Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
This list is updated monthly with new best of the year worthy titles.
Whats a podcast now, anyway?
Did your eyes glaze over?
Then you know just a fraction of my pain as Vultures resident podcast critic.
As a result, podcasting has been fully reinvigorated as a cultural force.
But its also never been more muddled in terms of what it actuallyis.
It remains to be seen how Ill approach this list at the end of 2025.
10.What The Hell is My Job?!
(Mondegreen)
10.
A great reminder of how podcasts can be just about anything you want.
For each Monday since the very beginning of the year,What The Hell is My Job?
Also interesting: This is a purely independent creation from a team (or a person?)
that has remained very much anonymous themselves.
9.The Curious History of Your Home(Noiser)
9.
An unassuming podcast that I kept thinking about and returning to as the year rolled on.
(Cats!?)
Bookstores are filled with this kind of stuff.
Why cant podcast directories be stacked with the same?
8.Dodger Blue Dream(Richard Parks III)
8.
Theres a true pleasure to listen to someone who really loves something and can pull others into that feeling.
As such,Dodger Blue Dreamis a champ.
Here he brings a new approach to week-by-week coverage of a single sports team.
Now, this is no sports-recap podcast.
Oh, and theres also the whole winning the World Series thing.
I dont usually give a single damn about baseball, let alone the Dodgers, but I was transfixed.
7.Hang UpSeason 2(Radiotopia)
7.
This sophomore season refines and perfects the shows essential magic.
6.Embedded:Tested(NPR and CBC)
6.
5.Noble(Wavland and Campside Media)
5.
A classic investigation of a mystery, done exceptionally well.
4.Beyond All Repair(WBUR and ZSP Media)
4.
3.The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast(Rabbit Grin Productions)
3.
Yeah, sure, its another nostalgia-cast but when it works, it really works, you know?
2.Club Shay Shay, Katt Williams Unleashed (The Volume and Shay Shay Media)
2.
But its also simply just a remarkable thing to listen to all two hours and forty-five minutes of it.
1.Hysterical(Wondery, Pineapple Street)
1.
A new Dan Taberski joint is always exciting, and here, he produces his sharpest work yet.
The malady looks like Tourettes syndrome but isnt quite that.
The stories that Kumanyika brings do just that, threaded together in his signature propulsive oratory style.
Isnt stuff like this the point of a news organization?
But what if there was a way to claw some sense of control back?
Its fun to hear a human being rebel in a bid to defend his own humanity.
This story may seem like an isolated phenomenon, but its more widespread than you might think.
He lays his feelings so bare its hard not to be moved by them.
Its a testament toPrimers efficacy, then, that learning about new music genres from abroad feels so easy.
But withThe Case of the Tiny Suit/Case, the team has pulled off a solid sequel.
There may well come a time when the bit grows thin, but were far from there yet.
The point here isnt simple nostalgia.
Read Nick Quahsconversation withSixteenth Minute (of Fame)host Jamie Loftus.
In the process, the audience might even come to see the beauty of the entire enterprise.
Be sure to check out this great piece of podcast history.
More long-running pods should do remasters.
What results is a fascinating and heartfelt work of memory and memorializing.
The composite picture that emerges offers yet another reflection of the boondoggle that is American justice.
The United States mightve pulled out of Afghanistan a few years ago, but the forever war persists.
In doing this,Finally!
This couldve been fodder for any number of true-crime shows, but this podcast stands apart from the pack.
How do you convey the sheer uncertainty felt by the investigator without oversensationalizing the case?
Sivertson and her team walk that fine line, and the way they balance the tightrope is fascinating.
But you know what?
Or so I tell myself.
But what actually happened here?
And how widespread is the practice, really?
How does a best-selling book about trauma figure into the explosion of culture-war conflicts happening in colleges and workplaces?
