Picks of the week
Legacy: Charles Dickens
Wondery, episodes weekly
’Tis the season for settling in and listening to the story of Charles “the godfather of Christmas” Dickens. It’s a perfectly timed choice for the latest subject of Afua Hirsch (below) and Peter Frankopan’s probing biopic series, which looks at the Victorian novelist’s highs and lows. Behind the literary success and work on social reform were bad financial decisions, rumoured affairs and constant battles with his publishers. Hollie Richardson
Dateline: Deadly Mirage
Widely available, two episodes weekly
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, there’s no scandalous stone unturned, which is just as well as these residents took the term “love thy neighbour” literally until the murder happened. Hannah Verdier
Promenade
Widely available, episodes weekly
Promenade’s short slithers of audio are less than 10 minutes long, but the feeling they bring lasts a lot longer. Now in its third season, this new batch of first-person stories explore connection, with a barber who cut Paul McCartney’s hair, a veteran Texas radio host and Louise O’Neill’s beautiful tribute to her grandmother. HV
Watch Dogs: Truth
Audible, all episodes out now
Russell Tovey, Freema Agyeman and David Morrissey lead the cast in this glossy drama featuring a good dose of AI. The government is pumping out fake news and cracking down on civil freedoms, and citizens are under surveillance. At the end of each episode, listeners can answer a question, choose your own adventure-style. No pressure, then. HV
Trump’s Terms
Widely available, episodes weekly
NPR’s podcast, formerly known as Trump’s Trials, turns its attention to the incoming administration and the people who’ll take power. The short episodes are dynamic – as the headlines move fast – and always well informed on issues including abortion rights, spending and how women have to behave to secure a place on Trump’s team. HV
There’s a podcast for that
Rachel Aroesti chooses five of the best experimental podcasts, from a personal poetry podcast to an interview show with inanimate objects
Offal
The creators of this deeply unsettling programme prefer the term “audio zine” to podcast. And, to be fair, Offal is most definitely not available via the usual pod providers – episodes are sent out to interested parties via WhatsApp on an approximately monthly basis (you can also buy a compilation on cassette from the show’s website). Yet this unorthodox delivery system is by no means the weirdest thing about Offal: to create the show, the anonymous team behind it feed AI various scripts – from deliberately odd apocalyptic dramas to cultural satires – to produce a hilarious yet hauntingly uncanny 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 reimagines the podcast as a vessel for verse. Largely delivered in rhyming couplets, the show cushions George’s voice with samples from film and music to create a mesmeric and often very beautiful collage of sound. But the content of his words is crucial, too: many episodes double as an incisive history lesson on the kind of thing you didn’t learn in school, from the way pop culture is fuelled by black trauma to the changing national identity of Uganda. Other episodes take a more personal tack, seeing our host muse on his love life and anthropomorphise the battle between contentment and ambition in his brain.
The 11th
This podcast series is named after its day of release – it originally came out on the 11th of the month – which also happens to be the only consistent thing about it. Each episode swaps format, subject matter, duration and voice to create a lucky dip of audio delights. One instalment 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 is a walking tour of a pink Miami apartment complex, an audio drama themed around Saturn returns and a personal history about one 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, which sees host and creator Ian Chillag converse with a different inanimate object each episode. Not literally, admittedly (that would be disastrously one-sided) – instead, this sweet, funny and empathetic pod 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 riff on how it feels to remain undrunk, the prospect of being urinated on and the pleasures of people asking what shop you’re from.
Eighty Thousand Steps
The podcast is a mobile medium, which means people rarely stay in one spot while listening to their favourite series. That’s a fact that this show takes advantage of, but also turns on its head: Eighty Thousand Steps – which is available solely via its dedicated, pedometer-based app – only plays when the listener is walking around. The series marries this innovation with profound subject matter, concerning itself 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 some more for this …
And for our final picks, Ammar Kalia chooses five of the best podcasts to get you thinking, from psychoanalytic studies of pop culture and politics, to explorations of lost music, and an examination of living with a “difficult” name
Namedropping
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 are given. Their fascinating and funny series talks to comics, 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 a silencing effect on other aspects of your life. Psychologist Xian Zhao is particularly poignant on the importance of correctly pronouncing someone’s name.
Have You Heard This One?
With a recent study finding that more music was released on a single day in 2024 than in the entirety of 1989, it can feel impossible to keep up with the current state of the industry, never mind its history. Hundreds of artists and important stories simply go unheard and unnoticed. This artfully crafted anthology series uses immersive sound design and the investigative work of a different music journalist each episode to uncover the musicians more of us should know about and be listening to. Highlights include the story of the Singing Nun, Jeanne-Paule Marie Deckers, and the radical legacy of country singer Wilma Burgess.
The Full 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 mutton to tea, as well as investigating modern concerns with nose to tail eating, European cuisine and the rocketing prices of groceries. The most recent series focuses on the often polarising figures who have shaped and commercialised our eating, including Delia Smith, Madhur Jaffrey, Ken Hom and Jamie Oliver.
What the Hell Is My Job?!
Our jobs can provide a 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 call it a day. Rather than academically analysing workplace dynamics, these lighthearted, bite-size episodes simply present anonymous first-person accounts of people’s jobs, exposing their joys and fears. Among the off-kilter accounts are tales of a geese-chaser, therapist, doctor and salesperson. Listen and get some inspiration for your next career move …
Ordinary Unhappiness
There’s more to how we interact with and consume politics and pop culture than the headlines may suggest. According to this long-running series, deep unconscious forces shape all aspects of the media and the ideas we consume. Using psychoanalytic theory, hosts Abby Kluchin and Patrick Blanchfield apply concepts such as transference, historical trauma and the oedipal complex to everything from the film Challengers and the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer to modern American politics. Episodes can run for more than two hours, but stick with the tangents and technical terms – the length of the discussion is always justifiable and it’s well worth the listen.
Why not try …
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Crossways, a men and women’s football crossover from former England captain Steph Houghton and Arsenal hero Ian Wright.
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The Best Idea Yet, which reveals the untold stories behind beloved gamechanging things from the Happy Meal to the Jacuzzi.