On a Friday afternoon recently, at the end of a long week, I was sitting on a video call with half a dozen other people when I hit play on an episode of a new podcast.
I wasn't shirking work, we were all listening — in fact that was the whole point of why we'd carved out an hour of a very busy day to be there.
It's called a listening party, where a bunch of people come together listen to a podcast episode and then tear it apart. In a good way.
We hear what's working, what's not working, how we can make it better.
Listening parties can be brutal. Despite this, and despite everyone being ready to clock off on a Friday and leave the week behind, people were smiling.
Dare I say it, people were actually enjoying this meeting.
And that's when I realised the power of what we were making — a podcast designed entirely to make people feel good.
A new way of listening
I probably don't need to tell you that increasingly the world, and the way we interact with it, are driven by computer algorithms which predict our very mood and respond accordingly.
And this is changing the way we consume news and media.
We are more impatient, we expect technology to predict and accommodate our needs, and we disengage if it doesn't.
We know this because of the data.
We give data away every time we access something online, and it shows how radically our media consumption habits are on the move — and a new frontier is digital audio.
Imagine for example you're listening to a story about the war in Ukraine, and immediately following is another story about adopting rescue rabbits.
Jarring, right?
This isn't speculation, we know from the data people switch off when this kind of radical shift in tone happens.
In traditional media — say back in the day when you'd buy a newspaper and read it, if not cover to cover at least up to page 8 — you would take what was served.
Page 1, a terrible bombing overseas. Page 3, rescue kitten steals hearts.
But now people are looking for their media experience to be more consistent with how they're feeling.
They want a music playlist that suits the vibe. They pick a podcast that fits with where they're at in their day.
I've been working on a project that is responding to that need, launching a new podcast curated around a single mood state.
And something else we've been noticing?
People want something to make them feel good.
An antidote for news weariness
There is a growing cohort of people who are actively avoiding or reducing their intake of news, stepping aside and switching off from the barrage of grim news headlines.
People who wish that news didn't, more often than not, mean bad news.
The 2022 Digital News Report from Canberra University showed that more than two-thirds of people in their study actively avoid the news, in part because it makes them feel worse.
What better place to target a mood-based podcast than by being the antidote to bad news?
The Make Me Feel Good podcast does what it says on the box; it is a collection of stories from ABC hosts around the country that remind you that the world actually is a pretty wonderful, wacky and wild place.
Leading the development of this podcast has reminded me how important these stories are.
They might not set the news agenda, but they are just as important for providing a sense of connection and some much-needed light relief on those darker days.
Whether it be hearing about the zoologist exercising obese micro-bats on a treadmill, or a love story that played out in Morse code in a remote Antarctic station, listening to these stories has reminded me of the importance of celebrating the joyful moments.
They challenge the view, which you could easily walk away with if you absorb the leading news headlines, that the world is a dangerous, deceitful and dark place.
With mental health conditions like depression and anxiety becoming increasingly common this isn't something to be sneezed at.
If being able to capture moments of laughter, success and celebration can leave someone feeling a bit more connected, a bit brighter, then this podcast will have done its job.
Who could be better placed than the journalists embedded in communities around Australia to tell these stories?
We connect people through stories
Something the ABC has always done is provide a sense of connection, of shared identity and a place for people to not only be informed, but to feel part of something.
In my career, the way people interact with and consume media has been continually changing.
There are always those who decry the change as the end of media as we know it, but I disagree.
If you look beyond the obvious shift from analog to digital, from broadcast to online, things are still very much the same.
We tell stories, we connect people, and we listen to what the audience is telling us they need.
Yes, perhaps now I'm looking at figures to see how many people clicked onto and listened to a piece of audio, rather than looking at a studio phone light up with incoming callers, but the principal is the same.
The audience and the ABC have always been in a relationship, and this new podcast is a way to keep pace with audience needs and habits.
It is just another step forward to meet the audience where they need us to be.
I for one hope it reaches those people, like a collection of tired end-of-the-week meeting attendees, who need to hear something that puts a smile on their faces.
