The best podcasts of 2024 don’t disappoint. Which is saying something, because at this point in the evolution of the podcast, there certainly is no shortage of stand-out options to suit any interest. Want to improve your love life? There’s a podcast for that. Want to brush up on obscure historical facts? There’s a podcast for that. Want to creep yourself out with a real-life who-dunnit? Yes, there’s a podcast for that—or, actually, several dozen.
That’s not hyperbole. In just the last year, Spotify reportedly streamed over six million podcast titles alone. With so many options, it’s no wonder that scanning the list of potential listens can sometimes feel a bit like scanning the internet itself.
But never fear: Your search need not be nearly as endless and we’ve found plenty of contenders for the best podcasts of 2024 to help narrow it all down. Whether you’re looking for comic relief, words of wisdom, or a gripping diversion, you’re sure to find something satisfying—and maybe even totally unexpected—here.
I used to find the concept of watching a podcast very strange (that’s what, I don’t know, television is for?), but I must admit that I’ve been watching designer Bella Freud’s new podcast, Fashion Neurosis, with great interest. This has a lot to do with the format: Channeling her great-grandfather Sigmund, Freud has her guests recline on a couch (in very soft, flattering lighting) as she queries them about important pieces of clothing from their childhoods, what they start with when putting an outfit together, how comfortable they are being naked, and more. The resulting conversations—with the likes of Zadie Smith, Daphne Guinness, Courtney Cox, Kate Moss, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jonathan Anderson, Karl Ove Knausgård—are intimate, funny, and (what else?) very stylish. I’m obsessed. —Marley Marius
I’m not really a true-crime podcast person. Something about reliving all that terror just rubs me the wrong way; life is scary enough as is! But I am not immune to the charms of suspense, and this podcast has that in spades, minus anything gruesome. Written and narrated by local hero (to any public radio-listening denizen of the tri-state area) Matt Katz, it tells the story of his strained and eventually estranged relationship with his father. But the series quickly becomes more of an investigation of family origin writ large, with detours into the internet sleuths who have mastered the intricacies of ancestry.com and 23andMe; the standards (or lack of) amid 1970s fertility doctors; and the nature of inheritance. This is one of those rare stories in which a deeply personal narrative collides with a hidden history—and it’s totally fascinating stuff. I haven’t been so tuned into an audio program since Serial. I don’t just count it among the best podcasts of 2024—I count it among my favorites of all time. —Chloe Schama
A few hours after producer Julie Piñero kissed her boyfriend of four months goodnight, he was randomly attacked, dying at the hospital not long after. He was only 26. Delejos offers listeners a beautiful unfolding of the emotions and events that followed for Piñero. The 28-minute audio piece examines the murkier, yet universal, aspects of grief: How entitled are we to our grief, and for how long? What does it mean to honor and preserve someone’s memory? What does distance mean when somebody dies? The winner of Tribeca’s 2024 Audio Nonfiction Award, Delejos also marks the triumphant return of the unabashedly tender Love Me podcast. While there is a lot of great media out there about grief and loss, this one is a new favorite for its complexity, nuance, and rich sound design. —Joanna Solotaroff
As a journalist, gossip is practically a professional obligation. How lucky, then, that it also happens to be one of life’s greatest pleasures—although, as any busybody knows, it’s an activity that can land you in hot water. Enter Normal Gossip. Host Kelsey McKinney serves up anonymized secondhand gossip ranging from the drama roiling a local knitting circle to the particulars of a sorority-sister wedding scandal. Season six proved another riotously funny, deeply unhinged dive into juicy stories from people’s everyday lives. A gifted storyteller, McKinney brings the audience along for the ride as she wades into the complicated dynamics of a mushroom foraging group, a polyamorous relationship centered on a pair of tie-dye overalls, and an MFA program with an unforeseen rodent problem. —Hannah Jackson
Fans of The Daily, Pod Save America, and The Ezra Klein Show will love The Political Scene by The New Yorker, which provides in-depth reporting and analysis on a range of timely—and pressing—political issues. Featuring lively round-table discussions with TNY’s writers and editors—including fan-favorites Evan Osnos, Jane Mayer, and Susan Glasser—as well as appearances by special guests like the ACLU’s David Cole and Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, each show offers a well-rounded look at the topics impacting the current state of the union with compassion and clarity. In short: A must-listen for any citizen who wishes to stay well-informed. —Christina Pérez
We’ve said it before: This podcast is great! Forgive us the inside endorsement, but we really do think that everyone should check The Run-Through With Vogue out. While earlier episodes of the show had cohosts Chloe Malle and Chioma Nnadi in the same room, the more recent iterations have had a transatlantic vibe, with Chioma giving her across-the-pond perspective as British Vogue’s head of editorial content. It is really the most charming way to catch up on what is going on in the Vogue offices in both New York and London. —CS
