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 Talks.
We would invite people to make short audio stories inspired by a set of prompts.
And 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 docs, 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, and 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.
And 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 AudioFlux?
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.
And 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, you know, 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.
So how does it work?
Like, how do you get people to do it?
How do you set up the structure for this 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 audio flux 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 to participate in the circuits.
But 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 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.
I know.
Well, this is our way of protesting against all of the you know what's happened to podcasting, in a way,
I just, I'm a big, I want, I'm a big podcast fan.
I make podcasts.
I listen to podcasts.
But I have you know, 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 process.
And then we pick winners and we present the winners and the commission works at a big live event somewhere.
It'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.
And 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 this.
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 he, his wife, found herself in and, you know, touches on letting go but also really dives into a certain time and place and space in their lives.
All 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.
It 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.
I don't know.
Because, you know, it wasn't what I thought it was.
The 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.
Tinnitus 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.
So 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 you know a little more personal with this and bring his like signature NPR style to this little flux work.
And 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.
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.
And 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.
We 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?
Gaza 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.
You 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.
Certain 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's something different about that.
But it probably wasn't.
It's just an attempt to kind of try to predict the future.
Yeah.
It'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.
There are no sounds of planes.
There's a truce.
But this truce is only temporary, only four days.
Oh God, I pray that this truce will better our conditions.
I swear, life is beautiful like this, without the sounds of Zanana.
Zanana So 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 AudioFlux 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 fluxworks will talk to each other within a circuit or across circuits.
And, you know, ultimately, you know, we've had 300 plus fluxworks 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.
After the break, Julie and I share a few more audio flux stories.
Stay tuned.
And we're back with Julie Shapiro.
All right, so I have another flux work ready for you.
This one is from Circuit Four.
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.
And this is The Ghost on Side B by Caitlin Hale Wood and Alan Giffinski.
OK, 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.
It's 2001.
It'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.
I 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 with Sid Wood.
It's going to be a 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.
I'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?
Nice to meet you.
Wow, that is so good.
I often have to breathe a little bit after it ends before I can really talk.
Yeah, yeah, this one.
Well, I'm actually curious, what's your first impression coming out of it?
My first thing is that there's so many hours of my recorded voice in the world.
And I think about this a lot with my kids and how I don't have a lot of the previous generation, you know, of the sound of their voice or even photographs of them, and how much more kids will have.
And how rare and special this is.
To have this thing, especially radio, recorded onto a tape is really something else.
I used to record radio onto tape.
And so I just find it all very, very kind of magical.
And I don't even know if people will understand, with the fact that you have a recording device and a documenting device in your pocket at all times these days, how special it is to have the sound of someone's voice recorded.
And then the pure chance of it all and then the near disaster of losing it all too without knowing.
All of it is just like it's full of emotion for me.
Yeah, I can really appreciate that sort of the wonder of it all, like that.
Actually, the stars aligned for her to discover this for Caitlin.
Caitlin Hale would, and Alan Gafinski made this piece together.
And it's really, it's been a crowd favorite.
I mean, we love all of the Fluxworks equally, but this one really, people respond to in a certain way.
And I think it has to do with some of the things you were talking about, like the power of of hearing somebody.
And so Caitlin had these recordings, and I think she found a very poetic way to bring us closer to her and the story of discovering her father.
And I'm really struck by the different tones and emotions in this piece.
It's funny.
It's a little mysterious.
The sound design by Alan is beautiful.
You are immersed in the sound of like cassette.
And you know it's just.
It's so familiar to anyone who ever played cassettes or played with cassettes growing up.
And then that line, a sonic axis of time and place, time and space.
I love ending in that sort of place of thinking and wondering and speculating.
And yeah, this piece, I think just the three minutes are perfect.
But I will say there's a bigger story here, and they're actually trying to tell the bigger story.
So sometimes Fluxworks can be like testing grounds for bigger ideas that people want to dive into, and they're developing a whole show around Caitlin's story.
So search to learn more about her father.
So it all starts here, but then, you know, it can and does go on from here.
So while we're on this circuit of firsts, let's hear first words.
Can you describe this piece?
Yeah.
One thing I should say is so many of the flux works revolve around family relationships.
And so this next piece also has to do with fatherhood and language and hearing voice.
But it's a very, very different story told in a very different way.
So we're going to hear First Words by Peter Lang Stanton, and this is basically a kind of time-lapse piece about the first two years of his son's life.
Let's start with the home movies, the ones my dad made with a camcorder on his shoulder and shorts that were dangerously short.
Dad, get that stupid camera out of my face!
Here's another home video.
I made this one.
Let's do two breaths.
