Kerning Cultures landed two Signal Awards, making our network the first in the Middle East to win a prestigious podcast award. KC brought home two awards hailing from our flagship English podcast, Kerning Cultures.

Signal Awards is a New-York based inaugural organization that honors and celebrates creators who are “raising the bar for podcasting”. Their mission is to amplify, share, and celebrate outstanding podcast content from around the world.

Leaders within the podcast industry evaluate shows across many categories, including Most Innovative Audio Experience, Best Exclusive Content & Experiences, and many others. Award judges include representatives from Vox Media, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, and Netflix.

“For us, as Arab producers, it’s a huge honour to be recognised on a global stage alongside mega-podcasts like Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, Story Pirates from Gimlet Media, and HBO Max’s, Hacks,” says Kerning Cultures Network co-founder and CEO, Hebah Fisher.

Our podcast “The Sleeping Children” won Gold in the Documentary Episode category. The “Sleeping Children” tells the tragic story of an asylum-seeking family whose daughter “falls asleep” and doesn’t wake up again for 5 years.

“Sheikh Imam: Voice of Dissent” won the Silver Signal Award in the Music Episode category. The podcast chronicles the inspiring story of a blind Egyptian oud player/singer and a rebel poet whose collaboration transcended borders, shook regimes, and instigated a new era in popular music. 

Both winning episodes also picked up “Listeners’ Choice” by popular vote. Kudos to our dedicated production team behind this amazing win. Our production team includes Zeina Dowidar, Nadeen Shaker, Heba El-Sherif, Andrei Popoviciu, Dana Ballout, Alex Atack, Deena Sabry, Monzer El-Hachem, Youssef Douazou, Mohamad Khreizat, and Ahmad Salhab.

“We put so much of ourselves into making these stories and are grateful that our hard work is getting this kind of recognition,” says English Managing Producer, Alex Atack.

Alex promises some great ambitious stories in store for Kerning Cultures listeners this season. “Surprising, deeply human stories that you wouldn’t hear anywhere else from Somalia, Morocco, Palestine, Afghanistan, and more.”

Tune into this season of Kerning Cultures on all podcast streaming channels. You can support Kerning Cultures on https://www.patreon.com/kerningcultures for as little as $2 an hour.