At this point in the evolution of the podcast, there is something for everyone. In fact, scanning your listening options can be like scanning the internet itself—do the shows simply go on forever?
Fortunately, we have some ideas about the best podcasts of 2024, and we’ve highlighted them here. The season of road trips and long days at the beach is also the season for a long listen, so hit download, plug in your headphones, and enjoy.
Inconceivable Truth
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—to any public radio-listening denizen of the tri-state area—local hero 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
Love Me: Delejos
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
Normal Gossip: Season 6
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
The Run-Through
We’ve said it before: This podcast is great! Forgive us the inside endorsem*nt, 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
Serial: Season 4
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
Song Exploder
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
Therapuss
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
Watch What Crappens: The Valley
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
You Had to Be There: The Kerri Strug Episode
This personable new show poses a madcap journalistic experiment for each episode: “Find and interview an eyewitness to a specific iconic moment in pop culture history…in just 48 hours.” The result is something like a game-ification of deadline anxieties with the antics of a private detective mixed in. The episodes run the gamut from the iconic to the somewhat obscure; of particular note (for anyone watching the Olympics in particular) is the Kerri Strug episode—fascinating for its look back at the culture of competitive ’90s gymnastics, and specifically the 1996 “magnificent seven” who went on to win the gold medal for the team competition. Was it a good thing that we celebrated an injured gymnast sticking the landing with a broken ankle? The show goes deep on the moment, while offering an inquisitive look at everything that’s changed in women’s sports. —CS
