Whitney Henry-Lester
Podcast Producer
About
Whitney is a podcast producer at KUOW. She helped develop some of KUOW's first podcasts, including How's Your Day? and Second Wave.
Whitney has a degree in film, but she has spent most of her career producing and editing audio stories. She has also worked with StoryCorps, The Third Coast International Audio Festival, 99% Invisible, and Transom.org.
She once ran an audio artists residency from her apartment in Lima, Peru.
Location: Tacoma
Languages: English, Spanish
Pronouns: she/they
Stories
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Taylor's coming, are you Ready For It?
Whether or not you’re a Swiftie… Taylor Swift’s presence will have a big footprint on our region For some local fans, her three-and-a-half-hour performance is their wildest dream and the most important event of the year. We'll talk to two local fans about how they’re getting ready and why they feel such a deep connection to her music.
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A voice breaks barriers
This is a story about the way we make a statement.
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A bike builds a bridge
Anti-Asian hate crimes spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic. And then the Atlanta spa shooting scarred a community already suffering.
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A book becomes a movement
Shawn Wong discovered the first Japanese American novel, No-No Boy, at a used bookstore for 50 cents, after being told by his English professors that Asian American literature didn’t exist.
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A Jizo Bodhisattva cradles grief
During the mizu kuyo ritual for pregnancy loss, a small Jizo Bodhisattva statue enshrines ceremonial remains of a lost child. Following Shin Yu’s miscarriage in 2012, she had a mizu kuyo ceremony to process her grief.
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A steelhead obsession dries up
Dylan Tomine has a passion for steelhead trout. Or an obsession. Or an addiction.
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A time capsule returns
On the eve of selling her family’s house, Donna Miscolta’s daughter had a special request: Go to the stairwell and pull back the loose board on the bottom step.
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A resume loses its shine
Eason Yang was on an ambitious career trajectory, helping tech companies like Uber change the world. Until he got cancer.
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A name is a thing that is changeable
A name is an object that defines who we are. But what if our name is wrong?
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The Blue Suit is back... now as Ten Thousand Things
In many Chinese sayings, “ten thousand” is used in a poetic sense to convey something infinite, vast, and unfathomable. For Shin Yu Pai – award-winning poet and museologist – the story of Asians in America is just that. Introducing Ten Thousand Things, a special podcast series about modern-day artifacts of Asian American life, created and hosted by Shin Yu Pai and produced by KUOW.