tony the scribe
I’m an award-winning audio journalist, researcher, audio engineer, writer, and composer based in Seattle, Washington.
I bring expert audio engineering skills, a skilled pen, a comfortability with deep research, a bone-deep desire for justice, and a curious joy to the teams I work on.
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If I was born 150,000 years ago, at the dawn of our species, before streaming services and public radio and large-scale agriculture, I’d still be telling stories. The flicker of a campfire, a steady drum beat in the background, the silence of a crowd waiting for the first words.
I’ve been obsessed with mythology my whole life. There’s something timeless about the stories we tell about great evils, and the flawed heroes resisting them. I tell those stories in a modern context; from rap songs about my struggles with anxiety to podcasts about everyday people who stand up to systemic oppression. The everyday and the mythic are more closely related than we give them credit for, and it’s the stories that meet them at the crossroads I am most interested in.
I work with the tools I have available. 150,000 years ago, that would’ve meant suspense, silence, and song. Today, it also means field recorders, multiband compressors, and synthesizers. I value technical competence incredibly highly, but as a means rather than an end. Everything in service of the story, of giving the listener something to carry with them through the wilderness.
Audio work is uniquely capable of accompanying people through the world; you can listen to a podcast while you’re immersed in the mundanity of doing the dishes. You can reach to a song for comfort like a familiar lover. I soundtrack people’s lives, to give them inspiration and curiosity and comfort as they make their way through the world. I tell the kinds of stories that hush the crowd around the campfire and get them to lean in.