There’s no real discussion of the year’s best podcasts so far without addressing the apocalyptic elephant in the room: Many series were compelled to pivot their content to coronavirus-related storytelling beginning in March, while others bent over backwards to explain themselves as they released non-COVID-related episodes they had obviously batch-recorded weeks earlier. Right around now is when everyone seems to be hitting their pandemic groove, however—or at least, audiences have largely adjusted to hearing the tinny sound quality and halting cadence of hosts recording remotely from their laptops. Suffice it to say, it’s been a uniquely challenging time for content creators (as it has been for us all), and either in spite of or because of it, they’ve managed to find new ways to move us, and keep us moving. Here are some of the best series from the first half of 2020.
Most Significant Correction To The Record
Floodlines
Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath are 15 years removed from the national psyche, so an eight-part series—dropping amid larger, fresher crises—might appear to be an old recitation of a well-known event. But the unfolding narrative reveals a sweeping story that has never been told in its entirety. Journalist Vann R. Newkirk II presents vivid evidence that the real disaster was not a force of nature; it was human, and victims of Katrina are still suffering in want of recognition. Interview segments portray the disaster in vivid detail, revealing heartbreak, desperation, and at times resilience and joy. Newkirk’s analysis shows American citizens placed too much faith in their institutions and were failed by them at nearly every level. The New Orleans police department, the federal government (typified by FEMA and its leader Michael Brown, who sits for a six-hour interview), and the Army Corps of Engineers are all implicated here. And through it all, the national media was there to get the story wrong, demonizing Black looters, spreading rumors about phantom snipers, and blaming residents for choosing to live in a supposedly undefendable location. People have waited a long time for this acknowledgment. [Zach Brooke]
Best Team-Up
Double Threat
In the midst of a truly terrible year, podcasting giants Tom Scharpling and Julie Klausner have finally teamed up to remind listeners that despite all the horrible things going on, there are still plenty of other horrible things to laugh at. Double Threat sees Scharpling and Klausner harnessing their comedic chemistry to rip apart all the creeps and overpaid mediocrities that pollute the media landscape. On a recent episode, the duo hate-listened to Alec Baldwin’s insensitive interview with Woody Allen on NPR. While rolling their eyes at all the bullshit and evasions coming thick and fast from both men, Tom and Julie make time for digressions about Allen’s career as a Batman villain writing riddles for the Riddler alongside Neil Simon. These extended riffs, where pop culture figures are smashed together, have led listeners down some truly strange roads, including a startling revelation from Scharpling: As a child he believed that the concentric circles that Porky Pig pops out of to deliver his signature catchphrase was the inside of a carrot. Klausner’s delight at this information makes it clear that, more than anything else, Double Threat is about two funny friends trying to keep each other sane. [Anthony D Herrera]
Best Apocalypse Guidebook
How To Survive The End Of The World
Octavia Butler and the Brown sisters have been saying it for a long time: Get ready, stay ready. How To Survive The End Of The World has created a thoughtful, comprehensive miniseries in 2020 on how to survive the apocalypse. Organizer and theologian Autumn Brown normally hosts this social justice podcast with her sister, adrienne maree brown, but takes the lead on this run of episodes. This grounding and practical audio handbook asks, what skills do we have, and what skills do we need, to survive during a systemic collapse? Each episode focuses on a single skill and features anecdotes, instructions, and energizing conversations with experts on the topic as well as sweet listener messages, sharing how they create intimacy during this disconnected time. If it feels overwhelming to build such a robust skill set, don’t worry—the prescient series provides ideas that are actionable and (thank god) playful. If you want to learn how to stay well during the outbreak, create a small garden in your kitchen, or get the skills to better love other people and the world we share, How To Survive The End Of The World has crafted you a bible. [Morgan McNaught]
Most Welcome Change To The Investigative Podcast Genre
Wind Of Change
In the years since the podcast boom, there has been a trend in the medium toward the macabre—investigative shows all seem to be fixated on murder and the darker elements of humanity. Wind Of Change lives up to its name, however, shaking up the genre by following a tale of the unlikely intersection between international espionage and ’80s hair metal. Specifically, the show attempts to unpack the rumor that the CIA wrote the West German band the Scorpions’ 1989 megahit “Wind Of Change” as a sort of anti-Soviet psyop. Investigative podcasts are rarely this ebullient and introspective about the implications of the story they’re telling. While the program isn’t a direct product of the magazine, the New Yorker’s distinct journalistic voice is present throughout all eight engrossing episodes, and the podcast is all the better for it. This comes down to Patrick Radden Keefe, a staff writer for The New Yorker, who imbues the podcast with the magazine’s signature globetrotting expansiveness (Russia, Ukraine, Germany), as well as some narrative detours that only help to enrich the experience. Keefe mines a surprising amount of depth from this lark. [Ben Cannon]
69 Comments
I’ve been enjoying The Wire: Way Down In The Hole and the second season of Against the Rules with Michael Lewis.
