SOUNDTRACK OF SILENCE
MATT HAY
WITH SPECIAL GUEST, NPR HOST OF
ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
MARY LOUISE KELLY
Thursday, February 20, 2025
6:30 PM
Don Wolf Center at Electric Works
Tickets Are $35 for General Admission
Join us for an inspiring evening of storytelling about the journey through hearing loss, reminding us that every sound—from laughter to the whisper of the wind—is a melody to cherish.
Matt Hay, MBA has a long journey toward deafness and even longer journey toward learning to “hear” again with an experimental brainstem implant. He first publicly shared his story on a National Public Radio (NPR) podcast titled Soundtrack of Silence. The intimate, funny and authentic peek at what it’s like to start a career, fall in love and build a life while battling a rare disease inspired actor Channing Tatum and Paramount Pictures to option the motion picture rights to Matt’s life story. Matt’s memoir Soundtrack of Silence was released in January 2024 by St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of Macmillan.
When Matt isn’t adding tracks to the soundtrack of his life, he passionately supports the hearing loss community as a member of the Columbia University Genetic Counseling Advisory Board and served as a consultant to the St. Joseph Institute for the Deaf. He’s proudly served as a Congressional lobbyist for neurofibromatosis (NF) research funding, the genetic disorder that caused his hearing loss, and has raised money for NF research by doing endurance events, including an Ironman Triathlon and most recently, the Boston Marathon. Matt currently serves the rare disease community as the US Director of Advocacy for a global biopharmaceutical company. He lives in Westfield, Indiana, with his wife (whom he’s quick to point out is the hero of his story) and three children.
Mary Louise Kelly is a co-host of All Things Considered, NPR’s award-winning afternoon newsmagazine.
Previously, she spent a decade as national security correspondent for NPR News, and she’s kept that focus in her role as anchor. That’s meant taking All Things Considered to Russia, North Korea, and beyond (including live coverage from Helsinki, for the infamous Trump-Putin summit). Her past reporting has tracked the CIA and other spy agencies, terrorism, wars, and rising nuclear powers. Kelly’s assignments have found her deep in interviews at the Khyber Pass, at mosques in Hamburg, and in grimy Belfast bars.
Kelly first launched NPR’s intelligence beat in 2004. After one particularly tough trip to Baghdad — so tough she wrote an essay about it for Newsweek — she decided to try trading the spy beat for spy fiction. Her debut espionage novel, Anonymous Sources, was published by Simon and Schuster in 2013. It’s a tale of journalists, spies, and Pakistan’s nuclear security. Her second novel, The Bullet, followed in 2015.
A Georgia native, Kelly’s first job was pounding the streets as a political reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In 1996, she made the leap to broadcasting, joining the team that launched BBC/Public Radio International’s The World. The following year, Kelly moved to London to work as a producer for CNN and as a senior producer, host, and reporter for the BBC World Service.
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