Lifestyle
People in prison explain what music means to them — and how they access it
Many states have introduced tablets into prisons, allowing users to do things like listen to music and send messages. Several incarcerated people told NPR that while the devices aren’t perfect, the ability to stream music has been a game-changer.
Sarah Gonzales for NPR
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Sarah Gonzales for NPR
Many states have introduced tablets into prisons, allowing users to do things like listen to music and send messages. Several incarcerated people told NPR that while the devices aren’t perfect, the ability to stream music has been a game-changer.
Sarah Gonzales for NPR
Joe Garcia first heard about Taylor Swift in the late 2000’s, while he was in the Los Angeles County jail awaiting trial on murder charges. He initially wasn’t impressed with her music.
Now, multiple albums and prison transfers later, he credits Swift’s music with helping him get through his life sentence.
“Taylor Swift’s voice, the fairytale romance of it all, takes me back to a much more idyllic time and kind of keeps me focused on recapturing that type of sentiment as I go forward in life,” said Garcia, who was convicted of murder and is eligible for a parole hearing, which is tentatively scheduled for April.
Garcia — who counts “White Horse,” “The Man” and “…Ready for it?” among his top five — detailed his journey into Swiftdom in an essay that was published in the New Yorker last fall in collaboration with the Prison Journalism Project (PJP), a nonprofit organization that trains and publishes incarcerated writers.
The piece describes the impact of Swift’s music on his life — including his rekindled relationship with the woman he describes as his “sweetheart” — and the often-complicated logistics of accessing music behind bars over the years.
It has since been shared widely on social media, where many users wrote that it brought them to tears.
Garcia, who is now at High Desert State Prison in California, told NPR that even though he wasn’t able to follow the reaction in real time, he’s been moved to hear that his essay (one of many he’s published through PJP) resonated with so many people.
“In a lot of ways, I’m a normal human being with all kinds of emotions and heartache and depression … just like anybody who’s not in prison,” he told Morning Edition in a phone interview. “And so I’m always trying to figure out a way to communicate that type of empathy, I guess, and get people on the outside to understand what it’s like in here.”
Joe Garcia wrote about his experience listening to Taylor Swift in prison in a New Yorker essay that went viral in September.
Courtesy of Prison Journalism Project and Joe Garcia
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Courtesy of Prison Journalism Project and Joe Garcia
Garcia hoped that centering Swift, one of the most beloved and influential musicians working today, would be a relatable way to get that point across.
And while he can (and did) speak at length about his favorite eras, his piece shines a spotlight on a much broader topic: the mechanics, and meaning, of music in prison.
How people get access to music in prison
Garcia’s story illustrates some of the challenges that incarcerated people have faced in accessing music — and how new technology has made it possible for many to listen to songs and artists of their choice, some for the first time in years.
His essay details how he navigated ever-changing sets of rules and social dynamics to listen to music in various prisons over more than a decade.
That journey included shared CD players, a borrowed pocket radio, a reconfigured “old-school boombox,” an MP3 player paid for by his family and, most recently, a tablet.
Dozens of states have made tablets available — either for free or for sale — to prisoners in recent years, starting with Colorado in 2016. Almost all people incarcerated in California, where Garcia resides, now have them. And the companies behind the tablets said they had roughly one million users nationwide as of late last year.
“We are given a free tablet that is assigned to us by the state,” Garcia explained. “And then there’s a whole bunch of services that are either free or we have to pay for.”
Users can pay money to send messages, make video calls, play games, download books and stream music, among other functions.
There are still limits around consuming music, as incarcerated people told NPR. Songs cost money and tablets are in many cases only allowed during certain hours of the day. And the streaming services they come with don’t all let users do things like play an artist’s entire discography or curate a personalized playlist — as opposed to saving existing playlists.
Even so, they say, the technology makes a big difference in their day-to-day lives.
“Music is just a huge, tremendous factor in here,” Garcia said. “All throughout my everyday day to day, you see guys walking around with headphones on, with earbuds in. They’ll be singing along to whatever they’re listening to, they’ll be reciting their own type of rap lyrics, they’ll be in circles comparing things.”
Not everyone is listening to the same songs, of course.
