Leveraging one of the biggest strengths of podcasting as a format, interview podcasts allow hosts to pursue extraordinarily intimate conversations with their guests, and this category highlights podcasts which use this to deliver powerful and moving moments, and previously unheard revelations. Stand-out podcasts in this category demonstrate honesty, compassion and vulnerability, both with their guests and with the listener.
Winner: The Lawyer, the Sniper and the NSW Police
The Lawyer, the Sniper and the NSW Police is a truly remarkable listen. Although the eight-part show features guests for interview, the hosts are mainly interviewing each other about their respective traumas in the police force.
Lisa Nguyen is a police lawyer who discusses her rape by a police colleague in 2019, while co-host Mark Davidson speaks about his experiences as the lead sniper in the Lindt Cafe Siege five years earlier. Together they explore their respective experiences and the fallout, alongside guests specialising in trauma, police culture and law. The aim is not just to put police culture under the microscope, but to propose new systems to bring about change.
Without promotion, the podcast has received 20,000 listens. The hope is that the powerful series has reached enough members of the police force that the structural changes suggested by the podcast can be seriously considered and actioned.
