You're Dead to Me - History of the Telephone (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

For our 150th episode, Greg Jenner is joined by historian Professor Iwan Morus and comedian Catherine Bohart to learn about the history of the telephone on its 150th anniversary.The inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, was granted the American patent for his new communication system 150 years ago, on the 7th March 1876, beating out fellow inventor Elisha Gray who had submitted his patent on the very same day. But Bell still had to convince people that this novel form of communication would change their lives, and so he set out on a promotional tour across America and England, showcasing the wonder of his new invention, and even gifting a pair of phones to Queen Victoria.In this episode, we look at the first few decades of the telephone’s existence: the dramatic race between Bell, Gray and an Italian immigrant named Meucci to be the first to patent it, how quickly it was rolled out across America, how the technology actually worked, and its problems, including the ease with which people could eavesdrop on their neighbour’s conversations. We also look at the rise in jobs for women it provided, and the social anxieties it provoked, which mirror many of the worries voiced today about smartphones and social media. And we examine some early telephone etiquette: should you answer the phone with ‘hello’ or ‘ahoy-hoy’, and did a man need to be wearing trousers when speaking on the phone to a woman?This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Rosalyn Sklar and Katharine Russell Written by: Rosalyn Sklar, Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

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The final entry deadline to submit is the 26th of June. Enter your podcast at signalaward.com for consideration. Ahoy, hoi! And welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenna, and I'm a public historian, author and broadcast. And today, it is our 150th episode, and so we are picking up the receiver and dialing back exactly 150 years to learn all about the invention of the telephone. And to help us with this special anniversary episode, we have two very special callers on the line. In History Corner, he's Professor of History at the University of Aberystwyth, and he's an expert on the history and culture of Victorian science.

You may have read one of his wonderful books, including How the Victorians took us to the moon, and you'll remember him from our episode on Vital Electricity. It's Professor Yuan Morris. Welcome back, Yuan. It's a pleasure to be here again, Greg. Delighted to have you back. And in Comedy Corner, she's an award-winning comedian, writer, actor and podcaster. You may have seen her hilarious stand-up shows or on the TV, on Last One Laughing Island, QI, The Mash Report, live at the Apollo. Maybe you've heard her radio four show. Too long, didn't read. But you'll certainly remember her from one of our many past episodes, including the history of general elections.

And Julie Dobini, it is the wonderful Catherine Bohars. Hi, I'm so happy to be back. I feel like it's so nice if you list my credits but here I'm just a history nerd I'm like, teach me something, I'm so excited. Science, you say. Science. Because I did study history but pretty much

every place I could chose to study social history and so I'm out of my death. I'm excited. I'm guessing you own a telephone, Catherine. I mean, you know, we all have to, right, in the modern world? Yes, and I'm not sure I am one of those people who are like, if I didn't have to, I wouldn't.

I think I'm a bit like, it's my special friend. Me and my special friend. Do you know anything about its invention? It's early history. I mean, I've heard the words Alexander Graham Bell. Sure. And you'll hear them again. Yes. You know, I watch a lot of period dramas. I've seen a lot of calling an operator. And yeah, I have some sense of that, but I don't have any sense of the science of it.

I don't know how that worked. I'm assuming tin cans and string. Is that right? So, what do you know? This is the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you are loving listener. might know about today's subject. And like Catherine, you know what a phone is. But what about the phone's early history and invention? Maybe you've heard of Alexander Graham Bell like Catherine had. Maybe you've seen period movies

where people are speaking to complicated-looking contraptions and asking to speak to the operator. But was Bell really the first inventor? How did people react to this novel communication technology? And what does it mean to get your wires crossed? Let's find out. Right, Catherine, our big anniversary year was 1876, at least for, our purposes. Okay. So we're going to rewind to before the telephone and get you up to speed on

what came before. So how do you think people had previously communicated across long distances before the telephone? And of course, I'm going to discount sending post because that feels too easy. So presumably Morse code was a way of communicating over long distances and then? Pigeons. Good, yeah. Pigeons were always pretty good, weren't they? Yeah, send a pigeon in the post. Yes. Is that just posed? yearning, I assume. That one picked up from that vibe-wise, yeah. Like, looking out windows.