A Spotify playlist of the dozens of songs PJP writers said meant the most to them in 2023 includes artists as varied as Smokey Robinson, Carrie Underwood, Kendrick Lamar, John Lennon and Miley Cyrus (and also Swift).
Music as a means of relief and connection
Several people at prisons across the country told NPR that music makes them feel connected, both to others and the outside world.
Jeffrey Shockley, who is 24 years into serving a life sentence in Pennsylvania for murder, says music offers some relief from the “mundane monotony” of prison. That’s especially true when you’re not limited by what radio stations are nearby and which songs they decide to play, he adds.
Jeffrey Shockley, who is serving a life sentence in Pennsylvania, says he listens to everything from Beethoven to Eminem.
Courtesy of Prison Journalism Project and Jeffrey Shockley
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Courtesy of Prison Journalism Project and Jeffrey Shockley
Shockley estimates he has more than a thousand songs on his tablet, ranging from Christian music to classical to Eminem. He says being able to choose what he wants to hear throughout the day — like reggae on a happy morning or Beethoven before bed — has a huge impact on his mood.
“It’s being able to have that ability to reach out and hear something different that will catapult you out of whatever depths of hell you may be in in that moment, figuratively speaking,” he added.
Plus, Shockley said, listening to different genres gives him more to talk about with different types of people.
Garcia similarly says music is one of the few mediums — along with sports and news — that people in prison can share, regardless of their race or background. He says music helps him connect with others, even as someone who was admittedly somewhat antisocial before prison.
“Music is kind of one facet of me trying to open my heart and really appreciate people for who they are,” he added. “And I really do see that a lot in the other incarcerated guys … We end up using it as a platform to come together instead of being divisive.”
Garcia said music not only helps him connect with other people, but also with the outside world. He’s spent his whole life paying attention to new music — which is why he’s now listening to Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo at age 54.
“I don’t want to lose track of what the world is like,” he added.
Reflecting on the past and looking to the future
Music can bring back powerful memories and provide a source of hope for the future, incarcerated people say.
Shockley, 61, says hearing the music his grandmother raised him on, like gospel and Aretha Franklin, reminds him both of his family and simpler times.
“[Like] when you’re a young boy and you’re doing things and running around, playing in the backyard in the green grass,” he explained. “And now you’re sitting in a concrete jungle and hoping for a breath of fresh air .. It’s like a tranquil moment that some people may take for granted because when you don’t have it, you miss it.”
That music, he adds, inspires him to try to give back and uplift others as he was taught — but admittedly struggled to do — when he was younger.
“I don’t want to be who I was,” he said. “So I’m going to be who I can be or should have been.”
KC Johnson, who is incarcerated in North Carolina, described their tablet as a “lifesaver.”
They got it in 2021, just two months before their mom died. The two shared a love of blues, and Johnson was especially grateful to be able to listen to music that reminded them of her.
KC Johnson, whose release date is in three years, looks forward to going to concerts for the first time in over two decades.
Courtesy of Prison Journalism Project and KC Johnson
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Courtesy of Prison Journalism Project and KC Johnson
Johnson, who was convicted of robbery and second-degree murder, said music — especially concerts — was a huge part of their life before they went to prison some 17 years ago.
Now they listen to music pretty much all day: on their tablet while studying, with a portable radio while running or over the speakers at their work-release job at a local food bank (notably the only time they don’t need headphones).
“That’s where all my money goes,” said Johnson, 45. “It’s for my tablet, for my music.”
Johnson’s projected release date is in late 2026, at which point they are planning to move into a halfway house. They are especially excited that the facility allows MP3 players, which will hopefully mean easier access to artists on demand, including on runs.
Johnson is also looking forward to seeing live music again, for the first time in over two decades. Going to a festival is at the top of their to-do list. They say they’ve always loved the positive energy at concerts, where everyone is there for the same reason and getting along.
“I just want to get back in that atmosphere,” Johnson said. “So much has changed in the world, but I feel like going to something like that, it will still be like it was when I was younger — or I hope it is.”
Johnson sees music as a way to reconnect with their past self — and expects the same will be true even once they’re out of prison.
“The songs that I’ve listened to and hear will remind me of my strength and endurance and everything that got me through,” they said. “It’s a powerful tool, music is.”
