It’s been a big year for podcasts. In the wake of Serial’s success, podcasting earned President Obama’s imprimatur of legitimacy when he stopped by Marc Maron’s garage for an episode of his WTF podcast. While some of the biggest names – This American Life, Radiolab, the Joe Rogan Experience – continue to dominate, new names are heading to their studios with microphones in hand to tell tales, report stories, talk about science, music and urban legends.
1. Dear Sugar
Wild author Cheryl Strayed started writing the weekly “Dear Sugar” advice column on the literary site The Rumpus back in 2010, taking over from its longtime author Steve Almond. At first Strayed stayed anonymous, using that cloak of invisibility to write beautiful, raw and powerful words ostensibly in words of advice for her fan base of so-called “sweet peas”, but really as an ongoing memoir. Her words were wrought, honest, strong and occasionally painful, like what she laid bare in Wild, but more so.
Strayed went public in 2012, and her advice columns were collected into the book, Tiny Beautiful Things. This year, WBUR brought the column to life as a podcast with Strayed and Almond co-hosting. The show, like its written predecessor, makes for powerful listening. Whether challenging a married man who longs for intimacy with his wife, but can’t seem to stop having affairs, navigating sibling rivalry, or offering support to a single father worried he hasn’t done enough for his sons, the Sugars, as they’re called, offer empathy and tough love. They tackle topics like family, career and love with honesty and share the mistakes they’ve made as they’ve muddled through the world. The show has the ability to make listeners feel connected to each other even if just through earbuds and the universality of experience.
2. Mystery Show
Once upon a time, Starlee Kine was a radio reporter, but now she’s in the mystery-solving business. During each episode of the aptly named Mystery Show podcast, the amateur gumshoe attempts to solve a mystery. Her cases aren’t as grandiose as the crime that comprised the storyline on Serial, but are the much smaller, banal mysteries that come up in the course of living. During the show’s first season, Kine looked into the disappearance of a video store that seemed to vanish over night; she found the rightful owner of a commemorative belt buckle found on a street corner; and the story behind the picture on a Welcome Back Kotter lunchbox. She even investigated the exact height of actor Jake Gyllenhaal.
The show feels like the modern equivalent of sliding a quarter over the upturned coffee can in Encyclopedia Brown’s garage office and asking him to take your case. It’s fun, accessible and fascinating, and season two can’t come soon enough.
3. Another Round
When Another Round launched, hosts Tracy Clayton and Heben Nigatu described their podcast as a “basically happy hour with friends you haven’t met yet”. It’s an incredibly apt description for a show that manages to talk about everything from Drake to racial profiling to the joys of Tinder to interviewing the creator of The Wire and so much more, all while the hosts get increasingly drunk as the episode progresses. Whether Nigatu is grilling Clayton in a quiz called “Is This The Name Of A White Dude In Public Radio Or Just Some Syllables I Mashed Together?” or the two are interviewing presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton, it’s clear they are having more fun in the room than anyone else. Pour yourself a drink (or two) and listen up.
4. Lore
The internet is filled with creepy tales meant to keep listeners up late at night, staring uneasily at shadows. Aaron Mahnke’s Lore podcast could be just another venue for ghost stories, except for one thing – all the stories featured on his show are true. As the show’s website notes, sometimes the truth is more frightening than fiction and to prove that, Mahnke digs through history’s darkest corners for its grisliest tales. Whether recounting morbid stories about serial killers, witch trials, or The Others each chapter of humanity’s dark history is presented in painstakingly researched and absolutely captivating detail.
5. Invisibilia
The concept behind Invisibilia sounds impossible – how do you explore invisible forces that shape human behavior? The question of how you examine something that you cannot see is quickly answered in the show’s stories, which interweave cutting-edge science with human experience. Invisibilia is from NPR’s Lulu Miller and Alix Spiegel, and their experience working on shows like Radiolab and This American Life is evident in the podcast’s high-quality production, cutting-edge science, and carefully crafted stories. Whether they are exploring the absence of fear, the interaction between humans and computers, or a blind man who uses echo-location to see the world, the show uses connections between science and humanity to give listeners a whole new perspective on the world.
