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Stephanie Foo

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Stephanie Foo
Born1987 (age 36–37)
Malaysia
Alma materUniversity of California, Santa Cruz
Occupation(s)Journalist, radio producer, author
EmployerThis American Life
AwardsDaytime Emmy nominee (2016)

Stephanie Foo (born 1987) is a Malaysia-born American radio journalist, producer and author. She has worked for Snap Judgment and This American Life. In 2022, she published What My Bones Know, a memoir about healing from complex PTSD.

Early life and education

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Foo was born in Malaysia and moved to the United States with her family when she was two years old.[1] She was abandoned by her parents in her teens.[2]

She attended the University of California, Santa Cruz, graduating from Stevenson College in 2008.[3] During her time at UCSC, she was involved with the campus radio station, KZSC.

Career

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Radio

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Foo taught high school journalism after college, and began listening to This American Life and Radiolab. She eventually decided to try her hand at it, hitchhiking to a pornography convention in search of a story and ultimately starting a podcast called Get Me On This American Life.[4] Another early audio project was a music podcast called Stagedive, where Foo succeeded in reaching a young demographic.[5]

Foo was an intern then a producer at Glynn Washington's Snap Judgment, based in Oakland, then moved to This American Life.[6]

In addition to producer roles at Snap Judgment[7] and This American Life,[8] Foo has also contributed to Reply All and 99% Invisible.[9] She's drawn notice for work on topics ranging from Japanese reality television (a piece Flavorwire named to its list of the 20 best episodes in This American Life's 20-year history)[10] to race and online dating; The New York Observer praised the latter piece as one of Reply All's "most provocative episodes."[11]

In 2015, Foo launched her own podcast called Pilot, with each installment to serve as a pilot episode for a different genre of podcast. CBC's Lindsay Michael named Pilot to a 2016 list of five best recent podcasts, saying Foo has "created her own playground...A place where she can try things out and see how they go."[12]

Foo served as the project lead on the development of an app from This American Life, launched in October 2016, called Shortcut.[13] Produced in collaboration with developers Courtney Stanton and Darius Kazemi of Feel Train, Shortcut aims to allow listeners to share audio across social media sites as easily as they can share video clips via gifs. In the app, listeners can select an audio clip of up to 30 seconds and then post it directly to social media, where the audio plays alongside a transcription of the clip. At launch, the app operated on This American Life's archives,[14] but the project was later released as open-source code, available for other audio projects to adopt.[15] Writing at The New York Observer, Brady Dale called Foo's project "the number one innovation in podcasting" in 2016, saying, "If anything can ever make audio go viral, it’s a solution like this."[16]

Writing

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Foo has also been noted for her commentary on diversity in media,[17] especially for her 2015 essay, "What To Do If Your Workplace Is Too White."[18] Introducing the piece at Transom, Jay Allison said it "should be required reading for everyone involved in building our workforce or programming."[19] At Current, Adam Ragusea praised it as "frank and funny"[20] and Neiman Lab's Nicholas Quah called the piece "fantastic" and Foo "a force of nature."[8]

In February 2022, Foo released the book, What My Bones Know (2022; Ballantine Books) about healing from complex PTSD.[21][22]

Awards

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Foo produced This American Life's 2015 video project, "Videos 4 U: I Love You,"[23] which garnered three Daytime Emmy nominations: Best Special Class, Short Format Daytime Program; Best Writing Special Class; and Best Directing Special Class,[24] with the project's director Bianca Giaever winning the latter category.[25] The project also won the 2015 Webby Award for Online Film & Video in the Drama: Individual Short or Episode category.[26]

In 2016, Foo won a Knight Foundation grant from the Knight Prototype Fund[27] to work on the This American Life project for sharing audio clips that became the Shortcut app.[11] Foo was also a 2016 fellow at Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism to work on the same project.[28]

Foo served as a judge for the 2020, 2023, and 2024 American Mosaic Journalism Prize.[29][30][31]

