Julie Shapiro

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.

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 Audio Flux, which is sort of a new version of the Short Talks Challenge, but maybe a little bit more for the podcasting age.

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 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.

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.