Ear Hustle

Stories from inside and after prison on daily life, relationships and reentry AI summary

Ear Hustle & Radiotopia Visit website › Society & Culture · EN · 193 episodes · latest 2026-11-11 · explicit

Rank 973

0 upvotes, 0 downvotes

Embed a widget with this podcast’s standing on your website

What it is about

Ear Hustle is prison slang for eavesdropping, and that’s what listening to the show feels like: a raw, often funny, and always surprising peek into the reality of life inside prison. Hosts Nigel Poor and Earlonne Woods co-created the show that launched in 2017 while Earlonne was incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison, where Nigel was a volunteer teaching photography. Since Earlonne’s release in 2018, the show has expanded to include stories from prisons across the state, including the California Institution for Women, as well as stories about getting out of prison and starting over, post-incarceration. From finding romance, to grappling with a life sentence, to trying to parent via 15-minute phone calls, Ear Hustle stories deliver what This American Life host Ira Glass calls a “"very real” and “untragic” take on prison life. Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent listener-supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at radiotopia.fm and learn more about Ear Hustle at earhustlesq.com.

Publisher’s own description, taken unchanged from the podcast feed.

Listen

Available at these services — the RSS feed works in any podcast app.

Apple Podcasts Deezer

Latest episodes

San Quentin: The Magazine, Issue 4 E

2026-11-11 · 55 min · Season 18, episode 6

What do elevators, canned fish, and video games have in common? They're new on the scene at San Quentin. Our inside team — plus interns! — reports with up-to-the-minute updates from SQRC. Here's CDCR's statement about…
Inside Music: The Takeover! E

2026-10-28 · 39 min · Season 18, episode 5

Inside producers Tam and Sadiq take over the mic to introduce us to a (mostly) new crop of musicians heard out on the yard at San Quentin. And: some big news from an OG friend of the show. Subscribe to Ear Hustle Plus!…
13 to 29 E

2026-10-14 · 49 min · Season 18, episode 4

Jack spent 35 years in a security housing unit, aka "the hole," and he’s got some stories to tell. You can hear more about Jack's story on the PBS documentary The Strike. Subscribe to Ear Hustle Plus! Last week, Nigel…
An Announcement from Nigel and Earlonne E

2026-10-07 · 5 min

E and Nyge would like a quick word. Sign up for Ear Hustle Plus at earhustlesq.com/plus. (Supercast subscribers: Keep an eye on your email for instructions on how to set up your new EH+ feed.) Ear Hustle is a proud…
Catch a Kite: On the Road E

2026-09-30 · 38 min · Season 18, episode 3

We solicited questions about life in prison from audience members at our live shows. Then, we took those questions into a couple prisons we'd never been to before — Folsom State Prison in California, and SCI Chester in…
From "Examined: The Backfire Effect" E

2026-09-23 · 34 min

Here's a preview from the new season of Examined, a podcast from Pushkin Industries that looks at the realities of incarceration from the perspective of a wrongful conviction. This season: The Backfire Effect. Nearly 40…
The Whole Night Was for Nothing E

2026-09-16 · 58 min · Season 18, episode 2

Two people are connected by a terrible crime, committed over 30 years ago. What do we owe the people we hurt, and how long does that debt endure? Subscribe to Ear Hustle Plus! In the feed this week: Earlonne and Nigel…
On the Margins E

2026-09-02 · 47 min · Season 18, episode 1

A psychic. An RV park. A one-room post office. San Quentin's prison gets all the headlines, but just over the wall, there's a whole other world to explore. This episode was scored with music by Antwan Williams, David…
CIW: The Magazine, Issue One E

2026-08-12 · 35 min

Rumors of a prison swimming pool, losing cherished memories to new technology, the right to housing in prison, and different ways of looking at a letter: Our first class of storytellers at the California Institution for…
Revisiting "Last Memory: Linda" E

2026-07-23 · 58 min

Nigel reexamines the fourth episode in our Last Memory series, from December of 2024. Linda’s mom brought her to a Catholic Mass because she had a sense her daughter was on the verge of something, and needed help.…

Episode details from the publisher’s feed. Playback happens at the publisher.

Publisher details

Owner: Ear Hustle
Oldest episode in feed: 05/2017 · over 9 years
Typical length: 40 min
Format: Episodic Newest first, episodes stand alone

Ear Hustle in the rankings

The best Society & Culture podcasts The best English-language podcasts All rankings ›

For podcasters

Is this podcast yours? Verify it — afterwards you can correct details, get the widget for your website, and we let you know when your podcast is nominated or wins.

Without an account you can use an email address on your show’s own domain — we create the account along the way. The other methods need a login.