References

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  1. ^ Foo, Stephanie (August 16, 2018). "Crazy Rich Asians isn't about money, it's about entitlement—and that's a good thing". Vox. Archived from the original on 2021-02-15. Retrieved 2018-08-25.
  2. ^ Foo, Stephanie (December 23, 2020). "Have Yourself a Lonely Little Christmas". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 15, 2021. Retrieved December 24, 2020.
  3. ^ Townsend, Peggy (August 26, 2015). "Alumni Profile / 2008: Stephanie Foo: Story hunter". UCSC Newscenter. Archived from the original on February 15, 2021. Retrieved August 20, 2016.
  4. ^ Kurland, Andrea (June 23, 2015). "This American Life's Stephanie Foo landed her dream job by embracing failure". Huck. Retrieved August 20, 2016.
  5. ^ Webb, Tiger (March 16, 2016). "How to create a diverse workplace". Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). Archived from the original on February 15, 2021. Retrieved August 21, 2016.
  6. ^ McQuade, Eric (April 24, 2015). "Interview with Glynn Washington of Snap Judgment". The Timbre. Retrieved August 21, 2016.
  7. ^ Oppenheimer, Mark (2013). "NPR's Great Black Hope". The Atlantic. No. July/August. Archived from the original on February 15, 2021. Retrieved August 20, 2016.
  8. ^ a b Quah, Nicholas (October 13, 2015). "Hot Pod: WNYC is ready to make a $15 million move into podcasts". Neiman Lab. Archived from the original on February 15, 2021. Retrieved August 21, 2016.
  9. ^ Eppinger, Laura (25 August 2015). "Wanting to Be Heard: On Podcasts and Representation". The Toast. Archived from the original on 15 February 2021. Retrieved August 20, 2016.
  10. ^ Stone, Abbey (November 17, 2015). "Celebrate the 20th Anniversary of 'This American Life' With Our Favorite 20 Episodes". Flavorwire. Archived from the original on February 15, 2021. Retrieved August 21, 2016.
  11. ^ a b Dale, Brady (February 23, 2016). "Ira Glass Will Fix Podcast Sharing". The New York Observer. Archived from the original on September 18, 2016. Retrieved August 21, 2016.
  12. ^ Bambury, Brent (January 8, 2016). "Five fantastic podcasts you need to hear now". CBC Day 6 with Brent Bambury. Archived from the original on February 15, 2021. Retrieved August 21, 2016.
  13. ^ Locke, Charlie (October 12, 2016). "This American Life Is Making Podcasts as Shareable as GIFs". Wired. Archived from the original on February 2, 2017. Retrieved January 24, 2017.
  14. ^ Shavin, Naomi (October 11, 2016). "A New Tool From This American Life Will Make Audio as Sharable as Gifs". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved January 24, 2017.
  15. ^ "Hey, Podcast Creators: Shortcut Is Now Available for Any Show to Use". This American Life. 2017-12-12. Archived from the original on 2021-02-15. Retrieved 2018-01-17.
  16. ^ Dale, Brady (December 8, 2016). "The Top 8 Podcasting Innovations of 2016". New York Observer. Archived from the original on February 2, 2017. Retrieved January 25, 2017.
  17. ^ Quah, Nicholas (September 1, 2015). "Hot Pod: The podcast collective Radiotopia has a new leader". NeimanLab. Archived from the original on September 26, 2016. Retrieved August 20, 2016.
  18. ^ Wilson, Benet J. (October 16, 2015). "#MediaDiversity: The Struggle Continues, But Solutions Are at Hand - MediaShift". MediaShift.org. Archived from the original on August 27, 2016. Retrieved August 20, 2016.
  19. ^ Allison, Jay (October 8, 2015). "Stephanie Foo - Transom". Transom. Archived from the original on May 18, 2016. Retrieved August 20, 2016.
  20. ^ Ragusea, Adam (October 29, 2015). "'The Pub' #42: This American Life's Stephanie Foo on how to fix public radio's whiteness problem". Current. Archived from the original on August 27, 2016. Retrieved August 20, 2016.
  21. ^ "10 books to add to your reading list in February". Los Angeles Times. 2022-01-28. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  22. ^ Foo, Stephanie (2021-08-11). "I Tackled My Climate Anxiety by Becoming a Parks Department Super Steward". Curbed. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  23. ^ Leverant, Zoë (February 13, 2015). "'This American Life' Video Series Kicks Off by Helping a Couple Say "I Love You" — After Eight Years". Flavorwire. Archived from the original on September 14, 2016. Retrieved August 21, 2016.
  24. ^ Remling, Amanda (30 April 2016). "Daytime Emmy Awards Nominees 2016: A Nominations Refresher Before The May 1 Show". International Business Times. Archived from the original on 26 August 2016. Retrieved August 20, 2016.
  25. ^ Johnson, Zach (May 2, 2016). "2016 Daytime Emmy Award Winners: The Complete List". E! News. Archived from the original on August 15, 2016. Retrieved August 20, 2016.
  26. ^ "This American Life Videos 4 U: I Love You". Webby Awards. International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on August 28, 2016. Retrieved August 21, 2016.
  27. ^ Lichterman, Joseph (February 23, 2016). "A tool to make audio easier to share, and 10 other media projects the Knight Foundation just funded". NeimanLab. Archived from the original on August 22, 2016. Retrieved August 21, 2016.
  28. ^ "Stephanie Foo". towcenter.org. Columbia University. Archived from the original on August 28, 2016. Retrieved August 20, 2016.
  29. ^ Schilling, Vincent (2020-02-06). "Cherokee author awarded $100,000 for journalism excellence". Indian Country Today. Retrieved 2023-03-09.
  30. ^ Brod, Maya (2023-02-15). "Two Freelance Journalists Awarded $100,000 Each for Groundbreaking Coverage, Attention to America's Underrepresented Communities" (PDF). Heising-Simons Foundation. Retrieved 2023-03-09.
  31. ^ "Judges". Heising-Simons Foundation. 2024-02-07. Retrieved 2024-02-07.
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