One of Yowei Shaw’s first longform audio projects got her in big trouble at work. She was an intern at a college radio station in Philadelphia when she put together a half-hour audio doc about…trash. “There was a skit involved. There was dumpster diving,” she recalls now. “I hung out with my friend who's a crust punk, and we went dumpster diving.”

But when it came time to actually turn her work in, “I was so late on getting it to my boss that he just aired it without listening. And then he listened to it, and I had a talking-to.” 

The talking-to didn’t diminish her enthusiasm for audio. After graduation, she got an AmeriCorps fellowship at a public-interest law firm. With that squared away, Yowei committed to using any free time to “freelance [her] face off.” During that year, she sold a story to Studio 360 about her parents becoming obsessed with the tango. It won a Third Coast Award, which helped her catch the eye of the folks at NPR’s Invisibilia, who hired her on full time. 

But it wouldn’t be media in 2024 if that fairytale ending didn’t come with a less-dreamy epilogue. Last year, Invisibilia was canceled—and Yowei was laid off. In response, she started her own show, called Proxy. Its first three episodes are a meta-look at the layoff process, and an investigation into why losing your job can hurt so much and for so long.

We talked to Yowei about making journalism without being extractive, protecting your IP, and flinging yourself across the internet to promote projects. This conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. 

You started off the way I think a lot of people start off: making audio as a side gig. How did you balance the time you needed for your day job with finding time to make stuff?

I'm in that position right now: I'm making Proxy on the weekends and at nights, and I have a part time gig. So I'm right back there.

When I was doing AmeriCorps, I worked a lot on weekends and at nights, but I also tried to make audio at my job. I started a podcast called Pursuing Justice for the public-interest law firm where I worked. I started a youth media project. I basically was pitching my job to allow me to do the work that I wanted to do. 

I remember having fights with a boyfriend at the time, who did not like me working all the time. I mean, did I even have that many friends? Was I partying? To be very honest, I think that was just my life. It was the thing that was giving me life at the time. I was all in on trying to figure out how to make stories and make them work. It’s sort of like, hobby plus passion. 

That period was only a year and a half. I did go full-time freelance after that, and that was a really scary jump, going from a steady source of income to not having a steady source of income. 

But I was living in Philadelphia at the time; Philadelphia is very cheap and affordable. And at the time there weren't that many audio producers either. After I made the switch to being full-time freelance, for a while I had too much work. But that time has passed. 

What did your initial audio kit look like?

I think I had an Audio Technica 8034, the shotgun mic. There's actually a Transom article that I wrote with Jeff Towne. He happens to live in the Philadelphia area, and early on I was able to be like, “It’s noisy on my street. How do I get good audio at home?” He was like, “Well, do you want to test some microphones and setups?” 

We ended up writing this article for Transom around different setups with a vocal recording booth, which is really one of those IKEA collapsible cube fabric boxes that you can outfit with sound foam. You're supposed to put it in a very specific way, and then have your microphone inside the box at a very particular distance. Otherwise I was just under a blanket and sweating my ass off, like many an audio producer.

I had Pro Tools. I didn't have transcription software back then; everyone was logging their own tape, and that was a shitshow. It was just like Pro Tools, Microsoft Word or Google Docs, and your recording equipment. 

It must have been a big transition from that to NPR.

Oh my god. When I first got to NPR, I was like, everyone looks so clean. I need to buy new socks so I don't have socks with holes. It felt like people were just clean and stylish.

What was it like to have all of their resources, and maybe some sustained mentorship?

When I was a freelancer, I was able to see different workflows and styles, and pick up a lot of tips from different shops.

At Invisibilia, though—I think that before that point, I didn't know how to actually score pieces, like the architecture of scoring and sound design. Elise at Invisibilia, I think, is a singular host. She was very interested in mentoring her team and teaching us things. I learned story structure from her. I learned also from Lulu Miller and Hannah Rosen and Anne Guttenkopf, and all of our editors, and from the other producers too. 

It was a small team,  which was great because we were constantly all cross-pollinating. I feel like I've heard from friends at larger shops on larger teams, sometimes you can work at the same show and not collaborate with somebody for like a year. 

How did the idea for Proxy come about?

I like reporting stories that start from an emotional place. Like, there's a weird feeling  that you don't understand. I love digging into the feeling and being like, okay, so where does that feeling come from? What histories and dynamics are leading to that feeling? Let’s go deep into this feeling and see what's going on. 

I would have this feeling and want to report a story, but I wouldn't want to report on my personal story. I would find somebody else who was going through the same issues and had the same questions—like my proxy, essentially. I would report a story about them and then talk to a bunch of experts along the way. And then, by the end of making the thing, I would always feel less stuck. So for Proxy, I want to give this experience to other people. One of the tongue in cheek things that we say to our listeners is, “We're trying to help you report on your feelings.”

Proxy conversations as a thing is something that I happened across a few times at Invisibilia. At one point I reported a story about this guy who got ghosted by a really good friend from college, and he was really hung up about it. Didn't understand why.  He ended up finding out that this friend had died by suicide, and suffered from this condition called avoidant personality disorder, where cutting off your friends, ghosting your loved ones, is a common thing that's part of the condition.

