On March 22, the second annual Ambie Awards, honoring excellence in podcasting, will be held at downtown L.A.’s Mayan theater (and livestreamed on Twitch). Hosted by Ross Mathews and Nikki Boyer, the event will be the first in-person ceremony for the nods, launched last year to celebrate a medium that rapidly has come into its own, attracting big-money deals and inspiring some of TV’s most talked-about series. Yet it remains a playground with few barriers to entry, as demonstrated by the wide range of nominees showcased in the following voters’ guide, including A-list stars and indie upstarts. As Donald Albright, chairperson of the Podcast Academy, puts it, “We have the possibility to tell the stories we want to tell without the gatekeepers.”
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'9/12'
Image Credit: Courtesy of Subject Amazon Music, Pineapple Street Studios and Wondery
Showrunner Dan Taberski (Missing Richard Simmons) examines unexpected and often absurd ways the world reckoned with 9/11.
FAVORITE EPISODE ” ‘Too Soon,’ about how The Onion and other comedy people tried to square the horrible thing that just happened with the imperative to make jokes about it,” says Taberski. “I already laugh too much in interviews, but man, did I laugh a lot in those.”
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'A Slight Change of Plans'
Image Credit: Courtesy of Subject Pushkin Industries
Host Maya Shankar, a cognitive scientist who served in the Obama administration, interviews guests both famous and not to understand how we react to radical change.
BEST INTERVIEW “Amanda Knox, who was wrongfully convicted of murder in her 20s,” says Shankar. “Amanda has one of the most reflective, introspective minds I’ve come across. Her insights blew me away.”
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'Alligator Candy'
Image Credit: Courtesy of Subject USG Audio
In an adaptation of his memoir of the same name, journalist David Kushner revisits the traumatic disappearance of his older brother in Florida in 1973.
KEY FIND “A couple years after my brother died, my mom sat down at the piano and recorded herself improvising a song for him. While I was making the podcast, she found the tape,” says Kushner. “Having it in the podcast is a treasure.”
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'Believe Her'
Image Credit: Courtesy of Subject Lemonada & Spiegel & Grau
Investigative reporter Justine van der Leun finds evidence forcing us to rethink the 2017 conviction of Nikki Addimando, sentenced to 19 years in prison for killing her abusive partner.
FAVORITE EPISODE “The first episode, ‘Chris Is Dead,’ was a piece of audio art,” says executive producer and Lemonada co-founder Stephanie Wittels Wachs, “the way it opens and lays out the case for everyone.”
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'The Bill Simmons Podcast'
Image Credit: Courtesy of Subject The Ringer, Spotify Studios
Two years after selling his site and podcasting empire The Ringer to Spotify for nearly $200 million, Simmons continues to host his phenomenally successful, near-daily sports and culture talk show.
EARLY ADOPTER Simmons has been podcasting since 2007, starting with ESPN.
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'Earth Eclipsed'
Image Credit: Courtesy of Subject The Lunar Company
The eight-part sci-fi series, about a neuroscientist on the verge of a potentially galaxy-saving discovery, is The Lunar Company’s debut project.
WHY A PODCAST? “For Earth Eclipsed to have been a TV show or movie, the location budget alone would’ve been prohibitive, not to mention VFX, and everything else,” says co-creator Victor Lee. “Developing the series for audio was the only way Earth Eclipsed got off the launchpad.”
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'False Idol'
Image Credit: Courtesy of Subject Religion of Sports, PRX
Sports reporter Tim Rohan delves into the story of Oscar Pistorius, the South African Olympian and Paralympian who killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, in 2013.
ADVANTAGE OF THE MEDIUM “Podcasts allow the host to pull back the curtain, to walk the listener through the reporting process, through all the ups and downs and revelations,” says Rohan. “As a print journalist, you do all of that on your own.”
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'Have You Heard George's Podcast?'
Image Credit: Courtesy of Subject BBC Sounds
Since 2019, the British spoken-word artist and rapper George the Poet has let his life and curiosity dictate the topics of this eclectic, Peabody-winning series.
FAVORITE EPISODE “Right now it’s ‘Who Hurt R&B?’ ” says George. “It helped me talk about the depiction of Black relationships in popular music, which has been weighing on my mind.”
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'Hooked'
Image Credit: Courtesy of Subject Apple TV+ Original podcast, produced by Campside Media
The saga of a Boeing engineer who became an extraordinarily prolific bank robber to feed his ravaging OxyContin addiction.
WHY THIS SUBJECT? “Tony Hathaway’s story was sort of the perfect one for telling the larger story of the opioid crisis,” says host Josh Dean. “Because you come for the bank robbing, but stay for the gut-wrenching human story behind it.”
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'The Imperfection'
Image Credit: Courtesy of Subject Wolf at the Door
The magic-realist adventures of two people who experience regular hallucinations and go off in search of their missing psychiatrist in a hidden, underground borough of New York.
ADVANTAGE OF THE MEDIUM “Every audio drama is a partnership with the listener to turn them into the set decorator,” says Alexander Kemp, who created the series with wife Winnie. “Their brain fills out the scene.”
This story first appeared in the March 2 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
