This is 99% Invisible.

I'm Roman Mars.

Years ago, I work 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. 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 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,

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 Audio Flux.

We thought, you know, everything is longer and longer and longer and longer.

So what if we could, you know, 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 Docs 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 audio flux stories in a bit.

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