Show Notes
This week we are featuring our first story from our Jesse Cox Audio Fellowship 2026! More than 15 Years ago, Jesse Cox co-developed an incredible audio narrative program on fbi.radio called All The Best. JCAF is an audio mentorship program, pretty one-of-a-kind, championing the kind of work and spirit our show's co-founder upheld and honouring his legacy.
After the Storm, Episode 1 - Arrivals by Ramon Briant Ramon brings us a Black Mirror-esque vision of Sydney. In 2075, a jaded ex-revolutionary is called back to Australia to complete his mission, but must avoid detection and navigate the world he left behind to be reunited with the ones he loves. After The Storm is an original audio fiction written and produced by Ramon Briant. The mentor and supervising producer was Ian Walker. Starring: Indiana Kwong as Alex, Tabitha Lafernis as the Robots Voice and Ad woman, Vinay Seethamraju as the customs officer, Catarina Fraga Matos as the news reader, Aileen Hyuyn as Sonia and Ramon Briant as Forest. This episode was produced with the support of All The Best and The Jesse Cox Audio Fellowship.
Shout-outs! Thank you to the friends and family of Jesse Cox, and to everyone who made JCAF 2026 possible. Our JCAF 2026 Fellows were Ramon Briant, Shareeka Helaluddin, Tessa Campisi and Anna Outridge The JCAF Mentors were Ian Walker, Farz Edraki, Liz Keen and Jon Tjhia The Workshop facilitators were Janak Rogers, Belinda Lopez, Jon Tjhia, Camilla Hannaan, Sophie Townsend, Mell Chun and Wing Kuang. And the Program facilitator was our executive producer, Mel Bakewell.
Pssst! Applications for the Jesse Cox Audio Fellowship 2027 are open. Just head over to the All The Best Radio website. Keep an ear out for the announcement of JCAF listening party to hear excerpts from the JCAF 2026 participants.
Join ATB! If you are looking to jump-start your radio career, applications for a Digital Trainee to go between All The Best at fbi.radio and The Wire at 2SER are open.
All the Best Credits Host: Gabriella Accaria Executive Producer: Melanie Bakewell Programming & Community Coordinator: Catarina Fraga Matos Production Manager: Kwame Slusher All The Best Intern: Nili Javid Theme Music composed by Shining Bird And a special shout-out to all our volunteers! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
More from All The Best
"...as an act of justice doing and expressing how much I care for them, and I guess also the sacredness of all life in witnessing and experiencing multiple genocides and affrontations of, like, what's happening on these lands I think navigating grief as an act of love maybe gave me a sense of autonomy and being able to move through with a, with a bit more grace and not letting it subsume me all of the time." - Shareeka Helaluddin
There is this Tolstoy quote from Anna Karenina, "All Happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." I've always struggled with this binary. This idea of happiness or unhappiness as somehow being fixed states. No nuance. I think real families, ones outside Russian fiction, exist on a more complex spectrum.
Sooooo ... the best way to think of this episode is a bit like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. But instead of there being a bereaved scientist obsessed with resurrection, we have a monster of a story stuck together from different audio body parts made by audio makers from all over the world. Our Programming and Community Coordinator Catarina Fraga Matos breaks down the way the audio corpse works:
Speculative fiction is all about reimagining the world. Taking something ordinary, turning it upside down, and asking, 'What if?'