Faith E. Pinho

Faith E. Pinho is the creator and host of Foretold, a Los Angeles Times podcast.

How was the final result of Foretold different than you thought it’d be when you started?
The beautiful thing about Foretold is that it is really a story about the evolution of a woman and her culture – and, on a meta level, our evolution in covering this story. When I first began interviewing Paulina, I was a pretty green reporter at the Daily Pilot, a community newspaper in Southern California. I had barely worked on a story for longer than a couple weeks – never mind several years! 

Then we started adding to our team. 

I remember senior producer Asal Ehsanipour buried in brightly colored sticky notes to sketch out the initial structure of this massive, winding and multifaceted narrative. Alex Higgins, our producer, composer and sound designer extraordinaire came up with quirky, memorable mnemonics to make the story sing – like my personal favorite, the dial-up Internet in episode 3. Assistant editor Lauren Raab picked over every fact, making sure we had checked everything down to the smallest detail. Our editors Sue Horton and Avery Trufelman molded every piece of our reporting and writing – from editing cold call emails to spinning a narrative from a mess of tape. We learned so much storytelling gold from our edit sessions, including one nugget from editor and executive producer Jazmín Aguilera: “Poetry is for concepts. Simple language for plot.” Heba Elorbany, our executive producer, always came to listening sessions with fresh ears for plot holes and unanswered questions. We could have never created this piece without the brilliance of Dr. Ethel Brooks, our cultural consultant who brought her expertise as a scholar and lived experiences as a Romani American to shape the story. Sound engineer Mike Heflin offered up his personal recording studio on countless occasions and made the tape sparkle, giving that final sheen to each episode. And without our composers Vadim Kolpakov and Alex PGSV, we wouldn’t have had such bright, evocative music transporting listeners from place to place throughout each episode. 

I’d always hoped to tell one woman’s story while weaving in lots of context and education about fortunetelling and the Romani American community. But I was blown away by how each of these people brought their skills and life experiences to shape this story into a true masterpiece. (I’m not biased at all!) 

What has the response been? Any interesting listener feedback you’ve gotten?
I’ve loved the responses we’ve received from listeners – some who were just drawn in by the storytelling, some who valued seeing and hearing Romani perspectives from a mainstream news organization and others who saw themselves in parts of Paulina’s life story. One line from a listener who emailed, Amanda, really stuck with me: “My point is, listening to Paulina's story—albeit absolute dimensions away from my own—helped me to realize that our identities are our own, that it's okay to explore and to try and to not know, that no one can (nor should) make these decisions for us, and that there is so much liberation to be found in exploring/owning/rejecting who we are in our own ways.”

Did any other podcasts inspire Foretold?
Oh so many! Our team was big and has diverse podcast tastes. We talked a lot about S-Town, and how to get drawn in on one person, even if the recording is on phone tape. We took inspiration from Trojan Horse Affair about how to have a mid-season reflection / meta moment. Unfinished: Short Creek did a wonderful job reporting on an underrepresented community, filling out the perspectives of folks who are typically reticent to speak to the media and humanizing sources with controversial opinions and experiences. Missing Richard Simmons inspired how to use "strike out" tape and how to include supporting sources with personality. I relistened to the parts of Suave that discuss how Maria Hinojosa navigated being a journalist and becoming part of the story. And on and on!

How hard was it to get people to talk? What would you say to them? Were you scared or uncomfortable?
Given the legacy of media coverage about the Romani community, many people were understandably hesitant to talk for the podcast. We approached every conversation – including cold calls – with as much sensitivity as possible. That usually meant acknowledging what we didn’t know, asking for their help in providing context or information and promising to be fair and accurate. Building trust with some sources took years. Some only spoke to us on background. Many still would never talk to us. I tried everything I could think of with hard-to-get sources – calling, emailing and texting, yes. But also DMing them on Instagram, driving hours to knock on their doors, having mutual contacts vouch for me. In one case, I even left homemade brownies at someone’s home. In the end, the silence and the hesitancy to talk became part of the story, and a lesson about what centuries of harmful journalism can do to fray the relationship between a community and the media.

Did you ever get your fortune told? What were you told?
A couple weeks before Foretold launched, Paulina pulled three tarot cards about the podcast. They were the eight of cups, five of wands and three of pentacles. I won’t even attempt to explain the cards as well as she does! But my takeaway from that reading was that, essentially, the eight of cups represented a journey, prosperity and celebration – a great, smashing success. To me, that encapsulated episode 1 – a big, splashy start. Then the five of wands brought in some controversy and backlash. That’s when we start to reexamine things in episode 7. The three of pentacles represented, as Paulina put it, “The end is kind of the beginning. The podcast is over but … we’re left with more work to do.” And, to me, that perfectly sums up the episode 9 finale – we’ve come a long way over th course of this story and learned a lot. So where does that leave us?

What’s one podcast you love that everyone else loves, too?
My colleagues Asal Ehsanipour, Alex Higgins and I are suckers for Normal Gossip. 

Self-care ritual?
A hot bubble bath with a good show / movie and a tub of Ben & Jerry’s.

Thanks, Faith!