A new podcast awards raises questions
At the expo hall in Podfest this year was one booth manned by “The International Podcast Awards”.
This wasn’t an award ceremony I’d heard of, so on the third day of the conference, I went to ask some questions of the guy who was sitting at the booth.
“Who does the judging?” was a good first question. The answer surprised me. “My dad”. That wasn’t the wide judges’ committee that I was expecting. I paused.
“So, how do the awards work?” I was told that they are free to enter, and if you win, it’s $300 to an awards ceremony in Phoenix AZ, where you get to pick up the award, you get filmed doing an interview, the whole red carpet treatment, but there are other packages available. There are two events a year: the next is scheduled for April 2026, in Arizona. “Who doesn’t want to win an award, right?” he said.
“Do you have any more details?” I asked. “Yeah, you can photograph this,” he said, holding up a sheet of letter-sized paper, which had been on the stand next to a metal microphone-shaped award and some lanyards. The right-hand side of the leaflet contained advantages you get from winning an award; the left-hand side claimed that they serve “entrepreneurs”, “executives” and “every-day heroes”.
I went to the website - to learn more about the every-day heroes who have won this award in the past.
The only winner I can find
When I looked, the website’s “awards” gallery didn’t contain any of the awards given out by the International Podcast Awards. Instead, it contains a picture of the award’s “first winner”, apparently from Australia. Despite it looking as though these link to more information, they don’t.
The podcaster, wearing a tuxedo, holds an award plaque marked “International Podcast Awards”, in front of a pull-up banner marked “Podcast Awards”. His name wasn’t mentioned at all on the site.
The podcaster is Kain Masters - who is Australian - and his podcast is Terminally Curious with Kain Masters, a show hosted on Spotify for Creators. His last episode, from August 2025, is Inside the World’s Most DANGEROUS Security Job, where he interviews Atlas Aultman, a former special operations director in Afghanistan. The episode has 131 views on YouTube.
The person seen giving him the award in the picture is Joshua 'Atlas’ Aultman.
The YouTube video, posted by Podcast Awards International, features Masters being interviewed by Clifford Starks, a pro UFC fighter. The video, which has 841 views, doesn’t contain any mention of the award; but the video’s description says the podcast “won for film work, editing and high-quality content to name just a few things that made his show amazing to consume.”
By email, I asked the International Podcast Awards for a list of winners.
I got a response from… Joshua 'Atlas’ Aultman, who runs the International Podcast Awards.
He told us: “We asked for/received podcasts and studio nominations through social media in 2025. We presented a show, studio, and 1-million+ view award at a red-carpet event last year. Awards were announced on social media but we haven’t created an awardee page yet - this website thing is new. Judges for last cycle were me and my team.”
He tells me that Masters was “the main winner”, and that they had other entries. He said that Bill Brassow was “recognized for his work in podcast production” (though his company, PodWorks, were the people filming and photographing it). He also suggested that Ian ‘Badger’ Asher received an award “for getting 1M views” - he’s the CEO of a company called Gun TV Shows, and appeared on the TARGETED podcast, which is hosted by Atlas Aultman. I don’t see evidence from the event’s YouTube channel of these awards.
The “awards” gallery which wasn’t
Apart from the winner Kain Masters, the awards page contained a number of other images.
Under “highlights”, next to Masters is another picture, marked “US shows” featuring happy winners holding an award. The picture shows Ross Fyfe and Jimmy Bosco, winners of The West End Golf Day from 2017. West End Draught is a brand of Australian beer, and the West End Cup takes place every year in South Australia, at the Liquor Industry Golf Club in West Lakes, which is just to the west of Adelaide. Its relevance to a podcast awards is unclear.
Scroll further down to the “Gallery Highlights - Snapshots from our unforgettable 2025 red carpet event”, and you could see seven images. An image of a red carpet in a cinema in Uzbekistan; an image of a classical music concert; an image of a child winning an award in Dubai; the original FIFA World Cup on display in the FIFA Museum; a video interview in front of a hand-drawn Cyrillic map; an image from India showing prizes being given for the New Business Launching Seminar run by Striking Online Service & Shopping Pvt Ltd of West Bengal; and finally, marked “red carpet buzz”, an image from 2023 of an outdoor red carpet in Turkiye. All are accompanied by misleading ALT text, claiming they’re taken at the awards. It’s our opinion that they’re not.
After Podnews contacted the company, all these images were removed, excepting the Turkish red carpet.
