The 26 Best Podcasts of 2024

The Ringer writer Rob Harvilla spun off his original podcast, in which he went through 60 songs that helped shape the cultural zeitgeist of the ’90s (along with its companion book) into a version for elder millennials. You know, the ones who remember where they were when MGMT’s “Kids” debuted more than they remember where they were when “Basket Case” hit the airwaves. (In my case, I was wherever most two-year-olds hang out. Probably at home with my parents.) Harvilla goes into excruciating and hilarious detail to place each track into its historical context, usually starting somewhere ostensibly nowhere near the track at hand, like a T-shirt cannon clocking his buddy in the face at a Minor League Baseball game as a lead-in to Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle.” In Harvilla’s own words: Don’t overthink it. But the irony is that Harvilla has done quite a bit of overthinking for you.

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You might recognize Will Sennett as the guy who described exactly how he would strike out Timothée Chalamet with three pitches. “You chased it—of course you chased it,” has embedded itself into my baseball-watching vernacular. That combination of sports history and absurdity is on full display on the serialized fiction podcast hosted by Sennett and fellow comedian Nate Fisher. In the most recent season, they tell the story of “history’s” most forgotten yet entirely forgettable NBA star, Fred Gentle—and the circumstances around his late draft selection and difficult shoe deal. The show is complete with “appearances” by the likes of Charles Barkley.

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Look, it just doesn’t get much better than Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Whatever “it” is, she’s probably better at it than most. Podcasting is no exception, even though the premise of her show is to play host to women who are—as the title and Louis-Dreyfus say—wiser than her. These women run the gamut from authors to activists, actors, and more. Even when the subject matter is lofty, the conversations feel down-to-earth, accessible, and fun. The best thing you can say about a podcast is that it sounds like you’re listening in on the smartest or funniest people you know having a conversation. Wiser Than Me hits that sweet spot. It never feels forced or ham-handed, and there’s always room for a little profanity.

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Lupita Nyong’o belongs in the category of “People I would listen to as they read from the phone book,” so it’s really a great thing that she decided to hop into the podcasting game. “Mind Your Own” is a collection of stories not dissimilar to something like “This American Life” but from an African perspective. Some stories come from Nyong’o’s own life, others via contributions from storytellers who dive into things like love, school dynamics, politics, humor, family, setting off in search of a better life—all in a beautifully and thoughtfully curated package.

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We all have our greatest fear. Some are niche; others are more of the stock variety. Me? I’m fairly vanilla in my anxieties: spiders, heights, tight spaces, pretty much in that order. In “Scared All the Time,” hosts Ed Voccola and Chris Cullari discuss some common fears and think about why they’re so common, whether you should actually be afraid of them, and so on. Let’s just say that as I was listening to the spiders episode, I was glad it was an audio-only format and I just had to listen to them describe the horrifically large spiders they were pulling up on the web. Still, it’s true that sometimes confronting and discussing your fears out in the open can disarm them a little bit—or, in my case, defang them a little. (You know, it’s not so much that I’m afraid of spiders biting me. I just don’t like looking at them.)

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Speaking of fears, tech writer Ed Zitron stares down the ghouls and vampires of Silicon Valley to explain in layman-friendly (and often expletive-laden) language how the tech world is fairly fucked up. And yet, as Zitron says, it can get better if it tries—and if we as its captive consumer society push back a little. Zitron explains things such as OpenAI’s shoddy business model, how one man single-handedly goofed up Google searches for everyone, the threat of monopolies, and the ever-feared Algorithm. You don’t have to be an expert in business or tech to get something out of each episode. Plus, it might just inspire you to do a little more digging and research on your own—or at least start to see the cracks in tech’s shiny armor.

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Jamie Loftus is the master of taking something ubiquitous—or maybe even overlooked—in culture and zooming in on it to show what it says about our world. Case in point: her book, Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs, which is about hot dogs, sure, but it’s actually about so much more. In Sixteenth Minute of Fame, Loftus looks at some of the Internet’s “main characters,” diving into how their stories relate to our media habits and cultural shortcomings. Her episode on the “Hide your kids, hide your wife” viral video unpacks the exploitation of minorities for entertainment, as well as the glossing over of sexual assault for the sake of humor. The episode about the Boston cop who eats shit on the metal slide? It’s really about police power and its relationship to the public. It would be so easy to just make this a surface-level “Hey, remember this eBaum’s World clip?” podcast, but it’s not. It also has a very catchy theme song by Sad13.

