Signal Award Winner · 2026
We Won a Signal Award for Best Video Podcast Co-Host Team
Ten months after launching our Toronto-born video podcast, I Thought It Was Just Me is officially a Signal Award winner.
· By Jayne Kamara & Shawna Stewart
We won a Signal Award. 😭🏆
First, thank you. We’re so grateful — turns out it wasn’t JUST us after all.
I Thought It Was Just Me is officially a 2026 Signal Award winner for Best Video Podcast Co-Host Team.
Ten months ago, Jayne Kamara and Shawna Stewart sat down to record a pilot while still figuring out exactly what this show was going to become. Since then, the Toronto-born video podcast has grown to more than 55,000 YouTube subscribers, more than 2 million documented cross-platform views, and an international audience spanning Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa and beyond.
Why this category matters
What makes this win especially meaningful is the category itself.
I Thought It Was Just Me has always been built around Jayne and Shawna’s real-life friendship. Random Thought Roulette™ gives each episode somewhere to start, but the chemistry, timing, laughter, side-eyes, nostalgia, tangents and completely unexpected turns are what make the show what it is.
Winning Best Video Podcast Co-Host Team recognizes the part of the show that cannot be manufactured: the way Jayne and Shawna naturally work together on screen.
Cast as best friends. Became best friends.
Jayne and Shawna first met after being cast as best friends in the film Bite of a Mango. Their real-life friendship continued through that experience and later through the Morningside press tour.
After repeatedly hearing that their off-camera conversations should become a show, they eventually created I Thought It Was Just Me.
The series launched in December 2025 — December 17, to be exact. The show was created and produced in Toronto, Canada, and remains independently produced.
What is I Thought It Was Just Me?
I Thought It Was Just Me is an award-winning Canadian video podcast and entertainment series hosted by Jayne Kamara and Shawna Stewart.
The show blends millennial nostalgia, pop culture, humour, music and unfiltered friendship through Random Thought Roulette™, the original interactive audience-powered conversation format created for I Thought It Was Just Me.
Jayne and Shawna discover prompts live, without pre-reading them, allowing each conversation to unfold naturally and often end somewhere nobody expected.
Ten months in, a world of connection
In its first year, the show has reached:
- 55K+ YouTube subscribers
- 2M+ documented cross-platform views
- 10K+ Instagram followers
- Audiences across Canada, the U.S., U.K., South Africa and beyond
- A 400-person live audience during its first live showcase at Big Day Out during TIFF season in Toronto
The bigger picture
The Signal Award win marks another step in the evolution of I Thought It Was Just Me from an independently produced podcast into a broader entertainment property spanning long-form video, short-form content, original music, interactive audience participation and live programming.
The goal was never simply to make a podcast bigger.
The bigger question has always been: how far can this format — and the friendship at the centre of it — go?
It wasn’t just us after all
Thank you to everyone who has watched, shared, commented, submitted a random thought, laughed with us, or told us, “I thought it was just me too.”
We’re only 10 months in.
Toronto, look what we made. 💜
Signal Awards 2026 Coverage
These stories cover the broader 2026 Signal Awards winner class; they are not presented as individual profiles of I Thought It Was Just Me.