I’ve really been enjoying Dead Eyes with Connor Ratliff
Same. I’m tearing my hair out waiting for the Ron Livingston episode to drop.
When I heard Tom Hanks had tested positive for Corona my first thought was “oh man, this is gonna fuck up Connor’s podcast!”
I want to get into Double Threat but I just can’t handle Greg Universe being that mean.(I know The Best Show also has Scharpling Snark but ragging on stuff at least isn’t the POINT of that program.)
I thought the show was a bit too mean with the first episode or two, but they really hit their stride. Give the Baldwin/Allen ep a shot.
Definitely gonna listen to that one at least, especially because I have a wayyyyyyy higher tolerance for ragging on Woody Allen than ragging on your typical schmuck.
Don’t know if you got around to listening to this ep. I tried 3 times to get through it. I’m cool with people bagging on things as long as they seem to have a good point or are funny about it, but the first 15 min of this was pretty rough going. The MIB players bit was amusing but overall it felt like being in a room with 2 people who endlessly hate on everything.Even the main event, the Baldwin/Allen interview, it just seemed like swinging for the low-hanging fruit or just repeating the same gripes and insults.
Winds Of Change was great! Highly recommend!
My favorite podcast is the most incongruous, “Straight 2 L” (a play on ‘straight to hell’, of course) a podcast where, as they say in their tag line, two straight ladies and a lesbian discuss the series ‘the L Word’ fifteen years after it finished airing. Spoiler alert, they all HATE the show and when they eventually get around to talking about the episodes take particular glee in ripping it to shreds. Topics include their love of ranch dressing, their confusion over the mechanics of strap-on dildos, and the apparent lack of an ass crack on one of the actresses on the series. With occasional digressions on the topic of living in a pandemic ridden dystopia.
While rolling their eyes at all the bullshit and evasions coming thick and fast from both men This is what I look for in an audio only entertainment medium 😉
Why would you “look” for something in audio only entertainment? *zing*
Epic wooooosh!
Very meta of you
Not my fault the joke went sailing over your head.
Take it easy, buddy. I’m sure you’ll figure it all out one day and, hey, if not, at least YOU think you’re clever and that’s worth something, right? Anyway, enjoy the internet!
It wasn’t even my joke, dumbass.
Never suggested that you made a joke, friend.
I’ve been really enjoying blocked party and your kickstarter sucks. A lot of very blokey bad taste humour but even that has been a welcome relief from the shit of the last few months. Other than that Shrieking Shack had been hilarious and cathartic in a time when jk rowling has been just piledriving her legacy into the dirt over and over again.
I only know about Blocked Party being annoyed about the johnny-come-lately Blocked & Reported podcast sort of stealing their name.
Blocked Party rules. If you like that, you might also like What A Time To Be Alive. It’s another podcast hosted by extremely online Twitter comedians, but it’s a countdown of their 5 favorite weird news stories of the week.
Sweet. I’d forgotten how much I liked listening to ridiculously online folks
I’ve greatly enjoyed The Neighborhood Listen because I could listen to PFT tell me about paint drying. Also Flagrant Ones certainly deserves some accolades for being one of the most enjoyable hang out podcasts out there. It’s amazing that some of their best episodes have occured in the absence of the whole reason they started the show (basketball)
The Neighborhood Listen is my favorite podcast he’s done. I’ve never failed to laugh out loud at an episode. Due in equal parts to Tompkins, Parker, and engineer Brett. Available for free now. I envy the poor people getting to hear it now for the first time.
I wish I liked basketball, because I love those comedians
I just started the Talking Sopranos podcast with Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa. It’s interesting, but Schirripa is just so loud and the guy is a serial interrupter. I’m only a few episodes in, hopefully he calms down.
Their conversations with others from the show are always worthwhile–their talk with Robert Iler especially so. Their episode recaps, not so much.
I think the only three podcasts I’ve really listened to this year are Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, Hills I’d Die On, and Staying In w/Emily and Kumail. All have been/were great.
I know the Conan one and the Emily and Kumail one, and like both, so I’ll try Hills I’d Die On. Thanks!
Floodlines was definitely a good listen. I also recommend Boomtown, which had the interesting fortune of talking about the possibility of a looming oil crisis right ahead of COVID. The Uncertain Hour also spun up a surprise COVID season that hit on things like essential workers, unemployment and why not having sick leave is bad for everyone right now.
In weekly news, RU Talking the Red Hots Re Me has started up. After the first episode, I wonder if the Scotts regret the band choice already. Those first two albums are rough, and I’m not sure they really get much better. I think think they sounded defeated already. I could see them combining multiple albums in single eps to burn through the catalog.
