Imagine it or not, it is time to look again on the podcasts that made our commutes, chores, and varied day by day duties extra entertaining, if not downright instructional, in 2024. With matters starting from nostalgic TV rewatches to relationship hijinks, getting older, life hacks, and long-form investigations into gun violence, there’s one thing for everybody in our best-of record.
So peruse our record, and prepare to fill your podcast queue.
Listed below are the 20 greatest podcasts of 2024.
20. Life Package
In case you’re searching for a primer on learn how to get issues accomplished, every thing from the existential (coping with local weather nervousness) to the unusual (eliminating fruit flies out of your kitchen/life), then Life Package is for you. In every episode, you will hear from an skilled who will reply your questions and make it easier to sort out duties and conditions that you just is likely to be loath to ask for assist with in actual life. Life Package is right here to fortify your confidence relating to day by day duties, in addition to these stuff you thought you have been the one one who did not know learn how to do.
Find out how to hear: Life Package 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 internal 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 relations in Miami and people in Cuba. Chess Piece‘s host Peniley Ramirez talks to these straight concerned within the occasions of November to March of 1999, when all eyes have been on Gonzalez, when the query of whether or not or not he would return to Cuba was each a risky political situation and a deeply private one for Cuban-People, reviving questions of exile and identification.
Find out how to hear: Chess Piece: The Elián González Story is on Apple Podcasts.
18. Lastly! A Present
Here is a podcast that permits us to do the unattainable: spy on another person’s life with out getting in bother for it. From creators Jane Marie and Joanna Solotaroff, Lastly! A Present options ladies dwelling extraordinary lives, and taking us together with them. In their very own voices, these visitors allow us to in on their tales of change, progress, and endurance. Hear from an abortion supplier with the Satanic Temple, a really younger chess grasp, a cat wrangler, and different ladies who spend their days doing stuff you may not even have thought have been actual. Every episode is reflective, intimate, humorous, and unwaveringly actual, so give your self the reward of immersion into a brand new life, normally for much lower than an hour.
Find out how to hear: Lastly! A Present is on Apple Podcasts.
17. Flightless Chicken
How would you clarify distinctive U.S. phenomena like Costco, storm chasers, and RVs to somebody who would not stay right here? Journalist David Farrier, a New Zealander caught within the U.S. on account of 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 consequently? One factor that fascinates Farrier is the chain restaurant phenomenon, so take a look at the episode about Olive Backyard, through 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.
Find out how to hear: Flightless Chicken 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 transferring components and euphemisms. Each week, she talks to a special 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, regardless of us all considering we’re alone in our wild journeys “on the streets” of relationship, there’s in all probability somebody who’s been there — no less than type of.
Find out how to hear: 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 marvel alongside along with her in regards to the fact of midlife. What does it imply to “really feel your age”? How typically do ladies 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 truly do it, and we want different voices to inform us that we are able to. No matter your age, My So-Known as Midlife is a crucial hear, a humorous and sobering reminder to be by yourself crew, no matter whether or not or not you possibly can nonetheless rage or take a red-eye such as you used to.
Find out how to hear: My So-Known as Midlife is offered on Apple Podcasts.
14. Hidden Mind
Hidden Mind is a podcast about human conduct — particularly, 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 relating to political conversations, and extra. Each episode is a intelligent and comforting alternative to glimpse the reasoning behind our most typical, and sophisticated, experiences of being people.
Find out how to hear: Hidden Mind is offered on Spotify.
13. The Secrets and techniques We Hold
Is there one thing you’ve got by no means informed 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 people in regards to the secrets and techniques they’ve round matters thought-about 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. Here is a podcast that may assist us really feel much less alone as we ask ourselves the query: Will we ever have a duty to inform our secrets and techniques?
Find out how to hear: The Secrets and techniques We Hold is offered on Spotify.
Mashable High Tales
12. Find out how to Know What’s Actual
What are the issues we have come to consider? Why will we consider them, even when and after we know we’re continuously 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 are able to develop into extra important. They sort out 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 habit may very well 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 skilled visitors are right here to present us the instruments to learn between the traces.
Find out how to hear: Find out how to Know What’s Actual is offered on Spotify.
11. Lengthy Shadow: In Weapons We Belief
In keeping with the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 134 mass shootings within the first 4 months of 2024. In the latest season of Lengthy Shadow, host Garrett Graff contemplates how we acquired 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 children who have 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, relating to retaining one another protected, we can not seem to get out of our personal approach.
Find out how to hear: Lengthy Shadow: In Weapons We Belief is offered on Spotify.
10. Taking part in Anne Frank
In 1955, 10 years after the tip of World Conflict II and the Holocaust, the stage model of The Diary of Anne Frank premiered on Broadway. In seven episodes, the Ahead’s government editor Adam Langer traces the motion of Frank’s diary from the household’s hiding place in Amsterdam to a bit of artwork that pressured 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 symbolize the murders of six million. Taking part in 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 right now, encouraging us to ponder how we view ourselves as customers of artwork, tradition and historical past.
Find out how to hear: Taking part in Anne Frank is offered on Apple Podcasts.
9. Fireplace Escape
Fireplace Escape is a 10-part collection about Amika Mota, a midwife and mother who, in 2008, awoke to seek 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 ultimately certified to affix the Fireplace Ladies, a bunch of incarcerated ladies 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 crew stay collectively in Firehouse 5, which continues to be a part of the jail however located simply exterior the gates, and on the time Mota earned $.53 an hour for her work. In Fireplace 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 identification all of a sudden modified from that of a trusted human to somebody seen by others for less than her crime. Fireplace Escape particulars how fire-fighting modified her capacity to outlive, how she got here to grasp justice, and what occurred after she left Firehouse 5 for good.
Find out how to hear: Fireplace Escape is offered on Wondery.
8. Radio Rental
Keep in mind, if you happen to 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 informed from the perspective 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.
Find out how to hear: 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 peak on my Hinge profile” sense, however within the “fabrication of a racial and/or ethnic identification” 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 identification 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 identification that is not their very own, to the detriment of precise Native individuals. Pretendians is a crucial hear for anybody who desires to grasp how far individuals will go to hijack identification, why, and the implications for these whose lived existences usually are not up for debate or sale.
Find out how to hear: Pretendians is offered on Apple Podcasts.
6. Hysterical
Within the fall of 2011, a bunch of teenage ladies on the identical highschool in upstate New York started presenting with uncontrollable neurological signs — tics, barks, stutters, even screeches and meows. Was it by some means associated to emphasize, or maybe the impact of long-buried trauma? Was it an instance of a mass psychogenic sickness, also referred to as mass hysteria? Or was it very a lot not one of the above? Prepare for a wild experience by a group dealing with a scary medical phenomenon that precipitated divisions because it continued to unfold. Alongside the best way, there are movie star appearances, debates about salad, and reminders of the unrelenting tumult that’s being a younger woman.
Find out how to hear: 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 demise 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.
Find out how to hear: Three is offered on Spotify.
4. Once more With This
A fantastic rewatch podcast allows 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 lately, Dawson’s Creek. Ariano and Bunting revisit each episode with an unflinchingly shrewd eye towards the main points we both by no means seen or pretended we did not see (i.e., the felonious relationship between younger Pacey Witter and his trainer). Put together to see the blush fall off the rose of your youth, and prepare to giggle boisterously in public.
Find out how to hear: Once more With This is offered on Spotify.
3. We Stay 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 form of is, and it is likely to be once more. The six components of We Stay Right here Now dropped earlier than Trump’s current re-election, which implies it is each more durable and much more necessary to listen to. It is an examination of our collective reminiscence, our neighborhoods, our fears and grief, and what we is likely to be able to as human beings who aspire to hear.
Find out how to hear: We Stay Right here Now is offered on Apple Podcasts.
2. Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Do you keep in mind that time lots of people on the social media platform then referred to as Twitter acquired mad at a girl for her Tweet about how beautiful it was to drink espresso within the morning along with her husband? No? Good, you are in all probability higher off. But additionally, take into account having Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) host Jamie Loftus inform you all about it, what it truly says about ladies’s capacity to exist on the Web, and folks’s determined have to 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 visitors like journalist Taylor Lorenz, Loftus tackles the fact of the algorithm, the entice of on-line discourse, and the “web rage machine.” In case you’re chronically on-line, or simply need to sound good when speaking to those that are, verify this one out.
Find out how to hear: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) is offered on iHeart.
1. The Competitors
Annually, 50 extraordinary younger ladies (assume 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 Lady. This — the need to win all of it mixed with the need to be preferred by your friends whereas continuously being watched by mothers and digital camera crews — is an enchanting premise for an investigative podcast.
Journalist Shima Oliaee returned to Cellular to be a choose for the Distinguished Younger Lady 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.
Find out how to hear: The Competitors is offered on Apple Podcasts.
Further reporting by Jenni Miller.
