Looking Back at the Cut Pathways Oral History Podcast

Press image for season three of Cut Pathways courtesy of the Carnegie Mellon University Oral History Program.

Cut Pathways

Season 4: Second Impressions

Retrospective Script

[Cut Pathways theme song] 

Katherine: Hello. You are reading about Cut Pathways, an oral history podcast we used to produce at Carnegie Mellon University. I’m Katherine Barbera. 

Dave: And I’m Dave Bernabo. 

[Short pause]

Dave: This podcast used to dive into the university’s archive of recorded oral histories to showcase the people that have made Carnegie Mellon what it is. 

[Upbeat ambient music]

Katherine: We recorded the real-life memories and perspectives of those who experienced the history of Carnegie Mellon University. 

[Small pause]

Katherine: And in July 2024 we’re looking back at the three-year anniversary of Cut Pathways, a project that meant a lot to both of us. 

[Nostalgic music]

Dave: Back in the summer of 2021, we launched the first season of Cut Pathways at Carnegie Mellon. It was an experiment to see if we could tell stories with recorded oral histories.

Katherine: Our first season dealt with “beginnings” and “first impressions,” like the start of now long-standing student groups and the first impressions students had of Pittsburgh when they arrived on the university’s campus.

Dave: We also talked about military code breaking activities during World War II—looking back, how that episode fit the theme of the season is not so clear… 

Katherine: Yeah, the first season was definitely experimental.

Dave: But it was an experiment that went well. 

Katherine: Yeah, the response wasn’t negative and before too long we found ourselves working on a second season. 

[Electronic music, beeping and blooping and such]

Dave: We decided to up the scale and the production value, telling a story across six episodes. That’s double the amount of episodes from season one.

Katherine: At the time I was working closely with the School of Computer Science to build their archives and preserve their history so we decided to make computer science the theme of the season. 

Dave: We called it “The Wild West of Computing” and explored some of the early days of computer science from 1956 to 1987. 

Katherine: We were feeling ambitious and had more content than we could fit into six episodes so we even decided to perform a live show of the podcast, a la RadioLab Live style. 

Dave: Artist Maggie Lynn Negrete joined us on stage to create live illustrations of the stories we were telling, and members of How Things Are Made, an improvisational electronic music group, provided a live music score.

Katherine: It went both extremely well and terribly, as did many events during the early virtual-inperson-hybrid days of the pandemic. 

Dave: Hundreds of people registered to attend the show, most of them virtually, but a major technology glitch meant that our online attendees never got the link to watch it. 

[Sad trombone sound]

Katherine: But we still had a blast putting on the performance. 

Dave: And we didn’t let that stop us from starting to plan for a third season. 

[Small pause and ambient transition music]

Katherine: With season three, we expanded our scope even more by looking at the history of avant-garde arts in Pittsburgh. 

Dave: We called it “Steel City Outsiders and the Institutional Avant-Garde.”

Katherine: This was probably the best and our favorite season we produced. 

[Music like The Cardboards or The Five]

Dave: These were stories about people that started something new. About not necessarily having a plan (or funding) but finding a way to do it anyway. These were stories about finding belonging and community, and forging new creative forms. We talked about avant-garde film. We talked about punk. We talked about electronic art. We talked about how computers changed art and music and arts communities themselves. 

Katherine: For one of the episodes, we explored the history of the Selma Burke Arts Center, an important hub for arts in Pittsburgh started with the support of renowned sculptor Selma Burke in the late 1960s. 

Dave: And for another episode, we looked at the evolution of punk music in Pittsburgh in the mid to late 1970s—those interviews were a blast to record. 

Katherine: This was our most successful season yet with hundreds of listens in the first few days. 

[AI-generated music]

Dave: Riding the wave from season three, we decided to test the algorithm with a special episode about artificial intelligence. 

Katherine: Yeah, this was a fun one to put together because we pulled stories from the oral history interviews to look at the future [add emphasis] of artificial intelligence, not the past. 

Dave: And we asked Chat GPT to write the script for us—with mixed success. Spoiler, we ended up writing most of it ourselves. But that episode was our most successful in terms of listens. 

Katherine: But soon after we wrapped, we left Carnegie Mellon to work full-time on Bright Archives. Our work now looks very different than it did three years ago running the Oral History Program at the university and producing Cut Pathways. 

Dave: We’re proud of our work on the podcast. 

Katherine: And we learned so much. Producing an oral history podcast is challenging, to say the least. But also rewarding. 

Dave: Oral histories are a rich source for first-person perspectives on historical events, but translating an oral history interview into a podcast is tricky. Podcasts are punchy and fast-paced, while oral histories are open-ended and patient.

Katherine: It takes a ton of time to edit the interviews into a cohesive story. 

Dave: And just as much time to write and record the narrative around it. Not to mention produce the show. 

Katherine: But podcasts are a fun way to engage with oral history interviews, especially since the interviews tend to be so long. The ones we recorded at Carnegie Mellon were often three hours or more. I think our longest one was seven hours. 

Dave: Oh cool.

Katherine: Maybe we’ll produce another oral history podcast in the future, but for now it’s fun to look back at Cut Pathways. 

[Inspirational music]

Dave: So how do we want to end this retrospective episode?

Katherine: Well, endings were always our least favorite part of the script writing process—too many threads to tie up and summarize in a short period of time. 

Dave: Cue music?

Katherine: Sounds great. 

[Music]

Katherine: This episode was written by Katherine.

Dave: And Dave. And all the theoretical music comes from the bands Watererer, How Things Are Made, Joni Mitchell, Bastro, Francis Poulenc, Ethel Smyth, The Funkees, Julia Niewiarowska-Brzozowska, Squirrel Nut Zippers, and Paul Simon.

Dave: Thanks for reading this retrospective episode of Cut Pathways. 

Katherine: See you next time. 

[Ending music]

This piece was a departure from our usual articles on brightarchives.com, but we thought it was a fun way to share some of our previous work. If you’re curious about Cut Pathways and want to have a listen, the episodes are still available through cutpathways.podbean.com.