Audio Flux

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0:37It's made for the yes life. With the power and room to handle whatever pops up. Yes to adventure. Yes to right now. Because saying yes without hesitation, that's real luxury. The all-new Audi Q3. Made for the yes life. Learn more at AudiUSA.com. This is 99 % Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Years ago, I worked with my friend Julie Shapiro at the Third Coast International Audio Festival. And for more than a decade, Third Coast hosted a competition for short-form documentaries based on a specific challenge. They were called short docs. We would invite people to make short audio stories inspired by a set of prompts.

1:19And we just trusted the fact that if you invite people to make something and give them a little bit of parameters to play with, you know, my mantra is like, it always works. You can always invite people to get creative and they will always respond in some fashion. Over the years, I must have listened to dozens of short talks and hearing them gave me this jolt of inspiration. They were a reminder about what was possible with audio and how the whole medium benefits when there's a place for all kinds of storytelling. However, in recent years, the audio business has changed. Long-form conversation-type podcasts dominate.

1:55And it's made it harder for documentary and short-form experimental audio to find a home. Which is why Julie Shapiro and her creative partner, John DeLore, created AudioFlux. We thought, you know, everything is longer and longer and longer and longer. So what if we could create some energy around a short form? So John and I decided to create AudioFlux, which is sort of a new version of the Short Talks challenge, but maybe a little bit more for the podcasting age. AudioFlux was recently recognized by The New Yorker as one of the best podcasts of 2025. And I want to share this project because I'm a big fan of what Julie and John are creating.

2:32And I want to expand your definition of what a podcast can be. We're going to play some AudioFlux stories in a bit. But first, I'm going to talk with Julie about how it all works. So let's start off with a bit of an origin story here. How did you and John first arrive at the idea for Audio Flux? Yeah, so we started in the spring of 2023 talking to each other. John and I had kind of known each other for, known of each other, really. We had a lot of people in common because we both had these long histories of working in public radio and coming into podcasting, you know, in its early heydays. And so we were talking in the spring because he had just been let go from a job with a big podcast company and I was in between positions.

3:17And we were just talking about how morale seemed really low, low in the creative audio corner of podcasting and in our community and amongst our friends. The people we kept talking to felt I just like really could sense this industry fatigue at every turn. And we started thinking about what could we do in this moment together that might reverse some of that or give people something to appreciate, you know, audio for the sake of audio. And this idea for AudioFlux came out of that kind of motivation to offer something back to the community and also do something that would bring our own spirits up at the same time.

3:53So how does it work? Like, how do you get people to do it? How do you set up the structure for the sort of challenge? So twice a year, we run circuits. And for each circuit, we have a different creative partner, like an illustrator or a pet portrait artist or a writer. And it's with that partner that the theme for the circuit and the prompts that we invite people to respond to are designed. So it boils down to that formula. And another part of the AudioFlex design is that each story is only three minutes long. So why three minutes? So we thought three minutes would be inviting enough to convince people to try, to give it a go, to participate in the circuits.

4:31But it's also like this iconic duration, right? Like three minute pop songs are very popular. And these flux works, we call them flux works, almost end up being like songs or like little pop songs that you can listen to over and over. And there certainly are some that I kind of sing along with when I hear them. So you can do enough in three minutes to make a really compelling, memorable, profound audio story. But it also is not too daunting if you're trying to do something, you know, in a limited amount of time or for the first time. I mean, I think most podcast ads are longer than three minutes at this point.

5:07I know. Well, this is our this is our way of protesting against all of the, you know, the what's happened to podcasting in a way. I jest. I'm a big podcast fan. I make podcasts. I listen to podcasts. But I think we're all a little frustrated with some of the things that have happened in the industry and how the kind of imagination has left the building. So how far along are you with the project? So we've had two banner years, I must say. We have run six different circuits, which means we have partnered with six different creative partners, six different sets of rules, six different themes. and the life cycle of a circuit is that we commission four pieces from producers who we invite and then we do an open call and then anyone can participate in the open call and then we pick winners and we present the winners and the commission works at a big live event somewhere.

6:03It's really important to us to bring the community together to listen to these pieces. And so we have been always debuting them first in a public setting at a conference or a festival. And then we put them online and now we have the podcast for them to appear in as well. Well, I'm very excited to listen to some of these flux works, as you call them. So let's start with one from the first circuit of stories. This one's called The Sound of Silence. Could you tell us about this piece? So our partner for the first circuit was the incredible artist and illustrator Wendy McNaughton. And with her, we came up with this theme of letting go.

