September Newsletter — Signal Hill Magazine, Happy Hour, and Survey
Join us on September 30th for our next Happy Hour! Read for more details on our conversation with Signal Hill Magazine's Editors-In-Chief.
Fall is right around the corner, and with it, a bunch of exciting things to share with you in this month’s newsletter:
- Notes from our conversation with Signal Hill Magazine’s Editors-In-Chief Liza Yeager and Jackson Roach, and a link to the full recording
- Final call for input on CAC's future through our member survey
- A generous discount to the newly opened Link Label Studios
- An invite to our next Happy Hour on September 30th!
- A couple of new job postings
On to the newsletter!
Signal Hill Magazine
If you're unfamiliar, Signal Hill is an incredible audio magazine and podcast created by Liza Yeager and Jackson Roach. In the year or so since launching, Signal Hill has been lauded from all around. It was listed as one of the best podcasts of 2025 by The New Yorker, The BBC, and The Atlantic.
Creators and editors-in-chief, Jackson and Liza, joined us for this month’s CAC call to talk about the magazine, what they aim to accomplish with it, and to share two pieces from their first issue.
The first piece is A Porous Place by Hannah Sassoon, which runs just over 60 minutes in its entirety. We played the first ~2 minutes without any set-up, as Liza and Jackson felt that was the best way to hear it.
Jackson and Liza spoke about intentionally breaking current conventions with the opening of this piece, which begins with almost 60 seconds of pure sound and texture before you hear the first spoken words. The choice to open this way was, according to Liza and Jackson, a very deliberate one. It challenges and invites the listener to listen closely.
We encourage you to listen to the full story of essayist Hannah Sassoons’ trip to southern France to work on a sheep farm, but then she learns about the military camp.
The second piece is Desperado by Neena Pathak which, once again, Liza and Jackson felt was best heard without an introduction.
Jackson and Liza wanted to share this piece because it was developed, written, and iterated on in a pretty unconventional way. Neena brought what was initially a very loose pitch about the—yet to be articulated—connection between hot yoga, and the passing of her father. Over weeks of writing, discussion, re-arranging, and debate, the piece took shape.
Signal Hill is now taking pitches for future issues. You’ll find the link to the pitch form on their information page.
The full meeting recording of our conversation, and some wonderful discussion is available below on our YouTube Channel.
Signal Hill is a non-profit, listener funded publication. You can listen for free on their website, linked below, but if you make a tax-deductible monthly donation, you can help support this work.
To follow Signal Hill:
- Website: signalhill.fm
- Instagram: @signalhillfm
- Podcast Feed: Signal Hill (Apple, Spotify)
Final Call for Member Survey
Tomorrow is the deadline for completing our member survey and if you haven’t submitted yet we want to hear from you!
It only takes a couple minutes to fill it and it’ll help us create the programming that you want and need.
This survey was developed with the help of our Advisory Board and a number of very supportive members who participated in focus groups.
Link Label Studios Open Now
When we saw that a new podcast production space opened downtown, we decided to reach out and introduce ourselves and our community. Link Label was happy to hear about CAC, and we had a great convo. Here's a bit more about them from the team at Link Label:
Link Label Studios is a podcasting and creative studio located in Chicago, IL, built for creators, brands, and storytellers who want their content to look and sound exceptional. From podcast recording to full media production, our studio provides the tools and environment needed to create content that stands out.
They were thrilled to learn about our community and very generously offered CAC members two discount codes:
- CAC50 – 50% off for first-time users
- CAC20 – 20% off for CAC members
To learn more about Link Label, check out their website. And if you're looking to book with the discount code, see the booking page below.
Happy Hour on September 30th!
We've just scheduling our next Happy Hour for this fall. We'll be at Pilot Project Brewing in Wrigleyville on September 30th from 6-8pm. See you there!
We're also working on another event this fall with John Fecile, a producer from Snap Judgement. Stand by for more info on that soon!
Chicago Audio Jobs and Internships
This is a non-exhaustive list of audio related job postings in the Chicago area. If you've got a job or an internship to share, shoot me an email at ian@chiaudiocollective.com