Roman Mars

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.

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.

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?

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?

And another part of the audio flux design is that each story is only three minutes long.