Best podcasts of 2024 so far

IIt’s getting harder and harder to discover new treasures in the cacophonous world of podcasting. There are a lot of programs – many of them are not good. It seems like every week a new celebrity announces a podcast in which they ask out-of-touch questions of other celebrities or revisit the heyday of their own network sitcom. And studios continue to seek out the most morally dubious true crime topics they can find.

So forgive me if I return to any of the masters this year. Robust podcasting 99% invisible began to analyze the biography of Robert Moses, The energy brokerand I’m devouring every episode, despite never actually finishing the book. Normal gossip, a show that exploded in popularity when it debuted in 2022, is currently publishing its best season to date. AND Serial, a decade after it debuted and quickly became the most popular podcast of all time, is back with an incredible fourth season centered on Guantánamo. There are also surprising new discoveries, including an audio diary podcast about fascinating subjects like an octogenarian pinup girl and an investigation into a gas attack at a furry convention.

Here are the best podcasts of the year so far.

See more information: The 10 best podcasts of 2023

99% invisible: the powerful corrector

99% invisible, the show about the details we rarely notice, especially in the realms of design and architecture, has long been a must-watch podcast for anyone who cares even vaguely about how our world is organized. So is perhaps it was inevitable that it would one day host Roman Mars, along with Daily Program writer Elliott Kalan would found an audiobook club to cover the 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Robert Moses, The energy broker. For those who don’t know Moses, New York’s famous urban planner has undoubtedly had a greater impact on the future of America’s largest city than any other person in history. Under Moses’ watch, the city built 35 highways, 13 bridges, numerous parks, hundreds of playgrounds, Lincoln Center, Shea Stadium, housing projects, and the 1964 World’s Fair. He also destroyed entire communities to build his expressways and parks. Robert Caro’s impeccably researched book positions Moses as a visionary and a destroyer of gentrified and prosperous immigrant neighborhoods.

The podcast is aimed at many listeners who have never read the 1,200-page book, tracing the life of Moses over several episodes and inviting guests such as New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, comedian Conan O’Brien and Power Broker author himself, to add historical and political context. This makes public policy debates fun.

Finally! A show about women that isn’t just a thinly veiled aspirational nightmare

I was skeptical of this podcast, which has no host and, arguably, no unifying theme among its episodes, other than the fact that it covers the stories of (mostly) non-famous women. But these women are absolutely fascinating: They include an 80-something pin-up girl logging her time shopping for vibrators, an intentionally provocative telehealth abortion provider who works for the Satanic Temple, and a cat groomer rounding up the feral felines who started to invade New York City.

Each episode is structured like an audio diary with that week’s specific topic describing your day from start to finish, including diversions and interruptions. The hostless format works, immediately immersing listeners in the perspective of its subjects. Prepared by Jane Marie, creator of the investigative podcast The dreamand Joanna Solotaroff, who began producing 2 drug queensthe podcast is, indeed, a fascinating celebration of women.

Skin and hate

You may be surprised to learn that a 2014 chemical attack in the Chicago suburbs that targeted hundreds of people remains unsolved to this day. The reason you haven’t heard about this terrible incident? The target was a Furry convention, a fact that caused several reporters to laugh live on air. (Furries, for the uninitiated, are a community of people who dress up in big, fuzzy animal costumes. And yes, before you ask, for a subsection of furries there is a sexual component.)

Investigative reporter Nicky Woolf, who has covered online subcultures for years and previously hosted the podcast Finding Q about QAnon, admits he has a soft spot (heh) for furries, an online community that’s quite cute compared to other toxic subcultures in the world. the Internet. Fortunately, unlike many archived podcasts, the show doesn’t take itself too seriously — puns abound — even as it delves into particularly obscure corners of the Internet to try to answer its central question: who would want to hurt furries?

Normal gossipSeason 6

Normal gossip is back and undoubtedly better than ever. In each episode of the podcast, host Kelsey McKinney shares an anonymous dramatic story with a guest, scratching the itch for juicy gossip, even if it’s about people you don’t know personally. The first season was a huge success in 2021 and now, after a shaky period, the sixth season is reaching the heights of beloved first episodes. The uproarious stories delve into the delightfully niche worlds of amateur Shakespeare productions, mushroom foragers, and members-only children’s play spaces.

Some adjustments to the format were fruitful: asking each guest what their relationship with gossip is, a staple of previous seasons, it was getting repetitive, so the decision to ask guests to bring their own gossip was a genius idea. Now you get two gossip stories for the price of one! (Well, technically it’s free, unless you want to describe the special bonus episodes to Defector Media.)

