Our first Let’s Build a Scene episode breaks down a scene from a podcast I've produced. This one is a doozy. It centers around Elie Honig, a former federal and state prosecutor who's prosecuted countless mafia cases.

We dive into narrative structure, the importance of details, and toeing the line between too much and not enough sound design. *pets lap cat, quotes The Godfather all afternoon*

Plus, Natalia Petrzela (host and producer of Welcome to Your Fantasy and co-host of Past Present) stops by to answer a Podcast Movement community question: What's the best way to prepare for an interview?

One of the things I always tell students is if, if, if you enjoy human drama, if you enjoy crazy stories with wild twists and things

Today on The Pod Lab, we're digging into bringing a mafia story to life.

Welcome to The Pod Lab, a Podcast Movement original series.

I'm Doug Frasier, producer, and host of the NPR podcast, "What We Do."

Today is a "let's build a scene" episode where I'll break down a scene from a narrative podcast I've produced.

And today's scene is a wild one centered around Elie Honig.

He is a former federal and state prosecutor.

But I tried mobsters or made guys, captains, bosses, murder, rico...

primarily Genovese and Gambino family, which is two of the five families.

And the scene is just, well, you'll see.

But before we jump into that, let's talk about the structure of the episode as a whole.

This was the longest What We Do episode I've produced so far.

The total runtime was about 30 minutes.

And how these episodes work is I interview someone for about half an hour, and then I create a narrative by taking bits of our interview and mixing them with a voiceover in sound design.

And then the final product is usually between 10 to 15 minutes.

He just had so many incredible stories to tell.

I was trying to get every bit of information I could while I had him on the call.

Which, this was before Zoom became so popular.

Um, and I was using Skype.

During the interview, we ventured into a bunch of topics and I was feeling things out, trying to find an angle for the episode while the interview was going on.

Uh, so I could steer the conversation accordingly.

So Elie started talking about his three most movie worthy cases, and of course that sounded like gold to my ears.

And those were the actual words he used.

He asked if I wanted the most movie worthy cases.

And obviously the answer to that is yes.

So I use that for the basis of the episodes, these three very different stories.

And I created three distinct chapters that together painted a picture of the wild, the funny, and also the fact that justice isn't always

I wanted to create intrigue for the stories by giving each one, a title.

So something to tease, what was to come.

To get a taste for this, here's an example of how I transitioned into the first story.

We came, we saw, we buried him in the woods.

In part of that first story is what we're breaking down today.

So come along and let's build a scene.

Since this comes in about a third of the way into the episode, um, let me give you some context for this particular scene.

So a made guy named Anthony Arlotta shows up in Elie's office.

Anthony's come in to flip or like they say, he's now a rat.

So he tells Elie that they got all the info correct.

And by they, I mean, the investigators got all the information, correct on a murder case that they'd been working on.

So that was good news for Elie.

And then something bizarre happens.

Anthony says, I can tell you where Gary Westerman is.

I don't know who the hell Gary Westerman is, but the agents who are Massachusetts FBI agents, their eyes light up.

Wait, wait, wait.

Okay.

So hold on a second.

Let's pause.

I love that sound that is called a bram it's a great sound effect, that's often laid over with other effects to create tension or suspense or intrigue.

And you've heard this variation.

I promise you on just about every movie trailer ever.

Here, listen to a few and you'll see what I mean.

Okay, so back to the scene.

Anthony said, "I can tell you where Gary Westerman is."

Here's Elie.

I don't know who the hell Gary Westerman is, but the agents who are Massachusetts FBI agents, their eyes light up,

As it turns out Gary Westerman had been missing for seven years.

He just disappeared off the face of the earth.

Now a lot, it was like, yeah, we killed him too.

We buried him in the woods.

I can show you where do you want it?

You want me to show you where?

We were like, yes, we do.

At this point, there's a couple seconds of no voices to let that tail end of the bram float there and build a little anticipation.

And then Elie gets into the story.

You'll hear some subtle and not so subtle sound effects during the scene.

Westerman was a bad guy.

