Staff
Eli Benton Cohen
Host, Executive Producer
Eli is an audio reporter and producer. He grew up in Birmingham, Alabama and first moved to California ten years ago.
As a reporter, he’s covered stories in Myanmar, India, Kazakhstan, and all across the American West. He’s embedded in crypto communes near Joshua Tree, followed Zanjeros as they manage the flow of water in the Imperial Valley, and interviewed Nobel laureates at UC Berkeley.
As a producer, he has made radio stories of every kind — daily news, narrative podcast series, long-form investigations, and live talk shows. Previously he worked for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Radiolab, KALW, KQED, and WBHM.
He graduated from Pomona College in Los Angeles with a bachelors of arts in political science. He lives in Berkeley and is most likely found grocery shopping at Berkeley Bowl or biking up in the hills.
Kirk Pearson
Composer, Sound Designer
Kirk is a composer and creative engineer in Berkeley, California.
Kirk spends much of their time searching for, recording, and making music from unusual sound sources. A mandolinist by trade, Kirk’s practice involves writing for unconventional musical instruments, and every once in a while, inventing new ones.
Kirk’s work invites audiences to reconsider their relationships to sound—be those the quirks of natural language, distortions introduced by digital compression, or one’s conceptualization of physical space based on recordings.
Kirk is also creative director of Dogbotic, a studio and audio laboratory that creates weird and strange sounds for weird and strange people. They teach a variety of hands-on workshops on topics such as homemade synthesizers, experimental photography, and media theory.
Advisors
Ben Trefny
Executive Producer, KALW
Susan McWilliams
Professor of Politics, Pomona College
Nikki Silva
Co-Host, The Kitchen Sisters
Brandi Howell
Producer, The Kitchen Sisters
Steven Aron
President, The Autry Museum
Gayle Wattawa
General Manger, Heyday Books