‘Like nothing else you’ll ever hear’: the 20 best podcasts ever

Mystery Show With Starlee Kine

Alice Levine, host of My Dad Wrote a Porno and British Scandal

There were only ever six episodes made of this mystery-solving show – and given how special it is, I don’t know why. Kline plays a PI character who investigates something you couldn’t solve using the internet. The episode I particularly remember is based around her friend David telling her that in the film Source Code, Jake Gyllenhaal looks really small in some scenes and really tall in others. They go online and realise that his height is unverified. So she goes on this odyssey to find out how tall Gyllenhaal actually is. Even if he didn’t appear at the end (which he does) the journey would have been enough.

Crushed by Margaret Cabourn-Smith

Deborah Frances-White, host of The Guilty Feminist

This is a podcast about our unrequited crushes on pop stars, teachers and peers we didn’t even dare speak to. The episode where Jessica Fostekew justifies her childhood crush on Gandalf (not Ian McKellen; the old wizard in the book) is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. I was crying laughing as Jess blurts out, “Well I lost a grandfather at a young age!” Podcasting wizardry.

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Radiolab, Finding Emilie

Ira Glass, host of This American Life

There’s an episode of RadioLab, Finding Emilie, about a woman hit by a truck which is masterly. At one point, someone describes to hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich the experience of being in a coma and I have thought about it so many times since. I’m terrified of being in a coma. I also know that some day when I’m in a coma, and have one of those moments of lucidity when it’s like you’ve been in a dream, I’m going to think about this episode from 2011. And I’m going to think “Fuck you Jad and Robert”.

The Adam Buxton podcast

Richard Herring, host of RHLSTP

I’m reluctantly going for Adam Buxton, even though he’s a competitor and annoyingly gets better guests than me. He did a fantastic interview with Paul McCartney. And Billy Connolly. I’ve had Michael Palin on, but he had Michael Palin first. I’m mildly jealous of him, but he deserves it. He gets quite angry about things, but he’s thoughtful and kind and that’s disarming. That’s why those interviews work so well. He has mastered it.

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Friedman Adventures

Dan Schreiber, host of No Such Thing As a Fish and We Can Be Weirdos

The host of this US fishing podcast is friends with two sea captains who, in 1986, rescued a nine-year-old girl they found floating in the ocean. She’d lost her whole family. Years later, the pair are recording their tale for a podcast, telling the story to a translator called Raquel, saying they’ve never had contact with the girl since. Her name – Desiree Rodriguez – is too common to find her. Suddenly the host says “I have a confession. Raquel is not a translator.” The two men burst out crying. She is crying too. Finally she says, “I am Desiree Rodriguez.” She’s the girl they saved and now she has a family of her own. It’s a beautiful moment.

Drifting Off With Joe Pera

Stuart Heritage, Guardian culture writer

Comedian Joe Pera releases podcast episodes with the same slow, deliberate pace as he speaks, dropping one short episode each month. Like his TV show Joe Pera Talks With You, every moment drips with lovingly crafted care. The third episode – where Pera meditates on the joys of meandering through the landscape of Red Dead Redemption 2 while interviewing its lead voice actor – is a colossal achievement for the medium. It’s like nothing else you’ll ever hear.

Bitch Sesh

Elizabeth Day, host of How to Fail

I adore reality TV and this hilarious show about The Real Housewives multiverse is one of my favourite podcasts about it. Hosts Casey Wilson and Danielle Schneider hilariously analyse the minutiae of The Real Housewives multiverse – and in episode 88, the actor June Diane Raphael says something that has genuinely helped me. Her car has been stolen and she says: “I’m not going to take on the identity of someone who has had their car stolen. I’m not going to take on the worldview of a victim of auto-theft. That’s not how I identify!” It made me laugh, but it left me with a profound understanding of the difference between something happening to us and something defining who we are, which really is the root of all meditative practice. I think of that moment a lot.

