Consider it or not, it is time to look again on the podcasts that made our commutes, chores, and varied every day duties extra entertaining, if not downright academic, in 2024. With matters starting from nostalgic TV rewatches to relationship hijinks, growing old, life hacks, and long-form investigations into gun violence, there’s one thing for everybody in our best-of listing.
So peruse our listing, and prepare to fill your podcast queue.
Listed here are the 20 finest podcasts of 2024.
20. Life Package
For those who’re searching for a primer on methods to get issues achieved, every little thing from the existential (coping with local weather nervousness) to the extraordinary (eliminating fruit flies out of your kitchen/life), then Life Package is for you. In every episode, you will hear from an knowledgeable who will reply your questions and aid you deal with duties and conditions that you simply could be loath to ask for assist with in actual life. Life Package is right here to fortify your confidence on the subject of every day duties, in addition to these belongings you thought you have been the one one who did not know methods to do.
Tips on how to hear: Life Package is on Apple Podcasts.
19. Chess Piece: The Elián González Story
In November 1999, 5-year-old Elián González was rescued after he was discovered floating alone at sea on an inside tube, his mom and the opposite migrants he was touring with from Cuba to Miami having died when their boat capsized. What ensued was a much-publicized custody battle between Gonzalez’s relations in Miami and people in Cuba. Chess Piece‘s host Peniley Ramirez talks to these instantly concerned within the occasions of November to March of 1999, when all eyes have been on Gonzalez, when the query of whether or not or not he would return to Cuba was each a risky political subject and a deeply private one for Cuban-Individuals, reviving questions of exile and id.
Tips on how to hear: Chess Piece: The Elián González Story is on Apple Podcasts.
18. Lastly! A Present
Here is a podcast that permits us to do the inconceivable: spy on another person’s life with out getting in bother for it. From creators Jane Marie and Joanna Solotaroff, Lastly! A Present options girls residing extraordinary lives, and taking us together with them. In their very own voices, these company allow us to in on their tales of change, progress, and endurance. Hear from an abortion supplier with the Satanic Temple, a really younger chess grasp, a cat wrangler, and different girls who spend their days doing belongings you may not even have thought have been actual. Every episode is reflective, intimate, humorous, and unwaveringly actual, so give your self the reward of immersion into a brand new life, often for a lot lower than an hour.
Tips on how to hear: Lastly! A Present is on Apple Podcasts.
17. Flightless Hen
How would you clarify distinctive U.S. phenomena like Costco, storm chasers, and RVs to somebody who would not reside right here? Journalist David Farrier, a New Zealander caught within the U.S. on account of COVID-19 journey restrictions, has some questions on what makes the States tick. What are these cultural phenomenon about? What’s altering about them, and the way is the nation altering because of this? One factor that fascinates Farrier is the chain restaurant phenomenon, so try the episode about Olive Backyard, wherein he asks folks how they “emotionally” join with it, summoning emotions of nostalgia, consolation, and familiarity — it might provide the unusual but comprehensible urge to tattoo an image of cheese grater onto your physique.
Tips on how to hear: Flightless Hen is on Apple Podcasts.
16. Why Will not You Date Me?
Nicole Byer desires to listen to concerning the gory particulars of relationship, plus all its shifting elements and euphemisms. Each week, she talks to a distinct comic, good friend, and/or ex about ghosting, situationships, getting engaged/married/pregnant, having a life with children, contraception, and a lot extra. Take a look at the episode with Riki Lindhome to listen to about “dating scraps,” fertility, and falling in love proper earlier than turning into a father or mother. It seems that, despite us all pondering we’re alone in our wild journeys “on the streets” of relationship, there’s most likely somebody who’s been there — a minimum of form of.
Tips on how to hear: Why Will not You Date Me? is on Apple Podcasts.
15. My So-Known as Midlife
Each week, My So-Known as Midlife host Reshma Saujani welcomes a visitor to surprise alongside along with her concerning the reality of midlife. What does it imply to “feel your age”? How usually do girls like Chelsea Clinton, Supreme Courtroom Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus actually take into consideration being middle-aged? Maybe, Saujani suggests, the mindset that comes with center age is protecting us trapped — we’re so busy worrying about if we’re irrelevant, if it is too late to do one thing that we’ll by no means truly do it, and we want different voices to inform us that we will. No matter your age, My So-Known as Midlife is a vital hear, a humorous and sobering reminder to be by yourself workforce, no matter whether or not or not you possibly can nonetheless rage or take a red-eye such as you used to.
Tips on how to hear: My So-Known as Midlife is out there on Apple Podcasts.
14. Hidden Mind
Hidden Mind is a podcast about human conduct — particularly, why we do the issues we do, even once we cannot clarify them. Host Shankar Vedantam dives deep into loneliness, making an attempt too onerous, feeling empty, balking on the subject of political conversations, and extra. Each episode is a intelligent and comforting alternative to glimpse the reasoning behind our most typical, and complex, experiences of being people.
Tips on how to hear: Hidden Mind is out there on Spotify.
