Discipline/Field: Design – Podcast
Based in: Los Angeles + Brooklyn
About: April is an author, journalist and podcaster who has written a few books about digestive disorders. Catherine leads communications for an environmental nonprofit in New York City and teaches writing at NYU’s School of Professional Studies. Falls Creek is the product of Catherine’s fascination with April’s upbringing in rural Oklahoma. Collaborators on a number of projects, including a podcast called Moms on the Rocks, April and Catherine are going to use their time at Yefe Nof to create a sample episode and working outline for the podcast series, and a book proposal for their literary agents.
Project Title: Falls Creek, the Podcast, is an investigation exploring politics, religion, and sex in Falls Creek, the world’s largest Christian youth camp that takes place every summer in in the Arbuckle Mountains of Oklahoma. Over 50,000 kids aged 12-18 attend. Interviews of former campers, counselors and other youth leadership, and leaders (current and former) of the camp answer questions about the persistent rumor that numerous teenage girls are impregnated despite the enforcement of dress codes, separate swimming facilities, and PDA. The collaborators believe the seeds of misogyny and hypocrisy in oppressive religious practices planted at Falls Creek influence young evangelicals and Southern Baptists and highlight who is really benefitting from these practices, providing a potential explanation of the fervent support of another seemingly discordant relationship the same group has with former President Trump and the connection between religious leadership and political leadership throughout five decades of Oklahoma history (1970s-2010s).