Alice Levine, host of My Dad Wrote a Porno and British Scandal
There have been solely ever six episodes fabricated from this mystery-solving present – and given how particular it’s, I don’t know why. Kline performs a PI character who investigates one thing you couldn’t clear up utilizing the web. The episode I notably keep in mind relies round her pal David telling her that within the movie Supply Code, Jake Gyllenhaal appears actually small in some scenes and actually tall in others. They log on and realise that his top is unverified. So she goes on this odyssey to learn how tall Gyllenhaal truly is. Even when he didn’t seem on the finish (which he does) the journey would have been sufficient.
Deborah Frances-White, host of The Responsible Feminist
This can be a podcast about our unrequited crushes on pop stars, academics and friends we didn’t even dare converse to. The episode the place Jessica Fostekew justifies her childhood crush on Gandalf (not Ian McKellen; the previous wizard within the guide) is likely one of the funniest issues I’ve ever heard. I used to be crying laughing as Jess blurts out, “Properly I misplaced a grandfather at a younger age!” Podcasting wizardry.
No stone left unturned … Ira Glass, host of This American Life. {Photograph}: Sandy Honig
Ira Glass, host of This American Life
There’s an episode of RadioLab, Discovering Emilie, a couple of girl hit by a truck which is masterly. At one level, somebody describes to hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich the expertise of being in a coma and I’ve considered it so many instances since. I’m frightened of being in a coma. I additionally know that some day once I’m in a coma, and have a kind of moments of lucidity when it’s such as you’ve been in a dream, I’m going to consider this episode from 2011. And I’m going to assume “Fuck you Jad and Robert”.
Richard Herring, host of RHLSTP
I’m reluctantly going for Adam Buxton, regardless that he’s a competitor and annoyingly will get higher company than me. He did a unbelievable interview with Paul McCartney. And Billy Connolly. I’ve had Michael Palin on, however he had Michael Palin first. I’m mildly jealous of him, however he deserves it. He will get fairly indignant about issues, however he’s considerate and type and that’s disarming. That’s why these interviews work so properly. He has mastered it.
Hosts with essentially the most … (clockwise from prime left) James Cooper, Jamie Morton and Alice Levine of My Dad Wrote a Porno; Hrishikesh Hirway of Tune Exploder; Ed Gamble; Marc Maron; James Acaster; Casey Wilson and Danielle Schneider of Bitch Sesh; Esther Perel. Illustration: Guardian Design
Dan Schreiber, host of No Such Factor As a Fish and We Can Be Weirdos
The host of this US fishing podcast is buddies with two sea captains who, in 1986, rescued a nine-year-old woman they discovered floating within the ocean. She’d misplaced her complete household. Years later, the pair are recording their story for a podcast, telling the story to a translator referred to as Raquel, saying they’ve by no means had contact with the woman since. Her title – Desiree Rodriguez – is just too frequent to seek out her. Immediately the host says “I’ve a confession. Raquel just isn’t a translator.” The 2 males burst out crying. She is crying too. Lastly she says, “I’m Desiree Rodriguez.” She’s the woman they saved and now she has a household of her personal. It’s a fantastic second.
Stuart Heritage, Guardian tradition author
Comic Joe Pera releases podcast episodes with the identical sluggish, deliberate tempo as he speaks, dropping one brief episode every month. Like his TV present Joe Pera Talks With You, each second drips with lovingly crafted care. The third episode – the place Pera meditates on the fun of meandering via the panorama of Crimson Lifeless Redemption 2 whereas interviewing its lead voice actor – is a colossal achievement for the medium. It’s like nothing else you’ll ever hear.
Elizabeth Day, host of The best way to Fail
I am keen on actuality TV and this hilarious present about The Actual Housewives multiverse is one in every of my favorite podcasts about it. Hosts Casey Wilson and Danielle Schneider hilariously analyse the trivialities of The Actual Housewives multiverse – and in episode 88, the actor June Diane Raphael says one thing that has genuinely helped me. Her automotive has been stolen and she or he says: “I’m not going to tackle the id of somebody who has had their automotive stolen. I’m not going to tackle the worldview of a sufferer of auto-theft. That’s not how I determine!” It made me snicker, nevertheless it left me with a profound understanding of the distinction between one thing occurring to us and one thing defining who we’re, which actually is the foundation of all meditative follow. I consider that second quite a bit.
Hollie Richardson, assistant TV editor, the Guardian
James Acaster and Ed Gamble’s comedy sequence, by which company talk about their dream restaurant meals orders, at all times will get stomach laughs out of me – however Claudia Winkleman’s episode is the very best. “I’ve by no means knowingly had water,” she proudly says earlier than occurring a 15-minute rant about how disgusted she is by her husband’s moist mouth after he glugs H2O. That is simply the beginning of a mind-bogglinghour that includes essentially the most brilliantly weird declarations, from eager to sleep with The Simpsons’ Mr Burns to doing a roly-poly the primary time she tasted her mother-in-law’s dauphinoise potatoes.
