npr.org.

Generation Listen: America’s Opioid Epidemic is made possible by Cigna, and by a collaboration between NPR and NPR Member stations WABE and GPB, in Atlanta, and WBEZ in Chicago.

By Joanna Pawlowska

Who’s game for a discussion about addiction?

It might seem like a hard sell, but on September 1 in Atlanta, NPR Generation Listen filled an intimate space at The Loft in Midtown with young listeners looking to get real about opioids, addiction and the many ways America’s Opioid Epidemic has impacted our personal, professional and collective lives.

True to our Listening Party model, we curated a powerful piece by NPR’s always inspiring Kelly McEvers.

Last year, Kelly went to Indiana to report for her podcast, Embedded, a project that takes a story from the news and goes deep. There was a headline that had been catching her eye for sometime: a surprising HIV outbreak with no sign of slowing down. She and her producer, Tom Dreisbach, headed to Austin, Indiana to find out what was going and meet the people this story was actually affecting.

What did they find at the heart of the story? Addiction. To opioids. An epidemic that was ravishing a community and leading straight to the HIV crisis she’s been reading about.  From this reporting trip, Kelly and her team created the very first episode of Embedded: The House.

A year later, Kelly and Tom went back to Indiana to follow up with the people they’d met. Had they been able to move forward with their lives? Had they been able to overcome their addiction? Kelly and Tom were able to find Joy, a nurse we meet in Episode One. The last we’d heard from her, she’d had an appointment with an addiction doctor scheduled. But would she keep it?

After talking for multiple hours in a rental car outside of Joy’s parents’ house, Kelly and Tom captured a deeply moving, powerful story about a woman struggling to beat her addiction and move towards recovery.

Joy’s story lay at the heart of our Listening Party.

After 22 riveting minutes of shared listening, Kelly kicked off the conversation with some questions for special guest Maia Szalavitz, author of a new book about addiction, Unbroken Brain, and a former addict herself.

She asked: Which parts of Joy’s story further stereotypes we have about people with addiction? Which parts challenge regular assumptions that we make? We seem to treat addiction differently from other illnesses: why and how does this play out practically? What is harm reduction all about? Who is most at risk for addiction in the first place?

We soon transitioned to the heart of the evening: the interactive conversation with our audience. Engaged, thoughtful and vulnerable, our inspiring and bright attendees opened up about their own experiences with addiction, about navigating the addiction of loved ones, and about committing their professional lives to thinking through systemic shifts that could change our cultural narrative about addiction and help offer relief to the thousands of American’s – of all ages and backgrounds – struggling to free themselves from its grasp. From the personal to the policy-based, questions and reflections we heard created a sense of hope about the future.

Two key questions surfaced from our discussion:

• Why does it require a secondary result – like HIV, Hepatitis C, or a rise in crime – to make us (and policy makers) care about people suffering with addiction? Why isn’t it enough to acknowledge that addiction is an illness and there are proven ways to help treat this illness?
  

• What can we – as Millennials, as active social media users, and as a people who care about helping people with addiction – do to change the narrative?
  

We explored all kinds of ways to poke at these questions, but a central idea took shape: we should seek out and share stories that show people with addiction as … people. We should seek out and share stories told in ways the allow those without first-hand experience to relate more empathically to the universally human struggles and triggers that lead those more susceptible towards addiction. We should try to chose empathy, support and community over shame.  And of course, acknowledge that this conversation is a work in progress and needs to extend beyond our intimate gathering. Everyone took a moment to jot down something that had surprised them or changed their mind on a Reflection Card – something they could go and share with someone else in their lives who hasn’t joined our discussion.

And we invite you to join this discussion, too. Listen to We Found Joy or look out for our Host Your Own Kit for America’s Opioid Epidemic towards the end of September.

Generation Listen: America’s Opioid Epidemic is made possible by Cigna, and by a collaboration between NPR and NPR Member stations WABE and GPB, in Atlanta, and WBEZ in Chicago.