Hub & Spoke Presents

Hub & Spoke Audio Collective
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Arts
  • Updated Semimonthly

This is the official podcast of Hub & Spoke Audio Collective. We're a nonprofit collective of independent podcasts, dedicated to helping one another shine. We believe that stories told through sound have the power to change minds and stir souls. The Hub & Spoke Radio Hour is a sampler of our work, complete with themes and producer interviews. Take a listen, and subscribe to any of our shows at hubspokeaudio.org, or wherever you get your podcasts. hubspokeaudio.substack.com

  1. Aug 19

    H&S Presents: The Lonely Palette Turns 10!

    The Lonely Palette, a flagship Hub & Spoke podcast, turned 10 in May. To mark the occasion, creator, host, and Hub & Spoke co-founder Tamar Avishai invited Julie Shapiro — creator of the Audio Flux podcast, radio visionary, and one of the newest members of Hub & Spoke — into a conversation about the industry, audio independence, and what it means to produce a show entirely on your own… and entirely for the love of it. This episode was produced by Tamar Avishai. Music used: The Blue Dot Sessions, “Helado,” “Red City Theme,” “Paper Feather”; Haas, Kowert, Tice, “The Decade” More information about The Lonely Palette here. Follow all the Hub & Spoke shows here. Subscribe to our newsletter. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hubspokeaudio.substack.com

    H&S Presents: The Lonely Palette Turns 10!

  2. Aug 12

    H&S Presents: Stories of Sound

    Stories of Sound is an audio series that delves into sound arts and audio storytelling, offering listeners a window into the creative processes, challenges, and inspirations of artists, authors and theorists who tell stories through sound. It is also the newest addition to the Hub & Spoke slate of curious, mind-expanding podcasts. We’re proud to present an episode of Stories of Sound’s most recent season, featuring Rikke Houd, a Danish radio maker working in the field of crafted audio storytelling and documentary art. After completing an MA in Radio at Goldsmiths College in 1998, Rikke worked for the Danish Montage Group and and has worked with sound and storytelling since – in radio and podcasts, theatre, exhibitions, and in collaboration with other artforms and fields. Rikke has produced work in Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and English and her award-winning work has been featured internationally. She co-founded the youth project Polar Radio and has initiated several transnational audio storytelling projects aiming to support geographical, linguistic and cultural minorities. She has also coached and taught workshops which focus on documentary storytelling and radiophonic awareness. Since 2022 she works as editor in chief of podcast for the Danish Association of the Blind. Since 2024, she has also served as a creative advisor for Æteren, an innovative Danish school for sound and storytelling. Stories of Sound: Conversations on Sound, Art, and Audio Storytelling is curated by Riccardo Giacconi at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University. Narration by Max Greenstein. Produced with support from the Faculty Research Awards Committee, School of Arts & Sciences at Tufts University. More information about Stories of Sound here. Follow all the Hub & Spoke shows here. Subscribe to our newsletter. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hubspokeaudio.substack.com

    H&S Presents: Stories of Sound

  3. Aug 5

    Lowlines, Episode 7: Epilogue

    PLACE:Out of the container of funk where everything was like this moving compost heap, being turned over and over by all the life within its busy layers. Out of the place where Maestra Estela and her family tune into the plant information highway with their thousands year old roots in the jungle. Out of the part of me that was feeling the boundaries between my body and where I was start to disappear… PULSE:Towards comfort and temperature controlled rooms, hot running water, spiced foods and on-demand TV. A quick satisfying of all those needs but it didn’t last. Ran out of steam somehow as soon as it was achieved and soon gave way to a resounding mutedness that felt chilling. There was no pulse, not in that rich and rhythmic way that I realised as soon as it was gone had been dancing along my nervous system all that time. REVERBS:And what do you do about that? When you know you need to go back into that more Tupperware-like container where sound is compressed – and yet also high-pitch and in random competition, rather than, as Josh Shrei says, in “oscillating interlocking harmonies”? I was told when I left the jungle that the work really starts when you leave and learn how to ‘integrate’ everything. I’m not even sure what that means a lot of the time but I do know that the more open and alert I stay to what’s beneath all the stimulation and consumption of information, the more I can feel things. ROLL CALL:Thank you for following these Lowlines with me! It’s been so good hearing about all the different threads that have been pulled from this first season. We deliberately haven’t offered up neat conclusions or brought in experts to talk at you. We wanted it to feel like a trip you could plug into and take what you wanted from, cruising along at your own pace. All these different people and places we’ve visited in Lowlines – their energy has a home here now and I love that. CREDITS:Petra Barran — Host and Producer Lucia Scazzocchio — Producer Lina Prestwood — Executive Producer More information about Lowlines here. Follow all the Hub & Spoke shows here. Subscribe to our newsletter. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hubspokeaudio.substack.com

