Boston—April 2, 2020—Hub & Spoke, the collective of smart, independent podcasts with a hub in Boston and a growing set of “spokes” in other cities, today announced the addition of its tenth member show: The Briny.
Made in the historic shipping city of Portland, Maine, The Briny is an independent nonfiction podcast about the way we’re changing the sea, and the way the sea changes us. In brief, sound-rich episodes, producer Matt Frassica shows how the oceans are recovering (or not) from centuries of overfishing and abuse, how they drive people to acts of heroism and adventure, and how they’ve become sites of experimentation to pull us out of our climate catastrophe.
The show returns for its second season this month with an episode about taking refuge from pandemic stress in the live webcam feeds of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Matt Frassica is a radio and podcast producer and editor who has made stories and podcasts for Slate, Stitcher, WNYC Studios, NPR, American Public Media, PRI/PRX, and KCRW, including shows such as Reveal, Freakonomics Radio, Today Explained, Here & Now, andThe Organist. He was previously a producer for public radio’s arts and culture show Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen.
“I was a huge fan of Studio 360 and I’ve been listening to The Briny ever since Matt launched it in 2017,” says Wade Roush, producer of Soonish and co-founder of Hub & Spoke. “I’m so envious of his skill at capturing the often inspiring, often wrenching stories of people who live and work on the sea. The show is a perfect ‘catch’ for us at Hub & Spoke, and we can’t wait to start promoting Matt’s work.”
“The Briny is such a beautiful and dynamic show,” says Tamar Avishai, creator and host of The Lonely Palette and another co-founder of Hub & Spoke. “We’re so excited to have Matt and his talents for tapping into such wonderfully human stories onboard. Every new member of Hub & Spoke has made me a better storyteller.”
“The Briny is my passion project—a way of connecting my lifelong fascination with the ocean with my vocation as a storyteller,” Frassica says. “Since the beginning of Hub & Spoke, I’ve been inspired by these independent creators banding together to support one another. I’m incredibly grateful and excited to join their ranks.”
Hub & Spoke’s mission is to carve out more space for high-quality, independent, nonfiction audio storytelling. The collective was founded in October 2017 as an alliance between The Lonely Palette, an art history podcast from Avishai; Ministry of Ideas, a history and culture show from Zachary Davis, Nick Andersen, and Galen Beebe; and Soonish, Roush’s podcast about technology and the future. Culture Hustlers, Lucas Spivey’s vox pop and interview show at the intersection of art and business, and Iconography, a history show from producer Charles Gustine, joined in 2018. In 2019, four additional shows joined the collective, including The Constant, a show about “the history of getting things wrong” from Chicago-based playwright Mark Chrisler; Open Source, a weekly conversation show hosted by Christopher Lydon and executive-produced by Mary McGrath; Rumble Strip, Erica Heilman’s podcast featuring extraordinary conversations with ordinary people; and Subtitle, a show from radio veterans Patrick Cox and Kavita Pillay about language and how it unites and divides us.
Listeners can check out The Briny at https://thebriny.net/ and subscribe wherever they get their podcasts. Hub & Spoke hosts will immediately begin promoting The Briny through pre-roll and post-roll announcements on their shows.