The broadcast piece was produced by Mansee Khurana.
The first time Pop’s Social, a catering company in South Orange, N.J., that specializes in dirty soda, served an alcoholic drink at an event, something strange happened.
At the event in December, its nonalcoholic offering, a spiced pear-cider seltzer with vanilla and peach syrups, cream, lemon and cold foam, was a hit. The Prosecco-spiked version? Not so much.
“People were more interested in the mocktail than the cocktail,” Ali Greenberg, an owner of the business, said in an interview.
Dirty soda — a customizable blend of soda, flavored syrup, creamer and sometimes fruit, served over pebble ice — has been crossing into the mainstream for years, especially after the cast of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” the hit reality show that premiered in 2024, frequented Swig, the Utah chain that started it all.
But its reach has gone far beyond the Mormon corridor, and its rise in popularity has dovetailed with an overall decline in U.S. alcohol consumption. “There’s not a lot of Mormon people in our neighborhood,” said Greenberg. “But there are a lot of people who are sober-curious or not drinking.”
The reality show, which follows a group of Mormon influencers in Utah, helped popularize dirty soda beyond the Mountain States and inspired a wave of TikTok videos on the subject. Swig rapidly expanded — growing from 33 locations in Utah and Arizona in 2021 to now more than 150 locations in 16 states — along with other Utah chains, and spawned copycats nationwide.
Dirty soda has joined other Mormon cultural exports, like tradwife influencers, a “Real Housewives” franchise in Salt Lake City and Taylor Frankie Paul, the Bachelorette who wasn’t, that have captivated America.
With the recent rollouts of dirty soda at McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A and Dunkin’ — behold the Dunkin’ Dirty Soda: Pepsi, coffee milk and cold foam — and the appearance on grocery shelves of Dirty Mountain Dew and a coconut-lime Coffee Mate creamer for homemade dirty sodas, we may have reached peak dirty.
The idea for dirty soda came out of a desire for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has millions of followers in Utah and surrounding states, to have more options for social drinking, as the church prohibits the consumption of alcohol, hot coffee and hot caffeinated tea.
When Swig introduced dirty soda in 2010, it filled a need, providing a pick-me-up for car-pooling moms and an after-school treat for their kids. It was quickly adopted by many in the community.
“In other cultures, parents go, they pick up their coffee in the morning, and for me and for a lot of my other friends’ parents, it was, ‘Let’s go pick up our dirty soda,’” Whitney Leavitt, a breakout star of “Mormon Wives,” said in an interview.
Leavitt was surprised when her dirty soda order became a recurring question from reporters in recent years. “They were so excited to hear all of the different syrups and creamers that we add to our drinks to make whatever your go-to dirty soda is,” Leavitt said. (Hers is sparkling water with sugar-free pineapple, sugar-free peach and sugar-free vanilla syrups, raspberry purée, a squeeze of lime, and fresh mint if she’s “feeling really fancy.”)
In April, Leavitt became the chief creative and brand officer at Cool Sips, a beverage chain based in New York that sells dirty sodas.
“Mormon Wives” inspired Kaitlyn Sturm, a 26-year-old mother of three from Jackson, Miss., to post recipes for dirty sodas on her TikTok. The one she makes the most contains Coke or Dr Pepper, homemade cherry syrup, a glug of coconut creamer and a packet of True Lime crystallized lime powder, which she combines in a pasta-sauce jar filled with pebble ice. “It kind of has become like a ritual, where I make one for my husband as well, and we have it most evenings,” Sturm said in an interview.
The trend has also hit fast-food menus. The new “crafted soda” menu at McDonald’s is riddled with dirty soda DNA. The Dirty Dr Pepper, with vanilla flavoring and a cold-foam topper, is the chain’s version of what has shaped up to be the universal dirty soda flavor. Since 2024, Sonic, beloved for its porous, soda-absorbing pebble ice, has offered “dirty” drinks — your choice of soda plus coconut syrup, sweet cream and lime.