    Lowlines, Episode 7: Epilogue

  4. Jul 29

    Lowlines, Episode 6: Low Vines

    PLACE:A tiny plane from Lima to Iquitos, a mototaxi down deep mud tracks to Aya Madre plant medicine retreat in Nauta, within the The Amazon jungle. Here there is white sand, a blood red river, giant winged trees and shallow roots. There are rampant levels of growth and rot and mould – and a cacophony of sound that drenches you even more than the rains that come down and squelch up the ground every day. Aya Madre is part of a huge web of plant medicine centres radiating out from Iquitos, each one tapping into the mad, harmonic chorus of the plant ecosystem in their own distinct ways – and in which at times I got almost too much of place…so intense was its imprint – the opposite of muted and flattened – I’m still getting reverbs all these months and miles away. PULSE:Female run, Shipibo lineage with 4000 year roots in this place. Through Aya Madre I witnessed synaesthesia in surround sound. By tuning into “plants capacity for vibratory oscillation as a highly elegant form of communication” the maestras and maestros sang these pulses, weaving them into sonic patterns, stitching them into their clothing… REVERBS:And I thought I could rock up for a couple of weeks, talk to the plants, maybe meet God and be transformed! One girl arrived asking if it was guaranteed results or her money back. She was gone within 24 hours, unable to secure the proof she needed. Never have I felt so westernised, so in need of checking my own assumptions about time and logic – and this I feel, is my biggest learning: an incredible violating of my own stereotypes of ‘how things work’. Back in London, with life and distractions and endless outside stimulation right there for the taking, I feel the piling in of it all. Layers and layers of stuff, smothering what I got a small glimpse of laying beneath. I didn’t have a big veil lifted while I was out there, but rather, felt this imprint of infinite depths that if I sit silently, shut off the mosquito frequencies of the city for a minute and choose to tune into them, they keep giving subtle but powerful reverbs. ROLL CALL:Aya Madre – headed up by Maestra Estela Shipibo textiles – a whole world! Jordan – a very thoughtful man. He is off the radar but hopefully will be able to share this episode with him someday Maestra Yaca, Maestros Nestor and Daniel, Maestra Estela’s family, Bacho, Valentina, Val, Lex, Judy, Eli – a beautiful group to be with PODCAST: on Resonance by The Emerald – kind of blowing my body and mind BOOK: I read up a bit on ayahuasca but my big inspo came from Will Smith narrating his experience! ROUTE:Mexico City to Lima by plane, Lima to Iquitos by plane, Iquitos to Aya madre by mototaxi and then there we were – a circuitous route with no straight lines, pulled lower than ever before… CREDITS:Petra Barran — Host and Producer Lucia Scazzocchio — Producer Lina Prestwood — Executive Producer More information about Lowlines here. Follow all the Hub & Spoke shows here. Subscribe to our newsletter. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hubspokeaudio.substack.com