13. The Secrets and techniques We Maintain
Is there one thing you’ve got by no means instructed anybody? What wouldn’t it take so that you can reveal that secret? On this five-part sequence from New England Public Media, host Karen Brown talks to of us concerning the secrets and techniques they’ve round matters thought of taboo, together with abortion, cash, and sexuality, and the way protecting their secrets and techniques has impacted their lives, particularly for many who come to occupy the political stage. Here is a podcast that may assist us really feel much less alone as we ask ourselves the query: Can we ever have a duty to inform our secrets and techniques?
Tips on how to hear: The Secrets and techniques We Maintain is out there on Spotify.
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12. Tips on how to Know What’s Actual
What are the issues we have come to imagine? Why can we imagine them, even when and once we know we’re continually confronted with false data each second of the day? Be part of The Atlantic‘s Andrea Valdez and Megan Garber as they examine how our brains course of avalanches of disinformation and the way we will turn into extra important. They deal with the thought of “prebunking,” how to not perpetuate the unfold of dangerous data, the function of emotion in getting us to click on that hyperlink, and the way your Vanderpump Guidelines habit could possibly be impacting your real-life relationships. In a world the place we do not all the time know what to imagine, Valdez, Garber, and their knowledgeable company are right here to provide us the instruments to learn between the strains.
Tips on how to hear: Tips on how to Know What’s Actual is out there on Spotify.
11. Lengthy Shadow: In Weapons We Belief
In line with the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 134 mass shootings within the first 4 months of 2024. In the latest season of Lengthy Shadow, host Garrett Graff contemplates how we bought right here. Beginning with the 1999 bloodbath at Columbine Excessive College, Graff traces the origins of the Second Modification and the rise of the NRA and its response to widespread gun violence, in addition to the impression on a era of children who have been raised with lockdown drills. This season will shock you, because it solutions questions you did not know you had about weapons within the U.S. and why, on the subject of protecting one another secure, we can not seem to get out of our personal method.
Tips on how to hear: Lengthy Shadow: In Weapons We Belief is out there on Spotify.
10. Enjoying Anne Frank
In 1955, 10 years after the top of World Conflict II and the Holocaust, the stage model of The Diary of Anne Frank premiered on Broadway. In seven episodes, the Ahead’s government editor Adam Langer traces the motion of Frank’s diary from the household’s hiding place in Amsterdam to a chunk of artwork that compelled producers, administrators, actors, and audiences alike into confrontation with the not-so-recent previous, in addition to questions of what it means to dramatize the lifetime of an individual who, in some ways, got here to signify the murders of six million. Enjoying Anne Frank makes use of archival footage to introduce us to the makers and stars of the play, the movie, and those that proceed to revive it at this time, encouraging us to ponder how we view ourselves as customers of artwork, tradition and historical past.
Tips on how to hear: Enjoying Anne Frank is out there on Apple Podcasts.
9. Hearth Escape
Hearth Escape is a 10-part sequence about Amika Mota, a midwife and mother who, in 2008, awoke to seek out herself handcuffed to a hospital mattress after a automobile accident that killed one man. Throughout her time within the Central California Ladies’s Facility in Chowchilla, Mota finally certified to hitch the Hearth Women, a gaggle of incarcerated girls who work as first responders and firefighters within the jail and inside 30 miles of it, because of a singular mutual-aid settlement with Madera County. The all-female workforce reside collectively in Firehouse 5, which remains to be a part of the jail however located simply exterior the gates, and on the time Mota earned $.53 an hour for her work. In Hearth Escape, Mota tells host/creator Anna Sussman how she struggled to navigate the on a regular basis grief and trauma of being incarcerated, separated from her household, her id immediately modified from that of a trusted human to somebody seen by others for less than her crime. Hearth Escape particulars how fire-fighting modified her capability to outlive, how she got here to grasp justice, and what occurred after she left Firehouse 5 for good.
Tips on how to hear: Hearth Escape is out there on Wondery.
8. Radio Rental
Keep in mind, when you can, the sound of a videotape sliding right into a VCR (if you do not know what I am speaking about, right here you go). If that sound makes you are feeling nostalgic and able to watch some motion pictures that may make your blood curdle, do your self a favor and take heed to this horror-comedy podcast. In it, Terry Carnation (Rainn Wilson) is the proprietor of Radio Rental, an ’80s video retailer that homes a set of unusual, scary, and true tales instructed from the viewpoint of the individuals who skilled them. In every episode, Carnation narrates the goings-on inside the shop — typically there is a void; typically a creepy little woman; nearly all the time his very vocal cat, Malachi — setting the scene for tales of the macabre. So seize your fanny pack, get comfy in your beanbag chair, and do not forget to rewind.
Tips on how to hear: Radio Rental is out there on Spotify.
7. Pretendians
Why would you faux to be somebody you are not? Not within the “I lied about my height on my Hinge profile” sense, however within the “fabrication of a racial and/or ethnic identity” sense. That is the query Pretendian hosts Robert Jago (Kwantlen First Nation and Nooksack Indian Tribe) and Angel Ellis (Muscogee (Creek) Nation) are exploring on this podcast about individuals who commit Indigenous id fraud. Who’re the folks pretending to be Native, and what do they hope to realize? Jago and Ellis examine and interview those that lead with an id that is not their very own, to the detriment of precise Native folks. Pretendians is an important hear for anybody who desires to grasp how far folks will go to hijack id, why, and the implications for these whose lived existences usually are not up for debate or sale.
