Conor Gillies ✰ Audio Producer



photo of ConorConor is the audio editor at Jacobin, working on shows such as Long Reads and People’s History, a documentary-style podcast about social movements and class struggle. The first season, “The Point,” followed a group of public housing residents in Boston as they organized for better conditions in the face of disinvestment and privatization.

Previously, at WBUR, he produced Radio Open Source with Christopher Lydon, a weekly news and culture program, and helped create Stylus, a miniseries about music and sound featured by Third Coast and Transom. He has written for The Awl and has spoken to KCRW about public radio’s misguided foray into podcast advertising, which may have led to a small argument with Ira Glass.

Based in Providence, Rhode Island.


Selected Audio



“A pickup baseball game in Providence, Rhode Island,” Field Recordings, 2024 Photograph of a baseball field

Sounds overheard one summer evening (website).


“William Morris, Romantic Revolutionary,” Long Reads, 2023 Willough Boughs, a textile design by William Morris

William Morris is renowned for his work as an artist and designer. But he was also a one-of-a-kind socialist thinker (website).


“Palestine and the New McCarthyism,” Long Reads, 2023 Detail of a Palestinian poster for Land Day

An interview with Rashid Khalidi, one of the leading historians of modern Palestine, for a special Long Reads episode about Israel’s war on Gaza (website).


“The Wounded Knee Uprising,” Long Reads, 2023 photo of an AIM militant ovelooking the Black Hills

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz speaks to producer Conor Gillies about the 1973 occupation and siege of Wounded Knee, and how it inspired a wave of international support (website).


“Turning the Earth Into Money,” A World to Win, 2022 portrait of Karl Marx

John Bellamy Foster discusses Marx’s theory of ecology and the “metabolic rift” shaping humanity’s relationship with nature (website).


“Grove Hall,” The Point, People’s History, 2020 Boston welfare advocates join an anti-war march

The second in a six-part story about tenants in Boston public housing—and how their struggle became connected to a wider Black freedom movement. In this episode, Columbia Point residents and Mothers for Adequate Welfare use militant tactics to get services they are owed (website with the full series).


“The Inimitable Johnny Hodges,” Radio Open Source, 2020 Photo of Hodges playing saxophone

Robin D. G. Kelley and others join to discuss Johnny Hodges, alto saxophonist and star of the Duke Ellington band known for blues feeling, storytelling, and the sheer beauty of his sound and tone (website).


“The Bauhaus in Your House,” Radio Open Source, 2019 Bauhaus design

The Bauhaus school lasted only fourteen years, till fascists suffocated it in 1933. Yet as a model of design, it has arguably ruled the world for a century (website).


“Bob Dylan, the Poet,” Radio Open Source, 2016 Bob Dylan on stage

With Dylan, you hear many things: rural protest storyteller, Greenwich village freewheeler, king of rock surrealism, modernist beatnik, and people’s poet (website).


“Music at the End of the World,” Radio Open Source, 2016 aerial view of Cornish sea

We’re listening with composer John Luther Adams to his famously oceanic, and at the same time minimalist, orchestrations (website).


“America in Three Songs,” Radio Open Source, 2016 Photograph of banjo player Bascom Lamar Lunsford with band

Greil Marcus locates a hidden history in just three strange songs, all of them worthy of obsession and homage: “The Ballad of Hollis Brown,” “Last Kind Words Blues,” and “I Wish I Was A Mole in The Ground” (website).


“Beethoven at the Piano,” Radio Open Source, 2016 illustration of Beethoven writing music at the piano

Throughout these piano works, one hears a master of forms: sonata, fugue, and perhaps variations as Beethoven’s signature. The notion was to take a motif and re-imagine it, transfigure it, over and over (website).


“Billie Holiday at 100,” Radio Open Source, 2016 photo of Billie Holiday with a microphone

There’s no other singer who ever made us cheer and cry at the same time (website).


“Ireland Rises Again!,” Radio Open Source, 2016 a cropped photo of the original Starry Plough flag design

A centenary show about Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising, a fascinating, tragic episode that blended literature and liberation, defeat and victory, national reverence and remorse, and beauty and terror. With Colm Tóibín and others (website).


“Terry Riley on ‘Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band,’” short radiophonic piece for a listening event, 2015 detail from an “A Rainbow In Curved Air” album cover

Riley reflects on one of his early, tape-loop-based works. A multi-saxophone, live version of the piece by Evan Ziporyn was being premiered for an 80th Birthday Concert at MIT (more info).


“J.S. Bach’s Bitter-Sweet Passion,” Radio Open Source, 2015 detail from 1902 painting “The Taking of Christ” by Caravaggio

The St. John Passion is a monument to eternal sadness and excruciating suffering rendered in musical language what no other language could (website).


“After Attica,” Radio Open Source, 2015 photo of a prisoner crowd during the Attica uprising

We’re revisiting the 1971 Attica prison revolt. It marks the twilight of the civil rights movement and the dawn of mass incarceration (website).


“The Sound of Science Fiction,” Stylus, 2014 photo illustration of jazz composer Sun Ra

For as long as we’ve wondered about alien worlds, we’ve wondered also: What might they sound like? This is the final episode of Stylus, a podcast about themes in music (website with the full series).


“Silence,” Stylus, 2013 photo of Ladakh landscape

This hour begins with a historic moment in music–the 1952 performance of John Cage’s 4'33"–then journeys into the absolute quiet of anechoic chambers, down the hallways of monasteries, and beyond.


Variable bitrate mp3s display incorrect timecodes. The Adams interview and Stylus episodes are all about an hour long.