See, right. That's what I'm assuming. Right, sort of some Wuthering Heights energy. Yeah. Sighing in a window seat. Did that not convey your message afar? I mean, sure. I mean, if you're a great romantic, maybe it did.

Yeah, I think I am. Put your heartbreak into the ether and hope that they heard you. How did people communicate over long distances before we're into electricity? The real answer is the electrical. telegraph. Beyond that, really, information travels essentially as fast as you can. You can send a letter at exactly the same speed that you could go if you went by horse. Wow. Would have taken weeks for news to reach from, months from Australia, weeks from Central Europe or America. And so, yeah, the internet. And you're, I mean, so you're on obviously the telegraph machine. That is

the crucial world-changing technology, isn't it? Yeah. From the beginning of the 19th century, people start trying to figure out, look, you know, we can do all sorts of interesting spectacular things with electricity, shocks, sparks, I mean, all sorts of stuff. If you can get that to happen at a distance, then you have some kind of way of communication. And that's what people are trying to do. In 1837, in the UK, in London, Charles Weston and William Fulbegill Cook take out what's the first patent for an electromagnetic telegraph. basically a gizmo that allows you to send information at a distance.

Pretty much at around by the same time, the outside of the Atlantic, Samuel Morse invents his version of Telegraph. And in connection with that, he invented the Morse code, that kind of system of dots and dashes that translates into letters of the alphabet and allows you to send information that way. So by the end of the 40s being the 50s,

telegraph lines proliferate. across the UK, across Europe, across North America, typically following the railway lines. It's largely a kind of commercial tool conveying information about all sorts of commercial stuff. That's kind of boring, man. Basically as quickly as possible. Where's the gossip telegraph?

That's my question. Well, there's a chap called Mr. Reuters who set up a news agency because he realised, hang on a second, I can make some money on this. Okay, great. Really? Yeah. I don't think of Reuters as my gossip rag anymore, but... Sure.

But maybe I'll start to. It's not quite what the business has anymore. But yeah. Not quite gossip stuff. Trying to get information more and more quickly. I mean, that's the telegraphic world of the 1860s, 1870s. That's where the telephone comes in. And that's where we meet Alexander Graham Bell, who you mentioned.

Catherine, do you know where he was born? Do you know which country he was born in? No. I mean, Bell, to me, feels British, but maybe that's not true. I don't know. British is correct, but it's not England. Oh, was he a skull? He is.

Okay. He's born in Scotland. He's born in Edinburgh, 1847. Yuan, his family are interested in speech and sound because his mother is deaf. And so he's interested in this sound technology for communication purposes. Yes, absolutely. I mean, his mother is deaf. He comes weirdly from a family of illocutionists,

people who teach you how to speak properly. That's the bell background. His father, if I remember rightly, develops a kind of sign language that allows him to communicate with his wife. So Bell comes from a background that cares about speech, communication, conveying things in new ways. They go over to Canada and the States. Bell is a musician. He works as a nelocutionist. He works with deaf people, communicating to the death.

amongst other people. He teaches a young lady. That's the point where I forget the name. Mabel, yeah. Mabel, a young lady called Mabel, who's the daughter of a chap called Gardner Hubbard. It's a good name, isn't it, Gardner Hubbard? Gardner Hubbard, goodness me.

And Mabel is deaf. And lo and behold, Belle marries her. Sort of problematic marriage claxon time, I think, because... Yeah. Not the sort of thing that we'd be allowed to do. Yes, sorry, we've invested in that this series. We spent some money. Good for you. I'm surprised it took this long.

Honestly, everything I know about history says, you should have really been ready to go. He did wait if she was after 18, which on this show is actually good. Pretty rare. I mean, I know it's a low bar, but, you know. It is. I mean, late teens, always better than early teens.

I can't help but feel. So he had a deaf mother, deaf wife. He's quite complicated, controversial character in the deaf community today, because later on in life, he argues against sign language. He's not a great hero, but we don't have time to talk about that so much. So I'll just sort of move on and say,

Telegraphy is a sort of ancient Greek modern compound word meaning faraway writing, telepharay writing. Telephony is far away sound. Is that what the new big exciting question mark is for Alexander Graham Bell? How do you get sound across a long distance? Yes, I mean, I think that's it. Exactly. There isn't really a very good way of doing that. Shouting, hello. I love yearning. Yerning, I think it's great. What about yearning or screaming? Yay, boys. Yearning had limited market value, I think, probably. Disagree. Okay.