Tips on how to hear: Pretendians is out there on Apple Podcasts.
6. Hysterical
Within the fall of 2011, a gaggle of teenage ladies on the similar highschool in upstate New York started presenting with uncontrollable neurological signs — tics, barks, stutters, even screeches and meows. Was it by some means associated to emphasize, or maybe the impact of long-buried trauma? Was it an instance of a mass psychogenic sickness, also referred to as mass hysteria? Or was it very a lot not one of the above? Prepare for a wild journey by a group dealing with a scary medical phenomenon that induced divisions because it continued to unfold. Alongside the way in which, there are movie star appearances, debates about salad, and reminders of the unrelenting tumult that’s being a younger woman.
Tips on how to hear: Hysterical is out there on Wondery.
5. Three
On July 6, 2012, 16-year-old Skylar Neese disappeared into the woods in Wayne Township, Pennsylvania, throughout the state line from her house in Star Metropolis, West Virginia. In December 2012, Neese’s finest good friend, Rachel Shoaf, confessed that she, together with Neese’s different finest good friend, Sheila Eddy, had stabbed Neese to demise that evening in July. Created and hosted by journalists Justine Harman and Holly Millea, Three is a 10-episode sequence concerning the occasions that led as much as Neese’s homicide. Harman and Millea interview Skylar’s household and shut pals, in addition to investigators on the case, concerning the chilling dynamic on the coronary heart of this teen triangle — and the way it reached its sinister pinnacle.
Tips on how to hear: Three is out there on Spotify.
4. Once more With This
An incredible rewatch podcast permits a listener to have interaction with their nostalgia, whereas additionally ensuring they do not take it too critically. Once more With This is hosted by Tara Ariano and Sarah D. Bunting, co-creators of Tv With out Pity and Beforehand.TV; this podcast returns us to the times when our TVs introduced us the weekly magic that was Beverly Hills, 90210, Melrose Place, and most not too long ago, Dawson’s Creek. Ariano and Bunting revisit each episode with an unflinchingly shrewd eye towards the small print we both by no means observed or pretended we did not see (i.e., the felonious relationship between younger Pacey Witter and his instructor). Put together to see the blush fall off the rose of your youth, and prepare to giggle boisterously in public.
Tips on how to hear: Once more With This is out there on Spotify.
3. We Dwell Right here Now
Micki Witthoeft, mom of Ashli Babbitt, the one rioter killed by the Capitol Police on January sixth, strikes into the identical Washington, D.C. neighborhood as two journalists for The Atlantic, Lauren Ober and Hanna Rosin. Naturally, they resolve to knock on Witthoeft’s door and discover out what she’s as much as. If it sounds prefer it must be the premise for a TV tragicomedy, that is as a result of it already type of is, and it could be once more. The six elements of We Dwell Right here Now dropped earlier than Trump’s latest re-election, which implies it is each more durable and much more essential to listen to. It is an examination of our collective reminiscence, our neighborhoods, our fears and grief, and what we could be able to as human beings who aspire to hear.
Tips on how to hear: We Dwell Right here Now is out there on Apple Podcasts.
2. Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Do you do not forget that time lots of people on the social media platform then often called Twitter bought mad at a girl for her Tweet about how beautiful it was to drink espresso within the morning along with her husband? No? Good, you are most likely higher off. But in addition, think about having Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) host Jamie Loftus inform you all about it, what it truly says about girls’s capability to exist on the Web, and other people’s determined have to direct their ire at one thing or somebody. In every episode of this podcast, Loftus examines those that grew to become web sensations, whether or not they meant to or not. Together with company like journalist Taylor Lorenz, Loftus tackles the truth of the algorithm, the entice of on-line discourse, and the “internet rage machine.” For those who’re chronically on-line, or simply need to sound sensible when speaking to those that are, test this one out.
Tips on how to hear: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) is out there on iHeart.
1. The Competitors
Every year, 50 extraordinary younger girls (assume researching most cancers in your “spare time”) from each state within the nation spend two weeks in Cell, Alabama, competing for a $40,000 scholarship and the title of Distinguished Younger Girl. This — the will to win all of it mixed with the will to be preferred by your friends whereas continually being watched by mothers and digital camera crews — is an enchanting premise for an investigative podcast.
Journalist Shima Oliaee returned to Cell to be a choose for the Distinguished Younger Girl competitors 20 years after she herself was the contestant from the state of Nevada. Then Roe v. Wade was overturned, shoving the nation — and these considerate, extraordinary teen ladies — into political turmoil. There’s nothing on the market fairly The Competitors; with loads of heart-tugging moments and quirks, you will savor each element in each riveting episode.
Tips on how to hear: The Competitors is out there on Apple Podcasts.
Further reporting by Jenni Miller.
