On March 6th, the Wythe Hotel held a weekend-long podcast festival entitled On-Air Fest. The festival space held artists, audio innovators, content creators and fans of the audio industry. Attendees experienced intimate talks, live podcasts, storytelling, an art installation, and unique audio experiences.
This year’s gathering featured big names in the podcasting and audio industry such as Michael Barbaro of The Daily, People’s Party podcast host, Talib Kweli, poet and author Hanif Abdurraqib, and This American Life creator Ira Glass who was awarded the Audio Vanguard Award.
The pre-weekend festivities began with an evening of celebration at the On-Air Fest opening party that included a live podcast taping of Mastercard’s Fortune Favors the Bold, hosted by Ashley C Ford. The night also included a live performance by EDAN and music accompanied by Sienna Fekete as well as an open bar.
Day one kicked off the weekend of audio events with the premiere of The Con, an audio crime piece created by Crimetown’s Zac Stuart Pontier and on-air fest founder Scott Newman. The series took listeners throughout the hotel as each act unfolded. 
The weekend continued with insightful conversations, live story performances, an adobe workshop, and different audio experiences. One including a mid-day meditation that overlooked the views of the city, two audio engineers who translated brain waves of people falling asleep into musical notes, as well as the behind the scenes stories of Dolly Parton’s America, a live tapping of Black Thought from The Roots new podcast called “Talkhouse”. and a preview of WNYC new podcast debuting in late March, “Come Through with Rebecca Carroll“.
During the festivities, The Wythe Hotel provided breakfast accompanied by stories and their signature happy hour cocktails in the evening at Lemon’s rooftop bar and Le Crocodile restaurant.
If you enjoy listening to podcasts, On-Air Fest is the place to be. The mission of audio haven is to create a creative gathering space to learn, connect and invest in the future of audio.
