Hub & Spoke welcomes the Audio Flux Podcast into its ranks!
Back in 2023, two widely known and beloved figures in the audio world—Julie Shapiro and John Delore—co-founded a new project called Audio Flux with the goal of encouraging more experimentation in short-form audio storytelling. Twice a year, Audio Flux recruits an outside creative partner to help design a set of prompts such as “letting go,” “listening with,” and “pet sounds,” then invites producers to submit original three-minute audio pieces inspired and guided by those prompts. John and Julie share each finished “circuit” of selected “fluxworks” at public listening events (the next one is coming up at Resonate 2025).
It’s a beautiful idea that’s already generated an incredible amount of enthusiasm in the audio community, not to mention a lot of cool, fun, moving audio. But almost from the beginning people started asking Julie and John: “Are you gonna start a podcast so people will have an easy way to hear the fluxworks?” Their answer was always “Yes, of course, eventually.”
And now that eventually is here. This week, Audio Flux released the trailer and the first episode of the Audio Flux Podcast, featuring a piece from Circuit 01 by Chloe Prasinos. The show is hosted by the inimitable Amy Pearl, a multimedia producer at Radiolab who co-created the short-form NPR podcast 10 Things That Scare Me and produced WNYC’s weekly 2-minute feature Good Things. Each episode will feature a single fluxwork, plus an interview with its creator, spreading the Audio Flux goodness well beyond the folks who hear the fluxworks at audio festivals and conferences.
As Season 1 of the podcast was coming together, Julie approached us and started to explain that she and John thought it would be more fun to make the show as part of a supportive community than to go it alone. We said “Yes, come on in” before she could even finish her sentence. (After all, we’re a bunch of audio geeks who have spent decades listening worshipfully to the stuff these folks have created.) And so the Audio Flux Podcast has become the newest member of the Hub & Spoke family. That means, among other things, that it’ll be promoted in shows across the collective, starting with today’s episode of my show, Soonish (jump to the midroll break at 44:30).
Welcome, Julie and John and Amy! We can’t wait to hear how the existing fluxworks sound in podcast form, and to hear all the amazing new work we’re sure the project will inspire from here on out.