The first season of Serial, which covered the murder of a Baltimore high school student and the trial of her boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was a bolt-from-the-blue, runaway success. Blame that triumph (truly, it was the default dinner-party conversation for an unbelievably long time) for the thousand true-crime spin-offs that have since emerged. Subsequent seasons of Serial went in a different direction, and this season is less about true-crime than a forsaken corner of the criminal justice system: the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. In fact, the producers and reporters behind this iteration are at pains to show just how far outside any system Guantánamo actually is, speaking with the wardens, translators, and prisoners who lived within its strange reality. —CS
My favorite episodes of Hrishikesh Hirway’s Song Exploder are the ones that feel delightfully unexpected, and I definitely was not anticipating a breakdown of “Low Rider” by the Latin funk band War to pop up on my feed. You know that song, from 1975, with the tooting trumpets, amazing hook, and a gorgeously gravel-voiced man saying things like, “The low rider drives a little slower / Low rider is a real goer.” The episode is fun, funny, inspiring, and demonstrates what Song Exploder does best, paying tribute to the joys of the creative process. (What is revealed throughout this episode is that the song was, more or less, entirely improvised.) But there are plenty of other great episodes this year, too, including the making of Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One” and Green Day’s “Basket Case.” If you’re looking for another fun throwback, I highly recommend the 2018 episode about the making of Liz Phair’s “Divorce Song,” a break-up anthem for several women in my life (including myself). —JS
UFOs, the collective conscious, and other somewhat esoteric topics are having a moment—and this mind-bending viral hit might just be one of the most compelling explorations in the metaphysical genre to date. Hosted by Ky Dickens and featuring neuroscientist Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell, each of Telepathy Tapes’ 10 episodes center around non-speaking individuals with autism who seem to possess unconventional communication abilities, like telepathy and ESP. Using scientific methods to examine the accounts of families who have experienced the phenomena first-hand, the stories—and the evidence—are remarkably convincing. Whether you consider yourself a believer or a skeptic, this show is a wild ride that will certainly challenge your ideas about the potential of human interaction. —CP
I only started listening to Therapuss because my current favorite actor Glen Powell was on it, but I immediately became hooked. Jake Shane’s Therapuss is the modern-day version of late-night television, and he has excellent (and humorous) interviewing skills. It’s my go-to podcast for when I’m in the mood for something easy and lighthearted that I can just laugh at. —Irene Kim
What’s really going on in the tech industry? Who are the people of power and the companies of influence that are actually driving Silicon Valley today? And, most importantly, how does all this impact aspects of our everyday lives? In this brilliantly crafted podcast from Wired, Bay Area-journalists and hosts Lauren Goode, Michael Calore, and Zoë Schiffer examine everything from the rise of generative AI and the motivations behind Elon Musk’s White House push to the popularity of apocalypse bunkers and Mark Zuckerburg’s midlife glow-up. Fresh and accessibile, it’s a surprisingly entertaining listen—one that is sure to leave you feeling more well-informed about the state of our world than ever before. —CP
In the summer of 2022 I was devastated by the loss of my mother, and binged the original Real Housewives of New York to pass the time. By the fall, I became hooked on the Watch What Crappens podcast, in which hosts Ronnie Karam and Ben Mandelker hilariously recap all things Bravo. They did something for me that so few were able to do that year: They made me laugh.
Two years later, Ronnie and Ben take no prisoners as they cover Bravo’s newest franchise, The Valley. Whether they were mocking Jesse’s insistence that doing psychedelics once would make him a better husband, or reflecting on what it means to have a dog named Jill, these two once again had me chortling through some of the most challenging moments of 2024. If The Valley isn’t your speed, they have almost 2,500 episodes to choose from, including recaps of over a dozen other shows from the Bravo-verse (and beyond). —JS
This is a fun one that I absolutely loved for its aughts nostalgia and cheeky mysteriousness. The internet is a strange place, one where outlandish rumors and conspiracy theories can spark and spread like wildfire with almost no explanation at all. One such theory: In 2002, pop-punk princess Avril Lavigne fell into a deep depression, committed suicide, and was replaced by an imposter named Melissa.
Sound far-fetched? It is. But many die-hard Lavigne fans swear it’s true—and there is just enough “proof” to make it seem almost plausible. In this podcast from BBC Sound, Irish comedian Joanne McNally embarks on a search across the globe (and the World Wide Web) to find the origins of the rumor—and, hopefully, uncover the truth. What she finds only leads to more questions about the weirdness of internet culture and why we choose to believe what we do. —CP
There are a lot of interview-style shows out there, but few focus solely on the wisdom of 60-, 70-, and 80-year-old women. “We’re certainly not in the habit of listening to old women who have had life experience,” actor Julia Louis-Dreyfus recently explained to the New York Times. “I mean, I would posit that our culture is much more inclined to listen to the wisdom of old men, specifically old white men.”
