Table of Contents
Picks of the week
Legacy: Charles Dickens
Wondery, weekly episodes
It’s the time to settle in and listen to the story of Charles “the Godfather of Christmas” Dickens. It’s a perfectly timed choice for Afua Hirsch’s latest issue (below) and Peter Frankopan’s probing biographical series, which examines the Victorian novelist’s highs and lows. Behind his literary success and social reform work were poor financial decisions, rumors of affairs, and constant battles with his publishers. Hollie Richardson
Deadline: Deadly Mirage
Widely available, two episodes per week.
This six-part series looks at how a lush oasis in California, billed as “the happiest place to be,” was home to a murder. As with all Dateline podcasts, no scandal is left unturned, which is a good thing because these residents took the term “love thy neighbor” literally until the murder occurred. Hannah Verdier
Walk
Widely available, weekly episodes.
Promenade’s brief audio slides last less than 10 minutes, but the feeling they convey lasts much longer. Now in its third season, this new batch of first-person stories explores the connection, featuring a barber who cut Paul McCartney’s hair, a veteran radio host from Texas, and Louise O’Neill’s beautiful tribute to her grandmother. high voltage
Watch Dogs: The Truth
Audible, all episodes now available
Russell Tovey, Freema Agyeman and David Morrissey lead the cast of this brilliant drama that features a healthy dose of AI. The government is spreading fake news and cracking down on civil liberties, and citizens are under surveillance. At the end of each episode, listeners can answer a question and choose their own style of adventure. So there is no pressure. high voltage
Trump’s terms
Widely available, weekly episodes.
The NPR podcast, formerly known as Trump’s Trials, focuses its attention on the incoming administration and the people who will take power. The short episodes are dynamic (as headlines move quickly) and are always well-informed on topics including abortion rights, spending, and how women should behave to secure a spot on Trump’s team. high voltage
There’s a podcast for that.
Raquel Aroesti choose five of the best experimental podcastsfrom a personal poetry podcast to a talk show with inanimate objects
Offal
The creators of this deeply disturbing show prefer the term “audio zine” to podcast. And, to be fair, Offal is definitely not available through the usual pod providers – episodes are sent to interested parties via WhatsApp on a roughly monthly basis (you can also purchase a cassette compilation from the show’s website). However, this unorthodox delivery system is by no means the strangest thing about Offal: to create the show, the anonymous team behind it feeds the AI various scripts, from deliberately bizarre apocalyptic dramas to cultural satires, to produce a hilarious but disturbingly strange Blue Jam style. fusion of horror, sketch show and soundscape.
Have you heard George’s podcast?
George Mpanga is better known as George the Poet and in this series he reinvents the podcast as a vessel for verse. Presented primarily in rhyming couplets, the show cushions George’s voice with film and music samples to create a hypnotic and often very beautiful collage of sound. But the content of his words is also crucial: Many episodes also serve as an incisive history lesson on the kinds of things you don’t learn in school, from the way pop culture is fueled by black trauma to changing national identity of Uganda. Other episodes take a more personal approach, seeing our host reflect on his love life and anthropomorphize the battle between contentment and ambition in his brain.
the 11th
This podcast series is named after the day it was released (it originally came out on the 11th of the month), which is also the only consistent thing. Each episode changes the format, theme, duration and voice to create a kind of sonic delights. One installment features an anthology of pep talks, another sees Broken Social Scene’s Charles Spearin transform the voices of his friends and family into songs. Elsewhere, there’s a walking tour of a pink Miami apartment complex, an audio drama about the Saturn Return, and a personal story about a woman’s obsession with a line of dialogue from The Cider House Rules.
everything is alive
When it comes to interview podcasts, a human interlocutor is generally a must. Not on Everything is Alive, in which host and creator Ian Chillag converses with a different inanimate object each episode. True, not literally (that would be disastrously one-sided); Instead, this sweet, fun, and empathetic group imagines what it’s like to be a can of cola, a pregnancy test, a baseball cap, and more. All the items are given names and full inner lives, as the actors who play them talk about what it’s like to be not drunk, the prospect of being urinated on, and the pleasures of people asking you which store you’re from.
Eighty thousand steps
Podcasting is a mobile medium, meaning people rarely stay in one place while listening to their favorite series. That’s a fact this show takes advantage of, but it also throws a twist: Eighty Thousand Steps, which is available only through its dedicated pedometer-based app, only plays when the listener is walking. The series combines this innovation with a deep theme, dealing with the stories of immigrants and refugees, a theme inspired by creator Crystal Chan’s grandmother, whose escape from China remained shrouded in mystery for most of the host’s life. .
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And something else for this…
And for our final elections, Ammar Kalia choose five of the best podcasts to make you thinkfrom psychoanalytic studies of pop culture and politics, to explorations of lost music and an examination of life with a “difficult” name
Mention of names
Shakespeare may have asked “what’s in a name?”, but for podcasters Giri Nathan and Samer Kalaf, few things are more important than the names we’re given. Her fascinating and funny series talks to comedians, writers and academics with “difficult” names about the impact their parents’ choices have had on their lives, as well as how changing your name to suit others can often have an effect. silencer in other aspects of your life. your life. Psychologist Xian Zhao is particularly poignant about the importance of pronouncing someone’s name correctly.
Have you heard this one?
Given that a recent study found that more music was released in a single day in 2024 than in all of 1989, it may seem impossible to keep up with the current state of the industry, no matter its history. Hundreds of important artists and stories simply go unnoticed and unnoticed. This cleverly crafted anthology series uses immersive sound design and the investigative work of a different music journalist in each episode to uncover the musicians more of us should know and listen to. Highlights include the story of singing nun, Jeanne-Paule Marie Deckers, and the radical legacy of country singer Wilma Burgess.
The complete English
Chef Lewis Bassett’s long-running series on the sociology and cultural impact of British food will change the way you look at what’s on your plate. Bassett invites food historians to trace the nation’s changing tastes in everything from lamb to tea, as well as investigate modern concerns about nose-to-tail consumption, European cuisine, and skyrocketing prices. of groceries. The latest series focuses on the often polarizing figures who have shaped and marketed our diet, including Delia Smith, Madhur Jaffrey, Ken Hom and Jamie Oliver.
What the hell is my job?!
Our jobs can provide fascinating insight into our lives. Since we spend so much of our waking time at work, our colleagues (whether we like them or not) can become more familiar to us than our families, and it can be challenging to leave work at the door when we’re done for the day. Rather than academically analyzing workplace dynamics, these short, light-hearted episodes simply present anonymous first-person accounts of people’s jobs, exposing their joys and fears. Among the out-of-character stories are stories of a goose hunter, a therapist, a doctor, and a salesman. Listen and get inspired for your next career move…
Ordinary unhappiness
There is more to the way we interact with and consume politics and pop culture than the headlines may suggest. According to this long-running series, deep unconscious forces shape every aspect of the media and ideas we consume. Using psychoanalytic theory, hosts Abby Kluchin and Patrick Blanchfield apply concepts such as transference, historical trauma, and the Oedipus complex to everything from the movie Challengers and the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer to modern American politics. Episodes can be over two hours long, but stick to the technicalities and tangents – the length of the discussion is always justifiable and worth listening to.
Why not try it…?
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transverselya men’s and women’s football crossover from former England captain Steph Houghton and Arsenal hero Ian Wright.
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Best idea so farthat reveals the untold stories behind beloved and revolutionary things, from the Happy Meal to the hot tub.