20. Where Everybody Knows Your Name
It’s almost 40 years since a baby-faced Woody Harrelson ambled into Ted Danson’s bar on Cheers, and despite their differing career paths since – with Harrelson departing the sitcom world for Hollywood’s big leagues – the two remain close pals. This warm and unvarnished interview series saw them reunite creatively, as they caught up with showbiz friends including Jane Fonda, Abbott Elementary creator Quinta Brunson and even Kelsey Grammer (to whom Danson extended a heartfelt apology over an old rift from all those years ago).
19. Here Comes the Guillotine
As the disclaimer at the beginning of each episode warns, Here Comes the Guillotine contains “offensive language, mature content and adult themes – what did you expect, it’s Frankie Boyle?!”. Indeed, the Scotsman’s pod about “the chaos of the world” – hosted with his friends and fellow Glaswegian comics Susie McCabe and Christopher MacArthur-Boyd – is jam-packed with not-safe-for-work anecdotes, from the (definitely unverified) history of gay liaisons on submarines, to some truly unprintable tattle about Paddy McGuinness. Frequently hysterical – but certainly not for the faint of heart.
18. Broomgate
Subtitled A Curling Scandal, this podcast about cheating in the sport might sound like a satire. Indeed, there was a lightness of touch provided by host John Cullen, a former semi-pro curler enthusiast and comedian, and the fact that it centred on “a performance-enhancing broom”. However, this series from Canadian national broadcaster CBC proved to be a wild ride, diving deep into how an innovation in the 500-year-old game – one that Cullen himself was eager to try out – gave way to cheating allegations. Did he inadvertently start Broomgate?
17. Animal
New York Times writer Sam Anderson opened this six-parter with a meandering anecdote about a crack in his floor at home that resembled “a burrito full of darkness”, and which his daughter’s hamster Mango fell into. When Walnut the dachshund came to Mango’s rescue, Anderson became fascinated by the “magic” behind animals’ instincts and humans’ relationship to them. Rock-hard cynics may struggle with its occasionally earnest tone, but few can resist a story that involves a trip to rescue pufflings (baby puffins) in Iceland.
16. The Price of Paradise
Since her days on the smash hit My Dad Wrote a Porno, Alice Levine has rarely been far from the podcast world. As the voice of this Wondery series, she took us deep into the tale of a British family who gave up their life in Hampshire in the year 2000, inspired by the Tom Hanks movie Cast Away, to move to an island off the coast of Nicaragua. Cue corruption, adultery, war with environmental activists and even kidnap. If you like your true crime podcasts on the snarky, sarky side of things – much like Levine’s other series, British Scandal – this was sure to hook you.
15. Empire City
Billed as “the untold origin story of the NYPD”, this meticulously researched series from Peabody winner Chenjerai Kumanyika put the largest police force in the US under the microscope. Are New York’s police, as his young daughter tells him, there to “keep people safe”, or has there always been something more heinous going on, right at the heart of the whole operation? From the force’s links to slavery to its efforts to control people of colour by recruiting them into their ranks – an initiative inspired by American colonialism in the Philippines – the history explored here was as eye-opening as it was disturbing.
14. Master: The Allegations Against Neil Gaiman
As the author of bestsellers including The Sandman and American Gods, Neil Gaiman occupied a privileged place in the worlds of fantasy and horror. That was until earlier this year, when this podcast from Tortoise Media unveiled a string of serious misconduct allegations against him, ranging from coercive behaviour to accusations of sexual assault. Theirs was a chilling, thorough examination of these claims, complete with analysis of the contradictions and grey areas therein.
13. Slow Burn: The Rise of Fox News
Another year, another must-listen investigation from Slate’s Slow Burn. This 10th series saw Josh Levin turn his attention to the rightwing news channel and ask whether anyone could have stopped its meteoric rise in the early 2000s. In the light of Donald Trump’s recent US election result, this look at how populism and tabloid spin came together on screen to potent, poisonous effect felt all the more vital.
12. Queer the Music, season 2
Admittedly, there is something bizarre about hearing Jake Shears of Scissor Sisters fame do a host-read ad for HelloFresh. But if you can get past the commercials, Queer the Music offered a charming look at LGBTQ+ artists and their masterworks. Interviewees ranged from New Orleans “bounce” hip-hop legend Big Freedia – who discussed how Hurricane Katrina led her to write the song Explode, later sampled on Beyoncé’s Break My Soul – to balladeer and electro experimenter John Grant, who dissected perhaps his most emotive song, Glacier.
11. Who Replaced Avril Lavigne?
Irish comic Joanne McNally has really nailed the “inane but highly bingeable” podcast thing, and she released not one but two series this year on BBC Sounds under the banner Joanne McNally Investigates. While her series on iconic 90s toy the Furby and its potential use as a tool for espionage was entertaining, the real triumph was this perfectly ridiculous look at an urban legend about 00s pop star Avril Lavigne. Co-produced with CBC in Canada, it saw her probe the conspiracy theory that the teen punk died at the peak of her fame back in 2003 – only to be replaced by a lookalike named Melissa. The evidence was questionable, but McNally threw herself into the mystery with gusto.
