British Podcast Awards 2025
It’s always a pleasure to be an award judge and gives me a perfect excuse to immerse myself in new podcasts. In judging both the British Podcast Awards, and their more ‘Indie’ relation the Independent Podcast Awards, I learnt that anything can be interesting if the storytelling and presentation choices are right.
Podcast tastes are very personal. We are drawn to them by the subject matter, the presenter’s voice, the music, the guests’ voices, the narration and sound effects. It’s the magic mix that encourages us to rate one more highly than another.
In 2017 when I made my first ten podcasts, for Kings Cross Story Palace I began with an oral history approach, and still prefer to give artists space to tell their story in a straightforward way. Each episode of Materially Speaking captures the essence of one artist’s life, while the series tells the overarching story of a rare artistic community held together by one natural resource - stone.
Since the pandemic, podcasts have become an important part of the broadcast and entertainment industry, and the winners of the British Podcast Awards are mainly produced by the giants like Audible, BBC, ITV and Sony Music.
From the shortlist of the Independent Podcast Awards I’d love to share a few hidden gems that I enjoyed, either because they made me think about something new, were brave, lobbied for social change or are just plain entertaining. Here goes:
Communication expert Sue Keogh reveals how design impacts decisions and emotions. She discusses how instructions for medical devices are made, recipes are written and how the manner a voting slip is created impacts democracy.
Masala is a South Asian feminist podcast uncovering cultural taboos like sexuality, menopause, mental health and sexual harassment. Sangeeta Pillai is a force of nature and her brave approach has won a huge following, including me.
Who Owns the Clyde podcast is an intelligent citizen-led investigation into ownership of Glasgow's iconic river through a kaleidoscope of voices, soundscapes and poetry. The warm presenters really ‘showed not told’ their case. I loved that they created a community event too and offered a clear invitation to come and get involved.
Spoiler alert … this won! Nicely presented with a variety of voices and excerpts from historic interviews. A podcast about language and accents and words. A good variety of voices and contributors and I liked hearing about the list of familiar Yiddish words in contemporary use. Well edited, well researched, and with Michael Rosen as one of the excellent guests.