We ended up pairing this guy with somebody else who has avoidant personality disorder. And it was just this magical conversation. 

Something a lot of us are always worried about, as journalists, is being extractive. I want to be useful to everybody involved—not just the listener, but the people we're telling stories about, who are allowing us in. And that felt like a moment of like, Oh, everybody here is getting something from this. It’s not just me taking from you two and telling this story.

And then you tried to sell Proxy to some networks, right?

It’s been a roller coaster. Ever since I got news of the layoff. I've just been in perpetual scheming mode. What can I do? How can I do this thing when the industry's falling apart?

After I was laid off, I looked around and I was like, okay. Can I get another job? Where would I want to work if I could get another job? And I just didn't see a place that was doing the kind of journalism that I'm interested in. There's plenty of wonderful outlets doing really important, beautiful work, but working at Invisibilia redpilled me on stories that are investigating emotions and ideas in a very rigorous way. 

I was at a mixer for audio in Philadelphia, and somebody from a local station approached me. This is like, right after my layoff. This person approached me and was like, “If you ever want to make another show, let me know. We'd love to work with you.” 

I had been so down in the dumps. And then it was like, okay, I guess I should put together a pitch deck and come up with a show.

They liked it and they wanted to make it, and then we entered negotiation. It all happened really quickly. It didn’t end up working out, but because I got such a positive initial response, I was like, okay, I guess maybe people want me to make a show. 

I met with so many different production companies and had many pitching conversations, trying to explain my show. It did not work out. There were some close calls. But it all came down to IP, because I did not want to be in the same situation [that I was in with Invisibilia]. I do not want to put my everything into a show and then, because of some higher ups’ decision—even if I'm doing a good job, even if people love the show, even if people don't want the show to go away—for it to be canceled. 

It’s not even about, how much is the Proxy brand and feed worth at this moment? It's not even about the future derivatives—I've had many false alarms with, oh, Hollywood's interested in making a story of mine a film or a TV show. I’m not holding my breath. That's not part of my business strategy. 

It was about control. At the end of the day, I just didn't want to give up control.  

And how do you monetize the show?

Honestly, I had never considered Patreon until I went to this podcast meetup and I heard someone talk about how they were able to make a living off of Patreon. That was a very different story than what I was hearing from other colleagues. I was like, Oh,  okay, maybe I could make this work. 

I have a part time job to pay the bills—and I like my part time job, to be clear. I also had savings developed from my time at NPR. So I sunk quite a bit of money into launching the show: hiring an editor, hiring people to make the tile art, theme music. I was hoping that I would get enough subscribers from Patreon off of that layoff series [to keep making it]. I don't know if you saw my ridiculous music video where I'm pole dancing in a Kleenex box costume.  It’s part of the story—it's part healing grief ritual, and it's also a publicity stunt that did not work.  

I’m proud to say that we did get listeners with no marketing budget, no network support. I was able to get some press. But we're still far away from what I would need to be able to be full time, and also to hire people to be full-time. 

So right now I'm doing another series, which is sort of like a campaign to try to drum up Patreon subscribers for Season 1. If we get 1,000 subscribers by August 22nd, there's this anonymous donor who has said they would be willing to give us some funding for Season 1. It's not enough to cover everything, but it's something. 

I'm really building it from the ground up—every listener, every subscriber feels like a win. The plan is to make the show maybe for one or two years and make it good. I believe in the show. The people who find it seem to love it. 

There is a huge audience of Invisibilia fans that does not know that this show exists, because I'm not allowed to put a feed drop on the NPR feed for Invisibilia. Which I would love if they would allow me to. They are kind enough to do cross promos on the back catalog. But to be able to do a feed drop of my show would be amazing. 

I was able to collaborate with my colleagues at Planet Money. We adapted the layoff series for a story on their show and that was humongous for me.

I'm basically just flinging myself shamelessly across the internet. I'm not somebody made for the internet. I'm bad at social media. I'm very self conscious. I'm not good at this shit, but for the sake of the show, I'm pitching myself to like every editor, every podcast. I'm making social videos. 

What advice do you have for beginning podcasters?

Honestly, I don't know if I can give advice, because I'm not succeeding. I'm still trying to figure it out! So I think it would be kind of presumptuous of me to give advice. 

I can say what has been helping me so far, which is, I don't understand the podcast business. I don't understand the promo game. But we're reporters, so we can use our reporter skills to figure it out. My friend Kelly McGovern always says she's on the beat of how to make a successful podcast. I feel like I've been on the beat of how to make a successful podcast in 2024 for the past year. 

I have no shame about asking for help now. I'm calling in all the favors. I'm asking everybody what they know, how they can help, how to do this, how to do that. I’ve been really grateful for all of the free advice and support. And I've been giving it to other people when they ask. 

I don't really know what I'm doing, but I do trust my reporting skills and ability to figure out some strategies for moving forward. I think that's all you can really do.