This is genuinely my all-time favorite podcast, but I’m really surprised they chose RHCP as their third band to cover. Radiohead or Elvis Costello (which were both mentioned in past episodes) would have been far superior choices.
I’m surprised they didn’t go with The Smiths, considering they’ve both talked about loving that band a lot, and Scott (Aukerpuss) has that whole justification of liking an artist’s work up until you learned they were a shitty person. But i listened to the first ep and realized I’d listen to those two talk about just about anything.
The catalog gets a bit better (“Mother’s Milk” and “Blood Sugar Sex Magik”) but in any case, I think it was hard for them to pick another band.
It has to be one they both liked at one point (Auckerman seems to have a much deeper musical knowledge than Adam), that the listening audience knows, and that has a lot of albums and an interesting history.
That said, I do hope they open it up next time with either going with a genre (say ‘90s alternative rock), or going with classic rock bands like The Beatles or Led Zeppelin.
I feel like Winds of Change is a parody of a podcast. There’s not much actually happening, there’s no proof of anything but that doesn’t mean the podcaster can’t fill an entire 45 minutes of fluff. There’s a really good podcast in there about the CIA and popular culture and any podcast that devotes an entire episode to the hair band rock festival in the 80’s is going to be highly entertaining but this isn’t a good podcast
Yeah, I feel like this is the most disappointing podcast of the year. It is mostly an investigation of whether this is the kind of thing the CIA might do. Which is not same as investigating whether it was a thing they did do.
Most of the episode is about him proving something could be true because a lot of people say that it can’t be proved that it isn’t true.
Personally, I thought the podcast was great. I figured there was no way he would be able to prove anything since that would have certainly made the news before I listened to it a few weeks after its release but I did like the various rabbit holes he went down and the side topics he featured. I found it to be both an interesting time capsule and an informative look at aspects of the Cold War and the CIA I never previously considered.Mild spoiler:..Also, the interview with Klaus Meine was a great climax to the series. It certainly didn’t go the way I expected and I was quite impressed with his description of the events around that time and his reaction to the theory.
I get that. I just think he didn’t really have enough meat to the story so dragged out it to the point it had no focus. I really liked the stories about how the cia used pop culture and wished he emphasized those stories instead of spending half a podcast talking to Scorpions fans in the Ukraine. It would have been a much greater podcast if he used the song into an entryway into the CIA and pop culture instead
I agree with Snagglepuss, I thought the podcast was great to listen to while your mind was elsewhere, mostly because it was 3 hours too long.
I found it disappointing, too. If it were half as many episodes but covering the same material it would’ve been so much better.To me it felt like it would’ve been better as a long form article in The New Yorker more than a podcast (and The New Yorker editors are amazing and would’ve kept it from meandering so much).
Blowback has been the best by far this year also Unfinished is pretty good so far.
Which Blowback are you talking about? There are two so I want to grab the right one 🙂
The Iraq War one.
‘13 Minutes to the Moon’ by the BBC World Service about Apollo 13 has been utterly gripping featuring expert commentary, interviews with crew members and people at Mission Control and a score by Hans Zimmer:https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2
The Zach and Donald Scrubs podcast is great.It’s mostly two friends just shooting the breeze and eventually talking about Scrubs.Lots of good information on the show and just fun stories from everyone invovled. And since the cast are actually good friends it’s fun to see everyone showing up including Bill Lawrence who cameos pretty often. Must listen if you like Scrubs, fun listen just to laugh.Also, 5,6,7,8…
Cult Podcast and Behind the Bastards are recent favorites of mine. Oh No Ross and Carrie has lost a little of its undercover mojo lately but their old episodes (ESPECIALLY the flat earth series) are evergreen.
Hoo boy I’ve caught Robert Evans fever. I’m currently listening through his reading of his book War on Everyone on Behind the Bastards, it’s quite good. I also quite like his podcasts This Could Happen Here and Worst Year Ever, especially the latter because I get my Cracked-alumn fix x3 with Cody Johnston & Katy Stoll cohosting.
Robert Evans is our podcast daddy.
Oh those are so good. It Could Happen Here (a series about how a second civil war could be started if a mass protest movement were coupled with a recession for those who haven’t listened) is extra chilling since it was made in 2018, before Covid and the BLM protests. If you like BTB I do recommend Cult Podcast. It has a similar “funny commentary on dark stuff” vibe. It’s like if Last Podcast on the Left kept the thorough research and humor, but lost the bro-y vibe. It’s hosted by three stand ups, two are women.
Thanks for the recommendation! I’m a sucker for crime, so I’ll definitely be checking out Cult (props to them for such a sleek website).I definitely noticed some of the weird prescience of It Could Happen Here has. Shows how rational some of the hypothetical is, but it’s weird that it happened so soon.
