Skip to content

Siner Says

A blog about journalism, food, shoes and other random thoughts — essentially, a way to casually exercise my writing muscles. If you’re looking for my actual radio work, see my on-air portfolio.

Travel envy

Photo credit: Emily Siner

A few months ago, I traveled to Chicago for a reporting trip. The interviews wrapped up in the early afternoon, but I booked a late flight home so that I could take advantage of my new favorite luxury of travel: the United Club.

My husband and I discovered the United Club when we flew to Japan in 2023 with our 8-month-old baby. We’d opened a United Airlines credit card to pay for our flight with points, and it came with two passes to the private airport lounge.

Readers, it was glorious.

We sat at a table with plush seats and its own charging ports. We dined on a buffet that was completely free.

Our gate, it turned out, was right next to the lounge. So when we left, we waltzed over, past the crowds of harried-looking people — plebians, really, whose butts were undoubtedly sore from sitting on hard pleather benches.

We stepped up to get our passports verified just as boarding opened, families first, which meant we ended up being the very first passengers on the plane. For a moment, we had the entire international flight all to ourselves.

This, I thought. This is the way to fly.

Read More »Travel envy

A year in review, post-layoff

My landmark Supreme Court cases mug: a reminder, now, of getting laid off.

A year ago last month, I lost my dream job.

I was the executive producer of More Perfect, a podcast about the Supreme Court. It was everything I wanted in a job: editing narrative journalism, learning about the law, leading a small but talented team. When WNYC announced it was cutting 10% of the company due to budget constraints, I hoped that our high download numbers and critical acclaim would keep us in play, but it was not to be.

And so I joined the well-trodden ranks of journalists who have experienced a layoff.

Read More »A year in review, post-layoff

The ultimate minimalist baby registry guide

Sorry to say, your baby stuff will never be this minimal.

Hey, Mama!1 Welcome to the Baby Industrial Complex. You will likely get sucked into hours, if not days, of researching best-of-registry lists and minor variations on every item. You’ll start seeing Instagram ads for hiply named objects that are billed as better alternatives to things you didn’t even realize you needed.2

This is a trial run for parenthood: lots of noise and no magical tuning fork. So as with all parenting decisions, remember these basic principles:

  • There is no objective “best.” So much depends on your preferences. Some people swear by things that you don’t think will work for you. This is a great way to practice trusting your gut, even as a newbie parent! 
  • You can always figure it out later. A lot of what feels urgent in parenthood isn’t. If you change your mind later, it will be fine! (When it comes to baby items, you can always buy it later, or even find it for free in your neighborhood.)
  • When in doubt, ask two friends for their advice and decide on one. There’s so much info online about all things parenting, and a lot of it directly contradicts each other. Once you start feeling overwhelmed, it’s best to get off the computer and ask someone you actually trust.3

I am hesitant to add to the noise by making yet another baby gear recommendation list. But to make it as useful as possible, I’m separating it into two sections: my best-of list of items and resources that make me happy every time we use them; and my full list of all the baby items we acquired in our child’s first year of life, along with whether we got it new or used.

Read More »The ultimate minimalist baby registry guide

Journalists: Don’t overlook the international Fulbright fellowships

Maynooth University in Maynooth, Ireland
The university in Maynooth, Ireland, where my Fulbright was based.

In theory, being a working journalist means you get to spend your career steeped in curiosity. You ask questions, you write stories, you learn endlessly about how our society functions.

But in reality, other duties get in the way. There are deadlines to meet, breaking news events to respond to, newsroom meetings to join (or lead), mid-year evaluations to write. It can feel far away from the thing that got many of us into journalism in the first place, that desire to learn more about the world around us.

If you are a journalist who’s felt this itch, you’ve probably entertained the same options I did. Grad school. Law school. The prestigious paid fellowships at Harvard, Stanford, University of Michigan, and Mizzou.

But what I didn’t know about for many years was one of the coolest opportunities available to journalists: a Fulbright.

Read More »Journalists: Don’t overlook the international Fulbright fellowships

Culture shock

It's hard not to fall in love with the Irish coastline.

When my husband and I arrived at our new home in Maynooth, Ireland, we could barely believe our luck. Maynooth is a charming college town, home to a bustling main street of cafes and pubs and even a 12th-century ruined castle, which we toured while jet-lagged on our first day. Trees are greener here. Groceries are cheaper. The accents are definitely more charming.

Common wisdom tells us that, after moving to a new place, we will experience “culture shock” — a feeling of overwhelm that can render us aghast and immobile, until we acclimate and get over it. Perhaps that is true for some people or some places, but what I’ve found in moving around the United States and, for brief stints, to other countries is a different mixture and order of emotions.

Read More »Culture shock

A sense of adventure

I mean, check out those Cliffs of Moher, right? The western coast of Ireland is beautiful.

“What are you most excited about for Ireland?” multiple friends have asked me in recent days. We leave in less than 24 hours now, so the trip has been part of every recent conversation.

I’ve struggled to answer that question. How can I pinpoint one thing? Sure, there are individual things I’m looking forward to. Hiking along the western coast of Ireland. Hanging out in Neolithic monuments. Buying an epic raincoat.

Read More »A sense of adventure

The dizzying back-and-forth of abortion law

a close up shot of a newton s cradle
Photo by Jose Manuel Gonzalez Lupiañez Photography on <a href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-close-up-shot-of-a-newton-s-cradle-10424708/" rel="nofollow">Pexels.com</a>

After the U.S. Supreme Court decided that abortion was no longer protected by the federal constitution, I couldn’t help but feel like we were all hanging on to a pendulum for dear life.

I started covering abortion law in 2014, as a public radio reporter in Nashville. At that time, abortion was not only legal in Tennessee (as it was — past tense — in every state), it also enjoyed additional protections under our state constitution. It was, you could say, more legal in Tennessee than in other states. Now, a near-total ban is going into effect later this month.

Halfway through this eight-year turnaround, I visited Ireland for the first time. It was early 2018, and abortion was still constitutionally prohibited. But a few months after my visit, the country legalized it for the first time. It’s now easier to get an abortion in Ireland than in Tennessee.

I find it both dizzying and fascinating to be living through these times of change. And by zooming out a bit, geographically and chronologically, the arc of the pendulum is even easier to see. Or maybe the better word is pendula, plural: Each place carves its own path back and forth, and sometimes it knocks into the other along the way.

Read More »The dizzying back-and-forth of abortion law