These drinks might feel new, but there are antecedents in the Italian sodas of the ’90s (fizzy water and a pump of Torani syrup); the Shirley Temple (ginger ale or lemon-lime soda with grenadine and maraschino cherries); and the egg cream, a tonic of seltzer, chocolate syrup and milk. And what is a dirty Dr Pepper with cold foam if not a descendant of the root beer float? “It’s just a soda fountain from 125 years ago,” Kara Nielsen, a food and beverage trend forecaster, said in an interview.
Though Leavitt moved to New York City with her family in December, her dirty soda ritual has remained consistent, with one key difference. “In Utah, we don’t get to walk to dirty soda shops,” Leavitt said. “We have to drive there.”
Annuals include flowers like marigolds and nasturtiums. They grow fast but won’t come back the next spring (though they will drop seeds and possibly propagate). Perennials like lavender and sage will return year after year, but they may take longer to grow. Wildflower and pollinator packets often contain both annual and perennial seeds but are frowned upon by some serious gardeners, because the selection can be haphazard and ill-suited to the area.
It’s a good idea to exercise a little situational awareness. How much rain can you expect? How much sunlight? Dig the earth and feel it between your fingers — is it sandy? Loamy? These are things to keep in mind as you prepare for your journey into horticultural chaos.
“You want to prepare your soil, your site, at least a little bit,” said Deryn Davidson, a sustainable landscape expert at Colorado State University Extension in Longmont, Colo. “Try to get rid of weeds. Make sure the soil is ready to receive seeds.”
Davidson, who has written about chaos gardening, strongly advised covering the seeds with a layer of soil, lest they become bird food. As for watering, that depends on where you live, she added. On the whole, though, the formula is straightforward: “Soil, sun and water is what these seeds need,” Davidson said.
Not everyone is a fan of the trend, or at least the way it has been portrayed on social media. “Nature is not chaos — nature is pattern,” said Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and the author of “Braiding Sweetgrass,” which recommends imbuing modern life with Indigenous wisdom.
“It seems unrealistic,” Kimmerer said of the chaos gardening videos she has watched. The feeling of effortlessness they convey — a common social media effect, almost always the result of deft editing — seems to elide the work that goes into a garden, whether chaotic or not, she suggested.
“I want my garden to be natural and biodiverse,” she said. “That’s a good impulse. I don’t think this technique is going to get you there, but that’s an important impulse.”
Boitnott, the maker of the viral video, offered a simple reason for why chaos gardening has become popular: “It just makes you happy.”
Admission: I suffer from eyestrain. Even right this very second. As a reporter working on a computer more than eight hours most days, my eyes often feel fatigued and itchy by evening.
I’m not alone: More than half of the U.S. population lives with computer vision syndrome, also known as digital eyestrain, and nearly 16.4 million Americans suffer from dry eye syndrome. So I was especially excited to stumble on New Vogue Spa, in the City of Industry, which offers a relaxing, if intriguing, treatment called “Eyeball Care” — something I’d never heard of before at a day spa.
New Vogue Spa is an Asian-style spa with Korean and Chinese influences. The spa’s offerings include massages and body scrubs — I was curious about the “Red Wine Body Scrub” — but I couldn’t help exploring eyeball care, which was much needed after my 50-minute drive from Silver Lake. (The City of Industry is about 30 minutes from downtown L.A. without heavy traffic.)
So it came to be that I found myself lying on a massage table, wearing what looked like protruding diving goggles, with clouds of cool, aromatic steam oozing from both sides of it and engulfing my face. A spindly plastic tube extended from my forehead to the “Eye Spa” machine. Serene spa music, a blend of classical piano and loudly chirping birds, trilled in the background as the machine sloshed and gurgled. It felt like lying, creekside, in a spa robe wrapped in a blanket of chamomile and rosemary-scented fog.
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As my esthetician, Jenny Chen, adjusted the eye mask and added essential oils to the mist, New Vogue manager Lesley Xie explained that the 60-minute, $125 Eyeball Care treatment aims to hydrate and stimulate blood circulation in the eye area, decrease puffiness and dark circles and aid eye fatigue and dry eye syndrome.
“It’s really helpful for overall eye health for people who are on computers for a long time or sleep really late or who are reading a lot,” she said.
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1. The Eyeball Care treatment included a mask filled with cool, aromatic steam to help relieve fatigued eyes. 2. Slippers in the Himalayan Salt Room.
