Table of Contents
Selections of the week
Origins with Cush Jumbo
Widely available, weekly episodes.
Cush Jumbo is always a lot of fun when she’s doing press interviews for her work (The Good Wife, Criminal Record, Hamlet), and she’s just as great now that the tables have turned on her first podcast. She talks to stars about their origin stories, including Kate Nash, Harlan Coben, David Schwimmer and, in the first episode, Anna Wintour, who says she hates people who dither and recalls being fired from Harper’s Bazaar because she couldn’t pin a dress. Hollie Richardson
Rebel spirit
Widely available, weekly episodes.
Comedian Akilah Hughes brings a light touch to her serious mission when she returns to her Kentucky hometown to try to change her high school’s racist mascot from a Confederate general to a cookie. Can she bring the school into the modern era? What will the change mean for her and other students? Hannah Verdier
Sara and Cariad’s Oddballs Book Club
Widely available, weekly episodes.
Sara Pascoe and Cariad Lloyd go beyond the usual selections with the second season of their book club for people who don’t want to talk about reading over cheese and wine. First up, Roisin Conaty presents Standard Deviation, Katherine Heiny’s charming novel about a mismatched couple raising their children as best they can. High voltage
Then and now
Widely available, weekly episodes.
Was parenting and childhood better when Babátúndé and Leonie Aléshé were young? The pair laugh out loud and show plenty of chemistry in their new podcast, which looks at how parenting has changed. While Babátúndé is the comedian, his wife gives him a run for his money and isn’t afraid to poke fun when needed. High voltage
Streams: The definitive history of Joy Division and New Order
Widely available, weekly episodes.
New Order fans are in for a treat with this second season, which revisits the band’s journey from black and white to colour with Power, Corruption & Lies. The band members and their famous fans tell us fantastic stories about a new era in which working with Arthur Baker, soaking up the early days of dance culture in Ibiza and giving birth to World in Motion became a reality. High voltage
There’s a podcast for that.
This week, Graeme Virtue choose five of the best podcasts of Science Fiction StoriesFrom an alternate Marvel universe to star-studded tech thrillers
Escape pod
The sci-fi tales featured on Escape Pod often explore dazzling or disturbing futures. But this charming trove of speculative fiction is practically prehistoric in podcast terms, having first launched in 2005. Each installment features a short story—a mix of originals and fiction culled from other sci-fi media—in a no-frills audiobook style. Episodes average half an hour in length, so entire galactic empires can rise and fall in the time it takes to walk the dog. A back catalog of more than 900 stories sounds overwhelming (here’s a list of the stories you’ll find in Escape Pod). Where to start) but Escape Pod has never lost touch with its DIY origins.
Ad Lucem
The podcasting space has long been a hotbed of sci-fi dramas with impressive audio design and at least one big Hollywood name attached. The stylish but disturbing conspiracy thriller Ad Lucem is a cutting-edge example, though its darker themes and occasional swearing may not be for everyone. While it’s set in 2032 on the eve of a transformative technological launch, its roots are in the traumas of the pandemic depriving us of touch. It begs the question: what if your voice assistant could hug you? Olivia Wilde, Chris Pine and co-creator Troian Bellisario are the main stars, but seasoned pros Fiona Shaw and Clancy Brown are immaculate in the margins.
LeVar Burton reads
Actor and director LeVar Burton (pictured above) will forever be associated with science fiction after his long stint on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Before he played chief engineer Geordi La Forge, however, Burton hosted the American educational television series Reading Rainbow, which helped several generations of schoolchildren improve their literacy. Both professional threads come together in LeVar Burton Reads, a celebration of fantastic short fiction that ran for more than 200 episodes before concluding earlier this year (ending with a classic short story by sci-fi god Ray Bradbury). Unsurprisingly, Burton is a skilled and evocative storyteller, and after each story concludes he also shares some of his reactions and reflections – an added layer of intimacy that helps each one linger in the mind.
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Marvel’s Desert Dwellers
Fed up with spandex-clad superheroes? Good news: In the world of Wastelanders, most of the Avengers are gruesomely killed in a surprise attack. Decades later, the United States is a post-apocalyptic patchwork of fiefdoms ruled by villains. This Mad Max version of the Marvel universe is the brutal backdrop for vivid character studies of five old-fashioned survivors: a goofball space cop Lord of the stars (Timothy Busfield), bitter circus act Hawkeye (Stephen Lang), distant spy Black Widow (Susan Sarandon), angry loner Glutton (Robert Patrick) and the marginalized tyrant Condemn (Dylan Baker). Immersive world building and a rich vein of satirical humor help make each series a fun ride even before the scattered misfits band together to One last hurrah.
Clarkesworld Magazine
Science fiction magazines that published stories in the 1940s helped popularize the genre. Fast forward to the present, and it makes sense that science fiction periodicals, from the 1970s workhorse Asimov’s science fiction To the digital anthology Lightspeed Magazine – have an audio spin-off. The feature film Clarkesworld Magazine The podcast offers a spectrum of horizon-broadening sci-fi and fantasy stories that often shed light on international tales in translation. Episodes range from short ten-minute snippets to multi-part novels, and if there’s a tantalizing feeling that anything can happen, Kate Baker (host and narrator of the podcast since 2009) provides a cohesive and welcoming story line.
Why not try…?
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Football Weekly presenter Max Rushden teams up with comedian David O’Doherty to What did you do yesterday? in which – bingo! – they ask their famous friends how they’ve spent their last 24 hours.
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Californian wellness center Miracle Ranch promised patients a better, healthier life through the “alkaline diet.” Chameleon: Doctor Miracle details the deadly consequences.
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BBC Satire Everything is news pairs a former foreign affairs correspondent (played by real-life journalist-turned-comedian Helen Price) with a sacked cabinet minister (actor Michael Clark) in a critique of the “centrist dads podcast” genre.
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