IN EAR SHOT

Storytelling to explain complex and sometimes difficult situations is an art as old as time. Podcasting, well that’s a little newer. But these Kiwi women are using the increasingly popular format to talk about taboo topics and take charge of the narrative, writes

“Nuku came about from a time in my life where I really needed to connect with indigenous women’s voices.”

QIANE MATATA-SIPU

Meghan Markle’s much-hyped podcast Archetypes, launched in August, featuring discussions on well-covered ground in contemporary feminism through interviews with celebrity guests. It has garnered listeners in the many millions, topped Spotify charts including in Aotearoa, and managed to knock the wildly popular, reliably controversial oe Rogan from the top spot of Spotify’s podcast charts at least for a while. ut she’s not the only woman challenging Rogan for audience share. Wāhine Nicola “Nix” Adams, who also launched her podcast Wellness F ...... Wednesday in August, has stayed high on NZ’s charts. Adams, who has a large social media following, shares without filter her struggles, including methamphetamine addiction and prison, and the lessons she’s been able to draw from those experiences while transforming her own life.

Adams is part of a cohort of women in Aotearoa who are helping to reshape media through their podcasting. The storytelling form is taking off, the only medium apart from S O streaming video on demand to actually buck the trend and increase users in the most recent NZ On Air research. isteners currently skew slightly male

the research doesn’t take into account nonbinary listeners. Yet it’s largely women who are using the medium to challenge biases, while telling damn good stories, and winning awards both at home and abroad.

“It just feels like because we’re talking about menopause, because we’re talking about ageing, it’s there’s been this sweet spot where we’re having intimate, intelligent, curious conversations, and podcasting seems to be a great platform for that,” says presenter Petra

agust on her series Grey Areas. Another high-charting podcast released this year, it’s all about still often taboo subjects related to ageing, particularly for women. Her aim is that Grey Areas allows listeners to feel like they can take charge of the narrative around getting older and approach it with optimism.

With its malleable format and directness, podcasting can allow for more agency in the telling of personal stories. Award-winning journalist, multimedia producer, photographer and author Qiane Matata-Sipu created her Nuku podcast as part of a larger project to share the knowledge and experiences of 100 indigenous women from Aotearoa, Australia and Hawaii. “Nuku came about from a time in my life where I really needed to connect with indigenous women’s voices, and I could see that other people needed that as well,” Matata-Sipu says. “And I wanted to challenge myself in the way that I documented those stories, because I come from a print journalism background… I wanted something different for this kaupapa, I really wanted story sovereignty. I wanted to ensure that the wāhine who I was interviewing had their own story sovereignty that you could hear from their voice, their full, raw, unfiltered lived experiences.”

ane Yee, head of podcasts for he p n , says that brands are increasingly recognising the growth and potential of podcasting and are upping budgets, helping to drive the aural expansion. Currently, 13% of New Zealanders listen to a podcast every day, but it’s not just the increasing reach of the format that makes it such a compelling medium, it’s the connection it engenders between the storytellers and their audience. With a progressively noisy media landscape fracturing our attention spans, the close-listening and audience commitment that podcasts can attract is rare and valuable. “The wonderful thing about podcasting is that it is a really immersive experience,” says Yee. “It’s an opt-in experience, so people

are intentional when they choose to listen to something. We know from heaps of global research that people listen because they like to be informed. And that’s not necessarily about what’s happening in the news, but they like to learn things, and they like to discover new things, or expand on their interests in quite an in-depth way.”

For Noelle McCarthy, the podcast is an ideal format to confront big topics – ageing, systemic racism in healthcare, modern masculinity – without them becoming dry or didactic. Well-known for her writing and broadcasting, McCarthy started the company Bird of Paradise Productions with her husband John Daniell in , a er they noticed a gap in Aotearoa’s market for telling intricate narratives through “built” podcasts, which are intensely researched and scripted rather than chatbased. “My background is in radio, and I’ve always valued that … intimate connection your voice can have with listeners, and I think the podcast is even more so, it stays with you,” says McCarthy, “...it’s a very intimate relationship you have with these people, with the character or the narrator, or whoever you’re listening to. I nd that really satisfying from a writer point of view, that … I can write something that has that connection.”

Beyond the grimly compulsive true crime genre that dominates the charts globally, or those featuring household names, having enough of an impact to get people talking and sharing podcasts is important. “One [aspect] is time…it takes a long time to build an audience,” says Yee. “And this is why the commitment of having to do it for the long run [is needed]. Unless you have a massive marketing and promotional budget… if you don’t have the backing of a major network or promotional push behind you, you know, word of mouth is still the number one way that podcasts grow.”

