Consider it or not, it is time to look again on the podcasts that made our commutes, chores, and varied each day duties extra entertaining, if not downright academic, in 2024. With subjects starting from nostalgic TV rewatches to relationship hijinks, growing older, life hacks, and long-form investigations into gun violence, there’s one thing for everybody in our best-of checklist.
So peruse our checklist, and prepare to fill your podcast queue.
Listed below are the 20 greatest podcasts of 2024.
20. Life Equipment
Should you’re in search of a primer on get issues achieved, every part from the existential (coping with local weather anxiousness) to the extraordinary (eliminating fruit flies out of your kitchen/life), then Life Equipment is for you. In every episode, you will hear from an professional who will reply your questions and provide help to deal with duties and conditions that you simply could be loath to ask for assist with in actual life. Life Equipment is right here to fortify your confidence in terms of each day duties, in addition to these belongings you thought you had been the one one who did not know do.
pay attention: Life Equipment 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 interior 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 family in Miami and people in Cuba. Chess Piece‘s host Peniley Ramirez talks to these immediately concerned within the occasions of November to March of 1999, when all eyes had been on Gonzalez, when the query of whether or not or not he would return to Cuba was each a unstable political concern and a deeply private one for Cuban-People, reviving questions of exile and id.
pay attention: Chess Piece: The Elián González Story is on Apple Podcasts.
18. Lastly! A Present
This is a podcast that permits us to do the inconceivable: spy on another person’s life with out getting in hassle for it. From creators Jane Marie and Joanna Solotaroff, Lastly! A Present options girls dwelling extraordinary lives, and taking us together with them. In their very own voices, these company allow us to in on their tales of change, development, 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 had 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 much lower than an hour.
pay attention: 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. attributable to 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 in consequence? One factor that fascinates Farrier is the chain restaurant phenomenon, so try the episode about Olive Backyard, during which he asks individuals how they “emotionally” join with it, summoning emotions of nostalgia, consolation, and familiarity — it could provide the unusual but comprehensible urge to tattoo an image of cheese grater onto your physique.
pay attention: Flightless Hen is on Apple Podcasts.
16. Why Will not You Date Me?
Nicole Byer desires to listen to in regards to 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 youngsters, contraception, and a lot extra. Try the episode with Riki Lindhome to listen to about “relationship scraps,” fertility, and falling in love proper earlier than turning into a mother or father. It seems that, despite us all considering we’re alone in our wild journeys “on the streets” of relationship, there’s most likely somebody who’s been there — a minimum of type of.
pay attention: 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 in regards to the reality of midlife. What does it imply to “really feel your age”? How typically 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 retaining 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 really do it, and we want different voices to inform us that we will. No matter your age, My So-Known as Midlife is a crucial pay attention, a humorous and sobering reminder to be by yourself workforce, no matter whether or not or not you may nonetheless rage or take a red-eye such as you used to.
pay attention: My So-Known as Midlife is offered on Apple Podcasts.
14. Hidden Mind
Hidden Mind is a podcast about human conduct — specifically, why we do the issues we do, even after we cannot clarify them. Host Shankar Vedantam dives deep into loneliness, making an attempt too arduous, feeling empty, balking in terms of political conversations, and extra. Each episode is a intelligent and comforting alternative to glimpse the reasoning behind our commonest, and sophisticated, experiences of being people.
pay attention: Hidden Mind is offered on Spotify.
13. The Secrets and techniques We Maintain
Is there one thing you’ve got by no means advised anybody? What wouldn’t it take so that you can reveal that secret? On this five-part collection from New England Public Media, host Karen Brown talks to of us in regards to the secrets and techniques they’ve round subjects thought of taboo, together with abortion, cash, and sexuality, and the way retaining their secrets and techniques has impacted their lives, particularly for many who come to occupy the political stage. This is a podcast that may assist us really feel much less alone as we ask ourselves the query: Can we ever have a accountability to inform our secrets and techniques?
pay attention: The Secrets and techniques We Maintain is offered on Spotify.
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12. Know What’s Actual
What are the issues we have come to consider? Why can we consider them, even when and after 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 vital. They deal with the concept of “prebunking,” how to not perpetuate the unfold of unhealthy data, the position of emotion in getting us to click on that hyperlink, and the way your Vanderpump Guidelines dependancy could possibly be impacting your real-life relationships. In a world the place we do not at all times know what to consider, Valdez, Garber, and their professional company are right here to provide us the instruments to learn between the traces.
pay attention: Know What’s Actual is offered on Spotify.
