Award-Winning Original and Branded Podcasts
2021 SILVER, 2020 GOLD AND SILVER WINNER LOWELL THOMAS AWARD FOR BEST PODCAST
2020 GOLD WINNER LOWELL THOMAS AWARD FOR BEST RADIO BROADCAST
2021 GOLD AND BRONZE WINNER NORTH AMERICAN TRAVEL JOURNALISTS ASSOCIATION FOR BEST PODCAST
When story matters…
Come inside the award-winning audio world of Black Cabin Studio. Lauded journalists and audio pros, finding and crafting must-listen original and branded content. All to build, transform and inspire audiences. Yours and ours.
Have a listen…
Here & There:
A Canadian Geographic Travel Podcast
Here & There shares deep-dive travel documentaries from across Canada and around the world — the sort of big-idea stories that might change everything about the way you see places and the people who live there.
North Americana
Our flagship show, our baby. North Americana has won all major travel journalism awards across North America. On our third season now, North Americana continues to set the bar for narrative travel journalism. Every story champions sustainable exploration — from embedding with Yukon Quest mushers to chatting with Canadian comedy giants who changed American comedy. Our vivid up-close storytelling digs for what we call, “the one big thing”. That essential, often surprising truth, about a people, their culture, where they live. The sort of thing, if you knew only this before you went, it would change the way you saw everything.
Canada’s Calling
With a strong launch season salted, Canada’s Calling explores every nook and cranny of this stunning diverse nation, and celebrates all the people who call it home. Black Cabin is proud to lead the next, re-imagined chapter of this Destination Canada podcast — in production now and launching January 2023.
The New Healthy Building
Our branded podcast for Thomas Cole Inc. tells real stories about transforming communities and saving the planet one building at a time. Sounds like big talk? Maybe for some, but not this group. Very cool, exciting stories about technology and people that will both change and save the world.
Who we are…
We’re a team of veteran journalists with an eye for stories that subscribers of major media platforms will pay to read and listeners around the world will wait in their driveways or stay up too late, just to hear out to the end.
We believe in the power of audio to engage and inspire like few other media. Yup, we agree, “the medium is the message”, and we love thinking how Marshall McLuhan’s head would explode now pondering all this.
We believe too in the power of great storytelling, to make a difference to an individual, to a community, to a company, even to the world.
And we bring this hard-won savvy, this unrelenting quest to create something special, to each and every project, each and every story.
Again, yours and ours.
The Team
Liz Beatty
Executive Producer
Liz Beatty is an award-winning feature writer, broadcaster and podcaster. She’s won all the top awards for podcasting, radio broadcasting and feature writing in the travel and culture lane. Her show North Americana took the 2021 Silver, and both 2020 Gold and Silver Lowell Thomas Awards for Best Podcast from the Society of American Travel Writers. North Americana also took 2021 Gold and Bronze for Best Podcast from the North American Travel Journalists Association.
Liz had been a regular contributor to National Geographic Travel magazine, books and blogs for years. She writes too for The Guardian, T+L, AARP, The Walrus, Toronto Life and others. She’s an alumna of the revered Transom Radio Documentary Workshop. Before North Americana, Liz launched a travel show in 2017 as host and executive producer on SiriusXM Canada Talks. For two years running, she won top honours in radio broadcasting/podcasting from both the Society of American Travel Writers and the North American Travel Journalists Association. She has photographed, written about and produced award-winning stories on everything from the great climbs of the 100th Tour de France for National Geographic to finding the last vestiges of nomadic gaucho culture off the grid in Northern Argentina for Canadian Geographic and SiriusXM.
Lia Grainger
Senior Producer
Lia Grainger is our award-winning Senior Producer and a freelance feature writer based in Toronto. Born and raised in Vancouver, she now works in print and audio in Canada, the United States and Europe.
As senior producer for North Americana, her work for our 2021 season won a Silver Lowell Thomas Award for Podcast.
Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, The Toronto Star, National Post, Chatelaine, Vancouver Magazine, Toronto Life, This Magazine, Utne Reader, and many others.
She is also a professional flamenco dancer and artistic director of the touring world music ensemble Qairo.
Scott Gurian
Contributing Producer
Host and producer of his acclaimed podcast Far From Home, Scott Gurian is an immersive travel and culture documentarian, drawn to fascinating stories in faraway places.
Scott has documented adventures like an18,000 mile (29k km) road trip from the U.K. to Mongolia and back as part of the Mongol Rally. He’s taken listeners into the abandoned buildings in Chernobyl, visited Iran as an American tourist, attempted to learn the art of Tuvan throat singing, and participated in a hallucinogenic ayahuasca ceremony in Peru!
His work wins top honours from the North American Travel Journalists Association year after year, including 2020 Gold and 2021 Silver for Best Podcast. The Guardian calls Far From Home “a brilliant listen,” and The Washington Post recommends the show “if you are a fan of ‘This American Life’ or ‘Serial’ without the murder.”
Scott is also a Peabody award-winning journalist who worked in public radio (WNYC, KGOU, et al) for many years, reporting for places like NPR and the BBC. He also produced stories for podcasts like Planet Money and 99% Invisible. Scott is an Emerson College alum.