I’m an audio maker from end to end – I can help you conceive and format your podcast project, consult on story and structure, research and interview guests, write scripts, edit audio, create innovative sound design, write music for your project, and mix and deliver your episodes. If any of that sounds good, drop me a line.
I’ve worked across multiple genres like chat, comedy, arts and culture, experimental fiction, narrative nonfiction, musical science podcasts for kids, and travel. I’ve sung, played and spoken in live shows and recorded albums full of music.
For example…
Composition
I have been composing and recording music and songs for podcasts since 2007; here is a sample:
You can listen to some samples of my podcast music organised into Themes, Bed Tracks, Full Songs and Live Scores – or it’s all together here.
For example, I’ve made music for the Mubi podcast since it began. You can hear my theme and bed tracks on nearly every episode. See my recent work for other examples or here for more examples.
Drilled podcast
I’ve acted as senior producer, composer and mixer on a number of seasons of Amy Westervelt’s highly successful climate podcast Drilled – including senior producer(*) and composer(†) on Obstruction*[2025] Carbon Bros*† [2025], The Real Free Speech Threat*† [2023-24], Light, Sweet, Crude*† [2023] and Rigged*† [2023], and mixer on Slapp’d [2025].
Live Performances
I’ve written played music and sung songs live – under my own name, as Pale Bird, and with a number of podcasts including The Allusionist, The Beef And Dairy Network, Nice Genes, Material Girls, Radio Diaries, Neutrinowatch, Radiotopia, and others.
I’ve performed at audio festivals including Third Coast, On Air, XMTR, Resonate, Hearsay, Vancouver Podcast Festival, HotDocs, PodFest Berlin, PodCon,, and London Podcast Festival.
Song by Song Podcast
Sam Pay and I created Song by Song in 2015 and talked about every Tom Waits song in chronological order until we ran out in 2024. We had some great guests including John Danielle, Jon Ronson, and John Hodgman. Despite the evidence, most of our guests are not white men called Jo(h)n.
Neutrinowatch Podcast
In 2021, Jeff Emtman and I created this experimental podcast where every episode changes every day. Every episode requires a lot of writing, sound design, and Python programming.
Answer Me This! Podcast
I’m one third – or perhaps less than one third – of award-winning podcast Answer Me This! The show started in in 2007 and I am the on-air sidekick and occasional musical director.
Pale Bird music
I have written and released over 100 songs as Pale Bird, some of them are bangers.
Training, Mentoring and Education
In 2017, I founded the Podcast Maker Weekend at London Podcast Festival and led the project until 2022. More recently, I’ve taught on podcasting at SFU on their publishing programme and academic podcast network winter school (2024-).
Recently, I consulted with the team behind Netherlands-based “open world” generative podcast Drift [released Nov 2024]; gave mentoring and feedback for Dr Emily Candela as she leads an audio collaboration between the Royal College of Art and The Lapworth Museum of Geology [Feb 2024-Nov 2024]; and talked about Neutrinowatch at Roguelike Celebration 2024 (with Jeff Emtman) [Oct 2024].
There’s more information here if that’s your thing.
Martin Zaltz Austwick 