When all you want is entertainment and a little light relief, podcasts offer the perfect place to turn. The vibrant creativity of the podcasting community, combined with the intimate and immersive nature of the medium itself, makes it ideally suited to enjoyable escapism, and this category recognises the best shows meeting that need for their listeners.
Winner: Days Like These
Born during the strange days of the pandemic when the creators saw a need for a podcast to reach people, Days Like These is packed with strange and wonderful stories to touch our shared humanity. It’s a heart-filled show capable of making listeners laugh, cry and think.
Farz Edraki anchors the podcast with warm empathy, while a team of reporters bring unforgettable and unique stories from all over Australia and beyond. The stories focus on ordinary lives and the extraordinary things that humans do to get through them: from a muslim woman getting a donut-making lesson from a man in a Trump MAGA hat, to the Indigenous man learning about his family’s history of resistance, the stories are engrossing and unexpected.
The creators’ love for the craft of storytelling is obvious, and while the stories stand by themselves, the inventive sound design brings the wonder home extremely effectively.
