—— AUDIO BRIEFING SERVICE · PHARMA · BIOTECH · MEDTECH
Your science, heard.
Podcast and audio production for life sciences teams
Distributed life sciences teams are generating important knowledge every day — clinical updates, field intelligence, training content, pipeline shifts. The information lives in formats nobody finishes.
Audio changes that.
Produced audio has narrative structure, sound design, and editorial thinking that’s built for the way your team actually consumes information.
WHY AUDIO? WHY NOW? ——
Your team isn’t ignoring the content. They’re ignoring the format.
PDFs go unread. Slide decks get skimmed. All-hands recordings sit unwatched at 1.25x speed. Meanwhile, the same team members listen to an hour of audio on their commute without thinking twice.
The format is the problem. When complex scientific information is delivered in a format that fits how people actually spend time — in transit, between meetings, during a workout — completion rates change. Retention changes. Behavior changes.
Distributed teams can’t get current together
Global field teams, remote researchers, and distributed clinical staff need a way to stay aligned that doesn't require everyone in the same room at the same time. Asynchronous audio is the format built for that reality.
Training content loses the science when it loses the story
Most eLearning strips out the narrative to get through compliance review. Audio preserves the human voice, the expert insight, the texture of the science in a format that's still scalable and trackable.
HCPs won't sit through another slide-based program
Physician and specialist audiences are time-constrained and skeptical. On-demand audio that’s produced to the standard of content they choose to consume meets them where they are instead of asking them to show up for you.
—— SERVICES
Choose the audio format that fits your team.
Every engagement is scoped through a discovery conversation. While no two engagements are the same, the production is consistent: narrative-first, sound-designed, editorially structured audio built for the way life sciences professionals actually consume information.
We’re delivering produced audio that sounds like the content your audience actually chooses to listen to.
INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS
Audio Briefings for Distributed Teams
Done-for-you produced audio for organizations whose teams are too dispersed, too time-pressed, or too burned out on meetings to absorb information any other way. We script, produce, and deliver — you distribute.
Weekly or monthly pipeline briefings
Onboarding audio series for new field or clinical staff
Change management briefings during system or process rollouts
Leadership “state of the science” updates for global teams
Expert interview series around a product launch or trial readout
PRIMARY BUYERL&D · Internal Comms · HR
STARTING AT$3,500/mo
TRAINING ASSET
Audio as a Learning Modality
Produced audio integrated into eLearning modules, standalone microlearning series, or on-demand field reference tools. Built to hold attention through complex scientific content .
Narrated explainers embedded within compliance or onboarding modules
Scenario-based audio case studies for field training
Expert interview series as standalone microlearning
Spaced reinforcement audio series to support retention
Produced audio components for existing eLearning refreshes
PRIMARY BUYERL&D · Instructional Design
STARTING AT$4,500/mo
On starting with a pilot
The pilot is the hardest episode to make. That's the point.
Most clients come to us wanting to start with a pilot episode — something low-stakes to test the concept before committing. We welcome that. But a pilot isn't a trial run. It's the episode that establishes everything.
Voice. Tone. Pacing. Editorial framework. Sound design. How complex scientific information gets structured into a listenable narrative. The pilot is where all of those decisions get made — and made well — so every episode after it has a clear standard to meet.
Pilot engagement — $8,000–$12,000
The pilot is a standalone engagement, not a discounted first episode. It includes discovery, editorial framework development, script drafting, voice direction, full production, and two to three rounds of revision until the standard is locked. Clients who complete a pilot move into retainer production at a faster pace with fewer revision cycles — because the hard decisions have already been made.
Discovery & editorial scoping
We learn your content, your audience, and what you're trying to accomplish. We define the editorial framework — format, length, tone, structure — before a word of script is written.
Script development & voice work
We write the first script, you review it, we refine. Voice direction and host preparation are part of this phase — how the science sounds matters as much as what it says.
Production & sound design
Recording, editing, music, sound design. We produce to the standard of audio your audience chooses to consume voluntarily — not the standard of a recorded meeting.
Review, refine, lock the standard
Two to three rounds of feedback on the pilot. Once it's approved, the editorial standard is set — and every subsequent episode is produced against it efficiently.
Ongoing production at pace
With the framework established, ongoing episodes move faster. Retainer clients typically receive 2–4 episodes per month, with lighter revision cycles because the standard is already defined.
The work behind the work
We've produced science audio that people actually listened to.
Upstream Solutions is led by Dr. Zakiya Whatley — a PhD scientist, host, writer, executive producer, and science communicator who has built produced audio from the inside of the complexity problem, not as an outsider looking in. The science fluency is real. So is the production standard. Bringing the same podcast production expertise that powered a #1 Apple Podcasts life sciences show to your team's audio learning and briefing needs.
Boston Children's Hospital · NYT T Brand Studio
Breakthrough
A science podcast about the innovations revolutionizing the future of pediatrics — hosted and produced for one of the world's leading children's hospitals in collaboration with the New York Times.
#1 in Life Sciences on Apple Podcasts, June and August 2022
Webby Award Nominee — Health, Science & Education
Client returned for a second season
Spotify Studios
Dope Labs
A science and pop culture podcast that translates complex research for everyday audiences — built on the belief that science is for everyone, not just academics in ivory towers. Now in its fifth season.
Spotify Sound Up Winner — selected from 18,000+ applicants
Featured on CBS This Morning
289 episodes across 5 seasons · active
AAAS · Science Magazine
Science Podcast
Freelance producer and segment host for one of the world's most respected science journals — interviewing researchers across oncology, endocrinology, genomics, and biomedical devices.
Continuous protein monitoring — on-body sensors for transplant tracking and autoimmune early detection
Liquid biopsies for cancer — improving detection of circulating tumor DNA in the blood
Catoctin Furnace ancient DNA — tracing genetic history of enslaved African Americans to 41,000 living relatives
Fat storage and aging — the biology of middle-age weight gain and what it means for human health
What separates produced audio from recorded content
Narrative structure, not information sequence
A produced briefing is built around a story arc — tension, insight, resolution — not a slide outline read aloud. That's what makes it listenable at 6am on a commute versus exhausting in a conference room.
Sound design, not background noise
Music, pacing, and audio texture aren't decoration. They're how listeners orient themselves, know when something important is coming, and stay engaged through complex content. We design for that — intentionally.
Editorial thinking, not transcription
The script isn't a document read on a microphone. It's written for the ear — shorter sentences, spoken rhythm, strategic repetition. That's a different skill from writing, and it's why produced audio sounds different from everything else.
HOW TO START ——
Start with a conversation about the content.
We scope every audio engagement through a discovery conversation — what the content is, who the audience is, what you've tried before, and what format would actually serve your team. No template proposals until we understand the fit.
START HEREPilot Episode
A standalone engagement that establishes your editorial voice, sound design, and production standard. Everything that makes ongoing episodes efficient starts here.
$8,000–$12,000
STANDALONE · INCLUDES DISCOVERY, FRAMEWORK, FULL PRODUCTION + 2–3 REVISION ROUNDS
INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONSAudio Briefing Retainer
2-4 produced episodes per month. Scripted, produced, and delivered on your timeline — for the team that needs to stay current without adding to the meeting load.
$3,500/mo · $5,500–$6,000/mo
2 EPISODES · 4 EPISODES · FOLLOWS PILOT ENGAGEMENT
TRAINING ASSETAudio Learning Series
A produced audio series integrated into your training program or delivered as standalone microlearning. Project-based or ongoing — scoped to your content and timeline.
Starting at $4,500
PER SERIES · PROJECT OR RETAINER