Off Menu

Hollie Richardson, assistant TV editor, the Guardian

James Acaster and Ed Gamble’s comedy series, in which guests discuss their dream restaurant food orders, always gets belly laughs out of me – but Claudia Winkleman’s episode is the best. “I have never knowingly had water,” she proudly says before going on a 15-minute rant about how disgusted she is by her husband’s wet mouth after he glugs H2O. This is just the start of a mind-boggling hour featuring the most brilliantly bizarre declarations, from wanting to sleep with The Simpsons’ Mr Burns to doing a roly-poly the first time she tasted her mother-in-law’s dauphinoise potatoes.

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True Crime Obsessed

Chanté Joseph, host of Pop Culture With Chanté Joseph

This recap show for true-crime documentaries is my favourite podcast in the world. Its hosts, Gillian Pensavalle and Patrick Hinds, are the funniest – the show is basically two people screaming for an hour every week. My top episode is Class Action Park. It’s a documentary about this amusement park in the 1980s and 90s in New Jersey that had a terrible reputation. Health and safety simply did not exist for this place – and so many children were injured. It was absolutely bananas and their recounting of this documentary is brilliant. It’s so, so funny – and so good they did it again for their live show.

Where Should We Begin? With Esther Perel

Kate Thornton, host of White Wine Question Time

When I listened to the first episode of this peek inside couples’ real-life relationship counselling, I couldn’t get out of the car because I didn’t want to turn it off. I felt so naughty listening in on an anonymous couple’s therapy. It was like hearing something I shouldn’t. You really invest in the couples, and think “I hope you make it!”.

Song Exploder

Adam Buxton, host of The Adam Buxton Podcast

Favourite ever podcast episode is a big question – it reveals a lot about a person. I’ve spent many happy hours with The Horne Section and Athletico Mince but have mentioned them too many times – so I’ll go for the always excellent Song Exploder, where musicians dissect one of their tunes and explain how it was made. The episode where Björk breaks down her 2015 track Stonemilker is just fascinating. There is also an amazing episode of Hugh Cornwell’s film music podcast MrDemilleFM, where Brian Eno talks about his favourite pieces of music in films. It introduced me to so many great bits of music. But I’m only allowed one, so I’m going for Song Exploder. This is the problem: I’d rather pick a favourite child (it’s Rosie).

Sick of Being Sick

Steven Bartlett, host of The Diary of a CEO

One of my best friends, Rocio, had cancer. They found a large tumour in her brain. She launched a podcast called Sick of Being Sick to share long-form insights into the journey she was on. She explains the diagnosis in real time by releasing weekly episodes, so that’s obviously very meaningful and memorable for me. She also survives the brain tumour, so we get to hear about that. It was a really wonderful thing to do. I think it helped her a lot – and it certainly helped everyone around her.

Love + Radio

Miranda Sawyer, radio critic, the Observer

The episode that really turned me on to podcasts was The Living Room from season four of Love + Radio. Every episode of this beautifully produced show – from Nick van der Kolk, the son of psychotherapists who understands how humans are weirder and more delightful than we can ever imagine – is worth listening to (try The Silver Dollar or Fix). But this one blew me away. A woman lives in an apartment with a window that looks straight into someone else’s flat; she tells the story of what she sees. Funny, odd and, in the end, utterly devastating. It’s only 22 minutes long, but I still think about it now.

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Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen (link)

Coco Khan, host of Pod Save the UK

It’s a well known trope that every waiter in Los Angeles is an actor in waiting, so scams targeting entertainment industry hopefuls are plentiful. Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen aims to track down the devilish mind alleged to be behind one of the most outlandish of these, where elaborate ruses defrauded up to 300 victims to the tune of $1m. But it was learning that the “Hollywood con queen” made their way to London and Manchester that knocked me for six. Hearing the podcasters discuss venues I’d personally been to hit home hard. The alleged scammer is currently facing extradition from the UK to face US charges. This story is far from over.

