Our happy place

When high-profile political journalists Annabel Crabb and Leigh Sales started a podcast characterised by their own madcap friendship, it showed them what happiness is all about.

- JULIET RIEDEN

They say they are just two chicks chatting into the same phone at a kitchen table and if you tune in to their insanely popular podcast – along with the 100,000 or so who download every episode – you really will find just that. Only these are not just any chicks, they are high-profile journalists Leigh Sales – host of ABC’s searing nightly 7.30 report on which she regularly grills politics’ toughest nuts – and Annabel Crabb, who excels in putting the Canberra bubble under her microscope, sometimes while baking cakes, and recently brought us the rigorously researched TV series Ms Represented about the rocky rise of women in politics.

Okay … but here’s the thing … this podcast is nothing to do with political hot potatoes, current affairs or any of that complex and serious stuff. Well, potatoes do get a look-in – a recipe for glass potatoes using a jaw-dropping 250ml of oil to be precise. And it is hot, in the sense that Annabel and Leigh have stumbled upon something that has ignited the Zeitgeist. But the true appeal of the podcast, while no doubt founded on the living room profile of these two women, is about something that has the power to connect us all.