Chaffey College Welcomes Ear Hustle Podcast: Shines Light on the Incarceration System

Image courtesy of the Chaffey College Rising Scholars Instagram page: Hosts of Ear Hustle (Earlonne Woods and Nigel Poor, left to right) speak with Chaffey College Professor, Jessica Moronez.

On Thursday, April 16 Chaffey College welcomed Earlonne Woods and Nigel Poor, founders of the podcast “Ear Hustle.” It is the first podcast to be produced and directed entirely in prison. The event took place in the CAA building at Chaffey’s Rancho Cucamonga campus.

Representatives from the Rising Scholar’s program and Chaffey’s student publication — The Breeze were also in attendance. They took time to discuss the origins of the show, their experiences thus far and the impact their podcast has on the incarceration system.

Ear Hustle has recorded 17 seasons since its inception at San Quentin in 2017, where it began as an “audio project.”

Woods was serving two life sentences when he was transferred to San Quentin and met Antwan Williams, another incarcerated person. Together they approached Poor — who was a photography professor inside the prison at the time — to create a documentary. After bureaucratic obstacles and difficulties with production, they decided to shift to an audio format that discussed the “hidden life inside of prison,” for incarcerated people to enjoy.

After being permitted to submit an entry to the Radiotopia Podquest contest in 2016, Poor, Woods and Williams beat over 1,500 submissions to become the contest’s winners. Woods recalls San Quentin’s public information officer saying, “I only let you submit because I didn’t think that you would win.”

Woods said that the hope was to show that the “story doesn’t stop at conviction” and to build something specifically for the incarcerated population. After the first month, they already gained half a million listeners and have since won a Pulitzer Prize for their unique storytelling.

“We aren’t journalists, we don’t call ourselves that,” said Poor. Woods followed with, “We’re journey-ists, we like to take you on a journey.” The journeys they take you on include topics such as nickname-origins, meeting your cellmate (or celly) and life after incarceration.

Image courtesy of the Chaffey College Rising Scholars Instagram page: Hosts of Ear Hustle recall stories to Chaffey students, faculty and staff. (Earlonne Woods and Nigel Poor, left to right)

In one story, Woods and Poor recall speaking to a man nicknamed “Roach” about his fascination with bugs and critters; he even took snails into his cell to keep as pets. After the episode was released, a guard in the prison approached Roach to apologize to Roach for removing the pets from his cell. 

In another, Ear Hustle discusses the idea of passing away while serving a sentence with an aging incarcerated woman, shining a spotlight on an uncomfortable truth of the incarceration system.

Similarly, Chaffey College’s very own Rising Scholars program has begun to offer classes in journalism to the incarcerated students at the California Institute for Men (CIM) with many of the students being published already. Student journalists in The Breeze are currently working to help the students at CIM establish their own prison news outlet.

Through the 17 seasons worth of stories and conversations, Ear Hustle advocates for more than reform of the incarceration system. It advocates for the humane treatment of justice-impacted people, in and out of prison. The conversation has already begun, it is time to listen in.