My Dad Wrote a Porno

Alexi Duggins, deputy TV editor, the Guardian

In the mid-2010s, it felt like every laughing earphone-wearer on a Monday morning commute was listening to My Dad Wrote a Porno. The atrocious erotic novels written by host Jamie Morton’s ex-builder dad were hilarious in their misunderstanding of female anatomy (“Her tits hung freely, like pomegranates”), odd slapstick moments of love-making (one person has such vigorous sex her hair drops clean off her head) and the sheer awkwardness they caused as Morton read them aloud to his co-hosts. It’s almost too tricky to pick a best episode, but Jim’s Secret, in which a long-running character reveals he’s recently had a penis transplant, only to inexplicably ejaculate blue semen, is one of the most astonishingly laugh-out-loud moments I’ve come across in a podcast.

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You’re Wrong About

Kiri Pritchard-McLean, host of All Killa No Filla and Pod of Wales

I love the journalist Michael Hobbes – he’s astounding. In this podcast he co-founded with Sarah Marshall, they spent years taking topics people treat as accepted truths, and subjecting them to extreme research. Hobbes has since left the podcast, but his and Marshall’s look at Princess Diana is a five-part deep-dive on the people’s princess – and it’s absolutely brilliant. He reads out the whole transcript of Prince Charles’s Tampongate conversation with Camilla – where he tells her he wants to be her tampon. It’s actually a sweet, daft conversation where he’s going “I really wish I was with you now. I’m really lusting for you.” As a result of that podcast, I’ll defend Charles when people use Tampongate to say he’s weird and revolting. I have no allegiance to the monarchy whatsoever, especially as a Welsh person, but that show has for ever changed my outlook.

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Sweet Bobby

Rubina Pabani, host of Brown Girls Do It Too

There are so many Sliding Doors moments in podcasts where if a person had done something different they could have completely changed the narrative. Sweet Bobby, which follows radio presenter Kirat being catfished into thinking she’s in a relationship with cardiologist Bobby, has an incredible moment like that. Kirat bumps into Bobby in a Brighton nightclub, it’s dark, she sees him, and it looks like he’s ignoring her – but he just doesn’t know her. You’re like “What are you doing, you idiot? Go and speak to him!” I was basically shouting at my headphones.

Reply All

Grace Dent, host of Comfort Eating

I loved this show about the internet back in the day. It was so clever – and nailed the feeling of being online. My favourite episode is about a meme: a photograph used to represent the agony of being at a party you’re not enjoying. The photo is just a boy on a bed looking miserable, and they try to find him. At first it’s like: “He’s dead!” Then it turns out that isn’t true, there are twists, turns and eventually they find him. It’s about internet folklore, and the obsessions that send us down rabbit holes in the middle of the night – it’s just brilliant.

WTF With Marc Maron

Ed Gamble, host of Off Menu

There’s one episode of this interview podcast where he interviews Gallagher, the famous US watermelon-smashing comedian, and it goes very wrong. Marc Maron says something Gallagher misinterprets and he starts ranting and raving – until he storms out. I do not know how Gallagher’s people didn’t get in the way of it being released. Once he’s left, Maron is totally baffled – sitting in the studio alone, trying to pick up the pieces. I’ve listened to it countless times. It’s an incredible piece of podcasting. It’s so tense – like a drama and a horror film all at once.

Bone Valley

Alexi Mostrous, host of Sweet Bobby and Hoaxed

This podcast has a formulaic set-up. A guy in the US got convicted of his wife’s murder. He’s been in prison for 30 years. He says he didn’t do it. Has there been injustice? But the guy who investigates it is this ridiculously good Pulitzer prize-winning journalist called Gilbert King. By episode four, Dog with a Bone, King has convinced us that Leo, the main character, was probably wrongfully convicted. Fifteen years after Leo’s conviction, his supporters persuade police to test a fingerprint found in Leo’s wife’s red Mazda – which she had been driving shortly before her murder. The police expect to find nothing. They do indeed get a match – to someone who has gone to prison for murder before.