Late last year, streaming music service Spotify gave podcasters the chance to blend published music into their shows. Spotify’s podcast creation tool, Anchor, lets creators embed songs from the streaming service’s vast library of music.  While there are hundreds of services offering royalty free music for pods, only shows as popular as This American Life can afford to license commercial tracks.  One of the best examples of these new blended podcasts is the Australian hip-hop podcast, A1: The...

Industrial Relations with Urzila Carlson   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Peter Kafka has been speaking to the most important people in media for the last decade.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Think your podcast is niche? The Mac Admins podcast speaks to a tiny group of professionals each week - it has done for five years now. The show has gone from a weekly catch up has turned into "some beer money" - thanks to the hosts understanding and communicating with the community.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Scott Galloway is one of the smartest thinkers with a microphone. Im so glad I was able to speak to him   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In her long career as a journalist, Dr. Fiona Reynolds reported on the Thredbo landslide, interviewed Bruce and Denise Morcombe, who sacrificed their privacy to appeal for help in the search of the son Daniel, and spoke with Rosie Batty, who became the face of change in the move against domestic violence after an unfathomable tragedy.  “I had seen many, many people throughout that time suddenly go from being anonymous to an overnight headline; their lives poured over, their personal lives...

Declan Fay has been podcasting for a decade. in 2021 he is close to celebrating 200 episodes of his podcast The Sweetest Plum, an indie comedy pod. We also talk about Cross Bread, one of my favourite pods of 2020.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The host of The Hardest Word was an early adopter of the podcast medium, creating podcasts Hootville and The Anglican and the Atheist in 2004. He was a young kid with a pocket full of pod-dreams. Alas the dawn of podcasting's golden age was a decade away and the podcasts withered along with his ego.  Since then Brett has strutted stages as a speaker and emcee. When not basking in the limelight he consults on marketing and communications via his agency Hootville Communications.  He lives...

As head of ABC Audio Studios for the last decade, Kellie Riordan was responsible for some of Australia’s most loved podcasts. Riordan championed a diverse slate of shows, from the true crime series Unravel, Ladies We Need To Talk, and an unflinching look at someone experiencing a mental health crisis, No Feeling Is Final.  “I've had the privilege to make, or be part of the making of a lot of great shows over the last few years.” says Riordan. “To see the escalation in the amount of great...

Yeah Nah, Pasaran is a weekly show dedicated to putting fascism and the far right under the microscope. The independent podcast has become a must listen for those wishing to track the organisation of far right movements in Australia. The podcast takes its name from the anti-facist rally cry ¡No pasarán!, popularised during the Spanish Civil War, and gives it a wonderful Australian spin. Hosts Andy Fleming and Cam Smith have been investigating facist and far right movements in Australia for...

Greg Larsen tells a familiar story of life as a comedian during 2020. He had a show ready to debut at the Melbourne Comedy Festival when covid cancelled the festival. But rather than scramble to move his work online, Larsen had been podcasting for some time, and had built a loyal audience.  “I was doing a one man play. And it was probably the most ambitious show I've ever done. And I spent a lot of work on it, a lot of time on it, and then it was cancelled. Okay.” Before I had a chance to...

Red Hot Australian Christmas is a darkly funny 45 minute radio play set during last year’s devastating bushfire season. It’s the story of Heather, a matriarch trying her best to ignore the fires and host Christmas for her extended family. She stays strong even as the mercury rises and smoke starts to engulf her homestead in Maffra, Gippsland, until a code red is called, and all are forced to evacuate.  The play was written and directed by comedian and author Tegan Higginbotham. The radio play...

You know that meme of the girl sitting beside the ice cream sign, "this is what its like to listen to podcasts"? That's me whenever a new episode of Oh No Ross and Carrie drops. If you've never heard their show, you're in for a treat, there's so many amazing episodes in the archives to explore. https://ohnopodcast.com   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Marc Fennell is the busiest man in podcasting. Beyond his weekly technology podcast, Download This Show, Marc has made a series of short run series for Audible, and is now back at the ABC with Stuff The British Stole.  Marc shares how he came up with the show, from development to pitch, and then how the hell do you record a podcast that takes the listener to all parts of the globe when the world is locked down?  Marc is always generous with his time and incredibly entertaining when talking...