6:39And this was based on a book that she had written and recently published after spending some time with people at the end of their lives. So the book was called How to Say Goodbye. And in talking to Wendy, we thought about a theme that wasn't exactly that. But letting go really touched on the things she was drawing and writing about. And so this was the theme we brought to the producers to work with. And Gregory Warner made this piece called The Sound of Silence, which was about a situation his wife found herself in and touches on letting go, but also really dives into a certain time and place and space in their lives.

7:16All right, let's hear it. So a few years ago, this thing happened to my wife, Sana. She'd be meditating or reading a book and she'd hear a sound. A kind of ghostly tone just above and behind her right ear. As though someone were reading over my shoulder with me and delighting in it along with me. An odd but delightful thing at a time when delight was in short supply. The pandemic's first spring. Sana's mind on high alert, schools closed, death and doom on the news. One tiny home office for the two of us. I was trying to get work done and you were always on the phone in interviews. But the tone was like a place that I could go to.

7:58It was like a dome I could enter. that was almost insulated by static. It let me let go of all this high cortisol shit. And the tone could also tune her in to the most everyday moments, our kid practicing piano. Every note was almost like a pebble thrown into a lake in such a way that it created these musical ripples. Wow, you never told me this. Well, because, you know, it wasn't what I thought it was.

8:40The tone, not what she thought it was. Deep inside your inner ear are these special hair cells, cilia, that float in fluid like a field of seaweed. They're tuned to different frequencies. If some of these little hairs are damaged by loud noise or by a virus... Now that frequency or that range of frequencies that used to be there is not there anymore. Dr. Jim Henry is a pioneer of research in tinnitus. And the brain is in a steady state most of the time. So now it's got this loss. The brain, he says, can respond to this loss of hearing by... Overcompensating, by upping its activity. Filling in the missing frequencies, like a phantom limb.

9:24Tinnitus is the sound of the brain's refusal to let go of what it once had. Yeah. Yeah. I got my diagnosis and I cried on my way home. I always had in the back of my mind, like, yeah, you could be reaching enlightenment or you could just be going deaf. And I just chose to believe in the former. She knows now it's a symptom. But still, these days when she's reading or concentrating on something beautiful. When words turn into images in your mind, the tones come back. For her, the tones are still a sign that she's attained some mental quiet. She's paying attention to what is here, even if the sound that she's actually listening to is just the brain's song of grief for what is gone.

10:19So that was The Sound of Silence by Gregory Warner. It's a beautiful piece. And what I love about it in particular is I know Gregory Warner's work from NPR. He was a longtime foreign journalist, did Rough Translation, the NPR podcast. And this allows you to get a different side of what he can create. That is so important to us to give, you know, we want to give brand new producers an opportunity to do something, but also to give more experienced people the opportunity to do something else than they usually do. And we felt that with Gregory, too. I mean, he is a masterful storyteller at all durations, but we really felt like he could get a little more personal with this and bring his signature NPR style to this little flux work.

11:05And it's just so beautiful. Yeah. So let's play another piece. This is from Circuit No. 2, and the theme is Listening With. And can you describe this theme and how you came to it? Oh, yeah. We were inspired by the film 32 Sounds by the wonderful filmmaker Sam Green. And in that film is a scene with Anaya Lockwood, who's this very accomplished field recordist, sound designer, composer, sound experimentalist. instrumentalists. And she has this theory of listening with the world instead of listening to the world or at the world. So we grabbed that theme from Sam's film and invited producers to draw from that theme of listening with as they tell a story and also to think about everyday sounds in their environments.

11:51And so what's this piece that we're going to listen to from this circuit? Well, this piece is actually, it's called In Between Silence by the British producer Talia Augustidis. And as Talia thought about the story she wanted to tell, she was thinking about the sounds around her versus the sounds that other people are hearing and are maybe forced to hear. So at the time, the war in Gaza was in full force, and she wanted to think about the situation for people living in Gaza and their sonic environments. And so she sort of took on the role of helping people living in that environment talk about what they were hearing on a daily basis.

12:35We must leave this country and look for another country to live. I always remember how you obtained residency in London, how you used to write outside of Buckingham Palace. I'm looking for something similar in Paris. What do you think?