This is the exact moment my son was born.
These are the first words I said to him.
It's also what I say to dogs.
Anyway.
And this is the first time my son ever used his voice, but I really had no idea just how long it takes to talk.
I'm going to make some sounds.
Can I hear you talk?
Oh my goodness.
Melvin, do you have anything to say this morning?
For the longest time, we say nothing at all.
We have to find workarounds, other ways to communicate.
The talking part takes forever.
Alvin, what's my name?
Imagine a new roommate, but you can't talk to each other for the first two years.
Let's wash your feet.
Feet?
Where are your toes?
The wait is so long.
Right there.
You worry he'll never be able to talk at all.
But then?
A garbage truck said beep beep.
Beep beep.
It went right by our house and it said beep beep.
Beep beep.
Hey Alvin, can you say cracker?
Cracker.
Can you say it again?
Sorry.
Alvin, can you say lawnmower?
Lawnmower.
Wow.
Cracker.
Can you say cracker again?
No.
Then all of a sudden you say cracker.
It happens quickly.
Old MacDonald had a rash.
It happens so fast, it breaks your heart.
And you realize because of your impatience, you were missing what was right in front of you.
What's my name?
Can I have a tracker, please?
Sure, honey.
So this one, like, you know, any parent who hears this just kind of loses it.
Yeah, relatable.
I mean, yeah, it's very relatable for anyone who's lived with kids learning language.
Yeah, you just miss those sounds.
There's a lot of stuff that's documented.
There's so many pictures, but I really do miss the...
You know the personalities that.
You know that.
You know there's still something there in you know my 19 year olds but, like you know, express through that the the squeeze box of that tiny little voice.
You know what I mean.
It's like, is this something I actually, I miss it.
I miss a lot.
And hearing the development, you know it doesn't seem.
It's like sort of, when you're in the moment you don't notice it.
But when you hear the syllables become words, become emotional utterances, it's so powerful and remarkable.
And it seems, you know, incredible that we learn language at all.
But yet we do.
Okay, so there's one more flux works that we want to share here.
And this one is from your latest circuit, circuit number six.
What was the theme for this one?
Okay, we just finished circuit six.
The theme was creative tension.
And our partner in this theme and circuit was Lorna Hamilton Brown, who has become known as the Banksy of knitting in the fabric art circles.
Fantastic.
I know, I know.
Well, quite an honor, and she has definitely earned it.
Lorna explores all kinds of social justice issues through her art, and her art is mostly knitting crocheting, working with fabrics.
She's also a teacher and an activist and an educator, but we were really lucky to meet her and work with her for this circuit.
And so the theme was creative tension, and we asked people to include the sound like a repetitive sound in their flux work.
It is a nod to kind of the repetitive motion of knitting and handiwork.
And then we also.
I thought this was really fun.
Another prompt was to give your story a color, which is like really nonsense also, but it was very fun to say like, what color does your story have sound like at the end of it?
So that was also a nod to kind of the yarn and different colors of yarn and a sort of synesthetic sense that Lorna has when she hears music and thinks of patterns.
Those were the prompts in the theme.
And the piece we're going to hear is called Red Card, and the color is red.
It's by a couple of producers, Vivian Schutz and Laura Rojas Aponte.
And the thing that is really notable to me about this one is...
As much as Fluxworks can be personal and artistic and talk about big abstract ideas, they can also very clearly document the world around us and things happening now.
And they really pulled that off with this piece.
All right, let's hear it.
It's called Red Card.
The cards, the ones that we make, are about the size of a business card.
About two inches by three inches, sort of a heavy piece of red paper, and since January we've made 110000 of them.
I tend to carry a stack of cards with me, usually in Spanish, because that's a second language for me.
I will hand them to people and say, in Spanish, This is about your constitutional rights.
There's information on what to do with immigration, with the police, with whomever.
He gave us cards week by week that we put on display at the market.
Most of the people that would come by take them, especially the Hispanic community and others, would actually take it to give to others that they knew.
It says, I do not wish to speak with you.
Answer your questions or sign. hand you any documents based on my Fifth Amendment rights.
You now have that card on you.
No, what by law will protect you.
I do not give you permission.
I do not give you permission to enter my home.
You come to this country for a better life.
Once you are able To apply into the legal status, you then do it.
Applying is a very costly process, but my folks, they had applied.
If it wasn't for us doing that, we wouldn't be able to be selling flowers in New York City seven days out of the week and put 26 people on payroll because of two people going across the border for their family.
The cards themselves, they're premised on the fact that somebody will read them and obey the law.
And at some point, that is not going to be true.