It's just going out of the BBC. It's a channel of yearning. All right. There were things like The Enchanted Liar, L-Y-R-E, not the lying. Invented by Charles Wheatstone, a telegraph chap, rab at 1860, Philip Rice, invents what he calls a telephone. So he invents the word telephone? He invented the word telephone.

Okay. And he invented an instrument that could electrically transmit sound over a distance, but not voice. Is Rice getting, like, muffled sound even from speaking of voice? Is he getting like you're in a tunnel on a train noise? Is he getting... Just going, buzz. So you're not putting your phone in Rice yet. Hello, hello.

Hello. Anyone? No? I liked it. Sorry, you know. Two other big inventors we should mention. Have you ever heard of Elisha Gray or Antonio Miyucci? No, but I'm hopeful that Elisha might have a chance of being. a woman? No. No. Okay. I was like, for a second, I was like,

is it just Elijah? Is that basically what you're saying to me? Okay, no, I haven't heard of either of those other men. They are the two big names, I think, that we could put up as co- or rival inventors of the telephone alongside Bell. Rival inventors, I think, very much.

Certainly from their individual. Well, they're not collaborative. They're not allies. They're not collaborating. Absolutely not. All three are rivals? Yeah. Okay, so say their names to be again? Antonio Miyucci is an Italian who, I think, moves to the States, I think. Yes, I mean, he moves to the states. He invents what he calls the teletrophon.

Oh, beautiful. Teletrofoam, yeah, great. Exactly. Yeah. And takes out a patent in 1871, or a caveat for a patent. Let us say, a kind of promissory note. I haven't quite got there yet, but I'm laying dibs on this invention. Placeholder.

I'm working on this. When it emerges. is looking at accounts of Mochi's invention. Canada, some things that a telephone can do. But there are weird aspects as well. I mean, for example, according to Mochi, users have to be insulated. They have to stand on glass stools.

Oh, totally reasonable expectations. Everybody has glass stools lying around after all. What level of simultaneousness is this occurring within the three of them? This is 1871, so this is... This is all pretty close. He's the first to file in America a patent that we might say is telephonic. Fair? Yes.

But is it his patent or is it him going... No. Just hang the fire, guys, I'm totally going to be a patent. It is a caveat. Well, mind you, a lot of what's going on is kind of an annual fire. And also, he's gutted, Mayucci. He's not made of money, this guy. He can't afford to keep the patent.

It's another $10, isn't it? Yes, I mean, I think the caveat lasts a few years, And then you've got to put your money down to keep it going. Yeah. It's 10 bucks. Murchy doesn't have 10 bucks. So the caveat lapses. You have to put credit on your phone page.

That's crazy. Pay monthly on your patents. So in the meantime, Elisha Gray. Gray is somebody who's made his money and is making his money out of developing new kind of variations, new improvements on telegraph technology. He patterns, what's, called a harmonic telegraph and a sound telegraph. So, yeah.

What year is that? 1874. 1874. So, yes. And then in 1876, Bell goes, well, Bing, essentially, and takes his stuff to the patent office, and he gets his caveat on the patent to say, look, I can do this thing.

This is the famous case, right? Because technically, Gray's the first one through the door. So Gray arrived first at the patent office. but what he submitted was a patent caveat, so not the full patent. An hour or so later, Bell turned up, or rather Bell's lawyers turned up, and they submitted the full thing, the full patent application. So Bell and Gray file on the same day, but Bell is awarded the patent. The Signal Awards recognize the podcast that define culture,

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Up to this point, I just want to say, we've had telephone, we've had telautograph, we've had teletrophona, we've had harmonic telegraph, they're lovely words for this new technology. Catherine, given your creativity, if I had to ask you to rebrand the phone with a new name, what would you re-dub the technology of a phone as? Man's best friend. Handed little helper. Charming. Yeah.

