🤔For Your Consideration: Podcasts Nominated for Ambies | Part I 🎧
Congrats to all of the podcasts who are nominated for Ambies from The Podcast Academy
It’s Ambies Season, Podcast Academy Members (and beyond)!
Last week, the nominees for the 2026 Ambies Podcast Awards were announced.
Since 2021, the Ambies have been awarded to podcasts, writers, engineers, production companies, and creators whose work displays excellence in audio. In its first year, the award ceremony was presented virtually (by two of my favorite podcast hosts, Miles Gray and Jack O’Brien of The Daily Zeitgeist) because of pandemic-era precautions. Since then it’s taken place IRL — in 2022 in Los Angeles, in 2023 in Vegas, in 2024 back in LA, in 2025 in Chicago, and this year, the winners will be announced at On Air Fest in Brooklyn on February 26th.
Voting is open to members of The Podcast Academy. The last day to vote is February 5th🗓️
Disclaimer: The Ambies are a program within The Podcast Academy. I am on the board of governors for TPA. They did not ask me to write this post!
For Your Consideration: The 2026 Ambies Nominees
The purpose of this post, and the one to follow (there are a lot of nominees to spotlight!) is to lay out your options as voters as you head to the polls (read: go to vote on the internet) to cast your ballot. It’s loosely based off of the idea of FYC campaigns that are more common ahead of the Oscars, Emmys, and other award shows.
I also hope this post appeals to podcast lovers who aren’t (yet) members of The Podcast Academy OR who are just looking for something new to listen to.
So, here’s how this FYC post works: I asked nominees to share some rapid-fire information about their shows.
I asked nominees to submit:
show name
category they’re nominated for
one-liner about the show
why they should win
another show in their category that they like / respect.
🗳️Read on for a bunch of nominees making their pitches.
Due to post length and making sure everyone who wants to submit has a chance to do so, this is just Part I. Stay tuned for Part II.
🙏If you find this valuable and want to support the stuff I do as a thank you, please subscribe to Podcasts We Text About!
Now Presenting… The Nominees
Bone Valley, Season 3: Graves County
Category: Best Original Score and Music Supervision Nominee
Logline
Graves County probes Kentucky murder, wrongful convictions, blame, and power dynamics.
Why should your show win?
Bone Valley, Season 3 | Graves County uses original music with rare restraint and purpose, deepening tension and emotional weight without ever overshadowing the reporting or the people at its center. With an original song written by two central figures of the podcast, Leo Schofield and Kevin Herrick, then reimagined and performed by Gangstagrass, the music becomes integral to the narrative, elevating the series into an immersive, unforgettable listening experience worthy of the Ambies.
Category-mate shoutout
We were really into the music of DC High Volume: Batman, which masterfully blends cinematic intensity and thematic nuance, amplifying tension, emotion, and the dark heroism at the heart of Gotham City.
Morning Brew Daily
Category: Best Business Podcast
Logline
Morning Brew Daily covers the latest news on business, the economy, and everything else.
Why should your show win?
Producing a great daily business news podcast is a grind, and we've honed a distinct show voice that makes complex business coverage digestible and fun. The best proof: we've built a real community around the show – listeners have written in to tell us about friends they've made at our live events or sharing the show in group chats.
Category-mate shoutout
We're in great company across the board, but Business Wars is a particular favorite for the MBD team! Their long form deep dives into juicy business stories are the exact kind of thing we love to nerd out about.
P.S. if you are going to the Ambies, say hi to our hosts, Neal and Toby. We have Morning Brew Daily stickers to give you!!!
Bone Valley, Season 2 | Jeremy
Category: Best True Crime Podcast
Logline
A confessed killer confronts crimes, justice, and redemption in Bone Valley Season 2.
Why should your show win?
Bone Valley Season 2 is a masterclass in narrative journalism, transforming a shocking confession into an intimate, ethically complex exploration of justice, guilt, and redemption. Through Pulitzer Prize winner Gilbert King’s relentless reporting and deeply human storytelling, the series pushes the true-crime genre forward, challenging listeners to reconsider certainty, accountability, and the possibility of change.
Category-mate shoutout
We loved Where Is Daniel Morcombe? because it refused sensationalism and stayed relentlessly focused on truth, patience, and empathy. It let the investigation unfold methodically, centered on the impact on Daniel’s family, and showed how persistence, journalism, and time ultimately delivered justice.
The Integrated School Podcast
Category: Best DIY Podcast
Logline
Thoughtful, nuanced conversations about race, class, parenting, and the persistent segregation of our country’s schools.
Why should your show win?
We’re a well-produced interview show that punches way above our weight class. As a DIY operation, we strive to provide listeners with exceptional content that sound like big budget productions.
Category-mate shoutout
abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast creates incredible, immersive listening experiences!
