I’ve been listening to Chana Joffe-Walt for a long time now on This American Life, where she often takes over from Ira Glass to host special episodes on race, labor, and education. Independently, she hosted the New York Times podcast Nice White Parents, which focused on school segregation and how progressive Brooklyn families undermined racial integration. But it was her conversations with men, women, and children in Gaza—which won the team at This American Life a Peabody Award in 2025—that made me want to open the fourth season of The Critic and Her Publics with her, and to explore how the interview can preserve the dignity and the complexity of ordinary people in a time of genocide.
Merve Emre: Many of our audience members are college students. How did you get from where they are to where you are now?
Chana Joffe-Walt: I started doing audio stories sideways. When I was in college, I thought I would do documentary photography or photojournalism. I have always loved observing. I would do art shows in college where I would interview people and take portraits of them, but at that time I didn’t know that was a job I could do.
After school, I worked at the Center for Documentary Studies in North Carolina and met these two women who ran a program for documentary arts. One taught audio and the other one taught visual arts. There, I learned about the form of audio storytelling and realized it was a much more direct way to do what I wanted to do—talk to people and get an entry point into different lives.
After that, I got a job in a middle school as an AmeriCorps volunteer. They put me with a group of kids who had in-school suspension—basically long-term detention—and asked me to come up with a program for them. I started taking them on field trips in the neighborhood to interview people and make something about their community. They would go and talk to people, and I’d figure out what worked and what didn’t. Then, I would spend a lot of time listening and trying to copy things that I liked. I learned how to do my job by teaching teenagers.
How do kids ask questions in a way that is different from how adults ask questions?
In some ways, they were much better than adults, and in many ways much worse. Both groups struggle to get over the performance of asking questions. A big part of working with kids was reminding them to find the thing that they were interested in and to ask real, genuine questions, not the question they thought they were supposed to ask. The biggest thing that we worked on was teaching them about open-ended questions; prompting somebody in a way that could lead to something new. Once they got to a point where they were asking questions that they were actually interested in, that was the best tape that you could get.
So, the middle school suspension program was canceled because you were too good at your job?
I think I was bad at my job. I was supposed to have them do math worksheets or something.
My big entry into doing this was after that middle school. I had applied to a public radio station in Seattle, and a wonderful news director who was dedicated to bringing in new people gave me an internship. I did a bunch of news spots; I’d do two-minute stories and I ended up being very lucky with the number of people who had babies in that office. So, I’d fill in for people who had maternity leave. In that job I was trying to figure out what I liked doing, and I realized that I didn’t love doing very short stories. I kept trying to find ways to make more space.
One thing I always wonder about people who are good interviewers is what their general temperament is like. You came here with your father, and you told me that on the drive up he said you were “sympathetic but angry.”
He said I’m sympathetic to people, but then I have a side of me that gets very angry. I said, “I think they’re the same parts of myself.”
What does that mean?
The part of interviewing that feels natural to me is being interested in other people and being an observer. I have always liked watching people, wondering who they are, what they’re thinking about, what their lives are like. As an adult, I have become more enraged by things that hurt other people’s experience of the world. Vulnerable people, in particular. So, that makes me angry.
When you decided to do the conversations with people in Gaza, did that initially come from a place of anger at injustice?
We were talking at the show about what kinds of interviews we wanted to do. Israel has not allowed any journalists into Gaza to report independently. It was clear that we would have to work with journalists in Gaza or talk to people on the phone. Like most interviews, Yousef’s started in a random way. It was November of 2023 and there had been reporting about kids whose parents had been killed, who were going from the hospital at al-Shifa down South. Yousef, who is a humanitarian worker, was interviewed about it. Initially, I reached out to him to ask if there were kids we could talk to. But when I was looking into him, I found that he had done a film about how difficult it was to find water. It captured how much time people were spending getting basic resources and the ingenuity required to do so. I went into the interview thinking that the story might be about that.
