Ear Hustle Live!

Ear Hustle brings you the daily realities of life inside prison shared by those living it, and stories from the outside, post-incarceration.

Ear Hustle launched in 2017 as the first podcast created and produced in prison, featuring stories of the daily realities of life inside California’s San Quentin State Prison, shared by those living it. Co-founded by Bay Area artist Nigel Poor alongside Earlonne Woods and Antwan Williams — who were incarcerated at the time — the podcast now tells stories from inside prison and from the outside, post-incarceration.

In 2020, Ear Hustle was named a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in audio reporting — the first time the category was recognized — for bringing audiences “a consistently surprising and beautifully crafted series on life behind bars.” In 2021, Ear Hustle received an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for “shatter[ing] the myths about serving time and what happens afterwards.” Ear Hustle has also received honors from the Third Coast International Audio Festival, the Moran Center for Youth Advocacy, and is a two-time Peabody Award nominee.

Earlonne and Nigel have delivered commencement addresses for the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and Bennington College, a keynote at Podcast Movement, and have discussed their work at the City Arts & Lectures and Commonwealth Club series in San Francisco, and at the Tribeca Festival in New York. In addition, Ear Hustle has also inspired multiple creative endeavors, including the Metropolitan Museum of Arts’ “Songs from the Spirit” dance performance featuring music from the podcast.

Earlonne and Nigel are also the authors of This Is Ear Hustle: Unflinching Stories of Everyday Prison Life, a book inspired by the podcast and published by Crown/Random House. The San Francisco Public Library selected the title for its One City One Book citywide community reading program in 2022.

Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary podcasts. Ear Hustle won Radiotopia’s first Podquest in 2016 — a search for new story-driven podcast ideas — beating out more than 1,500 international entries. Today, episodes have been downloaded more than 85 million times. The show is also broadcast to incarcerated communities, including in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation institutions and in the U.K. in collaboration with the Prison Radio Association.

The Ear Hustle team works in San Quentin’s media lab and in the KQED office in San Francisco.