NEW Just released · The Listening Booth · Ep. 84
A small podcast network of six independent shows — hosted by people who actually know the things they talk about. 410 episodes since 2019, no ads, no sponsor reads, listener-supported.
The Listening Booth
Ep. 84 · with Marisa Quinn · published 4 days ago
Newest episode at the top, oldest at the bottom — running down the tape. Click any episode to play it inline, or tap through to your podcast app.
The composer on his fifty-year practice, why he stopped writing for orchestras, and the period of three years in the early 90s when he didn't make any music at all.
Sara Bélanger talks with three regional museum curators — one in Iceland, one in Saskatchewan, one in the Marche — about what it means to catalogue collections nobody is funding.
Conor Llewellyn-Hayes meets a third-generation Welsh dry-stone waller on a hillside above Llanberis. Recorded in the open. There is weather.
Aoife Reilly interviews three former lighthouse keepers in Ireland, Newfoundland, and the Hebrides — all in their seventies now, the last generation to do that job before automation.
No interview this week. Just thirty-eight minutes of dawn chorus, recorded on May 14th, 2025 in a Suffolk hedgerow, by Joel Markandya. Some sparse narration only.
The Hungarian-Canadian poet on her three-decade career, the political weather of 1990s Budapest, and why she translates almost nothing of her own work into English.
— Four hundred and four more episodes, behind these. Browse the full archive →
— The six shows on the network
Each show has its own host, its own rhythm, and its own audience. We don't tell them what to make, we don't approve scripts, and we never insert sponsorship reads. We just provide the infrastructure and split the membership revenue equally.
Marisa Quinn · weekly
Long-form conversations with one person at a time, usually artists, writers, and craftspeople at the long end of their careers. 90 — 130 minutes. No edits.
Sara Bélanger · monthly
Conversations with the people who work in small museums, archives, and library reading rooms — the institutions almost nobody funds anymore. Roughly an hour.
Conor Llewellyn-Hayes · biweekly
A show about traditional building trades — masons, thatchers, drystone wallers, plasterers. Conor visits the work and records on location, weather permitting (and sometimes not).
Aoife Reilly · monthly
Stories from people whose livelihoods depend on weather, tides, and seasons — fishermen, shepherds, ferry captains. Mostly recorded in Ireland and the British Isles.
Joel Markandya · weekly
No interviews. Pure long-form field recordings — dawn choruses, market squares, a single train carriage through the Highlands. Sparse narration only at the very start of each episode.
Hilde Strøm · biweekly
A book show — but only about books at least twenty years old and out of fashion. Each episode is one book. Hilde reads from it, talks about it, and finds someone who loves it to talk to.
— About the network
Long Format started in 2019 as one show — The Listening Booth, hosted by Marisa Quinn, recorded in the back room of an apartment in Brooklyn. The network grew show by show, from people Marisa already knew and trusted, and is now six independent shows across five countries.
We have never run a sponsor read, an ad, or an affiliate link. We don't intend to start. The network is entirely funded by our 4,200 paying members, each of whom pays $4 or more a month, and gets in return roughly forty hours of new audio every month, no interruptions, and a transcript of every episode.
Most months we break even. Some months we don't, and the network's two-person operations team works without pay until we do. We are not VC-funded, we are not for sale, and we are not, as a senior producer once put it, "trying to get bought by Spotify."
— Become a member · keep us going
Membership is what keeps Long Format running. The minimum tier is genuinely affordable, the middle tier is what most people pick, and the top tier exists for people who want to support us at a level that genuinely helps. All three get the same audio. We don't gate episodes.