11. Lengthy Shadow: In Weapons We Belief
Based on the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 134 mass shootings within the first 4 months of 2024. In the newest season of Lengthy Shadow, host Garrett Graff contemplates how we bought right here. Beginning with the 1999 bloodbath at Columbine Excessive Faculty, 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 youngsters who had 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, in terms of retaining one another protected, we can not seem to get out of our personal manner.
pay attention: Lengthy Shadow: In Weapons We Belief is offered on Spotify.
10. Enjoying Anne Frank
In 1955, 10 years after the top of World Struggle II and the Holocaust, the stage model of The Diary of Anne Frank premiered on Broadway. In seven episodes, the Ahead’s govt editor Adam Langer traces the motion of Frank’s diary from the household’s hiding place in Amsterdam to a bit 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 people who proceed to revive it at the moment, encouraging us to ponder how we view ourselves as shoppers of artwork, tradition and historical past.
pay attention: Enjoying Anne Frank is offered on Apple Podcasts.
9. Hearth Escape
Hearth Escape is a 10-part collection about Amika Mota, a midwife and mother who, in 2008, awoke to search out herself handcuffed to a hospital mattress after a automobile accident that killed one man. Throughout her time within the Central California Girls’s Facility in Chowchilla, Mota finally certified to hitch the Hearth Women, a bunch 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 continues to be a part of the jail however located simply outdoors 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 all of the sudden 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 means to outlive, how she got here to know justice, and what occurred after she left Firehouse 5 for good.
pay attention: Hearth Escape is offered on Wondery.
8. Radio Rental
Bear in mind, should 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’re feeling nostalgic and able to watch some films that can make your blood curdle, do your self a favor and hearken to this horror-comedy podcast. In it, Terry Carnation (Rainn Wilson) is the proprietor of Radio Rental, an ’80s video retailer that homes a group of unusual, scary, and true tales advised from the standpoint 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 at all times 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 remember to rewind.
pay attention: Radio Rental is offered on Spotify.
7. Pretendians
Why would you faux to be somebody you are not? Not within the “I lied about my top on my Hinge profile” sense, however within the “fabrication of a racial and/or ethnic id” 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 individuals 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 individuals. Pretendians is a crucial pay attention for anybody who desires to know how far individuals will go to hijack id, why, and the implications for these whose lived existences aren’t up for debate or sale.
pay attention: Pretendians is offered on Apple Podcasts.
6. Hysterical
Within the fall of 2011, a bunch 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 one way or the other associated to emphasize, or maybe the impact of long-buried trauma? Was it an instance of a mass psychogenic sickness, often known as mass hysteria? Or was it very a lot not one of the above? Prepare for a wild experience by means of a neighborhood dealing with a scary medical phenomenon that triggered 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.
pay attention: Hysterical is offered 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 dwelling in Star Metropolis, West Virginia. In December 2012, Neese’s greatest good friend, Rachel Shoaf, confessed that she, together with Neese’s different greatest good friend, Sheila Eddy, had stabbed Neese to dying that night time in July. Created and hosted by journalists Justine Harman and Holly Millea, Three is a 10-episode collection in regards to 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, in regards to the chilling dynamic on the coronary heart of this teen triangle — and the way it reached its sinister pinnacle.
pay attention: Three is offered on Spotify.
4. Once more With This
An awesome rewatch podcast permits a listener to have interaction with their nostalgia, whereas additionally ensuring they do not take it too severely. 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 just lately, 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 snigger boisterously in public.
pay attention: Once more With This is offered on Spotify.
3. We Reside 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 kind of is, and it could be once more. The six elements of We Reside Right here Now dropped earlier than Trump’s current re-election, which implies it is each tougher and much more vital 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 pay attention.
pay attention: We Reside Right here Now is offered on Apple Podcasts.
2. Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Do you do not forget that time lots of people on the social media platform then referred to as Twitter bought mad at a girl for her Tweet about how pretty it was to drink espresso within the morning along with her husband? No? Good, you are most likely higher off. But in addition, take into account having Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) host Jamie Loftus inform you all about it, what it really says about girls’s means to exist on the Web, and folks’s determined must direct their ire at one thing or somebody. In every episode of this podcast, Loftus examines those that turned 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 lure of on-line discourse, and the “web rage machine.” Should you’re chronically on-line, or simply need to sound sensible when speaking to those that are, verify this one out.
pay attention: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) is offered on iHeart.
1. The Competitors
Every year, 50 extraordinary younger girls (suppose researching most cancers in your “spare time”) from each state within the nation spend two weeks in Cellular, Alabama, competing for a $40,000 scholarship and the title of Distinguished Younger Girl. This — the need to win all of it mixed with the need to be favored by your friends whereas continually being watched by mothers and digicam crews — is an enchanting premise for an investigative podcast.
Journalist Shima Oliaee returned to Cellular 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.
pay attention: The Competitors is offered on Apple Podcasts.
Further reporting by Jenni Miller.
