Stories of Our Times

Stories of Our Times is the award-winning daily news podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times, where daily news meets narrative storytelling. Hosted by investigative journalist Manveen Rana, we unravel a remarkable story each day with world-class journalism at its core.

 Our unique narrative format allows our listeners to delve deep into the heart of the stories, while our global reporting features eye-witness accounts and exclusive interviews with key figures. Notably, our interview with General Nick Carter, the Chief of the Defence Staff of the British Army, won the British Podcast Award for Best Interview.

The podcast works alongside print journalists and specialises in covering ground breaking investigations, including the exclusive reporting by Paul Morgan-Bentley into how British Gas installed prepayment meters in vulnerable customers' homes. The collective impact of our journalism across print, digital and our podcast resulted in British Gas stopping the practice as well as an intervention by the Energy Minister Graham Stuart.

Our entry for the awards is a recent collaboration with the investigations team on the Russell Brand rape and sexual assault, our producers spent several months working with our print journalists - Rosamund Urwin, Media Editor at The Sunday Times and Charlotte Wace, News Reporter at The Times to piece together a narrative storytelling format and was dealt with absolute sensitivity and care. The episode is our most listened to episode so far this year.

 In addition to bringing our distinctive Times journalism, we pride ourselves on covering unique stories that reflect the changing world around us. Our episode on the disappearance of Nicola Bulley showcased this as journalist Darryl Morris visited St Michael's on Wyre in Lancashire to interview ‘grief junkies’, TikTok sleuths and amateur detectives that had descended on the tiny village. His powerful and challenging interviews with them gave us a unique insight into a fast developing story. We’ve included this as part of our second entry.

For our final entry, we’ve included the story of Dave Young, a volunteer evacuator in Ukraine, who drives around some of the most dangerous places in a dented, bullet-riddled van. A chance encounter with veteran Times war correspondent Anthony Loyd in Slovyansk leads to Anthony joining Dave on his rescues. Eight months later and after sifting through countless recordings from the battlefield, we brought Dave’s heroic efforts to light. In this time, he had rescued over 800 Ukrainians and lost his right eye to shrapnel. The episode provided a rare glimpse into the heart of the war in Ukraine, and sparked calls for Dave’s story to be made into a film that would support him and others like him.

Our podcast boasts a substantial female audience, making up 60% of our listeners, predominantly aged under 45. It has grown 24 per cent YOY and is often featured in the Essential Daily News podcast category on Apple Podcast alongside The News Agents, The Rest is Politics, The Daily and Newscast.