The images on the website’s front page remain a mix of Kain Masters being interviewed by Clifford Starks; a black and white picture showing a man recording something in a pizza restaurant in São Paulo in Brazil; Aultman interviewing Starks; then, lower, Starks, Aultman and Masters with nine other unidentified people in front of a banner with podcast platform logos on it; Masters accepting the award from Aultman; an unrelated picture of a glass award to someone called Matt Seymour marked as being for the Unsplash Awards 2018 (the company used for all the free stock images on this website, and which has since been removed); Starks interviewing Masters; Starks interviewing an unidentified woman at the award; and finally Masters giving a speech to a ceremony with four visible tables for guests.
The submit page includes details of a “red carpet venue in Phoenix Arizona”, and an embedded Google map for 697 Hilltop Street, Springfield MA, an address which appears to be used on websites for variety of businesses, including a Chinese food company, a roofing company, a phsychiatrist, a beef seller, a rental company for Perth in Australia, a Bangalore-based microgreens company, a plumbing company, a pizza restaurant, a printing company, and plenty more.
The others in the images weren’t winners
The YouTube channel for the awards helps me understand who is pictured on the website.
The unidentified woman on the front page is Stephanie LaBorde Dreux, who is Head of Community Activation of the IDIA, an organisation helping people access technology. Osama Awadalla is a former fighter and actor. Others in the group image include the owners of a gym, and the owners of a martial arts company. (Kain Masters describes himself as a martial artist). The event was videoed by PodWorks Studios.
In short - I think there was only one winner - Kain Masters. Apart from being a podcaster, he’s also an author of a well-reviewed book about how to become a toxic male. He’s shared social posts on his Instagram of his win. I tried to get in touch, but the only way appears to be to send him a message on LinkedIn, and he only accepts messages from Premium members.
The “praise” from winners who didn’t exist
The front page contained “praise” from two happy podcasters. One is Liam Fox from Sydney, who claims to be a winner; his same photograph is used on a Parisian alternative health website where he’s called Jacques, a warehouse worker who was delighted at his treatment by the company. The other is Eva Chen from Phoenix, who oddly is illustrated by a picture of a business award given in Nottinghamshire, England in 2019. I can’t find a podcaster called Eva Chen, excepting the New York-based fashion influencer.
I asked who these winners were. Aultman told us: “The names and quotes you referenced were the original placeholders that we had in draft. They got published instead of the reviews that were supposed to be in there - so we fixed that, thanks for pointing that out. That’s all my fault, I wanted it live prior to Podfest so we could use the website and then got caught up with work.”
The replacement “praise” is from Kain Masters, and a non-committal quote from “Stephanie D” - who is presumably Stephanie LaBorde Dreux. She isn’t a podcaster.
The business plan
I then noticed the “store” at the top of the page: and all becomes clear.
As with similar awards, there’s a fee to attend the awards ceremony, of $300 each, or $500 “with your significant other, best friend, or someone you want to impress”.
But, unusually, that’s not all.
To get a “media package”, which is a red-carpet video interview, is $500 “so (your audience) can celebrate your success”.
Additionally, to “talk on our stage” is $500 - to “add to your speaker reel or boost your credibility”. “We set up the stage, the lights, the sound the professionals, and gather an amazing crowd - you deliver value for up to 1 minute of microphone time.” (This makes my recent talk at Podfest be valued at $22,500).
Aultman told us: “At this point, I’ve spent thousands of my own money trying to keep people who have amazing shows in the world of podcasting with this program. There was interest in the next red carpet event at Podfest, but I wasn’t trying to sell anyone and nobody committed to attending the event by purchasing a ticket. Low ticket sales = awards recognition online only. I’d love to keep doing this but it’s very quickly becoming a financial burden that I won’t be able to continue on red carpet events past April if there is no awards dinner, enough donations, or sponsors.”
An evening of cosplay
Excepting the photos on the website, these people aren’t doing anything wrong. They provide a nice service - it’s an evening of cosplay, where for $300 you get to dress up in a nice suit and get treated like a fancy award-winner, so you get to claim you have won an award and charge your clients more. Pay $500, and you get to cosplay with a potential client. Pay $500 more, and you get to give a 60-second speech in front of them. And for another $500 more, a video interview with a UFC fighter.
If you don’t care about the circumstances of it, it’s a good investment that’ll make you look more persuasive - you’re a winner of the International Podcast Awards after all, which is almost as exciting as winning a real award.
Aultman disputes this. “To be perfectly clear - nobody has paid for an award. And no one has paid for recognition. This isn’t a buy-an-award program - it’s free to enter.”
“At this point, I’ve had little interest in people at Podfest attending another event and appreciate your interest in telling people about us. I’m not sure the traditional / audio-only podcast community will be interested in this. It’s been the YouTubers that are expressing the most interest.”
And perhaps, for people who care more about how things look, it would be the ideal purchase.