13:09Gaza is over, my friend. And unfortunately, we will not be able to even breathe in it. The drones feel so familiar in Gaza that they've earned a nickname. Zanana. It means an annoying buzzing. A buzzing which has been present for over 20 years. A buzzing which becomes near constant during periods of increased violence. A buzzing which represents surveillance and the looming possibility of a missile strike.

13:43You try to just get on with things normally. So you try to make food. you try to kind of watch things on TV that will uplift you

13:58certain sounds would penetrate that kind of attempt to create normality and then over time you become habituated to the sound but then the level of anxiety that you're experiencing can then lead to more paranoia about the meaning of the sound your sort of mind kind of thinks oh it's slightly different there was something different about that but it probably wasn't it's just an attempt to kind of try to predict the future

14:29yeah

14:33it's an interesting question whether the periods of silence in Gaza between bombings or between drones and rockets and so on was in itself not silence because it's foreboding

14:51There are no sounds of planes. There's a truce. But this truce is only temporary, only four days.

15:09Oh God, I pray that this truce will better our conditions.

15:20I swear, life is beautiful like this, without the sounds of Zanana.

15:32So that was In Between Silence. And, you know, when you hear this piece together with, or next to Gregory Warner's story, you get these two different meditations on silence. What does Talia's story evoke for you? I think one of the miracles of what audio flux gets to is that there's so many ways to tell stories. I mean, these were two different circuits with two different starting points, but yet they have in common this idea of silence and some manifestation of silence or lack thereof. And, you know, one thing you find and what's really fascinating is how sometimes the flux works will talk to each other within a circuit or across circuits.

16:13And, you know, ultimately, you know, we've had 300 plus flux works made across the six circuits. And it's just there's such a boundless possibility for storytelling, even in this short duration. So you take, you know, two producers who have done a lot of other work, each approaching this three minute challenge or exercise. And, you know, we learn a lot about Talia through how she tells that story. We learn a lot about Gregory through what he reveals about his wife, but, you know, they're very different in form, different in style, but I think memorable, equally memorable, but just for very different reasons.

16:50After the break, Julie and I share a few more AudioFlex stories. Stay tuned.

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19:10Champion of hurling grass and pollen everywhere! And in the blue corner, the challenger, extra strength Hannity! Eye drops that work all day to prevent the release of histamines that cause itchy, allergy eyes. And the winner by knockout is Paradee. Paradee, bring it on. And we're back with Julie Shapiro. All right, so I have another Fluxwork ready for you. This one is from Circuit 4. The theme was firsts or first times. Our partner was Jason Reynolds, who had written a young adult novel about a very special first time. And so we drew from that topic and invited people to tell us about first things or first times.

19:55And this is The Ghost on Side B by Caitlin Hale Wood and Alan Gifinski. Okay, I have not heard this one. So let's check it out and we'll talk about it on the other side. It's on the radio now.

20:15Okay, hang tight here. One, four, three, two, one, you're on.

20:22It's 2001. I'm 16, maybe 15, and I'm sitting on my bedroom floor in front of my ancient clunky stereo, listening to my CD of the original Broadway cast recording of the 1990s hit musical Rent. I'm always listening to Rent. Broadway stars fill my ears with lyrics of Bohemia. I want to get out of the suburbs and make art and be a lesbian and not wear clothes from Kohl's. I decide that I must record this CD to a tape so I can listen to it in my mom's minivan on the way to school because we don't have a CD player in the car. So I take a blank tape I find in the living room. I put the cassette in my tape deck.

21:15I sync it with the start of the CD, and I press record. The next morning, I hop in the passenger seat. I put the tape in the cassette player, and I'm singing along, and it's all bouncy, and rent, rent, rent, rent, rent. Then, without warning, the tape skips to the other side, the B side, and a man's voice comes on. Good morning, 609, we said what? And my mother says, where did you get this tape? And I say, what? What is this tape? Did you get this tape from the box in the living room? Who is this man on this tape? And she says, this tape is not a blank tape. This tape is your father.

21:58I'd never heard this voice before. Or if I did, I didn't remember. on July 18th, 1987 Sid went to work at the country radio station where he was a DJ and then did not come home I was two he was 40 it was a heart attack but here he was Sid Wood on Country 105 WFMB like he'd been hiding in the airwaves all along. Hearing my dad for the first time didn't feel like looking at a photograph. It felt like touch. Tiny spools with reels of magnetic tape coiled into a plastic cassette. This was a portal. There you are. Here I am, at a sonic axis of space and time. Okay, y 'all going to stick around for a little longer or what?

23:04Nice to meet you. Wow, that is so good.