So the legal battle literally went down to the wire. Gray didn't take that lightly. He filed legal actions. He tried to argue his case. But ultimately, Bell was found to be the official winner, whether he was the moral victor, Catherine, I'll leave up to you. I think the lesson here is that boys should learn to work together. That's my lesson is that actually they could have probably come up with it together earlier

if they put their little brains together, but they decided to make it a competition as they must. And look what happened. We do know that, I have. Alexander Graham Bell does make the very first official telephone call. He demonstrates this by calling his assistant. Oh, he doesn't call Gray to be like, nah, nah, nah, nah. Is that what you would do?

That's in my head what their vibe is. Okay. But okay, so he calls his assistant. He does, yes. Where is his assistant? Well, that's not that far away. Yeah. The assistant is in the next room.

Oh, very good. And the first known telephone message is, Mr. Watson, come here. I need you. I want you, isn't it? I want you. I want you. I feel that's quite heated rivalry.

I want you, I need you. Also, Watts with Watson's always getting relegated to second. Yes. You always need a Mr Watson as your assistant. I want you. I want you. That is romantic. We finally got to yearning.

Electromagnetic yearning at laugh. Yuan, given that Bell could easily have just shouted into the next room. It hasn't really. prove that this technology is effective over distance. It's proved that it's effective over 10 metres. So were people initially bedazzled by this invention, or they're a bit like, well, that's just a parlor trick? If it's possible to be simultaneously bedazzled and unimpressed,

then by large people are bedazzled and unimpressed. On the one hand, wow, the other part is, what do we do with this? This doesn't, for example, solve the problem of being able to, to send even more information even more quickly than telegraph lines because voices aren't actually that efficient as means of quick communications. I mean, all those dot, dot, dot, dot, dash, dash, dash, dash, is a lot quicker, a lot more efficient than saying, Yes.

Mr Watson. Come here, I need you. That's their issue. They're like, oh, great, so now we have to listen to you, yap on. Is this what we just want to get to the information? I don't know. You're, what's at voice messages. They're basically mini-poll.

podcast now. I've got friends who leave five-minute messages. It's like, come on, just send a text. This is such a male reaction to the opportunity to chat. I'm like, what are you talking about? How nice. Okay, so they just think inefficient. It's not quite clear what this amazing technological novelty is for. There are technical problems, right? Buzzy interference, noisy. There's an issue of crossed wires, which is quite a literal thing. The wires get crossed. Yes, literally. Literally. If wires brush up against each other. Two wires touch each other.

Then the messages might get confused, go in different directions. Reception with early telephones really isn't that good. It's buzzy, it's crackly. There are problems of being able to discriminate noise from the background. There is the whole business of you talking to the operator and then the operator putting you through. There's also the party line, isn't it? Yes.

So a shared phone line. Though mind you, party lines lasted for quite a long time. I can remember as a child in the 1970s. What is the party line? We were on a party line. You share the line with some of your neighbours. So if they're on the phone, you can't be on the phone. Can you hear what they're saying?

Yeah. Bring it back. I was going to ask gently, Catherine, would you be interested in eavesdropping? And your reaction tells me, perhaps. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't mind. Bring it back. Are you joking?

Bring it back. That's fantastic. Does anyone ever get off the phone? I'd be like, I'm like, bring my meals to me. Who needs podcasts? I'm just listening in to the neighbours. Marriott number nine is I'm making another call. From 1878, this is a brand new invention, the switchboard. Why is this important? As more and more people get phones, as more and poor people on the network,

then connecting people gets more difficult, more important, more complicated. So switchboards are a way of to a degree automating, you know, the business of kind of taking somebody's end and plugging it into somebody else's socket. Operating offices, switchboards are entirely staffed by women. Before they started employing young women as telephone operators, they did try young men. After all, that was the history. Telegraph operators from the mid-1840s have typically been young.

young men, and they were typically a pretty raucous crew. And that kind of telegraph culture didn't really seem to work in the telephone exchange. Shocking. But women are, you'll be astonished to know, docile, well-mannered, they don't misbehave, they don't gossip, they don't do anything. They don't gossip. I'm like, this is a track. What do you do, then?