You have a red card that it's a piece of cardboard and the other person has a rifle and handcuffs.
We know of many neighbors who, because of all of these efforts, they didn't open the door, and they don't open the door still.
And that is one of the reasons why ICE started to arrest people in the courtrooms.
As an academic, as an activist, a scholar, I think that the red card is a beautiful symbol.
But at the same time, to me it is also kind of an index of how tiny, how little, how fragile our rights are.
It's like such a little thing and that the most fundamental rights can be written in a little card like that.
It's kind of telling, right?
As a printmaker, what I can do is print something for you.
And within my own art, I can tackle issues, I can do these things.
But when those things are not effective, I don't know what to do.
I mean, this one is kind of the most 99PI story.
It tells a full story of the world that we're in through a small object.
I love stories like this.
Yeah, and just a couple of those lines that really bring home the situation that we're reading a lot about in the news, but just that personal window into actual people's experience of having the cards and dispersing them.
And we also thought the theme creative tension.
For me was also a moment of reflection as artists and creative people.
Like what do we do in this moment where things around us seem chaotic, and what is an artist's role in this moment?
So there's sort of this meta notion of creative tension which the printmaker elaborates or is very eloquent about talking about what can he do in this moment.
So this piece speaks to all of the themes wrapped up in the overarching theme of creative tension.
When I first heard it, I didn't know the audio flux prompt.
And I was so struck by the rhythm of the incantation of rights.
It's really amazing because it's like, in speaking them like it's what sort of gives them their power, and like rights not used or rights lost, and speaking them like keeps them in use.
And I just think it's amazing to hear.
Yeah, and speaking them, the people that they are for and are about, speaking them.
So this is a document that is about community and about all the people.
And then you're actually hearing it read by some of these people.
It's so satisfying and it's so powerful.
I hope that we've just blown people's minds in the best way possible, because I have noticed it too in listening to podcasts.
I love podcasts.
I listen to chatty podcasts.
I listen to three-hour-long podcasts.
I've made and contributed to that particular art form.
It was just so nice to remember this period of time in which this kind of creative radio was just part of my life, every single day.
And so I really, really appreciate this project and what you're doing with it.
It just pleases me to no end.
Oh, thank you.
And I have to say, like, there's a lot out there besides audio flux.
And that's what's very exciting about this moment is there are other independent small projects.
There's Signal Hill.
There's small audio art.
There's In the Dark.
There are a lot of people out there who value hearing these and making this kind of work.
So we feel like we're part of a bit of a renaissance of, you know, audio for the sake of audio and community and culture, alongside the podcast industry.
So for people who want to get involved with AudioFlux, where can they find out more?
Our website is the best place to sign up for our email list.
We run two circuits a year and every single person listening to this is very welcome to give it a go and submit to the next circuit, which should be launching at the end of February.
And you do, but you do also have a podcast.
So can you describe your podcast?
Oh, yeah, we have a podcast too.
It's not exactly an afterthought, but it is, you know, one of the many parts of the project.
So yes yes, we launched our podcast, the AudioFlex podcast, in the fall of last year, hosted by the marvelous Amy Pearl.
And we are walking the walk.
These episodes are maybe 10 minutes, 20 at the most, but really we're keeping things short and just inviting people to just revel in what audio can do and celebrate these incredible creators that are, you know, experimenting and sending in their pieces.
And yeah, we're having a lot of fun with the podcast and I hope everyone goes and subscribes for it.
Julie Shapiro, thank you so much for talking with me and thank you so much for Audio Flux.
I really appreciate it.
Oh, thanks, Roman.
And, you know, you are also welcome to make a Flux Rick anytime you would like to.
I was so inspired listening to them that I really think that this is my year to get my Audio Flux out there.
Okay, I'm holding you to that.
You've basically signed on the dotted line.
If you love these documentary shorts and want to hear really short versions of 99 Invisible, the first 25 episodes of this show were all about five minutes or less.
You can find those by scrolling way back in our feed or on our website, 99pi.org.
99% Invisible was produced this week by Jason DeLeon.
Mixed by Martin Gonzalez.
Music by Swan Rial.
Kathy Tu is our executive producer.
Kurt Kolstad is the digital director.
Jelani Hall is our senior editor.
The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Leigh, Lasha Madan, Joe Rosenberg, Kelly Prime, Jacob Medina-Gleason, Talon and Rain Stradley, and me, Roman Mars.
The 99% Visible logo was created by Stephan Lawrence.
We are part of the SiriusXM podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building in beautiful Uptown Oakland, California.
You can find us on all the usual social media sites as well as our own Discord server.
There's a link to that as well as every past episode of 99pi at 99pi.org.