Behind the Bastards’ mini-series “Behind the Police” is fucking amazing stuff.
I enjoyed Wind of Change, but Patrick Radden Keefe doesn’t do himself a lot of favors.
He alternately pats himself on the back about his journalism bonafides and then is as gullible as a Facebook conspiracy uncle when he runs across someone who grew up in the DC area and is a fan of the Scorpions and who come to the same theory that the show is premised on.
EVERYONE who grew up in the DC area during the Cold War knew spies, whether they knew who they were or not, and was always hypothesizing about what various agencies were doing and whether the weird neighbors were KGB or some other outfit.
Keefe either has big gaps in his DC culture knowledge or is playing stupid, which he doesn’t do elsewhere in the show.
It was a good series overall, but that was a cringeworthy episode and it seemed to be a genuine response by Keefe, because he referred to it as though it was an important clue of some time later on in the series.
Blank Check with Griffin and David has been on fire this year. The end of its Demme run and its George Miller series were incredible.
I’ve been working through the back catalog over the past few weeks, as I picked it up on a crossover with my longtime fave, The Flop House (which was once upon a time featured in this spot on the AV Club). I didn’t expect to be engaged by a sincerely critical movie review podcast, but the narratives of the director and actor career arcs, and their rises and falls with box office booms and busts, I find really fun. I don’t pay especially close attention, it’s mostly an accompaniment to me falling asleep or pushing snooze over and over, but it’s great.And no ads? Like, literally I don’t think I’ve had a single one. Maybe its regional since I’m in Canada. But that makes it so much less painless to let the podcast run in the background when there aren’t repetitive 4 minute ad breaks over and over again (for as funny as the Conan O’Brien and Ron Burgandy podcasts are, the commercial interludes are oppressive).
it’s Michigan-specific, but I listen to the Drew & Mike Podcast every day. they were my favorite morning drive until they were dropped for those morons Dave & Chuck “The Fuck”.
Bonanas for Bonanza.It’s been exactly what I need right now.
No love for The Office Ladies in here?
I’ve been really enjoying the new Star Trek Voyager podcast Delta Flyers,featuring cast members Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeill.It’s concise, informative and mercifully free of the awful guessing games/endless riffing/time wasting bullshit many other TV podcasts have.
The best new podcasts I’ve heard this year are Blowback, a thorough look at the US/Iraq wars, and 5-4 which goes hard on the Supreme Court justices and cold. Also, Our Vantage Point is a great retro wrestling podcast.
That Alec Baldwin/Woody Allen interview was unreal. This Baldwin guy seems like he might be kind of an a-hole. (Also when did Allen start speaking like a cartoon impression of himself)
Blowback is the best podcast of the year so far. TrueAnon didn’t start this year but it’s really been consistently great for the past few months, and it got so little media coverage last year that I’m gonna count it anyway.
Bonanas for Bonanza is so very good. An Any Daly Pilot Project spin off where Dalton Wilcox (Andy Daly), the Poet Laureate of the West, Mutt Taylor (Matt Gourley), and Amy Sleeverson (Maria Bamford) watch the greatest television show off all time, Bonanza.It’sa fun combo between very loose character-based improv and an episode-by-episode review show. And I could listen to Andy Daly and Matt Gourley podcast pretty much anything at this point.3/3 wives buried!
Brownie? I hear he’s doing a heckuva job!
I wish Rabbit Hole made the list. Seeing the journey of a mostly apolitical, introverted internet troll to an alt-right, hateful bigot was fascinating, especially when you hear the luminaries of the alt-right talk about how this is by design.
Rude Tales of Magic has become far and away the most entertaining option in the overcrowded Actual Play D&D podcast genre. Its two best episodes to date aired in April and May, then it pivoted to a new campaign since quarantine wouldn’t allow the group to record together. Impressively, the new campaign and new characters are every bit as good as the original. It’s my favorite show of the moment. Highly recommended for anyone who feels like The Adventure Zone has lost a lot of its energy and wants something as wild and unpredictable as that was at its best.
Behind the Bastards is one of the best podcasts out there. The host, Robert Evans, goes into detail on the life and times of some truly awesome bad people, and you get a great history lesson out of it.There’s a new guest each week (though many have been on multiple times).These last two weeks have been about the history of the police, and, well, lets just say it was eye-opening.Another great one is Worst Year Ever (name was created last year; who knew they could see the future?) and is with the host of the previous mentioned, as well as Katy Stoll and Cody Johnston. Really good political talk. They even have a youtube show called “Some More News.”
We hate movies has been great. They have so much content and have been adding more and more with covid. Has brought me so much mirth in these crazy times. A true podcast escape.
Kasting Cuzzins is a consistently funny listen. There’s something amusing to me, anyway, about two guys who seem as disgusted with their past as white rappers as they are amused by it.