A thing that felt especially important in these stories, because I wasn’t able to do any reporting in person, was to find ways to capture something organic to the person that I was talking to—something they were trying to accomplish, thinking about, or pursuing, so I could capture a person’s experience that felt on the ground with them. I brought some clips to talk through how I got to that place with Yousef.
Usually when I talk through a story, I play the best pieces of tape that we get. This is the opposite. This is the part of the conversation that happened before I even arrived at a story.
I was thinking about things I repeat all the time in interviews. Generally, I’m trying to get somebody to tell an anecdote and talk about how they feel about it. “What happened next?” “How did that make you feel?” “What did you think?” “Can you give me an example?” People speak in general terms. I’m trying to get an example, so they will walk me through something. You can hear this in the raw audio. Yousef had moved from the north of Gaza to the south, and he was trying to convince his family to come down. He was in the middle of trying to set up tents for them and figuring out where they would live. This is the first twenty minutes where I’m not yet sure that’s what the story is going to be about.
This is the raw audio, not edited.
Chana Joffe-Walt:Where are you?
Yousef Hammash: Hi Chana.
Hi.
In Rafah.
Do you have any questions for me before I start?
Happy to answer your questions.
The first few minutes, I ask “Would you mind telling me a little bit about where you are now?” He does that. Then I say, “How long have you been there?” And he says, “We came here to seek safety.” I say, “Are you feeling safe? Do you have a sense of safety?” He says, “No.” He talked about the North where he’s from. He had just seen a picture of it and didn’t recognize places that he has known his whole life. I asked him to describe it. “What did you see?” “How did you feel?” Then I say, “Is there some place in particular that shocked you?” He talks about that for a while and mentions several times in those answers, “I’m the only man in my family. I have many people depending on me: my wife and my kids, my sisters, and my mom, and that’s a big responsibility.” And then he goes on answering about the North. Then he comes back to “we’re in survival mode. I’m responsible for my children, my sisters, and my mother.”
As an interviewer, I’m looking for responses that get at what this person is about. I don’t want to talk to this person and just ask, “How much are you suffering?” “Is it terrible?” I know it is.
So, he says, “I’m in survival mode.” I say, “That sounds like that’s your focus right now.” (Sometimes I’m just asking, Am I right?) He talks more about that. He says, “I’m kind of numb, and I’m just trying to survive.” I ask him to tell me about surviving. “What did you do today?” Now, I’m coming back to my initial premise, thinking that we’re going down the path of him finding water. That goes on for six minutes.
I still thought that the story was going to be about him trying to get resources. That happens a lot in interviews. He tells me about going to the market. I ask him what he wanted to find, and he talks again about trying to find tents. I say, “You were trying to find tents for your family?” He tells me about his sister who’s pregnant, and then we talk about something else. This is the second clip, fifteen minutes into the phone call:
Have you had decisions that you had to make for everybody that you couldn’t figure out what the right choice was?
Yes.
Give me an example.
Yeah, the decision that I’m making today. I decided to build a tent while they are in an apartment in Khan Yunis, and everything is available for them. I’m taking them in this harsh weather, in an empty land and a tent.
Now I’m zeroing in. This seems like an important thing that’s happening in his life. I ask a few questions about that, and then ask bunch of questions, trying to understand how this is going on in his family. “How are you thinking it through?” That question goes nowhere. He says, “I can’t imagine that I was ever going to be here. I just can’t get over the fact that this is what I’m doing right now.” And then this part, number four:
Is there anybody in the family that is hesitant? Do you have to debate and convince them?
Yes, they’re part of the family. A few minutes ago, I was having this debate with my sister. She’s pregnant and doesn’t want to do her delivery in a tent.
Now, he’s talking about something that he actually cares about. He’s laughing a little bit. Ten seconds later, this is the last clip:
They didn’t like it, but they trust me.
What do you say? And what does she say?
She said that we cannot suffer more. At least we have a bath here. The main debate was a bathroom, about having your privacy to use a bathroom, because when you are fleeing in a tent, there are no bathrooms or privacy. I’m trying to find a way to build a bathroom for them.
