E.R. Murrow Award Podcast Submission - Disrupted
Any opportunity to record a conversation with Reginald Dwayne Betts feels like a gift. Not only is the lawyer/poet successful and thoughtful, but he also cares deeply about giving back to his community. He started an organization called Freedom Reads, which brings bookcases full of books into prisons. And as a formerly incarcerated person himself, he knows the power these books bring.
But when the Disrupted talk show team sat down to interview Betts, we came away with something that even surpassed our already high expectations. It wasn’t just that Betts bared his soul to us— it felt like he was also baring his soul to himself and trying to grapple with what he saw. You can hear the raw emotion in his voice, the pain he still feels about having spent so much time in prison.
The best conversational podcasts make the listener feel like they are right there in the moment of the interview, not sure what will happen next. The listener can hear the meaning behind pauses, or the way a voice cracks, the way a sniffle sounds. This interview had all of that and more. We hear hope juxtaposed with pain. “In the face of complete disaster, I chose to dream,” he says when talking about becoming a writer. “I should still be grateful for the fact that I did eight and a half years and have never, in prison, felt as bad as I feel some days now,” he says later on.
Disrupted is a show about change and the people who make that change possible. Our interview with Betts perfectly encapsulates what Disrupted is all about— nuanced reflections that take you on an unexpected cascade of emotion.
Original airdate: December 6, 2024
Murrow Award submission date: February 12, 2025