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.’

 

Substack 

If you want more of what’s happening at All the Best, check out our Substack! It’s a roundup of all our activities with a little bit of BTS.

 

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.

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