Show Notes
Happy New Year, and here is our second ‘best of’ episode. But this time it’s the All the Best staff picks. Cockroach by Jin Hien Lau Kwame’s first pick comes from #659 Extra(ordinary) Tales – Part One. What begins as a chance encounter with a cockroach on an escalator spirals into a wild story of movie nights, pop culture, and a swarm of roaches bursting out of a DVD case. Kwame loves this story for its humour and cockroach-themed 90s nostalgia. Produced by: Jin Hien Lau Sound design by: Gregory Thorsby The audio corpse Cat’s fav was the #641 The audio corpse. This piece is part of The Exquisite Audio Corpse, an ambitious international collaboration between 75 audio makers from around the globe run by Audio Club, creating a series of seven sonic “corpses” inspired by the surrealist game exquisite corpse. Cat loved seeing the individual styles of storytelling. The sample was from M. Cristina Marras and storytellers in that episode were Lezak, Pierre & Florence, Yhane, Ali, Darien, Arielle, Valdez & Hazel, Ellie, Cole & Claudia. The Love Game by Wing Kuang Mel’s pick was from #661 The Love Game. Wing Kuang guides us through a love story of two gamers —one in Melbourne and one in Shanghai —navigating the complexities of long-distance relationships and the bureaucracy of Australia’s immigration system. This story came from the Jesse Cox Fellowship 2025, and Mel enjoyed seeing Wing explore how to include elements of bilingual storytelling and gamification. Produced by Wing Kuang Supervising Producer: M. Cristina Marras Window by Danni Stewart Kwame’s second pick comes from #633 Small Audio Art. It came from a Small Audio Art challenge, and Danny’s story, The Window, follows a parasocial relationship with a neighbour. Produced by Danni Stewart Just Breathe by Ben Haywood Our final pick is Mel’s second pick. It’s another one from the Jesse Cox Fellowship 2025. This time it’s #662 Just Breathe Man. Ben suffers from depression after knee surgery. Searching for ways to heal online, he finds himself trapped in toxic ideas of masculinity. It’s only when a friend takes him to his breathwork class that he finally breaks down and begins to heal, learning that recovery can come through friendship, community, and space to breathe. Mel said ’This story started out when Ben first pitched to the fellowship as a completely different idea. He had a kind of couple of story false starts in the making of this, and then yeah, sort of turned his audio story in on himself and the time that he was going through.’
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All The Best Credits Program Manager & Host: Kwame Slusher Executive Producer: Melanie Bakewell Programming & Community Coordinator: Catarina Fraga Matos Community Coordinator: Patrick McKenzie Theme Music composed by Shining Bird Special shout-out to our volunteers. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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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.
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: