I Listened to Podcasts in 75 Days in 2024, and These Are My 10 Favorite New Shows
According to my favorite podcast app , Pocket Casts, I listened to 74 days, 19 hours, and 36 minutes of podcasts in 2024. (If that sounds like a lot, it’s less than last year; I blame my 10-month-old for that. Cutting down on my listening time.) I also spent the year writing about the best things I listened to for my newsletter. Podcast the Newsletter , and the shows below are just that. I kept coming back week after week.
I know there are a lot of year-end podcast lists out there these days, but even the best of them are missing what I consider to be great shows that haven’t gotten the attention they deserve. I hope you enjoy my picks – some have been advertised elsewhere and some may be new to you – and let me know what I missed. I need to get my numbers back by next year, so I need new shows to get me there.
Because the boss belongs to us
Jesse Lawson and Holly Cascio have a hypothesis: Bruce Springsteen deserves a weird kind of seal of approval. To prove this, they, in each episode of Because the Boss Belongs to Us, go through a list they made, asking: Is Bruce at camp? Does he have a story about the struggle? Do his songs evoke feelings of deep sadness, loneliness, euphoria, or anything else that weird people experience? Can you dance, cry and have sex with Bruce? Listening to this makes me feel like I’m sitting on the floor of Holly’s room next to her stack of magazines, watching her and Jesse handcraft this show.
Cement City
Journalist Jeanne Marie Laskas moved to a tiny Pennsylvania town called Denora just to find out what it was like to live there and left with more than 850 hours of recording. She turned all this documentation into a podcast, Cement City . (Denora! Population: 4,650. There are no banks, grocery stores, or gas stations on Denora, but there is a Smog Museum and a mayor named Piglet.) The entire show builds up to Denora’s general election and Christmas celebration. and along the way, Laskas makes us feel like we live there too. Overall, the series was an incredible piece of reporting that I couldn’t put down.
Confessions of Anthony Raimondi
The Confessions of Anthony Raimondi introduces Anthony, a member of a New York City crime family who claims to have participated in the 1978 assassination of the Pope. It’s so full of tall tales that it’s impossible to believe them all, and that’s the whole point of this podcast: Mark Smerling (co-creator of the HBO series The Jinx ) follows Anthony’s stories and tests them, which is difficult because Anthony is such an unforgettable character and a fantastic storyteller that It can be difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. I don’t really care if these stories are true or not because Anthony is charming and the podcast is great.
Tiny dinosaurs
In “Little Dinosaurs “, improvisers Connor Ratliff and James III pose as scientists and best friends who have revived dinosaurs in miniature form, but try to keep it a secret. The real jokes start coming when their famous and funny improv friends (like Lauren Lapkus) stop. This show is funny, sweet, and weird, and is a great place for comedians to get silly. Connor and James’ chemistry is the best. I want to live in their Tiny Dinos house.
Telepathic recordings
The Telepathy Tapes is one of the most confusing things I’ve listened to in a long time. It is based on the theory that nonverbal people with autism are telepathic and have otherworldly perception. This is both incredible and, if you really think about it, quite plausible, and if true, it changes everything science has told us. not just the abilities of neurodivergent people, but also connectivity and communication. It all starts with host Kaye Dickens taking her tape recorder into the homes of autistic children around the world (accompanied by a neuroscientist) for intimate conversations with their families, who share incredible things. If you believe them (and why wouldn’t you? How arrogant to think that we have it all figured out, that the quietest people in the room have nothing to say), it may make you question everything you think. you are aware of how reality works and how society treats people with autism.
Empire City
Chenjerai Kumanyika is the host of Empire City , a show that delves into the complex history of the NYPD, right back to the very beginning – and not to sound corny, but it’s a story the cops don’t want us to know. . Chenjerai is an amazing storyteller and takes you back in time. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t really trust the police, Empire City will tell you that you probably shouldn’t do this. This is a history podcast filled with life.
Sixteenth minute (of fame)
I’d follow Jamie Loftus to the ends of the earth, but there’s no need when she’s recording a brilliant weekly show on my phone. “Sixteen Minutes of Fame” tracks down former Internet “protagonists”—people who, whether they wanted to or not, went viral for various reasons—to find out what happens when fifteen minutes of online fame are over. Some of these stories are funny (like the time she talked to the guy who ate 40 rotisserie chickens) and some take a dark turn (the story of the famous blue and white or black and gold dress), but Jamie interviews everyone involved with empathy. , trying to understand their point of view and what it would be like to be at the center of the Internet, if only for a day. Loftus also flexes his journalistic muscles in search of contextual elements that might explain why these stories entered the zeitgeist.
In the dark
The New Yorker’s third season of Into the Dark is one of the greatest pieces of long-form investigative work I’ve ever encountered. Madeleine Baran reports on the 2005 Haditha massacre, in which 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians were killed by US Marines, relying on stunning audio recordings and access to classified documents and photographs that reconstruct what happened and refute almost everything. which the military had previously revealed. More than simply explaining that terrible morning and the suffering of the families left behind, or finally identifying the people responsible for these war crimes, it explores how war can dehumanize others. It is sobering, compelling and difficult listening.
Rebellious Spirit
For her podcast Rebel Spirit , comedian, writer, and actress Akilah Hughes took the microphone back to her small hometown of Florence, Kentucky, to try to convince the community to change the school mascot from the Boone County Rebels to… Southern food. staple, the humble cookie. It sounds silly, but she has a serious mission, and the podcast is a great piece of journalism that explores how deeply ingrained racism is in our culture. Listeners live the story with Akilah, who augments her narrative with original recordings and interviews with people like the writer of “Gritty,” the Philadelphia Flyers’ viral mascot. Rebel Spirit is a story about more than just the Boone County Rebels, it’s a story about how much work it takes to move beyond the past and try to be a little better.
Good whale
The Good Whale is a podcast about Keiko, the famous whale who played Willy in the movie Free Willy . Keiko became the center of controversy when the public, who loved Free Willy and the fact that Willy was freed, realized that Keiko was not free. Millions of dollars were spent returning Keiko to the wild, and the tale of his journey to freedom became an incredible story. This show has excellent production values, methodically walking us through everything that happens and even allowing itself to take flights of artistic fancy. Consider episode five, which covers the time after Keiko was first released, when scientists didn’t know where he was. Instead of simply skipping over this uncertain period, the show asked musical creatives to use what little information there is about where Keiko started and where he ended to write songs that imagine what might have happened to him in the future. it’s time. This is one of the most creative shows I’ve encountered this year.