Xie said that eyeball care treatments are common in China. When she was growing up in Guangdong in Southern China, elementary school students were given a break every afternoon to perform “eye exercises,” which involved gently massaging pressure points around their eye areas, for 5-10 minutes.
“It released eye stress because we studied from eight o’clock in the morning until almost noon time,” she said. “It was a break for our eyes to prevent nearsightedness and tired eyes.”
New Vogue Spa’s treatment was supremely relaxing from the onset — part Head Spa, part facial, part eye care. Chen began by massaging my scalp for about 10 minutes, as I tried not to fall asleep.
Next she cleaned my face, applied massage cream and gently massaged my face and eye area, manipulating the outer corners of my eye sockets as well as under my brow bones and on my temples. She was precise and firm but careful — as she pressed on the outside corner of my eye, I felt tension draining down the side of my cheek and neck.
Esthetician Jenny Chen conducts “Golden Eye therapy” on reporter Deborah Vankin.
Xie said the massage is based on traditional Chinese medicine, focusing on stimulating acupressure points around the eyes.
“Gentle massage of these areas is believed to help promote blood circulation, relax the muscles responsible for focusing and relieve visual fatigue,” she said. “While it’s not a medical treatment for vision conditions, it’s widely used as a preventative and restorative method.”
The massage was followed by “Golden Eye therapy,” during which Chen used an electronic device on my face with a metal roller ball on it. It uses “ultrasonic vibration technology,” Xie said, to help the skin absorb the applied moisturizing cream and combat eye puffiness.
The main event was the “cooling steam therapy,” which Xie said was meant to be calming and refreshing and help relieve tired eyes. Chen fitted me with what looked like an enormous diving mask that quickly filled with cool, hydrating mist — I felt droplets of water dripping from my eyes and down my cheeks. The Eye Spa machine uses a “cold mist atomization process,” Xie said, “that disperses micro-particles of moisture combined with soothing essential oils.”
At the end of my treatment, Chen gave me under-eye gel pad masks, for added hydration, while conducting one last head massage. She applied moisturizing eye cream, face cream and sunscreen before sending me off.
Dr. Kristina Voss, an ophthalmologist with Keck Medicine of USC, was enthusiastic about the Eyeball Care treatment.
“It sounds wonderful. Anything that makes you feel good, I generally support,” she said. “It sounds safe because they’re not putting pressure on the eye. Direct pressure on the eyeball [is dangerous]. And I’d be nervous if they were putting something in the eye, but they’re not. Steam, or even cool condensation from a humidifier, is effective for dry eye. Massaging pressure points probably doesn’t treat dry eye, but could potentially treat eyestrain or tension headaches that can be interpreted as eyestrain.”
Los Angeles Times features writer Deborah Vankin inspects her eyeballs after her treatment.
Temporary relief aside, however, Voss warned that the treatment is not a replacement for seeing a doctor if a condition is ongoing.
“It’s relaxing and complementary to a doctor’s dry eye treatments — like medicated drops or in-office treatments — but it’s not a simple fix or cure all,” she said. “Ongoing doctor’s care would be important.”
After my treatment, I was invited to linger in the co-ed Himalayan Salt Room and Red Clay Room or woman-only spa area, complete with a warm soaking tub, lounge area and treatment rooms for body scrubs. (I skipped the adjacent New Vogue MedSpa, where you can get botox, dermal filler or microneedling treatments.)
Guests are also treated to a cup of homemade snow fungus tea (made from tremella mushrooms) with a single jujube, or red, date, floating inside. New Vogue makes a fresh batch every morning for guests, simmering the collagen-rich drink so long it becomes somewhat gelatinous.
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1. The Himalayan Salt Room. 2. The co-ed lounge area. 3. The Red Clay Room.
“Snow fungus focuses on deep hydration and skin plumping, while red dates support circulation and a healthy glow,” Xie said, calling the concoction “a warm bowl of snow fungus and red date soup.”
I can’t speak to the medicinal benefits of snow fungus tea. But after a glass of the warm, woody-tasting drink — together with the hour-long tension-taming eye treatment — I saw the world in a whole new way while walking out the door: clearly, from a relaxed perspective and with the bigger picture in focus.
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