As podcasts became an undeniable force in mainstream politics and culture — figuring heavily in both “Zootopia 2” and the White House press strategy — these were the shows and episodes that made us put down our laundry, or sit in the car long after arriving at our destination, and keep listening.
The Return of ‘Heavyweight’
We suddenly live in a world where we need assurance that our media is human-made, meaning, of course, that it isn’t A.I. But humanity will not roll over that easily, and neither did the podcast “Heavyweight,” which deals with exceedingly human plights, after it was canceled in 2023 by Spotify. This year, Pushkin Industries, co-founded by Malcolm Gladwell, announced it would resurrect “Heavyweight,” and new episodes started rolling out in the fall, with its beloved host, Jonathan Goldstein, at the helm. The show’s premise — to investigate and offer closure to highly specific personal moments — ultimately defies categorization. And its magic lies in the thorny, enigmatic spaces that still require a human brain to parse.
—Maya Salam
Love on Ice
The Canadian hockey romance “Heated Rivalry” skated onto our screens in November of this year, and the show quickly became one of HBO Max’s most popular offerings. But it wasn’t just women (the show’s key demographic) who were swooning over the love story of Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) and Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams). Dan Powers and Chris Powers — brothers, former hockey players and hosts of the hockey podcast “Empty Netters” — took to recapping the show and live streamed their reactions to the season finale. Their support and excitement of “Heated Rivalry” felt like an important acknowledgment from the hockey community that a queer love story was breaking barriers across demographics. One fan commented on a TikTok clip of their podcast: “As a hockey mom worrying about the toxic culture in this sport, you are giving me hope that the right role models in hockey exist! Keep being loud allies!”
—Shivani Gonzalez
An Afrobeat Pioneer Gets His Due
Jad Abumrad, among the most gifted audio storytellers of the past 25 years, returned with his first series since stepping down from “Radiolab” — the radio show he created in 2002 — more than three years ago. Over 12 thematically structured episodes, “Fela Kuti: Fear No Man” does what the best biographies do: make the legacy of an outsized life feel tangible. In addition to interweaving the Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer’s own music and few recorded interviews, Abumrad and his producers present an extraordinary assembly of Kuti-ologists, including his children, collaborators and famous admirers (among them: David Byrne, Ayo Edebiri and President Obama, whose company, Higher Ground, produced the series along with Audible). The third episode, “Enter the Shrine,” ingeniously simulates Kuti’s infamous Lagos nightclub circa 1970, bathing the listener in a hallucinatory cocktail of music samples, live recordings and firsthand testimony.
—Reggie Ugwu
Meeting the MAHA Moment
“Maintenance Phase” debuted in 2020, a collaboration between the writer Aubrey Gordon (“What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat”) and the podcaster and journalist Michael Hobbes. Early episodes were devoted to debunking diet and wellness fads: Snackwell’s, celery juice, the Master Cleanse, Moon Juice’s sex dust. The podcast has always understood that questions around health are inherently political. Now, with the Make America Healthy Again movement on the rise, most of the rest of us understands this, too. Recent episodes have discussed contemporary flash points like seed oils and ultraprocessed foods, both obsessions of the secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The hosts — chatty and excitable — have a way of registering disgust, contempt and sheer bafflement without ever quite giving into despair. A recent, delightful episode focused on enthusiasm for raw milk. So drink deep, without any associated listeria risk.
—Alexis Soloski
The Messiness of Human Connection
Returning for its fourth season after a six-year hiatus, “Love Me” arrived like an invigorating tonic, delivering the type of intimate and surprising character studies that are endangered in an era of chat-driven and videocentric podcasts. Created by Cristal Duhaime and Mira Burt-Wintonick for the CBC, and hosted by Lu Olkowski, this season’s true tales of “the messiness of human connection” included a man’s interview with his mother’s secret Italian lover after her death, a Japanese alpinist’s five-decade search for survivors of an officially extinct species of wolf, and a drag performer’s fraught attempt to discuss her sexuality with her traditional Greek family. In the poignant fourth episode, “Places Go,” a man asks his partner, who suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder, about the disorienting experience of driving to a psychological hospital after an agonizingly sleepless night. “Everyone else was probably driving to start their day,” they recall. “And we were still on the previous day.”
—Reggie Ugwu
A Trip Back to Stars Hollow
In 2016, “Gilmore Guys,” the podcast in which Kevin T. Porter, a seasoned watcher of “Gilmore Girls” and Demi Adejuyigbe, who had never seen it, covered all the episodes of the show that followed a mother-daughter duo in the fictional town of Stars Hollow, Conn. So it was a delightful surprise when a new episode dropped in their podcast feed without warning in August of this year, nearly 10 years later. Porter and Adejuyigbe were joined by a favorite guest, the author and TV writer Aisha Muharrar, to reminisce on the heyday of the podcast and talk about how their voices had deepened with age. The return of the show felt like a surprise visit from an old friend.
—Shivani Gonzalez
A Roommate With a Secret
The New Zealand journalist and podcaster David Farrier takes a look at things that he finds to be inherently American on his podcast “Flightless Bird.” But sometimes instead of a broad topic like First Amendment auditors, hell houses or Chipotle, he does a deep dive into an odd story — as he did with the “Spaceman Barry” episode. In it, he speaks with Noah who finds out that Barry, the man he lived with for years, had served time in prison for something truly unexpected after Barry’s death. I don’t want to spoil it, but the story will make you laugh, reflect on your personal relationships and glue your jaw to the floor during the reveal of the twist.
—Shivani Gonzalez
Pinball Wizards and Defiant Comedians
Two years after it ceased production amid financial struggles, the pioneering podcast “The Truth” roared back to life with four new stories that displayed a level of originality, playfulness and sound design that is still too rare in audio fiction. “Operation Skill Shot” channels “Goodfellas” as it chronicles the rise and fall of a prideful pinball shop owner who gets entangled with the mob. And the sci-fi satire “The Joke” conjures a dystopian, distant future where a harmonious but humorless society has inspired a defiant comedian underground.
—Reggie Ugwu
A Fresh Take on Mary, Queen of Scots
“The Rest Is History” tends to get so into the minutiae of its subject matter that you’d be forgiven for losing track of its web of events while listening on a grocery run. But the six-part series on Mary, Queen of Scots, this year was unusually gripping, at times sounding more like a true-crime mystery than a historical recounting. Starting from Mary’s birth and coronation as an infant, the series is at its best when describing the murder of Mary’s second husband, Lord Darnley — a dramatic tale that helped to propel her downfall and made me pause in the milk aisle. Hosted by Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, British historians who have managed to find a reliable balance of intellectualism and humor, the podcast is not yet done with the Scottish queen; the series is expected to return to chronicle her grim fate.
—Julia Jacobs
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