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As a millennial, my ears are acutely trained to perk up when I hear “Hello, I’m Johnny Knoxville.” Now that I’m firmly in my 30s, I can accept that Knoxville isn’t jumping off quite as many things as he used to. Instead, he’s teamed up with Elna Baker of This American Life for a new podcast venture under the Smartless Media umbrella. The elevator pitch of the show is this: Can you teach bravery? Baker and Knoxville bring in some of the most courageous people they can think of—such as bull riders, BASE jumpers, Arctic explorers, Travis Pastrana—to talk about how (and why!) they manage to do what they do. Baker and Knoxville complement each other nicely, trading off interviewing and color-commentating duties fluidly. For example, when Knoxville is enamored with a particularly gnarly story, Baker will play the layperson and ask what a phrase means or explain something to the non-extreme listener. And Knoxville uses his Jackass bona fides to relate to guys climbing onto bulls or flipping motorcycles when Baker might (understandably) be out of her experiential depth.

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In this, the year of Dune: Part Two and Fallout, Kyle MacLachlan is once again on our radar (as he always should be). Rather than getting in front of the camera, though, MacLachlan put together a serial podcast about a tiny (like, really tiny) coastal North Carolina town that once found itself mixed up with Pablo Escobar’s drug trade. You’d never know this town existed if you didn’t specifically look for it, and that’s probably what appealed to arguably the most famous drug kingpin of all time. MacLachlan’s voice lends itself nicely to this format, so it’s such a joy to listen to him from the ground in North Carolina, talking to the people who remember the town’s coke-runner heyday.

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Speaking of soothing podcasts helmed by actors, let’s talk about Minnie Driver. The basis of her podcast is simple: She asks her guests (who come from the worlds of sports, media, art, and beyond) the same seven questions each time. The conversations yield some beautifully human moments of empathy, growth, humor, sadness, love, and connection. Even when it’s over Zoom, Driver’s interviews feel like a conversation at a dinner table or in a mood-lit living room at the end of a night, when everyone’s loosened up just enough. When there are so many comedians shouting over each other on podcasts for laughs (no shade to those types of shows), Minnie Questions feels like a meditative break. No matter who the guest is, you benefit from listening to a smart and insightful conversation between thoughtful people—and come away with a new perspective on something for the rest of your life.

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Normal Gossip is one of Defector’s flagship podcasts. As a deeply loyal Deadspin-turned-Defector reader, I’m happy to listen to and read anything from the team over there. Kelsey McKinney is the friend who asks her audience about the latest gossip in their lives. Then she and her guests listen in to listener-submitted gossip about everything under the sun. There’s a lot to be said for cinematic, highly produced podcasts, but there’s also something to be said for listening to some gossip, right?

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Yes, that’s right: curling. I love curling. I know it’s such a cliché to watch professional sports and think, I could do that! But I am 100 percent certain I could be a damn good curler, if not an Olympian. (This is not to downplay the skill of curlers—it’s to overhype my own confidence in my aptitude for finesse games.) Americans are used to dramatic retellings of sports scandals, but typically those stories are from the “big” sports here, like baseball, basketball, or football. We don’t know much about curling. So this is the perfect show to learn about the sport and its universe, as well as how one Canadian butterfly flapped its wings and changed the nature of the sport forever—as told by a man in the center of it all, John Cullen.

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I use Wikipedia more than any other website, and it’s not even close. My friends and I used to play a game in high school where we’d pick two unrelated topics—say, sharks and the Vatican 2 movement—and go from point A to point B using only the links in Wikipedia articles. I was so good at it. So when actor/comedian D’Arcy Carden introduced WikiHole, I knew it was for me. It’s essentially a quiz show, featuring great comedians, actors, and musicians (all described as Carden’s very best friends), to answer trivia questions across a slippery slope of topics as they slide deeper into the WikiHole. D’Arcy, I am begging you: Please email your best friend Brendan to come on the show.