They just sit there and they're obedience. They do as their child. They're trusted, which is quite a rare thing in the 19th century for women to be given this level of trust in a commercial operation actually. Yes, I'm not having. This is an important new kind of employment for middle-class young women. Yeah, it's huge. Yeah, that this is an independent job,

something that allows degrees of financial independence, and feeds into that kind of late Victorian, wow, technology of the future. I mean, it makes women like that part of that kind of technological culture. They get a charming nickname. Do you know what the nickname is? Call girls. I want a better name. You're not far off. That's slightly inappropriate probably. The hello girls. Hello girl. I love that. How sweet.

From the 1880s, they're the hello girls. And initially, you just say, can you just put my friend Jim on? And they'd be like, sure. And then obviously after a while, there's too many gyms. And then they have to start asking you for actual details of the night. And the spread of the phone is really interesting. It spreads very quickly in America. So you get a very quick uptake in the States. It's really sort of popular in the cities.

By 1882, there's a telephone for every 200 people in Chicago, which is amazing. In London, it's every 3,000 people. Now, I said the hello girls, which obviously is a charming thing. Do you know where the word hello comes from? No. No. So it's the official telephone greeting. Okay.

And it's not the one that Alexander Graham Bell wanted. Okay. Do you know what he wanted? No. I said at the beginning of the show. A hoi-hoi! Are you joking? He wanted...

What if you're in a bad mood? A hoi-hoi, I'm very angry. Hoy-hoi. No, what are you talking about? Yeah, he wanted a hoi-hoi. And what was hello? His reaction when he heard he didn't get it? Hell.

Oh. That's great. Thank you. That's really good. So where did hello come from? He was a hoi-hoi-hoi. What a weird, rich boy. It's so like, well...

You and why do we say hello on the telephone? Because it's one of the most popular words on the planet. I mean, like a hoi-hoi, it's distinct, hello. Yeah. It's a word that hopefully is going to kind of cut through. It's Thomas Edison's idea, if I remember actually. It's Edison who suggests that hello would certainly be better than a hoi-hoi as a form of greeting when you're communicating. But they're both hailing words, aren't they?

A hoi-ho is what you say to a sailor when you're hailing them. And then hello was a hailing word. Hello! Yes. But in the UK, hello was a phrase of surprise. If I bumped into you on holiday, if the two of us were in the same cafe in Italy, we'd be like, hello, what are you doing here? So it was a word that existed already.

Just sort of to mask your disappointment at seeing a local on your one bloody holiday. Honey Boehart gets everywhere. It does eight days on the boat. It appears. Hello! Hello. I like you. So hello becomes the official word because of Edison.

He says it's got good, nice, clear, it cuts through the noise on the interference. And it becomes one of the most popular words on the planet. And the hello girls are so named. Can you imagine, though, if we did a hoi-hoi instead? No. The Lionel Richie song. A hoi-hoi, is it me you're looking for? Just so many.

I just can't bear to think how many boat shoes we'd have to be wearing. I just think, I'm very glad it's not. Okay. I just think the hoi-hoi girls doesn't quite have the same. I'm bringing it back. I'm bringing it back. A hoi-hoie magazine. Actually, there are plenty of concerns that were raised by this new technology arriving into people's homes and into towns and cities and buildings.

So, Catherine, I've got a mini-quivis for you here. These are seven things the Victorians feared might happen to society because of the telephone. Six are true. One I've made up. Can you guess which one I've made up? Let's go. Did people fear that women might commit adultery from home with the new technology of the phone? men maybe would not stand up when phoning a woman were people fearing that there might be phone calls happening between people wearing their pyjamas.

There might be fears of lower class people phoning up posh people and harassing them on the phone. There might be fears that businessmen would hog the phone lines and women couldn't use the phone because it was so busy. There could be fears that telephones would invade domestic privacy and of course casual telephone speech, little idle chit-chat, would destroy face-to-face manners and etiquette.

So which of these complaints, worries, concerns was not a Victorian anxiety about the phone? They all seem like pretty Victorian anxieties. Perhaps I'm inclined towards pajama? Is that maybe? What's your thinking behind that? The pajamas are the sitting down one. They just seem even more parodied, like I'm a parody of themselves. But they all seem like they'd be worried about it.

