#audacious machine creative

[innocuous-gnome]

the harbingers (2025)

[gabrielurbinatm]

It's The Harbingers launch day today! So I figured it'd be nice to put together a masterpost of everything you need to know about the series for its first week!

The series was created and written by me, it's executive produced by Eleanor Hyde, and it's directed and sound designed by Jeffrey Nils Gardner. It stars Andrés Enriquez, Lauren Grace Thompson, Emmy Bean, Joshua K. Harris, and Sabrina Odigie. It features original music by Nicholas Podany and original art by Cassie Allen. It's an Audacious Machine Creative Production.

The premise is pretty simple: It's about the first two people in the modern world to figure out how to do magic. Only they don't like each other and don't agree on how you should use magic. Oops. Oh and also they used to date back when they were in grad school together. Oops redux.

That's the basics of it, and you can go listen to the first episode right now, but but if you want more info, loads more below the cut!

Episode 1 is a special, extra-sized chapter, running just a little over 50 minutes. Most episodes in its sixteen episode (!!!) first season will be closer to 30-40 minutes, and they'll come out every two weeks on Thursdays once we get into the regular swing of things.

But that's once we get into the regular swing of things.

For this first week, we’re actually going to be doing three episodes - one today, one tomorrow, and one on Thursday. We liked the idea of starting with a quick flurry right up front, and these three work well as an introductory mini-arc to the series as a whole. The first episode introduces the premise and the characters. The second episode gives you a sense for some of the games we’ll be playing as the story unfolds. And by the end of the third you’ll have a glimpse at the scope of the Big Thing we’re doing.

If The Harbingers sounds at all interesting to you - and especially if you’ve heard and enjoyed Wolf 359 and Unwell and some of the other shows we’ve made in the past - I really think you should listen to these first three episodes that are coming out this week. I think if you do, you’ll be hooked - you’ll really want to know what’s coming down the pipeline, and we’ll have a grand old time laying out the story together. It’s an unusual format that we’ve ended up with for this one, a non-chronological puzzlebox mystery that touches a lot of people’s lives, but give it a moment and I think you’ll really fall in love with it.

It's a really big, strange, ambitious swing, and much of this year has been spent figuring out how to tell the story. So here's me DOUBLY grateful to the folks at the Tribeca Festival, who were some of the first people to believe in this show and encourage us to make it.

And as with everything that I do, The Harbingers is kind of a music show. Every episode is named after a song which in some way reflects, refracts, or informs upon the material in the episode. So OF COURSE there's an obsessive playlist for the series. It lives right here.

For anyone that would like to listen to the show with some other audio fiction fans, I’m actually going to be doing Listening Parties over on my Youtube channel for the first three episodes! On each release day this week, I’ll be doing a little stream so we can all listen to these together, starting at 8:00 PM Eastern. Here’s the link for the first episode, here’s the one for the second episode, and here’s the one for the third one! Tune in if you’d like to hear the episodes and comment about them in the chat!

Plenty more to say about this one, but I think at this point I should let the work speak for itself. So I’ll just close by saying… it’s nice to be back here. Launching a new fiction show, one that will (hopefully) go on for years, telling a big, sprawling story about characters who grow and change and evolve and surprise and disappoint and do a million other things. Making something with my talented friends. Setting off on the start of a long journey.

Deep breaths. And here we go.

Episode 1 of The Harbingers, I’d Love to Change the World, is now available wherever podcasts can be heard.

[worldgonewrongpod]

Hey, hey, hey - go listen to World Gone Wrong <3

[baronfulmen]

This podcast is making me angry.

It's a good podcast. Good acting, good writing, good sound quality and everything. It's told from multiple unreliable points of view, and is about people who get super powers (specifically some narrow category of magic) from rings they find that were made by an ancient civilization.

And I swear, I'm fine with things being unexplained. I'm not asking for midichlorians or whatever.

But some things you do have to address at some point, and unless I've missed it there's been zero explanation for why these people still have the magic rings.

It's an otherwise normal Earth, with no magic. Someone finds a ring that lets them teleport stuff, he has no legal claim to it because he basically stole it from an archaeological dig, and he just... keeps it and goes back to work. He uses it to teleport stuff sometimes, but it's treated as a party trick at first.

WHAT?

Everyone on Earth would be desperate to have that ring. He shouldn't have been allowed to keep it for any time at all, but once he did leave with it he should have IMMEDIATELY been murdered for it.

And obviously that would make for a bad story, but like... you gotta come up with some explanation for it. It's magic, so explanations are pretty easy, but you have to have one.

