The podcast, The Sound of Anger, was named Best Wellbeing Podcast and Smartest Podcast at the annual awards. The initiative is part of the Living With Feeling project at Queen Mary University of London.
Established in 2017, the British Podcast Awards honours the best in podcasting from around the UK. The winners were chosen by over eighty international and UK judges working in the sector.
The Sound of Anger podcast gives listeners a focused and in-depth exploration of human emotions. The series also features expert analysis and was described by judges as having an experimental approach which was both valuable and refreshing.
The sound design of the podcast was also commended with the judges commenting that it takes the listener on a journey through the expression and understanding of a very common and challenging emotion, anger.
Professor Thomas Dixon from Queen Mary’s Centre for the History of the Emotions said: “Here on the Living With Feeling project at Queen Mary we are experts on emotions, and we were gobsmacked and elated to win not one but two awards! We are really proud that the judges thought our series was the 'smartest' and also the best wellbeing podcast.
“It is a huge honour to win these awards and a testament to the quality of the production, the brilliant writing and acting of the dramas, and also the fascinating insights of the people we interviewed, from historians and psychologists to opera singers and political commentators.
“This has been a real team effort and comes out of years of research into emotions and the history of emotions here at Queen Mary University of London.”
The Living With Feeling project is funded by the Wellcome Trust and focuses on emotional health. The Sound of Anger podcast series used audio features, interviews, and two original dramas to give people the tools to think through their own feelings of rage, frustration, and anger - and to reflect on whether or not they are healthy emotions. The podcast also included two original dramas by Craig Baxter.
“People say that we are living in an age of anger, and it can certainly seem like that if you spend much time on Twitter, but there are historically lots of ways to think differently about rage and revenge, which might be a lot healthier - whether thinking about Charles Darwin's views on emotions, Martin Luther King's approach to civil rights, or the Stoic philosophy of the Ancient Roman thinker Seneca,” added Professor Dixon.
Producer Natalie Steed said: “As a freelance producer working independently it's thrilling to have caught the attention of the judges. I'm extremely proud of the work we made and very grateful to the British Podcast Awards for recognising it.”
The Living with Feeling project is based at Queen Mary’s Centre for the History of the Emotions. Launched in 2008, it is the first research centre in the UK dedicated to the history of the emotions. One of its key objectives is to provide a focus for interactions between social and cultural historians of the emotions, and historians of science and medicine. It also seeks to contribute to policy debates and popular understandings of the history of emotions.
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