10. Serial
This year marked a decade since Sarah Koenig and her team transformed podcasting from niche concern to worldwide phenomenon, with the Serial Productions team later joining the New York Times in a $25m deal. As with any major cultural moment, there are plenty of people who still associate Serial solely with true crime, and the case of Adnan Syed in particular. But write it off at your peril: this year’s fourth season, on the trauma-laden history of Guantánamo Bay, was a brilliant piece of journalism with plenty to say about the US’s approach to justice.
9. The Wonder of Stevie
Signed to Tamla Motown at just 11 years old, Stevie Wonder has gone on to become one of the most influential and garlanded musicians of all time. While you can hardly accuse him of resting on his laurels at any point in the last six decades, it’s clear that the 74-year-old had a particularly productive era between 1972 and 1977, during which time he released five hit albums and won a dozen Grammys for songs like Superstition and Master Blaster (Jammin’). Audible’s series – hosted by the New York Times’s Wesley Morris – expertly charted that special half-decade, with the help of one of the starriest podcast interviewee line-ups of the year, including George Clinton, Dionne Warwick and the Obamas.
8. Extrasensory
Having been involved in some of the most singular TV shows of the past decade, from Giri/Haji to The White Lotus, actor and writer Will Sharpe fit right in at the helm of Apple’s classy paranormal pod, based on real-life events. In 1957, English twins Joanna and Jacqueline Pollock were killed in a car accident. When their mother fell pregnant again, their father was convinced that the pair would be reincarnated – and the couple did indeed have another pair of twin girls, Gillian and Jennifer, with uncanny similarities to their late siblings. Media attention soon followed, but – almost 70 years on – the podcast reopened the case in search of answers that never transpired at the time.
7. Shell Game
Described by its host and creator, Evan Ratliff, as a “strange and immersive AI experience”, Shell Game saw the journalist clone his own voice before giving it a chatbot “brain” and letting it run amok, conversing with everyone from his friends and family to customer service agents and scammers. What happened when his ChatGPT-powered replicants talked to real people, and what did the uncanny valley between the real Evan and these fakes tell us about the weird juncture in time we live in? An ideal substitute for fans still missing the brilliant Reply All, and in particular its Super Tech Support segments.
6. Miss Me?
Childhood friends Miquita Oliver and Lily Allen have pretty different lives these days. While Oliver is single and lives in London, Allen is now a committed New Yorker, where she lives with her husband, the actor David Harbour, and her two daughters. In spite of these differences, they remain besties and clearly relish a good chinwag, making them a perfect podcast pairing. One for fans of a good old (occasionally X-rated) ramble, and frank conversation on tough topics such as infertility and Oliver’s fibroids diagnosis.
5. Dangerous Memories
There’s no shortage of podcasts centred on cults, but Tortoise’s compelling saga rose above the surfeit. In the unlikely setting of a prestigious art school in Florence, a therapist-type figure drew a group of privileged young women into her orbit, diagnosing the abuse they had suffered as children by analysing their dreams. She told them that they had likely forgotten or repressed their trauma in the years since, prompting them to cut off contact with their families. But what, asks Grace Hughes-Hallett, were Anne Craig’s motivations? And how did she get her clients to believe what were, it seems, false and damaging fabrications for so long?
4. Hysterical
Following his hit shows Surviving Y2K and Missing Richard Simmons, Dan Taberski returned this year with this intriguing series about a mystery illness that cascaded through a group of teenage girls. Back in 2011, students at a school in LeRoy, New York,began to develop Tourette syndrome-like tics and, as Taberski explained, they weren’t the only ones in the area. As he considered the possible causes of the outbreak, he deftly examined the roots of modern psychology, and whether this was a case of social contagion … or something more nefarious.
3. Buried
You may be aware that Michael Sheen is something of a standup guy; in 2021 he declared himself a “not-for-profit” actor, and channels much of his earnings into charitable causes. Even so, he might have seemed a random addition to the BBC’s environmental true-crime series from husband-and-wife reporting team Dan Ashby and Lucy Taylor. That was, until we got into the case on hand: in its shocking second series, The Last Witness, the trio investigated the possible harms caused by chemical waste dumped in south Wales, via claims made by a whistleblower named Douglas Gowan and previously investigated by Sheen, who was raised in Port Talbot.
2. Black Box
The Guardian’s timely series on the potential of AI highlighted the huge triumphs and chilling risks of AI. Hosted by Today in Focus presenter Michael Safi, Black Box delved into some of the upsides of the artificial intelligence boom – who wouldn’t want to receive a cancer diagnosis years before a doctor could spot signs of the illness? But at its core, this was a series that didn’t shy away from the dangers that may lie ahead – not least in its best episode, about a shady app that allows users to create naked deepfake images, leading to deep distress among teenage girls whose photos had been edited.
1. Kill List
As journalist Carl Miller and his team were at pains to tell us, Kill List was years in the making. You’ll easily be able to figure out why: this crime epic about a murder-for-hire website didn’t involve Miller homing in on known criminals, but rather tipping off potential targets and the FBI himself, leading to investigations, arrests and a covert takeover of the website by law enforcement. Kill List wasn’t overly concerned with suspense, cliffhangers and hide-behind-the-sofa reconstructions, save for the menacing robotic voice its producers used to recount the kill requests. But in its own methodical way, it laid bare the sinister reality of the dark web, and went where no podcast has gone before.