An artist, writer, producer and activist, Kahu Kutia is the woman behind award-winning RNZ podcast He Kākano Ahau, which in its rst series explored the ways urban M ori nd and maintain connections with their cultural identity, and in season two drew on knowledge from the past to envisage what the future could be like for M ori. Kutia has heard rsthand from listeners about the resonance of these stories. “With both seasons, [the response has] been so overwhelmingly positive and kind,” says Kutia. “Our second season in particular is very heavy, there’s an episode focused on suicide and also some pieces on takat pui, being queer. And then, you know, I had a lot of people reaching out, just talking about how emotional they were in listening to it, and maybe felt seen or heard or just felt really lucky to be part of those conversations.”

Travelling while disabled, religion, and how much you should spend on shoes if you can’t walk are just some of the topics covered in the awardwinning podcast What’s Wrong With You? – titled a er a question regularly asked of hosts Rebecca Dubber, a medal-winning Paralympian working in communications, and Stuff journalist Olivia Shivas, who doubles as a producer alongside Grace Stratton, founder of disability consultancy, communications and talent agency All Is For All. Through What’s Wrong With You? they’ve explored various facets of life in Aotearoa for disabled people through the voices of disabled people, while bringing a brilliant sense of humour to stories of navigating a world not designed with accessibility in mind – and dealing with misconceptions and stunningly intrusive questions

“The amount of time that it takes to put together an investigative podcast like that is huge.”

KIRSTEN JOHNSTONE

from nondisabled people. “From the beginning, we knew the topics we wanted to cover, but also within those topics about what would be explored,” says Shivas. “Like when we talked about the dating episode, we didn’t want it to be voyeuristic or a how do you do it type of thing. We wanted it to be like, why are people so interested in this, and … look at it a bit more critically.” The series cleverly subverts perceptions and is relevant listening for anyone who thinks the world should be accessible for everyone.

With a similar intent in sport, Zoe George, one of a handful of women working in sports journalism in Aotearoa, is driven to make the industry diverse and disability-inclusive. Through her podcast Fair Play on RNZ and now The Podium on tu , which will be covering the Women’s Rugby World Cup in October, she’s helped to make that a reality. “I went from this world of no, of people saying no to me, and then me having to go I’m just going to do it anyway, to then having this opportunity with tu where it’s a world of yes to ensuring that we’ve got better coverage,” says George.” We’re committed to coverage of women in sport, telling really great stories, while still o ering some of those traditional sports stories… that’s not going to go anywhere, and that will be part of our show. But there’s more to sport than just what happens on the eld.”

Meanwhile, using the podcast format to get wh nau opening up to one another, not just with an unseen audience, but with their nearest and dearest, is what Saraid de Silva and Julie Zhu did through Conversations With My Immigrant Parents. It’s a series that shares

rsthand intergenerational experiences of what belonging can mean. For de Silva, a writer and actor, and Zhu, a lm-maker and photographer, it was their rst experience with podcasting and there were some learning curves, such as how to create a space for families to open up within. “Just talking in a way that allows people to be vulnerable with you,” says Zhu. “Because we love those moments where the families can be vulnerable and emotional or talk about something that they haven’t talked about before, or is still an uncomfortable thing to talk about. So, trying to learn how to do that [but] still be sensitive.” “And then learning how to hold that and share it in a way that is respectful,” de Silva adds.

Self-described “audio nerds” and founders of Popsock Media podcast company, Melody Thomas and Kirsten Johnstone also had a crucial balancing act in producing The Lake, a series hosted by investigative journalist Aaron Smale, which delved into the horri c child abuse that occured at the Lake Alice psychiatric facility in the 1970s. “…It was really important to the survivors that their stories were not mediated or censored,” says Johnstone. “But we also had to protect our audience, if you know what I mean, not traumatise them. So we made the decision to separate out the fourth episode, which had a lot of the worst stu that nobody had heard before, and make that a self-contained thing that you could listen to if you felt like you could take it, or skip it if you didn’t want to go there”. “And,” says Thomas, “still follow the thread of the story.” Both searing and compassionate, The Lake won best narrative/serial podcast at the 2022 Voyager Media Awards and gold at this year’s New York Festival Radio Awards.

An aspect that continually came up in discussions with the women making these compelling podcasts is the amount of work that goes into creating them. Despite the relatively simple set-up needed to record them, layering the various components together can be demanding and involves a lot of learning on the go. “The amount of time that it takes to put together an investigative podcast like that is huge,” says Johnstone of The Lake. As McCarthy points out, you don’t necessarily feel the e ort that goes into creating these kinds of podcasts, and that’s part of what makes the listening so engaging, they ow seamlessly. “It was a lot of work,” echoes Dubber of making What’s Wrong With You? “And to be honest, I don’t think I appreciated how much work it was going to be when we rst agreed to do it. But when I listened back to the episodes, and to the feedback that I still regularly get from people in my Instagram DMs [direct messages] … it absolutely makes it all worth it. And, you know, I would do it all again, in a heartbeat.”

We’re not even close to saturation point for similar in-depth podcasts in Aotearoa, says Johnstone, “…because there aren’t enough people making [them], especially the type of thing we’re making, the narrative kind of podcast. There are not many outside of the big organisations like Stu and RNZ… I think there can always be more people being brought into that part of the industry.”