Compiled by Tess Connery
LiSTNR’s Gripped: You Don’t Know Me scores an AWGIE Award nomination
The 56th annual AWGIE Awards are set to be presented in Sydney on February 15, and the awards recognising the outstanding achievements of Australian performance writers. Series Writer of LiSTNR’s original audio drama podcast Gripped: You Don’t Know Me, Jacklyn Bassanelli, has been nominated for an AWGIE by the Australian Writers Guild in the Audio Fiction category.
Podcast Week’s Tess Connery caught up with Bassanelli to speak about the nomination, and what it is that has so many people hooked on You Don’t Know Me.
Jacklyn Bassanelli
“I found out a couple of weeks ago when they sent out the press release to everyone – that was a nice surprise! The AWGIE Awards are completely writer-driven, so it’s quite an acknowledgement for me as a writer,” Bassanelli laughs.
“I submitted the scripts late last year to be assessed by other members of the guild. Because I wrote all six episodes of the series, I had to choose a particular episode to be judged. I had a bit of a chat with Jen [Goggin] and we both loved episode five, so that’s the one I submitted.”
The AWGIEs are created by writers, for writers, and judge the awards on their scrips rather than the finished project.
“Being judged by your peers, it’s so different,” said Bassanelli. “It’s different to being judged on the success of the project, or on how it turns out after production. Obviously, the show’s gone really well which has been fantastic for everyone, but it gets judged on the script.”
In amongst all the mystery of You Don’t Know Me, at the heart of the narrative Bassanelli said that “the family drama is really at the core of it.”
“With the book, it’s a really interesting perspective – from the brother of someone who is accused of murder, or an unsolved crime. Then for the story to look around the family at repercussions for all the members, particularly the younger brother, Noah, I think that’s a nice twist on a mystery. It’s an interesting angle.”
When asked how she approached writing the series, Bassanelli said that “When we set about adapting the novel, I imagined it as someone watching a TV show but for the ears.”
“We had the advantage of the book and the podcast within the book, so that really gave us a lot of help structuring and getting information across that needs to be shared with the audience.
“The book has two narrative strands – Alice and Noah. At first, we started to try and tell those stories side by side, but it just became too complex for the listener. Our producer Jen Goggin came in and helped us structure it in a way that was a little bit easier for the listener to follow. We’re all just discovering what works in audio, especially in fiction. It’s not new – people have been doing radio dramas forever – but it’s not a common format.”
[Listent to You Don’t Know Me here]
10 crime podcasts to tune into on LiSTNR in 2024
Australians love their crime podcasts, and LiSTNR has released the top 10 crime podcasts.
1. Disclosed: The Children In The Pictures [Listen here]
2. Fairy Meadow (BBC) [Listen here]
3. Gripped: You Don’t Know Me [Listen here]
4. Crime Insiders: Forensics – The Unabomber [Listen here]
5. Crime Insiders: Detectives – The Hunt for Malcolm Naden [Listen here]
6. The Dry – Audio drama (BBC) [Listen here]
7. The Vanished (Wondery) [Listen here]
8. Crime Junkie – Conspiracy: Philip Island [Listen here]
9. Dateline NBC – The Murdaugh Murders: Inside the Investigation [Listen here]
10. Crime Insiders: In Focus – The Real Chopper: Part 1 & 2 – Man or Myth [Listen here]
The Daily Aus investigate vaping in Australia on Understanding Vaping
ARN’s iHeart and The Daily Aus have announced a three-part podcast series investigating vaping in Australia – the laws, the loopholes and what they’re doing to our lungs.
Zara Seidler, co-founder of The Daily Aus, said “Vaping has quickly become a major challenge, not just in school playgrounds but in politics. It’s an issue young people are directly and disproportionately impacted by, so we wanted to investigate how this has happened, and what happens from here.”
The series features candid discussions with experts and stakeholders across various domains including; Health Minister Mark Butler, Senator Matt Canavan, policy expert Associate Professor Becky Freeman, health expert Professor Emily Banks and toxicologist Dr. Jody Moller.
[Listen to Understanding Vaping here]
Improving your posture with Tiff Hall
On the latest episode of Nova Podcast’s Bounce Forward, host Tiff Hall spoke about the exercises that will improve your posture.
The team at Bounce Forward are changing things up so that Tiff is able to answer more listener questions. Each week Tiff will have a few more episodes where she answers questions on topics from fitness goals, to helping with plateaus, and mental health.
“The key to fixing poor posture is strengthening and stretching out the muscles in the upper back the chest and the core,” she said.
“Shoulder strengtheners include scapula squeezes – like squeezing your shoulder blades together for 30 seconds at a time – and rows using a resistance band to pull back your elbows. Rowing, chin tucks, and shoulder rolls in general are fantastic.
“For upper back, I love lat pull downs, you can really feel you’re drawing your shoulder blades into your back pockets. And push-ups are also an anti-hunch exercise and can be done in a million different modifications and variations to suit every level and ability.”
[Listen to Bounce Forward here]
SBS podcasts launch The SBS Book Club and Humans of the Australian Deaf Community
SBS is gearing up to release more podcasts that shine a light on Australian stories, starting this month with some of the nation’s best-selling authors and extraordinary Deaf Australians.
Named Best Publisher at the Australian Podcast Awards, SBS is starting the year with The SBS Book Club which celebrates the power of a great story with some of the biggest names in Australian fiction including Shankari Chandran, author of the award-winning Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, Melissa Lucashenko, author of Edenglassie, Tony Birch, author of Women and Children, Yumna Kassab, author of The Lovers, and Mirandi Riwoe, author of Sunbirds.
Host and executive producer, Sarah Malik, discusses how novels reflect the realities of modern multicultural Australia – including the themes of race, family, friendship and love – and how today’s writing contributes to new perspectives of how Australia was, is and could be.
This year also marks a new chapter for Auslan podcast Our Deaf Ways; a follow up season titled Humans of the Australian Deaf Community. It is a series of short video profiles spotlighting the lives of Deaf people working in various fields around Australia starting with Queer, Deaf artist from Adelaide, William Maggs.
This year will also premiere two companion podcasts to SBS’s television content: Alone Australia: The Podcast which will accompany season two of the TV series Alone Australia and Insightful with Kumi Taguchi will delve deeper into the stories of SBS news and current affairs program Insight.
[Listen to The SBS Book Club and Humans of the Australian Deaf Community here]
