Talia Augustidis

Talia Augustidis is a freelance audio producer, artist and community organizer based in London.

Okay so we have you bio, but how do you really describe what you do?
A lot of the work I do nowadays is in support of audio, the community organising part of my bio — I run listening events with In The Dark, I write the All Hear newsletter with Transom, and I work with The Roundhouse, a London arts charity, supporting their young creatives to make podcasts. 

If I can help it, I try to save my audio-making energy for pieces and series that I really care about, so I’ve structured my life to allow for that. And in terms of things I care about at the moment, I’m working on a fiction piece for iHeart Radio and I’m producing a new series of my podcast UnReality.

How did you make your way to the audio world?
I loved podcasts and found out my university offered a module in Audio Storytelling but, for bureaucratic reasons, I wasn’t allowed to take it. After several long, pleading emails to administration, I weaselled my way into Nina Garthwaite’s course on audio storytelling (a pre-cursor to her In The Dark School). It completely changed my life.

Was there one audio experience that made you fall in love with audio?
I’ve had several “woah” moments with audio, each with progressively more experimental and strange pieces. The first was discovering This American Life because it was the first time I had heard brilliant audio stories, then it was Radio Lab because I had never heard anything as experimental, then it was The Heart because I had never heard anything as experimental, then it was Peyk Malinovski’s Everything, Nothing, Harvey Keitel because — you guessed it — I had never heard anything as experimental. 

I loved your Lights Out piece. It seemed to be a lifetime in the making. What does it feel like to have it out in the world. Are you like…second guessing things? Have you listened a million times? Have people’s reactions made you think differently about it?
It’s interesting, before release I thought I would feel really empty once it was done, because that often comes with finishing a big piece of work, especially one years in the making. But actually when it came to it I remember feeling really free. Immediately after it was out there I started having all of these exciting creative ideas that I didn’t have space for before, because there was a story that I really needed to tell working itself out.

What work are you most proud of?
That’s a difficult one. I think probably Sleep Talks, which is maybe a lesser known piece but it holds a special place in my heart.

Can you tell me the history of In the Dark?
In The Dark was founded in London in 2010 by Nina Garthwaite. It was before the podcast boom but there was a feeling that exciting things were happening in art radio, but there was no space for creative radio in its own right, and there was a feeling in the older generation that shows needed celebrity presenters to draw in audiences. Nina knew that wasn’t right, she loved creative radio and could feel that her generation was interested in it, so she started In The Dark as a statement that creative radio mattered.

She looked to film and film festivals, where you can access international work easily from past and present, She wanted to bring that culture into audio — a space where audio from all these places could coexist and cross-pollinate: old and new, English and non-English language, fringe and mainstream, art and factual, radio and podcast and a place where people who liked that kind of work could meet, talk and maybe even forge collaborative relationships.

It began with Nina inviting radio makers who inspired her to play work by people who inspired them, and it grew from there. Branches popped up in Bristol, Manchester, Portugal and Spain, and they have done pop-ups around the world. I took over in 2022 and have been running the London branch ever since.

How are you bringing it to Tribeca? Tell me about the event!
So the event on the surface is a celebration of short audio pieces, anything up to 10 minutes. I think a good short audio piece is pure magic — something that can make you feel something big in such a short space of time, or transports you somewhere, or addresses big, weighty topics. It’s inspired by this concept of “small can be big” which Julie Shapiro has been bringing into her work with Short Docs and Audio Flux.

But beyond just the length of the pieces, I’m also using it as a space to celebrate independent audio more broadly. There are so many wonderful things happening in this space, beyond commercialisation and IP and ROI and all of that stuff. I’ll feature student radio, pieces made for fun in bedrooms, on a budget, just to experiment and play. It’s an ode to the industry really, with a selection of the kind of great work that made people get into audio in the first place.

Plus I will be performing a piece of my own! It’s an audio essay about an embarrassing mishap from my teenage years. I can’t say much else about it because it will give it away, but expect laughs and groans…

When is it? I really want people to come. (I am going.)
Thursday 13th June, 3pm at the Tribeca Film Center.

When you listen to podcasts or other audio, what is your ideal situation? Are you walking, lying down, in nature, etc?
Ooh I love this question. I find I’m most engaged when I’m doing a jigsaw puzzle. It’s a repetitive, tactile activity that perfectly silences some part of my brain that is easily distracted, and so I find it easiest to focus. There are pieces I really love which I remember the exact puzzle I was doing when I heard them.

What’s a podcast you love that everybody knows about?
Heavyweight. Especially the early seasons. Whenever I meet someone who hasn’t heard it I feel jealous that they get to listen with fresh ears. 

What’s a podcast you love that not enough people know about?
Not a podcast necessarily but all of Chris Attaway’s work. I think he’s so talented — his work can make me cackle and cry and I don’t know why everyone doesn’t know his name.

Thanks, Talia!