Any fans of the show that think I just missed something and it actually makes total sense, PLEASE let me know.

[theboardofdirectorslovesyou]

Where is Our Fair City?

Hello, Loyal Policy. This is Producer Jeffrey. If you've looked at the Our Fair City podcast feed recently, you might be wondering - where did Our Fair City go?

We are going to try an experiment - really doing science, you could say! We’re going to put the show in reruns. Our Fair City was originally ran 8 seasons from 2009-2018. And we think the show is still relevant to our world right now. So starting in September, we’ll be rereleasing the show.

You can listen to season 1 right now. It is an hour long single release that gets you right into the complex world of HartLife.

Starting in September on this feed, we are going to release season 2 rapidly in a 30-day period. It’s going to be almost daily. And then starting in October, we’ll be releasing weekly.

So if you think it would be fun to be part of listening to the show along with lots of other people, please join us! Tell your friends! We think it will be a fun journey to take together.

Meanwhile - For anyone who gets into the show and *just can’t wait* for weekly releases. We will have all 8 seasons available, ad free, as part of our membership.

That membership is $5/month and gets you access to all of Our Fair City and also ad free feeds of all our other shows. We’ll also be releasing a lot of Our Fair City bonus content there - things like blooper reels and behind the scenes conversations from when we made the show years ago.

More info about becoming a member can be found at https://audaciousmachinecreative.memberful.com/join

Thank you for listening! We are excited to share Our Fair City with you, so thank you for your patience while we get all the pieces lined up.

And as always - we will see you in the tunnels.

Jeffrey

[unwellpodcast]

Audacious Machine Creative is accepting auditions for their upcoming production of The Harbingers, an audio fiction podcast serial written by Gabriel Urbina and directed by Jeffrey Nils Gardner.  

Our first round of auditions will be via remote recording, for three primary characters: ADAM BLACKWELL, AMY STERLING, and CLAUDIA SKINNER. There will be a second round of in-person callbacks in Chicago, IL.

We are currently only considering actors in the Chicago area.

Please submit a resume and recording of the provided sides for the character(s) you are auditioning for before Wednesday, May 21 at midnight. Recordings do not need to be of professional quality- we just need to be able to hear your acting. You may choose to read sides alone or with a reader. Please slate all recordings with your full name and the role you are reading for.  

Call backs will be held in-person in Chicago, IL on May 30th and 31st. We will be recording the first four episodes of the season in July of 2025. At this time, we are only considering actors who are available to record in person in Chicago.  

Download the sides here.

Use this link to submit a resume, conflicts for the month of July, and recordings of your audition.

About the production process:

The first season will be recorded over approximately 16 recording sessions between July 2025 and March of 2026 in the Rogers Park area of Chicago. All roles will be paid at $25/hr for both rehearsal and recording.  This is a non-SAG production.

A pilot for The Harbingers is a 2025 selection for the Tribeca Festival. We are currently considering actors for all roles in The Harbingers. You may be invited to read for several roles during callbacks, including roles other than those you originally read for.     

About The Harbingers:

​​In the wake of a world-altering magic incident, the only two living magicians wrestle with how we got here and what happens next.

When Adam Blackwell and Amy Stirling met, they immediately clashed. They were both grad students studying a long dead language, academic rivals, and brief paramours - though they’d really prefer if everyone forgot about that last thing, thank you very much. Then they became the only people in the world capable of doing magic. Over the course of the next five years, they became global superstars, objects of adoration, scrutiny, and fear.

Until one day, Amy baits Adam into doing something incredible and terrible. The world's only two magicians are inextricably linked and now have to answer some difficult questions. Is this the right way to use this power? Have they done irreparable damage to the world? And above everything else, what are they going to do next?

About the characters:

We are excited to consider all kinds of people for these roles. All races, gender identities/expressions are encouraged to audition for whatever role catches your interest.

Adam Blackwell

The Most Powerful Man in the World

Adam is young (late 20s-early 30s) but the very definition of an old soul. He's careful and calculating, double checking the math on practically everything he says and does. He is energetic and genuinely generous. He has both boundless enthusiasm and a real talent for talking about the smart things he's doing in his work. Most people find him to be a kindly, reassuring presence. A few people think he's a conniving son of a bitch. The truth is that he's both - less of the former than he tries to project, more of the latter than he'd care to admit.

Adam has usually been the smartest person in whatever room he finds himself in. He can usually think his way out of any problem, and can confidently bluff his way out of a lot of the ones he can't just think his way out of.) At the same time, he can be a little culturally myopic - he's the sort of person that will read two books a week, but go a full year without reading any fiction.