Lawless Planet
Category: Best Emerging Podcast
Logline
A show about the true crimes fueling the climate crisis.
Why should your show win?
We tell the stories of industries and people who are destroying our planet, while highlighting those who are on the front line fighting to save their communities and in turn, our planet.
Category-mate shoutout
How Is This Better?
Climate Shifted
Category: Best DIY Podcast
Logline
I interview “artivists,” psychologists, and behavior designers all on the front lines of climate communication about what’s galvanizing behavior change.
Why should your show win?
It's a show that's desperately needed for these trying times. We no longer have time for doom and gloom messaging. We need anyone building climate movements to do so with what actually works—love, curiosity, art, community, and sometimes even joy and pleasure!
Category-mate shoutout
Shout out to Culture Kids. This mother and son host duo are absolutely adorable, the concept of a time-traveling train to learn about history is a sweet engagement device, sound design superb, engaging content, and punchy 15 minute episodes. Wish I had kids to listen to this with.
Black Women Stitch
Category: Podcast of the Year
Logline
Stitch Please celebrates Black women, girls, and femmes in sewing.
Why should your show win?
Stitch Please uniquely expresses the spirit of indie podcasting by moving the marginalized to the center. With creative expertise, critical analysis, and lot of fun, the show will help you get your stitch together.
Category-mate shoutout
Shadow Kingdom: God’s Banker
Category: Best History Podcast
Logline
Vatican’s top banker dies mysteriously; a lawyer follows the money
Why should your show win?
It turns a famous mystery into a reported, character-driven investigation that connects Vatican finance, Italian power, and a death under a London bridge.
Category-mate shoutout
I love History This Week!
The Left Arm Treasure Society
Category: Best Performance in Audio Fiction and Best Original Score and Music Supervision
Logline
A young boy finds a cryptic recording that leads to a cursed treasure hunt.
Why should your show win?
Our performers brought depth, emotion and nuance to their characters and anchored by an emotionally stirring score from our Grammy-nominated, Juno Award-winning music team, the series unfolds as an intimate, city-spanning family drama that listeners have told us echo in their own lived conversations.
Category-mate shoutout
For Best Performance, The Leviathan Chronicles have been giving great performances since 2008. For Best Score/Music, Bone Valley's use of slide guitar is hypnotic.
Shadow Kingdon: Coal Survivor
Category: Best Reporting
Logline
A union murder sparks a revolt inside America’s coal country
Why should your show win?
Seven years of reporting, creating the definitive audio archive of America’s most tragic, forgotten labor war.
Category-mate shoutout
The Outlaw Ocean
San Diego FC: Behind the Flow
Category:
Logline
San Diego F.C. is a club being built from the ground up — in record time, and they've got a plan to rock American soccer to its foundations.
Why should your show win?
San Diego FC: Behind the Flow is a labor of love, revealing the making of a Major League Soccer team before there are players, staff, or even a training facility. We take the listener behind the scenes as the club, its youth academy, and their physical training facility are all built from the ground up, when the club is still just a concept with many plans.
Category-mate shoutout
Pablo Torre Finds Out (an AMAZING show and host — an honor to be in the same category as this podcast)
Dogood Detectives
Category: Best Podcast For Kids
Logline
Nora Dogood and her brother are Sunshine Bay’s sharpest kid detectives.
Why should your show win?
Dogood Detectives doesn’t just ask kids to sit and listen… it asks them to get involved and each 10-minute mystery is packed with clues, with listeners getting to solve the case right alongside Nora and Trey in real-time.
Category-mate shoutout
Shout out to all the Bob The Bad Pirate songs in Lightcatchers which are super catchy and fun.
Ice Lions
Category: Best Production and Sound Design
Logline
Inspired by the true story of the first — and only — ice hockey team in Kenya
Why should your show win?
To create and produce the series we partnered with Nairobi-based Kalu Media and assembled an almost entirely Kenyan cast of children, teenagers, and adults delivering an authentic, in-world adventure. It was essential that the voices of the story come from the same streets, schools, and neighborhoods as the story itself and that the show be recorded in Nairobi.
Category-mate shoutout
Huge shout out to DC High Volume: Batman and the way they bring comic-books to life.
Happy voting!
If you’re not currently a member of The Podcast Academy and want to participate next year — either as a podcaster submitting their show or as a voter — feel free to use me as referral.
If your show is nominated for an Ambie and you didn’t know that this opportunity existed or haven’t had a chance to submit yet, don’t worry! Part II is running next week. Reply to this post with an email or a comment sharing your answers.
Voting is open to members of The Podcast Academy. The last day to vote is February 5th. VOTE.
More from Podcast Plunge
📈Beyond Downloads: What Metrics You Should Be Tracking for Your Podcast🎧
What Even Constitutes a Podcast “Download?”