Isaac Kestenbaum, Salt ’08

Isaac Kestenbaum, Salt ’08, is the co-creator of the Audible originals Midnight Son and Alaska is The Center of the Universe, and Director of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. Kestenbaum’s latest project, taking Midnight Son from audio to film for a documentary, Blood and Myth, premiered on Hulu on September 4, 2025.

Prior to the release of Blood and Myth, we sat down with Kestenbaum to talk Alaska, storytelling, and Salt.

You started at Salt as a student and are now the Director. Can you share how you found your way to Salt?

I'm from Maine, so I don't actually remember how I learned about Salt. Salt is one of those things that's just part of the landscape and the social fabric here in Maine. It's like, when did you first learn about the ocean?

Actually, I do remember seeing the first Salt magazine on a newsstand, nestled between these more touristy Maine magazines, like "10 Great Beaches to Visit in Maine." And then there was Salt. It really stood out to me because it was a black and white image on the cover, with a really gritty look. I picked it up, and I felt that this was the real Maine.

I was living in Portland when I came to Salt, and I was working at the Portland Press Herald, which is a great, great, great newspaper. I love, love the Press Herald.

Salt used to be kitty-corner from the Press Herald office. So I'd walk by there every day, and think, that's the kind of storytelling that I want to do. I want to spend three months telling one story and not one week telling five stories.

A significant portion of the work that you've done in collaboration with James Dommek Jr. is about indigenous life in Alaska. What was your initial connection to Alaska, and what keeps you coming back?

Josie Holtzman, my wife, and I got this idea to do audio tours, a soundwalk about climate change, and specifically about how winter is changing.

The idea is that you'd be walking outside in a mild winter, but hearing stories from people who remembered when this lake used to freeze over. And the idea was we wanted you to feel climate change, bodily.

We did a story about the Hudson River when it used to freeze, and people would sail ice yachts up and down it. And that was the winter of the polar vortex.

I remember looking at a map of where it had been colder than usual, and there was a big, blue coloration of the Northeast. But in the Northwest and Alaska, it was red because Alaska had been warmer than usual that year.

I'm always curious about the north, growing up in Maine. So we got a relatively small grant to go there for two weeks and continue the project on how winters are changing.

We went to Bethel and to Kotzebue, which is another small hub city, above the Arctic Circle. I interviewed people about how winter was changing there. And I fell in love with Alaska.

A year later, the Association of Independents in Radio had this huge project called Localore: Finding America, and it paired independent producers with public radio stations for about a year.

So Josie and I pitched. One of the stations that said they might be interested was KNBA, which is broadcast out of Anchorage, Alaska, and KNBA is [called] “Alaska's Native Voice.”

Together, we came up with this idea that we called Frontier of Change. We would travel to rural Alaska and record stories, and bring those stories back to Anchorage, for people to do audio tours, but they would be virtual reality audio tours that would transport you to different parts of the state. Because even in Anchorage, it's really hard to get off the grid.

It takes a long time. It's expensive. There are always weather delays when you're traveling out in The Bush. That was a year-long project, and we went all over the state and worked with the Anchorage Museum to do a series of events, and it just sprawled and became this massive multimedia storytelling, climate change communication project.

But one of the people that I met there was James Dommek Jr. He is a musician and scored a lot of our projects that we were working on.

He and I were just sitting around at the end of the day, and I asked James, “Do you have any good stories?” And he told me this eight-minute true crime story that happened in Alaska that he'd always been super interested in.

I just couldn't stop thinking about it afterwards. It had everything. It was an Arctic true crime murder that became supernatural, and then a courtroom story, with so many twists and turns. I just couldn't stop thinking about it. Ultimately, James, Josie, and I put together a one-page pitch and sent it to a couple of places, including Audible. That became Midnight Son.

So our sophomore podcast with [Audible] was called Alaska as the Center of the Universe.

It sounds like you were approaching Frontier of Change from a climate change perspective. Why did it become important to you to be telling indigenous stories with it?

Most people who live in rural Alaska are Native. I think it's around 80% Native population. In rural Alaska, once you get off the road system, a lot of people out there still rely on subsistence hunting to eat. Even just to travel, traditionally, people go from village to village on snow machines, and that's becoming increasingly dangerous because the ice isn't freezing over like it used to. That became a project that really centers the Alaska Native voice because those are the people who are so affected by climate change in Alaska.

Then I think similarly, with Midnight Son. That's a true crime story for sure. It's got all the hallmarks of a true crime: dead people, shootings, courtroom drama, and arrests. But it's also about colonialism in Alaska because it's about how justice works differently for Native people in Alaska.

That’s the best kind of storytelling, one where the issue is secondary to a great story, but you understand the issue through the storytelling.

How do you teach your students to figure out what stories they want to tell?