Days Like These, the latest podcast from ABC Studios, will feel immediately familiar to podcast fans. The series has the structure and tone of classic non-fiction podcasts, like This American Life, while still sounding completely Australian and unique. Producers Rachel Fountain and Ian Walker are happy with the comparison, and cite Reply All and Heavyweight as further inspiration for the show. Ian and Rachel tell us about putting a podcast together remotely, and how they created a very firm...

Podcasts can be incredibly niche affairs, allowing creators to indulge in their obsessions without chasing mass market appeal. Case in point is comedian Tim Ross' latest, House Stories; a short run series on the rarely seen tapestries of the Sydney Opera House. When I mentioned how niche the subject matter was, Ross laughed and pointed to the recently wildly successful Netflix documentary, My Octopus Teacher, as evidence that "a great story is a great story, despite what it’s about." - read...

Dr Amantha Imber is an organisational psychologist, best-selling author, and founder of Australia’s leading innovation consultancy Inventium. Her thoughts have appeared in Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Fast Company and she is the author of two best-selling books: “The Creativity Formula” and “The Innovation Formula”. Amantha is the host of the number one ranking business podcast How I Work, where she interviews some of the world’s leading innovators about their habits,...

Nazeem Hussain was preparing for a month-long run at the Melbourne International Comedy festival, followed by a national tour, when COVID-19 upended his plans. Knowing all Australian comedians were in a similar situation, Hussain launched a podcast: The Survivor’s Guide to Coronavirus. Hussain was buoyed by the "family spirit amongst comedians" who supported each other, emotionally and financially, while live venues shuttered across Australia. Nazeem talks about life in Melbourne's...

Brianna Peterson may have one of the most recognisable voices for the under ten set. For the last two years Peterson hosted Imagine This, an ABC science podcast for kids, that answered the big questions like why we get hiccups, and why mosquito bites are so itchy... Peterson has since gone independent, and her new podcast At Home With Brie is now available. The show is divided into day and night playlists; one to encourage kids to explore the world around them, the other to calm them down for...

American singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer was part-way through a world tour when COVID-19 shut the world down. As luck would have it, she was in New Zealand when her flights were cancelled. "I think I won the jackpot on this one very much by accident, but I am really, really lucky, as an American and especially as a parent of a small child," Palmer says. Palmer has spent her time in New Zealand finishing a podcast she started two years earlier. The podcast, The Art Of Asking Everything, has...

Kara Swisher joins me to talk about her new podcast with the New York Times, Sway. We also discuss her twenty year career on the tech beat, 500 episodes of Recode Decode, and discovering the big dog, Scott Galloway, for her podcast Pivot. Along the way we talk about the importance of finding a mentor, doing what you love, Trump and Twitter, and answer the big question of the day, who is more destructive to democracy Rupert Murdoch or Mark Zuckerberg?   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and...

After three seasons of the ABC's excellent political podcast Russia, If You're Listening, host Matt Bevan is back with new episodes focused purely on the last four years of Trump. Now renamed America, If You're Listening, the show will dive deep into a different defining moment in the US president's first term each episode, beginning with Hurricane Maria which tore through Puerto Rico in 2017. The official death count for this tragedy is 64, a number Trump repeated often, despite an estimated...

Among the glut of true crime podcasts released post Serial, one series stood out. Trace, from ABC’s Rachael Brown, ignored the sensationalist trappings of so many true crime yarns, remembering the victim and her surviving family are real people, not binge-worthy characters created for our entertainment - you can read my interview with Rachael in the Sydney Morning Herald, but here's our full discussion. Both seasons of Trace are fantastic, but you know that. Trace has been number one in Apple...

Amy Donaldson and Hunter Mulcare host one of my favourite independent podcasts, Two Shrinks Pod. The pair join me to discuss how the pod came to be, as well as mental health in the time of covid, is our government offering enough support to vulnerable people, and exactly what mental health issues does Dobby the house elf suffer from.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.