He was hanging out with these guys and he also was co-op.

He was really cooperating with the cops.

And so what they did is they learned him into the woods.

Um, they told them they were going to rob a drug dealer and they were going to go to the drug dealers house, like through a back way

So Westerman was wearing like a ski mask and he had a taser on him and he had gloves and everything, and they all were, but they knew what the plan was.

They had already actually dug a hole for Westerman and Arlotta told us, he goes, we all been just like we were in the middle of the woods and me and the two Greek guys that I'd

And we were using 22's.

He goes, but the weird thing was, he didn't die.

He said like, bullets seemed like they were bouncing off his head.

And we were like, what the hell.

How wild is that this guy gets shot a bunch of times and doesn't die.

It feels like something like Elie said straight out of a movie.

I wanted to use the sound effects to reflect this feeling of helplessness.

The murders must have felt in that moment.

So I used a couple of effects in Adobe Audition to achieve this.

I gave the gunshots a sound effect that's called a medium shot.

And this just gives a bit of distance to the sound.

And then I applied a light reverb and lowered the volume of the clips about 50%.

This gives those gunshots, that distant and muffled sound.

So it really does feel like the bullets themselves don't have the power that they normally would have, which plays again into that helplessness.

So I'll let Elie take it from here.

And so I took a shovel and another guy took a sh, the two shovels we'd use to dig the hole and we cracked them over the head and cracked the skull and killed him.

And then we pushed him in the hole and he flopped in at first and we buried him.

And we were like, okay, holy shit.

You can take a guy out of jail.

You can get a judge's order to take a guy out of jail for a day.

So the FBI agents, I didn't physically go, but the FBI agents got an order and they took him, they got him in a van.

They drove, drove him up to the woods of Agawam, Massachusetts, and Anthony like walked them through the woods, and was like, uh, looking at different trees and stuff.

And he was like, oh, I think it was right around here.

Let's jump back there for a second to the music choice.

Um, the overall tone of the episode is, is lighthearted, right?

It's not a hard-hitting journalistic piece.

It's more of a pop corner or bubble gum story.

So at this moment, when the music comes in, how to use a darker song, the feeling would have been entirely different.

So the story itself, or the story that I'm trying to tell would be different as well.

I wanted a tongue in cheek, almost feeling to this little track, and it's also there to help transition into this next part.

So FBI starts searching the area.

Sure enough.

There's 22 discarded shell casings from 22's all over the place.

Seven years later, they're still there, still intact and they do the dig and, um, they did one inch at a time.

That's the way the FBI does a dig.

They get a backhoe and they dig off one layer, one inch of dirt at a time.

And then they filter it like through a gigantic, like one of those sand, um, you know, those like Sims kind of thing.

But I can't, except because there's evidence.

And so I still remember getting emails throughout that day from the FBI team.

And they were like, okay, first inch removed nothing.

Second interim move, nothing.

Third inch removed, nothing.

Fourth inch removed.

We found what appeared to be two sneakers, fifth inch removed.

It's two Nike's.

Six inch.

Yup.

Two leg, b- two ankle bones.

Yup.

Two shinbones and all that.

I was like, okay, I think you got it.

Basically, just like Anthony said, they had pushed him in head first and then buried him.

So he was head down feet up.

Seven years later, they dug up Gary Westerman's body.

His Nike's were still intact.

We used to joke like Nike should have done like an ad, like how well, um, still had the taser still had the ski mask on.

When the forensic examiner looked at the body, she confirmed the dent marks in his skull, which appeared to be from bullets.

There was also a crack from blunt force trauma, like from a hammer or a shovel.

Everything was exactly as Anthony told them.

Here's a question I wrestle with here.

How many times should I use that email sound effect?

Should I do it every time that he mentioned that he got a new message?

Or just once to help make that moment feel more real and, and then just let it play out because if I use it every time, it might turn from a part of the story to a distraction.

So that was a big concern for me, but let's just play around here for a second and let's hear it with the email sound at every mention and see what it sounds like.

