A conversational interview podcast

The people whose job is knowing what actually matters.

Every field runs on a noise floor — the static you have to learn to hear through before you can do the job at all. Signal & Noise sits down, at length, with the people who separate what matters from what doesn't for a living: an ER physician, a wildfire dispatcher, a war-crimes translator, a professional gambler. Not hot takes — the actual mechanics of a hard call, episode by episode.

Hosted by June Okafor, who spent a decade on newspaper city desks before deciding the people making the calls were more interesting than the calls themselves. New episodes every other Tuesday.

Episode 47 · Latest 52 min

The Ninety-Second Decision

with Dr. Priya Ramaswamy

How you decide who gets seen first when the waiting room doesn't stop filling up.

0:0052:14

The archive

Six conversations, six different ways of telling the important thing from the loud thing.

  • No. 47

    The Ninety-Second Decision

    with Dr. Priya Ramaswamy, ER triage physician

    How you decide who gets seen first when the waiting room doesn't stop filling up.

    52 min
  • No. 46

    Reading the Table

    with Elliot Cho, professional poker player

    Fifteen years of learning to trust a flinch over a hand.

    61 min
  • No. 45

    What the Smoke Is Telling You

    with Renata Silva, wildfire dispatch commander

    Triangulating a fire's next move from wind, radio chatter, and instinct.

    47 min
  • No. 44

    The Last Honest Word

    with Tomasz Bujak, war-crimes tribunal translator

    Carrying testimony across languages without losing what makes it true.

    58 min
  • No. 43

    Twelve Thousand Manuscripts

    with Adaeze Nwosu, rare-books archivist

    Deciding which fragile things get saved when you can't save them all.

    44 min
  • No. 42

    The Sound Before the Storm

    with Hugh Faraday, seismic data analyst

    Separating a real tremor from a passing truck at three in the morning.

    39 min

Wherever you listen

Same conversations, three feeds. New episodes land every other Tuesday, six in the morning, Eastern.

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Have a signal worth chasing?

We're always looking for the next conversation — someone whose job depends on telling the important thing from the loud thing. It doesn't have to be dramatic. Honestly, the best episodes usually aren't. Tell us what you'd talk about and we'll get back to you within a couple of weeks.