Whitney Henry-Lester
Podcast Producer
About
Whitney is a podcast producer at KUOW. She helped develop some of KUOW's first podcasts, including How's Your Day? and Second Wave.
Whitney has a degree in film, but she has spent most of her career producing and editing audio stories. She has also worked with StoryCorps, The Third Coast International Audio Festival, 99% Invisible, and Transom.org.
She once ran an audio artists residency from her apartment in Lima, Peru.
Location: Tacoma
Languages: English, Spanish
Pronouns: she/they
Stories
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A book becomes a movement
Shawn Wong discovered the first Japanese American novel, No-No Boy, at a used bookstore for 50 cents, after being told by his English professors that Asian American literature didn’t exist.
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Jizo Bodhisattva
During the mizu kuyo ritual for pregnancy loss, a small Jizo Bodhisattva statue enshrines ceremonial remains of a lost child. Following Shin Yu’s miscarriage in 2012, she had a mizu kuyo ceremony to process her grief.
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Steelhead
Dylan Tomine has a passion for steelhead trout. Or an obsession. Or an addiction.
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Time Capsule
On the eve of selling her family’s house, Donna Miscolta’s daughter had a special request: Go to the stairwell and pull back the loose board on the bottom step.
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Resume
Eason Yang was on an ambitious career trajectory, helping tech companies like Uber change the world. Until he got cancer.
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Name
A name is an object that defines who we are. But what if our name is wrong?
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The Blue Suit is back... now as Ten Thousand Things
In many Chinese sayings, “ten thousand” is used in a poetic sense to convey something infinite, vast, and unfathomable. For Shin Yu Pai – award-winning poet and museologist – the story of Asians in America is just that. Introducing Ten Thousand Things, a special podcast series about modern-day artifacts of Asian American life, created and hosted by Shin Yu Pai and produced by KUOW.
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Part 6: The Reckonin'
Native Americans once owned these lands, and they still treat the Columbia Basin as their sacred home. We’ve all benefited from that taken land, but now corporations are the West’s new settlers. Meanwhile, Cody faces a federal judge and his tight-knit rural community. His sons start taking over what remains of the family’s vast operation and beat-up reputation.
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Part 5: The Bidding War
The Easterday empire is being broken apart. Some of the most valuable farmland in America is up for sale, and the billionaires are coming to town. The bidding war over water-rich lands shows the shift in how America farms.
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Part 4: The Crash
Cody's swindle comes crashing down, and it’s all thanks to Covid. When a giant meat operation discovers the truth about his ghost herd, they take aim at Cody.