The Loop

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In this all-New York season, Ear Hustle embeds with two innovative programs aimed at kids and young people caught up in the criminal justice system.

In the first five episodes of the season, we bring listeners into the Crossroads Youth Detention Facility in Brooklyn, where a program called Drama Club teaches improvisational theater techniques as a way to build connection and conflict-resolution skills. Nigel and Earlonne spent a year at Crossroads, following a cohort of Drama Club participants and graduates.

For the final episode of the season, we take the train uptown to the Children’s Museum of Manhattan. Twice a month, the museum closes its doors to the public, and opens them to a select group of parents and their children. Moms and dads, bussed over from Riker’s Island in chains, are uncuffed upon arrival at the museum. Wearing regular, non-prison clothes, they’re reunited with their kids for a rare, emotional, and often bittersweet visit outside prison walls.

Join us this fall as Ear Hustle takes on its first project outside the world of adult incarceration, chronicling the lives of young people involved, one way or another, in New York’s criminal justice system as they navigate growing up, dreaming big, and trying to stay out of the loop.