Martin Zaltz Austwick

Podcaster, Musician. Educator, Recovering Physicist

Audio

I’m a podcast maker from end to end† – I create shows, write, research, interview, host, perform, engineer, edit, sound design, mix, master, and compose (see Podcast Music). Here’s a visual representation of my recent work – the darker the blue, the more I did.

I’ve worked across multiple genres including unscripted comedy, arts and culture discussion, experimental fiction, narrative nonfiction, musical science podcasts for kids, and travel.

You can find a fairly comprehensive selection of my production, composition and performance work on podchaser.

Recent Production:

  • 20,000Hz Podcast: wrote and reported (and sang!) on Vocal Stratosphere, exploring the wonderful things people do with their singing voices, from vocal fry to belting, from whistle register to Tuvan throat singing [May 2023].
  • Guest co-host for two episodes to celebrate 300 episodes of the Flixwatcher podcast, talking about “The Irishman” and “Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves [May 2023]
  • Audio production, sound design and scoring, and writing for Season 3 of Damages [Nov 2022-May 2023]

2022 and earlier

  • Guest on “The Box” [Jan 2023] and Editorial Assistance on “Asperger“ (The Allusionist) [March 2022]
  • Created a new Neutrinowatch episode/format, You Can Really Get To Know Someone By Leafing Through Their Diary, involving 366 poems generated by a TTS model of my voice, a 30 minute suite of music, and code to automatically sample and remix these every day [October 2022]
  • Writer, performer, and composer on The Allusionist: Your Name Here live show; tour manager for Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand shows [July-Aug 2022]
  • Artist in Residence on Shadowtime on San Francisco’s bff.fm for two weeks (“Tree” and “Space”) – performed music, co-wrote and performed poems and audio pieces, and guested on air [June 2022]
  • Guest on Over/underrated with Song by Song cohost Sam Pay, talking about the bands Talking Heads and They Might Be Giants [April 2022].
  • 20,000Hz Podcast: wrote and reported “Mind The Gap“, where I spoke to two of the voices behind some of the world’s most iconic subway systems [March 2022]. I also wrote and produced “Progression Obsession” – about the most common chords in pop music [May 2021]; “Deepfake Dallas“, about Audio Deepfakes, as well as contributing music to the episode [September 2020]; and “4’33” “[January 2020]. “4’33″” was later adapted by Dallas Taylor for live performance at On Air 2020, and into a Main Stage TED Talk [July 2020] which has had nearly 2 million views.
  • Co-created two new episode/episode formats (“Gluteal Strategies”, with Jeff Emtman; and “Gus by Gus: Magic and Musings” with Lily Sloane) for Neutrinowatch, the semi-fictional generative podcast where every episode changes every day [Feb-March 2022]
  • Neutrinowatch picked up some lovely press and interviews from BBC Podcast Radio Hour, Miranda Sawyer in The Guardian, Caroline Crampton in HotPod/Vulture, Podbible, Lauren Passell in Bello and Podcast The Newsletter, Podcast Movement, RTE Lyric FM, the Podcast Studies Podcast, and more [Oct 2021]
  • Production, field recording and format development for the More Corners Podcast – the travel podcast that goes a little further. Recorded Vikings, an Elf Whisperer and visited a volcano for our Iceland episode [Feb 2022].

Selected Older work

  • Maddie’s Sound Explorers – a science podcast for 7-10 year olds, featuring a song built from the sounds of science and nature every episode. I developed the 15-episode series with host Maddie Moate based on an original idea by exec producer Matt Hill. I booked and interviewed guests, scripted episodes with Maddie, and edited, produced, mixed and mastered the show, writing and a recording a new piece of music based around the sounds and ideas in each episode [Aug-Nov 2020].

Ongoing Production:

Neutrinowatch [2021-]

Co-created this innovative semifictional anthology podcast where every episode changes every day.

Song by Song [2015-]

I produce and co-host Song by Song, which discusses every Tom Waits song in chronological order. Our guests have included Jon Ronson, Phoebe Judge, Jon Hodgman, Jeffrey Cranor, Simon Stephens and David Shrubsole.

The Allusionist [2015-]

I make music for The Allusionist, and have provided editorial input for a number of episodes and touring shows:

  • Research and production: The Cake is Mightier Than The Sword, Podlingual, A Festive Hit, Second Home, and more.
  • Tailored Scores: Harsh Realm, Eclipse, Continental, Transquilluisionist series.
  • Live show: Additional writing, music, and performance on Allusionist Touring Show [2018], No Title [2019], and Your Name Here [2022-]
  • In 2018, I re-edited over 100 episodes to be suitable for ad injection, and remastered them for LUFS standardisation. I worked with their technical team to create an automated solution for gapless mp3s to reduce the intrusiveness of injected ads.

Answer Me This [2007-2021]

I was music director, live engineer, and comedy sidekick/science nerd on question-answering podcast Answer Me This!. Just so you know, it has rude words and racy content.

Guest appearances:

I’ve also guested on shows including Under The Radar, the Podcast Studies Podcast, Over/Underrated, Shadowtime, Podcast Radio Hour, The 90 Minutes or Less Film Festival (with Colin Trevorrow), The Wire Stripped, Scientists Not the Science, Twenty Thousand Hertz, Flixwatcher, Getting Better Acquainted, Bright Club, The Bugle [briefly], and Jordan, Jesse Go! [VERY briefly].

Awards:

*composer only

**I wrote and produced episodes in the period in which it won this award

†I mean “from end to end of the podcast making process” but I’m also a podcast maker from top to tail, as it were

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