I remember this moment in the interview thinking, “I’m going to ask this person at the end of our call if I can follow up about the bathroom.” He has a mission that he is on, which is to build a bathroom. It has all the things that you want a story to have—stakes, tension, and an action this person cares about and is trying to do for himself. At that point, I thought this story was just about if he gets the bathroom and if his sister comes.
It’s amazing to me how simple the questions you’re asking are. Or maybe the right word is not “simple,” but “neutral.” It feels like there’s no pressure in what you’re asking. How do you maintain enough neutrality so that the subject doesn’t feel like you’re imposing on them?
The times where I’m actively pushing are usually, “Can we go back to that moment?” “Can you tell me more?” “What did she say?” “What did you say?” “How did you feel?” But in this kind of interview, I’m just searching, trying to learn about the person. Once I know what we’re going to check in about, I’m pushy in the direction of that story. I am having, as I’m interviewing, an idea in my head about how the structure of this story is moving, what it’s likely to move toward, and will direct the conversation that way.
How much is the subject in on the direction that you are going to take the story? Do you tell Yousef, at some point, “The story I want to tell is about your ferocious attachment to your sisters”?
It depends on the situation. In most cases, it’s an ongoing conversation. I’m sure at the end of that phone call, I said, “It sounds like you are trying to get your family here. I’m interested in that. Here is why I’m interested in that. Would it be okay if I called you tomorrow to see if you’re able to build the bathroom?” I don’t usually want to say, “The story is going to be about moving your sister,” because things change as I’m reporting. But I will always keep somebody in the loop about what I’m interested in.
How did you feel toward him?
I felt very worried about him. I felt especially for his sister, Aseel, who was reluctant to move. I continued to feel interested; I wanted to know what happened. But the biggest thing I felt was worried for them.
There’s an incredible moment in Yousef’s week when he learns from a friend that his uncle has been killed. He doesn’t want to tell his mother, even though she’s asking. He says, to you, “I can tell you, because they don’t understand English, and they’re not going to listen to NPR.” You end up being drawn into this intimate confession. Did you expect that?
Now, it’s a very familiar idea to me having talked to a lot of people in Gaza, but at that point, it was the first time someone had said to me, “I would rather not tell a family member about somebody who has died.” An amazing thing about the job in general is when people are open like that. You’re inside their world if they welcome you in.
There are also these unexpected moments in that interview of humor. Once, he texts his sisters, who have just been through an airstrike, “Are you alive?” And they send back laughing-crying emojis.
The whole family’s funny. I was delighted to learn that about them and was really glad when they shared it. It made him feel like a more three-dimensional person. People have all sorts of different emotions.
When he’s introducing one of the episodes, Ira Glass says, “I don’t want to idealize Yousef, but…” and then goes on to talk about his ingenuity and his incredible ability to get things done in a situation where it’s impossible to do so. How do you avoid idealizing a subject when you’re reporting a story like this?
My hope with all interviews is that they feel like real people. If somebody is feeling like an idealized subject, that means I have failed. I want people to feel like they have all the parts of themselves. That is part of why I want the stories to be about the thing that a person with agency is trying to achieve, is interested in, is wondering about.
When you’re editing the audio to create the final track, how much do you want to be present on the other end of that telephone?
I only want it if it serves the story. Generally, I don’t do interviews that are just a host interviewing somebody, with the back and forth. This felt different. The experience of the call is a big part of the story, so you hear a lot more of me than you normally would. I leave myself in in the places where I’m prompting the next thing that’s going to happen or saying something that he can react to.
Especially with Banias, so much of the story is about the way that she interacts with me. There’s a lot more of me in those episodes than I was comfortable with. I kept trying to take out some of my questions and my brilliant editor, Nancy Updike, had to remind me that the episodes were about our relationship. I had to put myself back in.
I was not surprised to learn that your career started in working with children. I felt like I intuited this, just from listening to the way you interacted with Banias. What’s the difference between interviewing a child and interviewing an adult?
