For the questions that stay with you
Most questions get a paragraph and a link. Some deserve more: the people involved, the place it happened, what was at stake, and what came after. Undertold exists to give any question that kind of answer, told as a story you can listen to.
Why we built it
The audio documentaries we love take a team weeks to make. A producer reads everything, finds the scene to open on, writes for the ear, chooses which voices carry the quotes, and lets music and silence do some of the work. That's why there are so few of them, and why they're almost never about the thing you happened to wonder about on the way home.
We wanted that craft for every question, including the small, specific ones nobody would commission. So we built a production process that follows the same steps a documentary team does, and runs them in minutes for one listener.
It isn't a replacement for journalists or documentary makers. It's built on their work: the sources it reads are theirs, and every episode tells you where its facts came from.
“Open in a scene, not with a summary. End on a turn or an open question.”
What we believe
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Curiosity is specific
Nobody wonders about “history”. They wonder why a lighthouse stood empty one December, or what the street outside used to be. The answer should be about exactly that.
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Craft is how you respect a listener
A list of facts read aloud is easy to make and hard to finish. Scenes, pacing, distinct voices and a score are what make forty minutes feel short.
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Sources belong in the story
You should be able to check any line you hear. Citations, verbatim quotes and plain statements of disagreement aren't footnotes; they're part of what makes a story worth trusting.
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Say what the machine does
Our narration is synthetic, and so is our music. We say so on every page where it matters, and we never present an episode as the work of a human journalist.
How we work
Every script follows the same house style. These rules are written into the production process itself, not left to chance.
The full flow, from question to finished mix, is on How it works. How we handle accuracy, quotes and AI is on Sources and trust.
- 1Write for the ear: short sentences beside long ones, and concrete detail
- 2Open each chapter in a scene, not with a summary
- 3Never invent facts, numbers, dates or quotes
- 4When sources disagree, say so plainly
- 5Be careful and fair with living people
- 6No filler and no moralising conclusion
Get in touch
Questions, corrections, press or partnerships: one inbox.
Found a factual error in an episode? The fastest route is “Report a problem” in the player, which tells us exactly where it is.
- Company
- Undertold (company details to be confirmed)
- Organisation number
- To be confirmed
- Registered address
- To be confirmed
- Website
- undertold.app