    Lowlines, Episode 6: Low Vines

  5. Jul 22

    Lowlines, Episode 5: Plotlines

    PLACE:Mexico City is on the wonk, its buildings leaning off in odd directions – and it is sinking at a rate faster than any other city on Earth. Each year it drops 20 inches lower, collapsing under a mountain of bad decisions, dodgy policies, over-population, inefficient infrastructure and terrible pollution – all stemming back to the Spanish conquest where indigenous wisdom was literally paved over. But just below these bad decisions lies the foundation and the solution: Las Chinampas – an Aztec-designed network of resilient and fertile allotments, surrounded by waterways – vital arteries in this complex agroforestry system. Like floating gardens – big juicy sponges of black, volcanic soil, layered up organic matter from the bottom of the river, strapped in with stakes and bendy willows and still enduring today thanks to projects like Arca Tierra. PULSE:Mexico City wants to be a lake – but the Spanish couldn’t get with its watery ways. Too convoluted for them who preferred to bring in a German to drain it and pave over it. Nor did they like the naturally porous and symbiotic volcanic stone that the Aztecs used for their buildings, preferring to import a whiter stone from Monterrey in the north – more European, closer to their own skin colour. And all these centuries later the hollowness of their plan continues to reveal itself. Fascinating what can happen when you’re not fully tuned into where you are… ROLL CALL:Arca Tierra – visionary permaculture and food cooperative who run lots of great events on their plotMaiz Ajo – Dani and Santiago are doing brilliant things with heritage corn, defying the GM-isation of their native cropAndrew Millison – explains the chinampas brilliantly ESSENTIAL READING: The Conquest of New Spain also A City on a Lake ON CORN: SUNU documentary and Sin Maiz No Hay Pais campaign ROUTE:Into the chinampas in my slides and sock combo and not enough warm clothes for an early morning meeting on the muelle with Lucio of Arca Tierra. Lots of time spent on trajinieras and kayaks amongst this ancient system of waterways. Very inspiring. Lots of lessons learned here with sound recording and the need to keep the recorder playing a LOT longer in future! CREDITS:Petra Barran — Host and Producer Lucia Scazzocchio — Producer Lina Prestwood — Executive Producer More information about Lowlines here. Follow all the Hub & Spoke shows here. Subscribe to our newsletter. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hubspokeaudio.substack.com

    Lowlines, Episode 5: Plotlines

  6. Jul 15

    Lowlines, Episode 4: Borderline

    PLACEThe Sonoran desert spills out either side of the US-Mexico border. Its terrain is riveted through by The Wall like a sewing machine, technology and geo-politics deciding what constitutes one place over another. But the border is not the territory and the desert will do what it’s going to do, despite The Wall’s puncturing. Down here the land and sky seem technicolour – impossibly vivid – and unimaginably vast. The heat is gas mark 6 temp and people seem meshed in and laconic. PULSEThere’s a charge here. It feels dramatic. Full-bodied reverb. The nexus is at Baboquivari, sending out ancient energy across the whole landscape like a heartbeat. I’m sitting pretty driving into it all in my friend’s SUV with superior AC and H&M plimsolls. I can enjoy it and find it juicy. Lagging over that border on foot for even a day would soon wipe the grin off my face. You’ve got to know how to move through it or you’ll get wiped. I want to find a desert woman who knows the contours and curves of this place intimately. Who’s tuned in. I’m pulled down to Arivaca after a tip-off in a cafe in Tucson. Down there the women birth their babies in tepees, they told me. That’s all I needed… ROLL CALLSamantha Moore – my bereft desert womanLa Gitana – the wonderful bar on Arivaca’s main dragSasabe Store & Wholesale Mesquite Firewood – in the back of which is the bar of dreamsBorder Patrol – I recorded our conversation but it was covert so didn’t think we better use itTumbleweed Cafe – which is now closed down I seeTHE BOOK: The Devil’s Highway – Luis Alberto Urrea ROUTEFollowing the threads down to the La Gitana bar in Arivaca, to the brittle dirt of a huntress’s land and an abandoned halfway house, on to a coven of new wave desert women in a secret bar at the back of a store – and then gravitating further down to the border to get up close with The Wall. CREDITS:Petra Barran — Host and Producer Lucia Scazzocchio — Producer Lina Prestwood — Executive Producer More information about Lowlines here. Follow all the Hub & Spoke shows here. Subscribe to our newsletter. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hubspokeaudio.substack.com