For all of his steady presence and bookish professor persona, there is a real sense of ego, entitlement, and even anger to Adam. He’s smart, he's put in the effort, he's done the work - it's time for everyone to be quiet and let him tell them how it's going to be. 

Amy Stirling

The Silver Witch

Amy (Late 20s-early 30s) has spent all of her life trying to do two things: get people to take her seriously and have fun. It is the sisyphean curse of her life that these are often in opposition. Still, Amy refuses to get discouraged - she will do great work, she will make people see how talented she is, and she will look great while doing so. If anyone's displeased by any of this, it's their problem.

Amy is an excellent judge of character, and an even better cataloguer of people's wants and needs. She probably wouldn’t call herself manipulative- she’s just VERY good at helping people understand what they really want. 

Amy is impulsive and hot-headed - though it often doesn't look that way purely by dint of her on-the-fly decision-making being so good. She loves dancing until 3:00 AM at music festivals, and has wandered through the woods high as a kite on more than one occasion. She firmly believes that Taylor Swift's Red is the first great artistic masterpiece of the 21st Century, and will happily spend forty minutes explaining why.

Claudia Skinner

Senior Partner, Skinner, De Vries, and Wiseman

Claudia Skinner (Early 40s) could have easily inherited a life of idle leisure from their father, an enormously successful lawyer. Instead, they went to work. There's a proper way of doing things, and they’re going to do things the proper way.

Now one of the senior partners and head litigators at the firm, Skinner earns astounding amounts of money each year by being an absolute master interrogator. Almost everything they do during a deposition - from odd humor and an irreverent tone to harsh rebukes and sharp, biting criticisms - is carefully designed to disarm. It is this quality - along with their commitment to exhaustive research and encyclopedic knowledge of the law - that makes them such a good lawyer.

Still, for all their coldblooded maneuvering, there is a humanistic side to Skinner. They’re set for life financially, so when they take on a client it's because they believe in the case. They believe in the best version of their client, and think they can be of help in getting them there. And as much as they would like to pretend that all their strange humor is just interrogation tactics, a lot of it actually comes from something their father taught them: "Things are never hopeless if you can still find a way to laugh about whatever's going on."

About Audacious Machine Creative:

Audacious Machine Creative is a fiction podcast studio and production house based in Chicago. Previous work includes Unwell: A Midwestern Gothic Mystery (Winner 2021 BBC Award Best Podcast), World Gone Wrong, and Our Fair City. 

Led by Eleanor Hyde and Jeffrey Nils Gardner, we work with a diverse team of professional writers, directors, actors, and sound designers from around the world. Audacious Machine Creative has won awards and critical acclaim for their independent shows, citing their dynamic acting, incisive writing, and high level of production. We have also collaborated with clients like Audible, Echoverse, Encyclopedia Britannica, Vox, Radiotopia, and others.

[merelymatt]

Audio Drama Sunday is for questioning who governs

🤖 Metropolis by @luxradium. "Every city is built on top of a sewer." What a great first episode. I love stories about cities, especially ones that aren't what they want you to think they are. I'm also a sucker for when a character encourages someone to live up to their potential and it gets them into trouble, maybe killed – but maybe they went out doing what they were really born to do!! Plus, just look at that cover art (by Michael Hirshon).

🐉 World Gone Wrong from Audacious Machine. They just keep nailing it with this show. I think because it's the feeling of being an ordinary person in strange times that they're trying to capture. This is an election episode, and the exaggeration of a literal dragon running for office is wryly funny, but what really works is the exhaustion of just not even having the capacity to be outraged or weirded out any more. Plus the idea of voting as choosing which final boss you'd rather fight is inspired.

And what's new from me and @foggyoutline this week?

Also an episode about how you get the people in power to do the right thing – I'm deliberately referencing stuff like 5calls.org but I didn't deliberately schedule it for US election season, that part just sort of happened.

We got to give Dédé Davi her audio drama debut – she'd done ad and corporate voiceover before but not acting. If you like her performance, she's looking for more parts in audio drama, so go cast her!

And Backstage on @merelyroleplayers, we're doing character creation, with the slight twist that it's a new character coming into an eatablished setting, played by an established player who retired her first character. It changes the maths a little bit – there's a lot of rules and lore there already that you're slotting into (not that Ellie doesn't add plenty more of her own in this episode! 🧛‍♀️)

[worldgonewrongpod]

Hey big things coming in tomorrow’s World Gone Wrong~