Radio 100

'I often think about a story from the SBS Greek team. At a street festival one day a listener was chatting to the presenting team before a live broadcast. She said she had to leave to go home to listen to the show. She knew she could stay and see it live, but 4pm to her meant sitting on her sofa with a tea and the radio on. Audio is enmeshed in our lives. Radio and podcasts fit into our routines, but there’s also something incredibly special about the connection they can create.'

'As a teenager, I fell for radio, staying up late to tune into triple j. Over the years, hosting ABC radio has made me feel like Australia is a rich tapestry woven with incredible conversations, characters and stories that we're all fortunate enough to immerse ourselves in. Live broadcasts can hold you in the moment. Radio has bound us together in times of emergency. Crafting audio documentaries across the globe has revealed to me the profound, understated power of a microphone to capture people at their most honest. If you want to witness someone's humanity? Listen to them.'

'To me, radio, podcasts and audio culture in Australia means so much: it’s the thing you put in your ears to tune out the world or feel more connected to it. It’s road trips flicking through stations to find the right song or the local weather report. It’s listening to my footy team winning a match as a kid. It’s a podcast shared best with friends or that makes you feel like the hosts are your best friends. It’s a shower while listening to the morning news. It’s my first boombox, Walkman, iPod and phone. It’s pressing play and record at the same time to tape a song during the top 40 countdown in the 90s. It’s music and joy and my career. It’s stories through sound; in episodes, instances, songs or industry. It’s community, education and entertainment. It’s the past, present and future.'

'I really came of age when the intimate relationships audiences had with radio evolved to become even more direct through podcasting. The evolution from broadcasting to narrowcasting, it became about finding the specific things you cared about and allowing the like-minded people that share that passion to live in your ears.'

'Training as a journalist, I thought I’d write features or perhaps do TV. But I found radio, and it’s become my enduring career love affair. For me, radio is the adrenaline thrill of being live with an open mic; its greatest joy is the one-to-one connection you make with each listener, and the theatre of-the-mind you create together. There’s nothing else like radio.'

'As a volunteer at SYN 90.7 at RMIT, I was lucky enough to get to host my own show. I called it folk ODYSSEY (dramatic, Michelle), and it ran on Sundays at 2pm. It was one of the first projects I worked on where it was just me. If I wasn't ready at 2pm on Sunday, there would be dead air. It was a powerful feeling, getting to talk to people and share something I was passionate about. It ended up being a fortuitous experience, as years later I became a podcast producer and have worked on over 4,000 hours of podcasting on more than 10 shows. My love affair with audio continues today, but it started back in that underground studio on Sunday afternoons, talking at the wall about 60-year-old folk tunes.'