    Lowlines, Episode 4: Borderline

  7. Jul 8

    Lowlines, Episode 3: Trainline

    PLACE:The placelessness of the train while moving through vast and shifting landscapes for 36 hours also creates a strange, metal-wrapped place all of its own. A home on the move. Cosy and secure and endlessly stimulating. Makes me think of what Richard Grant says in American Nomads: “a nomad is someone who doesn’t feel stable when stationary. A nomad feels stable when experiencing velocity”. I hear that. We pass through Louisiana swamps, young cypress thickets, past petro-chemical plants that fringe the Mississippi, tiny clapboard filled towns, into Texas and its glut of oil refineries, trucks alongside us, to New Mexico’s biscuity landscape and giant tumbleweed. Arizona and big pink purple skies, mountains in the distance…The Wall…checking off places as we view them from the viewing car… PULSE:The gyration, the solid rhythm, the slow, seductive horn that fills the air for miles around – mapping imagined journeys of an imaginary time on the here and now. The roll of a dice, the cackle of passengers with drink in their cups, the slew of accents, the rumble, the heat, the airlessness. All low to the ground. Hugging the shifting terrain with those metal tracks – and a couple of hundred passengers with time on our hands to sink into it all. ROLL CALL:Shout out to everyone who spent time chatting with me on the Sunset Limited: Jackie in the cafeteria, the King brothers (Lee, Lenny, Bobby, Matt and the other two), Meredith, Brad, Konnor, Maria-Luisa, Dwayne the conductor, the burrito queen and saviour on the platform in El Paso, the drunk guy with the vodka in his cup – and all the other people who aren’t featured. ROUTE:36 hours, a pure scrapbook of moments, endless stops, hot platforms, hot vinyl seats, dusty air vents, disinfectant and metal…the randomness of the encounter, the joy of strangers, all belonging to this route on these days… CREDITS:Petra Barran — Host and Producer Lucia Scazzocchio — Producer Lina Prestwood — Executive Producer More information about Lowlines here. Follow all the Hub & Spoke shows here. Subscribe to our newsletter. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hubspokeaudio.substack.com

    Lowlines, Episode 3: Trainline

  8. Jul 1

    Lowlines, Episode 2: Floodlines

    PLACE:The lower half of Louisiana is a puzzle of waterways, swamps, canals and levees. A once complex and resilient ecosystem carved through, for generations, by commerce. From a plane the land looks like a mass of fresh scabs – little flakey islands floating in the water for as far as the eye can see. And at the bottom of the map is Plaquemines Parish – the ‘bird’s foot’. This area was fertile farm land, alive with life but place names are literally dropping off the map. Down here, the ground is squelchy, watery, loose and the land disappearing so fast, so they say, that 30 football field sized chunks of it are slipping away from the state every single day. PULSE:The Mississippi river is the main artery of the whole area but she has been shackled in place by a complex levee system, designed to protect people and keep commerce flowing. As a living breathing entity, all she really wants to do is…river. To sway this way and that, sending nutrient rich sediment either side of her with every switch of her muddy hips, building up land and a natural defence system with it as she goes. ROLL CALL:Dave Baker – the passionate ecologist who provided deep context as we walked amongst the 800 year old live oaksWade Pitre – the friendly oil company worker who used to live off the landJustine DeMolle at Changes Restaurant – seafood kickers and a lot of heart from the doyenne of this Venice, La establishmentThe Lighthouse Lodge – Trampus and Barbara and Jowald who run such a welcoming spot CREDITS:Petra Barran — Host and Producer Lucia Scazzocchio — Producer Lina Prestwood — Executive Producer More information about Lowlines here. Follow all the Hub & Spoke shows here. Subscribe to our newsletter. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hubspokeaudio.substack.com

    Lowlines, Episode 2: Floodlines
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About

This is the official podcast of Hub & Spoke Audio Collective. We're a nonprofit collective of independent podcasts, dedicated to helping one another shine. We believe that stories told through sound have the power to change minds and stir souls. The Hub & Spoke Radio Hour is a sampler of our work, complete with themes and producer interviews. Take a listen, and subscribe to any of our shows at hubspokeaudio.org, or wherever you get your podcasts. hubspokeaudio.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Hub & Spoke Audio Collective
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    19
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Hub & Spoke Audio Collective
  • Show Website
    Hub & Spoke Presents

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