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There are sports podcasts and there are pop-culture podcasts. Often, these two intersect. But what Tony Hawk does better than other podcast hosts is play the everyman. Meaning: Hawk talks to famous guests across the entire podcast-guest spectrum in ways that we would if we met them at a meet and greet. He’s often a fan but never a fanatic. He asks questions that we’d probably ask—which elicits answers that we’d probably want to hear. Yes, Hawk gets pretty inside baseball when he has a skater guest on the podcast, but cohost (and co-skater) Jason Ellis helps by showing his curiosity about topics beyond his wheelhouse of skating, comedy, and MMA.

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Speaking of sidekicks: Andy Richter might just be one of the best podcast hosts on the air right now. The Three Questions’ loose premise is that Richter asks his guests who they are, where they came from, and what they’ve learned. Often they answer the last question before he even gets a chance to ask—just because the conversation is so free-flowing. Richter has spent many years choosing his times to carefully jump in as Conan O’Brien’s right-hand man. Now he’s the one behind the desk, so to speak, and he can dig into topics that aren’t exactly ideal for quick, lighthearted plugs on basic cable. Richter’s podcast isn’t new, but he’s back from a little break and deserving of a shout-out while his boss enjoys a new Max show.

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Nowadays, it feels as if every comedian must have a podcast by law. Part of that law stipulates that any ambitious young comic looking to break into the establishment must start with a podcast that blends sketches, stand-up, improv, and advertisement. Many are irritating. But the Almost Friday guys do the best job of it. It’s extremely Gen Z, but Will Angus and Liam Cullagh have the dynamic of your two friends who can comedically spar better than anyone—and keep the rest of the party gasping for air between bits. They’ll invite guests on to ask them about their lives, but also help them out by playing the straight man in a semi-preplanned skit. It’s like a guy going through airport security with a bag full of bombs, severed limbs, and manifestos written in code.

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I love cooking at home, but the real pain of looking up a recipe online is that you have to wade through roughly 10,000 words to get to the part where they tell you how many cloves of garlic you need. J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and Deb Perelman’s new podcast gets to not only the heart of how they make their recipes—but also the why behind each decision, too. You won’t find any fanfare about how a recipe for stovetop mac and cheese reminds them of their grandparents. Instead, they discuss their cheese choices and how they got there. The Recipe is accessible to the common person who doesn’t yet have an extensive (and expensive) collection of knives but has plenty of them saved in an online shopping cart along with a nice apron or two. The podcast is still in its very early days, so now’s the time to jump in and Julie & Julia your way along with them each week.

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We’re in a weird era right now when podcasters and guys dressed as lizards serve as therapists. Shows like Stavvy’s World are centered on people calling in and seeking guidance from some unlikely sources—but actually leaving with sound advice. Thankfully, comedian-actors Jake Johnson and Gareth Reynolds bring some levity to the self-help pod in We’re Here to Help. They impart real advice—such as telling someone in no uncertain terms to stop feeding their cat ear wax, because it’s bizarre. The show’s live-call format allows for fun back-and-forth, plus some callers get a chance to follow up later on, so we can see how the advice played out.

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Like the abundance of comedy podcasts, their sports counterparts have the potential to be incredibly irritating. But for my money, Shea Serrano and Jason Concepcion’s Six Trophies is downright fun. They truly blend sports and pop culture—remember, Serrano has written books about movies, and both were responsible for the celebrated TV show Primo. It’s far from the self-important, stats-heavy yell-fest of modern sports media. The generations that grew up watching Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption often think talking about sports needs to be a heated debate. Thankfully, Serrano and Concepcion are happy to discuss which fictional basketball game from movies and TV shows they’d most like to attend. Six Trophies is a show about jocks that isn’t run by jocks. It’s just a game, after all.

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We all remember the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but how much do we actually know about it? In Ripple, Dan Leone gets on the ground (and in the water) in Louisiana and other states on the Gulf to talk to the people who have been most affected by the spill. He listens to their memories of that day and learns about the spill’s lingering effects: friends and family members lost on the rig, waterways that people depended on dying in front of their eyes. Like any great serial podcast, there are characters and motives. Even more, Leone uncovers evidence from archival interviews, which come from the likes of BP executives, government agencies, and much more.

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