Eliza Smith

I’m the CEO and co-founder of Cosmic Standard, an Oakland-based podcast and interactive audio production house. I’ve been working in audio for over 20 years, and have an extensive background in public media, narrative storytelling, podcasting, and interactive audio. In 2020, my husband, Jacob, and I launched Cosmic Standard. Jacob is an audio producer, and worked for many years at the beloved, all-analogue recording studio Tiny Telephone, making records with bands and folks like The Magnetic Fields, Samantha Crain, and Sam Evian. Cosmic Standard is our love letter to audio: our mission is to umake great narrative audio with great people. Our clients include Patagonia, Dropbox, Vox, the ACLU, Google, OpenAI, Oatly, and McSweeney’s. We have had the pleasure of partnering with TED since 2021 on production for myriad shows, including TED Business and ReThinking with Adam Grant. Currently, we are collaborating with the TED Audio Collective on a brand new show hosted by Bilawal Sidhu: The TED AI Show. Before starting my own company, I interned with the Kitchen Sisters, working on segments for their legacy NPR spots. I moved on to intern at Snap Judgment. I became the show’s first fiction editor, working with authors like Charles Yu and Kelly Link to adapt their short stories into radio plays. I became a full-time producer at the show, and over the course of my tenure, I contributed to award-winning stories, including This is Not A Drill and Counted. I created Snap’s first spin-off show, Spooked, in partnership with Luminary and WNYC. I built the show from the ground up, expanding our team from one (me!) to nine members. Spooked garnered millions of listeners, and through our pay-to-play partnership with Luminary, we helped keep the lights on for the entire Snap Judgment organization. I am really interested in the future of narrative audio, and what podcasts will sound like when we outgrow the RSS feed. My team and I have experimented with interactive audio, game design, and the applications of AI in audio. We’re excited about applying our expertise in the field as we enter next generation of audio entertainment.

Media literacy, interactive audio, the future of podcasting, and inclusivity in media.

There are no podcast emergencies.

Talking about horror movies.