Ginkgo Bioworks
Knight’s Laws: Ginkgo’s 15 Year Anniversary
Archival Research and Curation, Creative Direction, Strategic Consulting, Project Management, Catalog Development, Story Editing, Podcast Production, Sound Design
“Ginkgo Bioworks is turning 15 this year. To mark the occasion and celebrate our founder, Tom Knight, we worked with Jocelyn and the Arbo Radiko to produce our first archival storytelling podcast series exploring Tom’s career, Ginkgo’s history, and the genesis of the entire field of synthetic biology. The series leverages the power of audio and archival storytelling, drawing on untapped stories about Tom’s experiences and our history. We hope this project will make those stories accessible and memorable for the Bioworker-owners who have gotten us here and will take us into the future. I can’t overstate the cultural importance of projects like this, nor the brilliance of Jocelyn and the Arbo Radiko team in bringing this one to life. Beyond any simplistic metric, we know the truest impact of sharing our stories with the people we live and work with isn’t listeners per episode, but the time spent reflecting upon one’s own work and life, and the ideas and meaning we make after sharing those reflections together. The incredible crew at Arbo Radiko were a pleasure to work with every step of the way; like many who hear Tom and our founders and leaders tell the story, they got it, and like those of us who have caught the synbio bug, they were able to tell it too, and grow it in their own way. ”
The Ask
Debut a new podcast featuring Ginkgo founder Tom Knight in conversation with Creative Director Christina Agapakis over the course of six episodes to cover the arc of Tom’s career, the origins of synthetic biology, the genesis of Ginkgo, and more - delivered as a private internal podcast series for Ginkgo staff.
Our Deliverables
ARBO RADIKO embarked on an unprecedented mission to reimagine Ginkgo’s archival audio interview collection across a 6-episode podcast series as a new human resources and marketing vertical, uniting past, present and future Ginkgo staff and community supporters.
The series acts as an entry point for both existing and incoming staff members to discover the depths of Ginkgo's founding story, enhance company morale and cohesion, and boost staff engagement. The episodes allow staff to experience the breadth of available content for creative use, and acts as a ready-made bank of content for use in future marketing efforts. It draws out illuminating and touching stories prompted by Tom Knight’s most inspired career spanning memories in conversation with today’s Ginkgo team. Our work also positions the series to be developed for public audiences. The series is currently available as an internal Ginkgo asset, with a public facing podcast in development.
Our Reimagining
In order to enhance the interview format for the most engaging listening experience, we scripted and recorded new audio material with Christina Agapakis in order to seamlessly integrate her narrative voice with existing archival interview recordings from Tom Knight, that instantly makes the listener feel that the two voices are unified "in the same room” - enhancing the storytelling and maximizing production efficiencies. By conducting additional archival research before each recording session, our assemblies were informed by Ginkgo and biotech histories—in keeping with our mission to provide an overview of the company in context with wider cultural and biological evolutions.
