Two podcasts produced by research teams at the University of Victoria are making international waves, winning accolades from the 2025 Signal Awards.
A Radical Act of Hope with Siila Watt-Cloutier won a Listener’s Choice Award and Gold Award in the limited series category for the genre of activism, public service and social impact. Call to Mind: Audio Diaries of Love and Memory Loss won a Silver Award in the same genre for an individual episode, Becoming a Granddaughter Again: Shifting Roles in an Intergenerational Punjabi Family.
A Radical Act of Hope features the story of Inuk climate and human rights advocate Siila (Sheila) Watt-Cloutier, Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions’ (PICS) inaugural Indigenous Climate Fellow. It was produced by PICS at the University of Victoria, in collaboration with Everything Podcasts.
“These awards affirm that my life’s work—and the voice of Indigenous peoples globally—continues to resonate as a beacon of hope, direction and action to build a better world,” says Watt-Cloutier. “I am grateful for the support from PICS and to the remarkable team at Everything Podcasts for allowing my voice, my life’s work and the voices of other Indigenous women to be heard by a larger audience.”
Call to Mind is led by Mariko Sakamoto, a Michael Smith Health Research BC Scholar and assistant professor in UVic’s School of Nursing, who hosted the second season of the podcast and expanded it into a research project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The audio-diary-style episodes bring to life personal stories of spouses, children and grandchildren journeying alongside a loved one living with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
“The award-winning episode recorded by Ashley Sharma with her nani, Devki, tells a powerful and emotional story about racism and gaps in the healthcare system, and the urgent need for culturally sensitive healthcare supports for people with dementia,” Sakamoto says.
The Signal Awards, which celebrate the podcasts that “define culture,” recognized this year’s winners from an extraordinary range of voices and genres worldwide. Other 2025 winners include high-profile shows such as The Wonder of Stevie, The Mel Robbins Podcast, Crime Junkie and New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce.
The Signal Awards received more than 385,000 public votes this year, a 126 per cent increase over 2024, and featured submissions from across the globe, including the UK, Australia, Germany and Qatar.