I still remember getting emails throughout that day from the FBI team.

And they were like, okay, first inch removed nothing.

Second inch removed nothing.

Third inch removed, nothing.

Forth inch removed.

We found what appeared to be two sneakers.

Fifth inch removed.

It's two Nike's.

Six inch.

Yup.

Two legs, b- two ankle bones.

Yup.

Actually, now that I've heard it after all of these months, since I produced the episode, I think this newer version may work better at bringing

Right.

So it feels like an onslaught.

And those extra sound effects, help that sort of play out.

It's funny how that works.

Um, maybe you've had this feeling as well, where you look back at an episode from months or even years ago and find better ways of doing things.

Um, I guess that's just part of creating.

MUSIC

Now it's time to hear a question from the Podcast Movement, Facebook group

. Christophe: Hi, I'm Christophe Zajac-Denek.

My podcast is called, "I'm Kind Of a Big Deal."

It's an interview show and I talked to people affected with dwarfism.

We talk about the successes, the struggles, the funny, and the real day to day experiences of little people.

I'd like to know, what's the best way to prepare for an interview?

Thank you for that great question, Christophe.

To help answer it, let's have a chat with Natalia Petrzela.

She's a historian as well as host and producer of "Welcome to Your Fantasy."

A podcast that dives into the history of Chippendales.

Yes, that Chippendales.

And a fair warning, if you're gonna listen to that show at work, put headphones in, cause it gets a bit steamy.

Natalia also cohosts "Past Present" where she and her co-host bring historical insights to political and cultural debates.

So when it comes time to preparing for interviews, Natalia's game is strong.

And as a historian, it will come as no surprise to hear that she believes research is crucial.

The way I think of any interview is that I am so lucky if I've set up time that someone is taking to spend with me to talk about their life or their job or whatever the topic is.

And so what I really try to do is a ton of research beforehand, to make sure that I understand who this person is.

I'm not going to waste time on questions that I could have figured out earlier on, and that I'm not going to miss a chance to ask questions that I

So that's the number one thing, you know, we read as much as you can do everything you can to make those moments valuable.

Are there any particular sources that you find yourself going back to, again and again in your research?

Um, yeah, well, it really depends who I'm talking to, but you know, I think I, you know, I'm lucky to have an academic affiliation, so I have access to all these

And it has so many local newspapers going back even to the 19th century.

Not that you're going to be interviewing somebody who was alive in the 19th century, but I find that that historical press is really, really valuable in not just reading like a Wikipedia page or

And so for me, that's always a place that I go to newspapers.com or if you have access, ProQuest historical.

Those are just really, really valuable.

Ooh.

One more on that, you know?

No, not that many people know this, but totally for free Google books has catalog Life Magazine, out some of Time Magazine for the stuff.

I do Yoga Journal, like there are a lot of periodicals there, which are there in full color and full print and are freely available.

So, um, yeah, historical press is a really a good place to go.

If the person you're about to interview has never been in a newspaper and is not in any books, where would you go to find information?

Yeah, well, again, it really depends like, um, for example, uh, for "Welcome to Your Fantasy," I interviewed a lot of Chippendales dancers.

Sure.

Some of them were famous and were written about, but, um, most of them were not.

And so for that, it doesn't let you off the hook for doing research.

For example, I'm thinking of one dancer, Scott Marlowe, who was very important to the story we were telling, but he wasn't a name that people were writing about, but it was important

So, um, the little that I knew about him, he danced with Chippendales for these particular years in New York city, he was from New York.

I tried to, understand what the neighborhood was like at that time where he was working, what it might've been, um, to get a job at that in, in that period, like I went to still

a book about, you know, um, nightlife culture in New York City to help me who never lived through that moment have smart questions to ask him, even though he's not a famous person.

That does it for this week at The Pod Lab, be sure to subscribe, to get notified of new episodes as they're released.

And if you'd like to be featured in a future episode, submit your question at the Podcast Movement Facebook page.

Until next time, keep experimenting

The Pod Lab is a Podcast Movement original series.