A part of me feels like there is no difference; you should talk to young people in the same way that you talk to an adult. They have the same kinds of thoughts, experiences, ways of telling stories and understanding. Where they are developmentally is important, but I want to treat them and their experiences with as much seriousness and respect as I would an adult. The thing that’s difficult about kids, especially if you don’t have the context of the adult world around them, is that they don’t know how to give you the context that leads to the story they’re telling you. And maybe the story isn’t accurate or factual.
Banias was different than other kids I have interviewed. She really wanted to perform for me. I knew that I liked talking with her, but for many months, I wasn’t sure what the story was. She talked, in our first conversation, about kids who had left Gaza for Egypt. She had just started an online school program for an hour a day and told me about what the apartments and moms looked like. I still wasn’t sure what the story would be until the call where she was telling me all about how things are going great. They’re moving, but it’s going to be fine. Then, her mom comes in and says, “She’s actually very upset about this,” and Banias falls apart in the background, saying, “Don’t tell her that.” After that call, I wondered if I could use that, because it felt like a violation of what we’d been doing. But then I wondered what had we been doing? I wasn’t sure.
Why did it feel like a violation?
When that happened, I realized Banias was presenting me with the world that she wanted to show me, and her mom had just breached the bubble that we had. It felt like I couldn’t leave it out but putting it in felt unfair to the project that we had been doing. My editor said, “If you find out something that informs your understanding of this person, you have to leave it in there.” That was the story: her narrating her life to me. So, when that moment happens in the episode, you experience it in the way that I did, as an interruption of her narration.
On the one hand, this is a child who does ordinary child things. There are airstrikes going on outside, but Banias and her friends are looking at the bugs on the ground. On the other hand, this is a child who feels compelled to perform normalcy for you.
I know I use the word “perform,” but now I’m not sure about that word. It feels like she was living in the world that she wanted to live in, and she was letting me into that world. It wasn’t distinct from what she was experiencing, she was aware of the bombing right next to her house, but she didn’t want to talk about that. The bugs she found were more exciting to her. She was just editing out all the parts that she didn’t want to think about.
How was your emotional relationship to her different from your relationship to Yousef?
It’s different in that she is a kid. I felt like I needed to keep checking in with her, and with her mom, that she understood I was recording.
What did you want these interviews to achieve?
I’m often driven by things that I want to hear more of. I was constantly reading news about Gaza, huge numbers, horrifying descriptions of violence, and I wanted to hear more from individual people. I hadn’t heard things that felt like they were on the ground with somebody in a day-to-day way, that was both about how they were experiencing and making sense of what was happening, and also asking, “What is the prominent thing in your mind?” “How are you figuring out the logistics of it?” I wasn’t hearing stories that felt like the human-level experience of this big, global thing that is happening.
It is now October 2025. Yesterday, Netanyahu and Trump released their twenty-point plan for Gaza. It is the height of inhumanity, the absolute opposite of what you’re trying to do. How do you look back at these interviews now?
This morning, I was listening to the interview with Yousef, trying to remember how we talked initially. In the beginning, he says “I’m in Rafah.” Remembering that he was in this place that he described in detail, that I spent so much time trying to imagine, remembering his sister going to the hospital and trying to understand that distance, now, all of that is gone.
It’s a little hard to answer that question, because it’s still ongoing. I’m still talking to people. Yousef’s sister has just moved again from the North back to the South. When we talked last week, she said she didn’t want to leave Gaza City, where she has been for the last month, but that her sisters wanted to. Yousef is now out of Gaza and on the phone with her, trying to communicate what his plans for them are. And she is pregnant again. I said to her, “Oh my God, Aseel. It’s just like the first time we talked!” And she said, “I know it sounds like that to you, but it is not the same at all, because I know that I am leaving, and I am never going back. Before, I was leaving, and we understood we were going to have some hard times, but then we would go back. Now, I’m leaving knowing that we are not returning.”
So, you asked me what I want these interviews to do. I hope they’re a document of people’s lives during this particular period of time. It’s harder for me to say something more articulate than that.