A question that students ask a lot is, “Is this my story to tell?” What story can I tell? And for better or for worse, there's no machine that you can run the story through and have it be approved. The same with any ethical question that comes up at Salt, it's ultimately up to the student to decide.

Certainly, we have our own code that Salt goes by, and we also share lots of other journalistic ethics codes, but ultimately, a lot of decisions are going to be up to the individual.

One of the things that's great about Salt is that we really emphasize ethical approaches to storytelling. And for me, that really comes down to communication; you need to be transparent with the people whose stories you're telling. Being clear with them: “It'll air here. It'll be in the Salt Story archive.” Just being super transparent about your intentions and where it's going to go. If you're able to do that, then I think it is your story to tell.

I'd say 99% of the time, the person whose story you're telling is like, “That's so great, you really captured me.” Even if it's just a very straightforward, ethically done, transparent story, people are still really happy that their voice is out there.

Why is storytelling important?

Fundamentally, story helps you understand something that you wouldn't otherwise be able to understand. Take climate change, for example. It's this big abstract [thing], and I think telling a story about one person who's affected by this issue really helps you understand it in a way that you wouldn't otherwise.

One of the things that students will struggle with initially is, what's the difference between a topic and a story? A topic is climate change. A story is a fisherman who's being impacted because the green crabs are eating all the clams. And I think once you have a story that helps you understand this big idea in a real, visceral way.

What do you miss most about being a Salt student?

When the fall semester kicks off, I get this super intense feeling of—not quite nostalgia—but almost like I’m transported back to when I was a student at Salt. I can so clearly remember this feeling of anticipation and nervousness

What I know, that those students don't know yet, is that they're going to have an amazing time over the next three months.

And what I miss the most about being at Salt is the cohort experience. Being surrounded by a bunch of other people who think about storytelling and documentary in the same way that you do, and bouncing ideas off of people.

How did Salt prepare you for a career in Radio and Podcasting?

For me, and a lot of other Salt grads, there's a before Salt and an after Salt.

Salt prepared me in a bunch of different ways. I certainly felt like I had more hard skills in terms of story structure and how to interview someone.

And the Salt network is really a powerful thing. So once you graduate Salt, not only are you connected to everyone that you went to Salt with, but then all of a sudden you're part of the larger Salt extended universe.

I graduated Salt in December of 2008, and I was able to get an internship at StoryCorps, and I feel I would not have gotten that interview if it hadn't been for Salt on my resume.

Along with the skills that I learned, it gave me the confidence to take on other projects, which eventually led to me often getting in over my head and figuring a way out of it.

I still do that now. I've got a sign hanging up in my office that says, “It always seems impossible until it's done.” So I feel like that's another thing that Salt gave me.

What advice would you have for folks who are thinking about applying to Salt?

The best advice that I could give someone who's thinking about coming to Salt, would be to talk to someone who just graduated from Salt. Ask them about their experience and where they are now, and how they feel Salt got them there.

Because I'm pretty confident that anyone you talk to who's been through the program recently is going to have positive things to say about it.

Also, that's a very Salt thing to do. Go interview someone, go ask questions, go out in the world and be curious, and then make what you will out of that.

You recently held a panel with Salt alumni talking about truth and storytelling. What does truth and storytelling mean in today's media landscape?

Truth and storytelling are fundamental to what we do at Salt. It feels increasingly important as the media landscape shifts and changes, and evolves or devolves.

For me, it really comes back to transparency. Being transparent with the people whose stories you're telling—why you're talking to them, where their stories are going to go, and who’s going to hear them.

Also, being really transparent with your audience about how you got this story, what kind of questions you asked, and what, if any, promises were made to your subjects. All of that is fundamental to what we do at Salt.

What is up next for you?

A documentary film company called Citizen Jones asked us if we'd be interested in working with them to adapt Midnight Son, the true crime podcast that we made for Audible, into a documentary film. I've been involved as an executive producer.

James is still the narrator, which is super cool. So he's on camera and kind of a character in it, which is great. And it’s out on Hulu, which we're really excited about. It's been crazy to see it, this thing that I made as an audio piece, get transformed into a different medium.

It’s called Blood and Myth, and it's very exciting.

Who are the artists that inspire your work?

I really like Taryn Simon, a photographer. She created this [book] called Contraband, where she embedded at JFK airport and photographed every item that was seized by the TSA and put it in a catalog.

What is your favorite place in the Porteous Building?

Besides the Salt classroom, when all the students are in here, I'd say my favorite place in this building is probably the library.

It's got these amazing windows, great light, and I just love being surrounded by books.

My other favorite place is the stairs because I feel like that's when you run into people. Some days, I get most of my work done just by running into someone on the stairs.

Other than your phone keys and wallet, what do you never leave the house without?

I always have a little pocket notebook for everything.