6. The Black Tapes Podcast
The Black Tapes Podcast takes listeners on an investigation into the world of paranormal investigator Richard Strand, who is being profiled by reporter Alex Reagan. The focus shifts when Reagan discovers Strand’s collection of unsolved supernatural mysteries – the black tapes. Reagan and Strand head out to report on the black tape cases and into a world where math, musical theory, obscure points of history, and science become either clues of a possible demonic invasion – or just random events linked only by an active imagination.
Other serialized shows like The Message, Limetown, and the Black Tapes spin-off, Tanis, have helped transform podcasts into radio dramas of old. Modern technology means shows that once were just scary stories to tell in the dark can now be aural blockbusters that make for compelling and addictive listening.
7. Reply All
The internet is a vast place filled with conspiracy theories, awful looking government websites and terrorists who tweet. Luckily, Reply All is there to guide users through it all. Hosted by PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman, the show is dedicated to exploring the stories and the humans, behind the internet. Whether talking to a serial prank caller, studying the gruesome Instagram for doctors, exploring how a college imploded thanks to anonymous messages posted on an app, explaining Weird Twitter to their boss, or following the Girl Scouts to Timbuktu, the show has become mandatory listening for anyone who uses and loves the internet.
8. Black List Table Reads
Thousands of screenplays are written every year, but few of them ever make it to the silver screen. The Black List Table Reads podcast takes some of the best of those unproduced screenplays and transforms them into “movies, for your ears”. Hosted by Franklin Leonard, who Hollywood insiders know as the man behind the industry’s Black List, a site that highlights unproduced screenplays, the podcast features a new script each month, brought to life by actors and comedians. In the past, films like Juno, The Wolf of Wall Street and The Social Network were all plucked from the Black List. For movie fans, getting to hear a script before it becomes a blockbuster is the incredibly exciting and perhaps more importantly, very entertaining.
9. New Yorker Radio Hour
Hosted by The New Yorker’s editor-in-chief David Remnick and co-produced by The New Yorker and WNYC Studios, the show brings the iconic magazine to life – sort of. While there is no doubt that people would tune in to hear writers simply reading their New Yorker pieces on air, the podcast strives for more.
Each week they feature interviews across genres: one week it’s author Ta-Nehisi Coates talking about the influence of author James Baldwin, the next there’s conversation with comedian Amy Schumer, followed by an interview with rock icon Patti Smith. The magazine’s famed cartoonists get in on the action, too, with their work-in-progress phone calls and there are conversations between writers like Jonathan Safran Foer talking to George Saunders. The New Yorker has an almost 90-year history perfecting its magazine. Its podcast has only been around a few months, but its already climbing its way to the top.
10. Hello From The Magic Tavern
There is something so unabashedly goofy about Hello From The Magic Tavern that it’s hard not to love. Even the biggest cynic can’t help but laugh at the exploits of Arnie, who fell through a dimensional portal behind a Chicago Burger King (with his podcasting equipment, of course) and found himself in the magical kingdom of Foon. With no way back to Chicago, he set up a podcast with two regular guests – a shape-shifter named Chunt, who is currently in the form of a talking badger, and a wizard called Usidore who is on a quest to save Foon (eventually).
The show stars comedians Arnie Niekamp, Matt Young and Adal Rifai who’ve been working together on the Chicago improv scene for decades. Their natural chemistry and ability to work off each other makes Hello From The Magic Tavern incredibly entertaining and binge-worthy.
As a bonus, here are a few podcasts that are just getting started, but could be featured on the best-of lists for next year: Bitch Sesh, The Leap, Codebreakers, Women of the Hour, Mash-Up Americans, and Sit Down with Alfred and Chris.
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