SerialSeason 4

I hate to put yet another Serial Productions podcast on the “best of” list, but they continue to earn those spots by bringing together some of the best investigative podcasts in an industry that has begun to reduce its investment in this important work. Sarah Koenig returns for the fourth season, this time in partnership with a journalist Dana Chivvis explores Guantanamo Bay in tales told week after week. Each new episode focuses on a different person’s experience, whether it’s a prisoner, a guard, or a journalist who has struggled for decades to escape government propaganda while covering prison. Together, they paint a vivid portrait of life in a place that three different presidents pledged to close – and yet continues to operate.

Delving into stories of torture, subterfuge and even federal agents teaming up with a man accused of leaking secrets on his honeymoon is a gripping listen. The Serial team has been reporting from Guantánamo for nearly a decade, and Koenig and Chivvis are able to review old interview recordings with the benefit of hindsight, like when they were taken, on their first visit to the prison, to its three gift shops. , which included Disney-themed Guantánamo merchandise. It’s just surreal moment of many in a fantastic series.

Glue the landing

Inside the Ringer’s prestigious TV feed lives a new series called Glue the landing hosted by TV critic-turned-TV writer Andy Greenwald (who also co-hosts The clock). The show humbly asks whether several beloved television shows have been successful. In each episode, he invites a guest to analyze the series finale. If you’re already a listener of several Ringer Universe podcasts, you’ll enjoy what is essentially an excuse for crossover episodes that put Greenwald in conversation with the likes of Mallory Rubin (on Friday Night Lights), Sean Fennessey (in Mad Men) and (of course) Bill Simmons (in The Larry Sanders Show).

These episodes are aimed at people who have consumed the series in its entirety, full of spoilers and in-depth analyzes of how the series’ plot came full circle from pilot to finale. So be sure to search for your specific favorite shows. Greenwald just wrapped Season 1 and is purposely delaying episodes of some of the most-watched and controversial finales of all time until Season 2. Here’s hoping the show returns soon and – eventually – resolves this Sopranos Final.

Things fell apart, Season 2

If you’ve ever wondered how the culture wars came to be, Things fell apart may offer the closest thing to an answer. Host Jon Ronson doesn’t just produce impressive investigative podcasts (Last days of August was my favorite), but he also stands out for finding specific case studies that illustrate a broader social phenomenon. Things fell apart connects the dots of isolated incidents to larger movements, and the second season is even better than the first.

Each episode asks one question: How does a serial killer who targeted Black sex workers in the 1980s connect to the 2020 murder of George Floyd? How does a best-selling book about trauma fuel campus protests? How did a chance encounter at a yacht club between the parents of a sick girl and an aspiring researcher spark some of the earliest conspiracy theories about the COVID vaccine? The stories alone are interesting, but the listener also leaves at the end of the season with a greater understanding of why we’ve lost a common sense of truth.

Who trolled Amber?

Speaking of the culture wars, in Who trolled Amber? Alexi Mostrous, the reporter behind Sweet Bobby It is Mistaken, approaches one of the most inevitable and polarizing moments in our cultural history from an intriguing angle. In case you were extremely offline in the spring of 2022, actor Johnny Depp sued his ex-wife Amber Heard after she wrote an op-ed in which she called herself “a public figure who represents domestic violence.” (A UK judge had already found “the vast majority of the alleged assaults on Ms. heard by Mr. Depp were proven to the civil standard.”) During the trial, pro-Depp memes became unavoidable online, inciting a reckoning around the limits of the #MeToo movement.

Instead of litigating the allegations against Depp or Heard, this podcast focuses on who, exactly, was creating the onslaught of reports criticizing Heard and defending Depp. Were they real people or bots? And if they are bots, who was behind the campaign? The series takes twists and turns you wouldn’t expect, involving foreign leaders with specific agendas and a tragic car accident in Florida that foreshadowed the online reaction to the Depp v. Heard. Consulting experts in bots, foreign intelligence, and law, Mostrous comes up with some answers about what exactly happened to spark the online furor and what it might reflect on the current state of culture.

Wikihole

There are still fun corners of the Internet, and Wikiholehosted by The good place actor D’Arcy Carden, illustrates the joys of searching something on Wikipedia and then falling down a rabbit hole of links and tangents only to emerge back where you started.

Carden invites comedians like Bowen Yang, Kumail Nanjiani and Ellie Kemper for a sort of quiz show based on bizarre facts from the depths of Wikipedia, from dolphins to Ancient Rome and Lenny Kravitz. Since the guests competing to answer the questions are well-versed in comedy, they happily comment on any bizarre facts that can be discovered from the Stetson hats. The episodes are highly chaotic, but this is more of a feature than a bug.