Ear Hustle
Ear Hustle is prison slang for eavesdropping, and that’s what listening to the show feels like: a raw, often funny, and always surprising peek into the reality of life inside prison.
Hosts Nigel Poor and Earlonne Woods co-created the show that launched in 2017 while Earlonne was incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison, where Nigel was a volunteer teaching photography. Since Earlonne’s release in 2018, the show has expanded to include stories from prisons across the state, including the California Institution for Women, as well as stories about getting out of prison and starting over, post-incarceration.
From finding romance, to grappling with a life sentence, to trying to parent via 15-minute phone calls, Ear Hustle stories deliver what This American Life host Ira Glass calls a “"very real” and “untragic” take on prison life.
Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent listener-supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at radiotopia.fm and learn more about Ear Hustle at earhustlesq.com.
- Update frequency
- every 13 days
- Average duration
- 39 minutes
- Episodes
- 164
- Years Active
- 2017 - 2025
The Wrong Line of Business
Earlonne's here with his "mystery" episode, and it's a doozy. He tells Nigel a redemption story wrapped in a drug-trafficking story, and, along the way, dives deep into several subjects we swore we'd…
00:45:50 |
Wed 13 Nov 2024
My Understanding of This Place: Nigel & Earlonne
Over the past two episodes we’ve been hearing about “memory places” at San Quentin: ordinary-seeming spots that become extraordinary through the eyes of people who spent time there. In this extra min…
00:15:30 |
Wed 06 Nov 2024
My Understanding of This Place, Part 2
In the second part of this two-part series, Nigel reveals to Earlonne the final stops in her memory-tour of San Quentin, culminating in an exploration of the prison’s former death row.
Thanks to Sh…
00:42:00 |
Wed 30 Oct 2024
My Understanding of This Place, Part 1
Nigel — with help from our team inside San Quentin — has been cooking up an episode that her co-host knows nothing about. Without giving too much away, we can tell you that it involves visiting a par…
00:48:49 |
Wed 16 Oct 2024
Election!
Incarcerated people in California can’t vote, but that doesn't mean they aren’t tracking electoral politics as closely as many of us on the outside are. In this episode, Ear Hustle’s inside team reve…
00:46:43 |
Wed 02 Oct 2024
A Little Streets, a Little Romance, a Little Deception
Wali was on his way to make a life-altering decision when a book made him reconsider. Shaka’s 40 years on death row were shaped by three books picked out for him by a prison librarian. At three Calif…
00:53:09 |
Wed 18 Sep 2024
Comfortable Inside
It can be hard to admit, but some people are more comfortable inside prison than out. We meet people who keep coming back and people who’ve stopped trying to go home, and ask: Is being “OK” inside pr…
00:47:34 |
Wed 04 Sep 2024
Coming Up This Season
The countdown is on! Earlonne and Nigel give listeners a taste of what’s in store this season: some controversy, some mystery, and (maybe) some laughter. The new season starts September 4.
Ear Hustl…
00:04:31 |
Thu 29 Aug 2024
Ear Hustle Extra: San Quentin: The Magazine, Issue 2
Our team inside San Quentin explores the complicated acts of crying and Hula dancing in prison, reports on the joys and sorrows of a new prison clothing policy, pilots a new podcast, and sits down in…
00:45:57 |
Wed 21 Aug 2024
Ear Hustle Extra: Revisiting “This Place”
Celebrating our 100th episode last year got the Ear Hustle team thinking about all the stories we’ve told since 2017. Over the next few months, EHers will talk about and listen to some of their favor…
01:09:24 |
Wed 31 Jul 2024
Ear Hustle Presents: The Moth
In this collaboration with the venerable live-storytelling project The Moth, we share one man’s story about using a medical condition to break the isolation of his life in prison, and Earlonne and Ni…
00:36:04 |
Wed 10 Jul 2024
Ear Hustle Presents: You Didn’t See Nothin
We’re introducing you to one of our favorite recent podcast discoveries. In 1997, a racially motivated attack and its aftermath roiled Chicago. “You Didn’t See Nothin” is a seven-part series that rev…
00:33:06 |
Wed 26 Jun 2024
Daughters
What’s it like to serve out a prison sentence alongside your mom? At the Central California Women’s Facility, a handful of mom-daughter combos are doing time together — some more harmoniously than ot…
00:43:30 |
Wed 12 Jun 2024
Crocasacks
When he was growing up, gang life gave Larry confidence, purpose, and an identity. But after years behind bars, the affiliation lost its luster. He tells Earlonne about becoming Lala from the East Co…
00:49:38 |
Wed 29 May 2024
Catch a Kite Nationwide
For our latest Catch a Kite episode, we’re taking advantage of a new tool: the electronic tablets that recently became available in 400+ jails and prisons across the nation. Using their tablets, inca…
00:32:21 |
Wed 15 May 2024
Moms
In honor of Mother’s Day, some decidedly un-Hallmark-y stories about incarceration and motherhood.
Thanks to Mary Behun, Reggie, and Kat for speaking with us for this episode.
This episode was sc…
00:42:18 |
Wed 01 May 2024
Hope Lacquer
Inside prison, as well as out, some of us cling to stuff and some of us let go. In this episode: two cell-block neighbors engage in a gentle dispute, Tony attempts to Marie Kondo his future from insi…
00:49:36 |
Wed 17 Apr 2024
Five Mirrors
Twelve years ago, Nigel asked San Quentin resident Greg Eskridge to write a list of everything he owned in prison. That much, Earlonne remembers. The rest of this episode is a surprise gift, from one…
00:44:55 |
Wed 03 Apr 2024
What's Up, Michael Freeman?
A bucolic garden, six kinds of breakfast cereal, and around-the-clock bedside vigil: How one California prison is trying to mitigate the fears and unknowns of dying inside prison.
Thanks to Joseph B…
00:51:18 |
Wed 20 Mar 2024
A Rock Across a Lake
We’ve never based a whole episode on a poem before, but this one, by Sky, took us by surprise. It’s both a record of longing for all the things she can’t do in prison — sleep in a teepee, have a cook…
00:28:09 |
Wed 06 Mar 2024
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