I'm going to go sitting down. Okay. Well, I'm afraid you are wrong. They were worried. They thought, but if men are sitting down on the phone, that's wildly inappropriate. They should stand to speak to a woman. Oh, for goodness. And the pyjamas thing, too.

What if they weren't wearing trousers on the phone? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. No, the one that was a lie. I said businessmen would hog the phone lines and women wouldn't be able to get on the phone. Exact opposite problem. Yeah, that. Their fear was that women would gossip on the phones and men couldn't do business, Catherine. Well, if the resource is finite, that's a reasonable concern, I think.

But, okay, fair enough. That's the made-up one. Good for you. Nuisance window! Well, it's been a fascinating chat, but it is time now for the nuance window. This is the part of the show where Catherine and I quietly eavesdrop

on the party line for two minutes. Well, Professor Yuan tells us something we need to know about the history of the early telephone. My stopwatch is ready. Take it away, Professor Morris. We've been talking about the telephone, invented in 1876.

I want to tell you about another invention that took place almost at the time. same time as the telephone. It's revealing and it's important because it tells us a lot, I think, about what the telephone meant to the Victorians. Almost as soon as the telephone was invented, people started talking about this other new invention that hadn't quite been invented yet, but was going to be invented really honest gov any second now. This was the telectroscope. The telestroscope essentially was going to be telephone with vision.

So you get wonderful cartoons in punch of matron pater, sitting in their Victorian parlour, talking to their kids, playing tennis somewhere far out in the colonies. And it's always on the cusp of being invented. Throughout the 80s, throughout the 90s, it's always just about to be invented. And obviously, it never is. But I mean, what I think is fascinating about that

is what it shows us about the telephone and what the telephone meant. It's the future. I mean, that's what all of those sorts of technologies meant to the Victorians because they were starting to think about the future and understand the future, basically the way that we do. It's that destination we're going to get to with big tech, with technology, things like the telephone. And a teleoscope was the next big thing on their horizon.

That was going to be the technological future. Amazing. Thank you so much. They basically invented Zoom. All I could think about it, as you were talking, was The Simpsons. In the future, they always had televisions that you could see each other on and that was like 100 years later in the 90s

of us being like, get real. But like, yeah, that's so interesting. Never happened. Listener, if you want more from Catherine, of course, she's done many episodes with us, including a fan favourite, Gronia O'Malley, Irish Pirate Queen, and of course the history of general elections, which was very interesting too.

For more electrical history from Professor Yoan, there's our episode on Vital Electricity with Olga Cock that was surprisingly violent. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friend. Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds in the UK to hear new episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner.

We had the incredible Professor Yuan Morris from the University of Aberystwyth. Thank you, Yuan. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. It has. We've had a lot of fun. And in Comedy Corner, we had the brilliant Catherine Bowhart. Thank you, Catherine. Thank you for having me. Am I allowed to plug my futuristic special that's on the internet?

Yeah, go for it. How exciting. I just put my most recent show on YouTube and it's called Again with Feelings. And if you like a nosy hello girl, then I'm very much that. And I'm gabbing some gossip. Perfect. There we go. Go watch it. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we search through the phone book for another neglected historical topic. But for now, I'm off to go and make a hoi-hoi, the official greeting for podcast.

Come on. Never. Bye. Hello. I'm Nick Robinson. You might be tired of switching on the news, hearing those pre-rehearsed soundbites, the lines to take from those who shape our lives. When politics is as fragmented, as unpredictable, as fraught as it is now, it can be hard to cut through the noise. That is precisely my aim on political thinking, my podcast from BBC Radio 4. I have extended conversations with those who shape our

political thinking. I try to get to the heart of what makes these people tick. What lies behind what you're seeing or hearing on the news. That's political thinking with me, Nick Robinson. You can listen on BBC Sounds. The Signal Awards recognize the podcast that define culture, and being honored by the Signal Awards, sets your production team apart, with recognition from the industry's top experts,

and access proof that your work is a standard bearer for podcasting worldwide. By entering, your work is heard by the Signal Awards Judging Academy, an invitation-only body of podcast professionals from acclaimed organizations which include the BBC. Grow your audience, celebrate your team, and stand out. The final entry deadline to submit is the 26th of June. Enter your podcast at signalaward.com for consideration.