The Shawn Ryan Show
Shawn Ryan
Society & Culture
Ear Hustle
by Ear Hustle & Radiotopia
Today: #113 in Society & Culture on our combined chart.
Chart positions today
If you like Ear Hustle, try…
The Ezra Klein Show
New York Times Opinion
This American Life
This American Life
Stuff You Should Know
iHeartPodcasts
Modern Wisdom
Chris Williamson
Notes from the Edge
Gamut Podcast Network
Ranking history
History builds daily. We started tracking this show on the Society & Culture chart recently, so the trend line appears after a second day of data.
View as table
| Date | Apple Podcasts |
|---|---|
| Oct 2 | #100 |
About the show
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.
Latest episodes
-
Catch a Kite: On the Road
September 30, 2026 · 38 minWe 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 Pennsylvania — and…
-
From "Examined: The Backfire Effect"
September 23, 2026 · 34 minHere'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 years ago, in the…
-
The Whole Night Was for Nothing
September 16, 2026 · 58 minTwo 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 get a reading from…
-
On the Margins
September 2, 2026 · 47 minA 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 Jassy, Derrell Sadiq…
-
CIW: The Magazine, Issue One
August 12, 2026 · 35 minRumors 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 Women dives deep…
-
Revisiting "Last Memory: Linda"
July 23, 2026 · 58 minNigel 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. Thirty-seven years into…
-
Behind the Scenes: “Bag of Skittles” and “Over and Over and Over and Over”
July 8, 2026 · 33 minCould telling Sadiq and Demarion’s story actually make things worse between them? And were we right to be concerned that SQ's public information officer wouldn't sign off on a story about penis modification? For our latest editorial…
-
Revisiting "Getting a Date"
June 24, 2026 · 43 minEarlonne relistens to the final episode of Ear Hustle’s first season, about one official and one unofficial way to get out of prison. Steve, Danny, Phillip, and Ron are all trying to make their way out of prison. In our final episode of…