Straight talkin … Chanté Joseph, host of Pop Tradition With Chanté Joseph. {Photograph}: Linda Nylind/The Guardian
Chanté Joseph, host of Pop Tradition With Chanté Joseph
This recap present for true-crime documentaries is my favorite podcast on this planet. Its hosts, Gillian Pensavalle and Patrick Hinds, are the funniest – the present is principally two folks screaming for an hour each week. My prime episode is Class Motion Park. It’s a documentary about this amusement park within the Nineteen Eighties and 90s in New Jersey that had a horrible fame. Well being and security merely didn’t exist for this place – and so many youngsters have been injured. It was completely bananas and their recounting of this documentary is sensible. It’s so, so humorous – and so good they did it once more for his or her dwell present.
Kate Thornton, host of White Wine Query Time
After I listened to the primary episode of this peek inside {couples}’ real-life relationship counselling, I couldn’t get out of the automotive as a result of I didn’t need to flip it off. I felt so naughty listening in on an nameless couple’s remedy. It was like listening to one thing I shouldn’t. You actually spend money on the {couples}, and assume “I hope you make it!”.
Adam Buxton, host of The Adam Buxton Podcast
Favorite ever podcast episode is a giant query – it reveals quite a bit about an individual. I’ve spent many completely happy hours with The Horne Part and Athletico Mince however have talked about them too many instances – so I’ll go for the at all times wonderful Tune Exploder, the place musicians dissect one in every of their tunes and clarify the way it was made. The episode the place Björk breaks down her 2015 monitor Stonemilker is simply fascinating. There may be additionally a tremendous episode of Hugh Cornwell’s movie music podcast MrDemilleFM, the place Brian Eno talks about his favorite items of music in movies. It launched me to so many nice bits of music. However I’m solely allowed one, so I’m going for Tune Exploder. That is the issue: I’d quite decide a favorite little one (it’s Rosie).
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Steven Bartlett, host of The Diary of a CEO
Certainly one of my finest buddies, Rocio, had most cancers. They discovered a big tumour in her mind. She launched a podcast referred to as Sick of Being Sick to share long-form insights into the journey she was on. She explains the prognosis in actual time by releasing weekly episodes, in order that’s clearly very significant and memorable for me. She additionally survives the mind tumour, so we get to listen to about that. It was a extremely great factor to do. I believe it helped her quite a bit – and it definitely helped everybody round her.
Miranda Sawyer, radio critic, the Observer
The episode that actually turned me on to podcasts was The Dwelling Room from season 4 of Love + Radio. Each episode of this superbly produced present – from Nick van der Kolk, the son of psychotherapists who understands how people are weirder and extra pleasant than we will ever think about – is price listening to (strive The Silver Greenback or Repair). However this one blew me away. A lady lives in an condominium with a window that appears straight into another person’s flat; she tells the story of what she sees. Humorous, odd and, in the long run, completely devastating. It’s solely 22 minutes lengthy, however I nonetheless give it some thought now.
All come up … Coco Khan, host of Pod Save the UK. {Photograph}: Pål Hansen
Coco Khan, host of Pod Save the UK
It’s a well-known trope that each waiter in Los Angeles is an actor in ready, so scams concentrating on leisure business hopefuls are plentiful. Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen goals to trace down the devilish thoughts alleged to be behind one of the vital outlandish of those, the place elaborate ruses defrauded as much as 300 victims to the tune of $1m. Nevertheless it was studying that the “Hollywood con queen” made their approach to London and Manchester that knocked me for six. Listening to the podcasters talk about venues I’d personally been to hit dwelling onerous. The alleged scammer is at present going through extradition from the UK to face US expenses. This story is way from over.
Alexi Duggins, deputy TV editor, the Guardian
Within the mid-2010s, it felt like each laughing earphone-wearer on a Monday morning commute was listening to My Dad Wrote a Porno. The atrocious erotic novels written by host Jamie Morton’s ex-builder dad have been hilarious of their misunderstanding of feminine anatomy (“Her tits hung freely, like pomegranates”), odd slapstick moments of love-making (one individual has such vigorous intercourse her hair drops clear off her head) and the sheer awkwardness they triggered as Morton learn them aloud to his co-hosts. It’s nearly too difficult to choose a finest episode, however Jim’s Secret, by which a long-running character reveals he’s just lately had a penis transplant, solely to inexplicably ejaculate blue semen, is likely one of the most astonishingly laugh-out-loud moments I’ve come throughout in a podcast.
If appears may … Kiri Pritchard-McLean, host of All Killa No Filla and Pod of Wales. {Photograph}: press picture
Kiri Pritchard-McLean, host of All Killa No Filla and Pod of Wales
I really like the journalist Michael Hobbes – he’s astounding. On this podcast he co-founded with Sarah Marshall, they spent years taking subjects folks deal with as accepted truths, and subjecting them to excessive analysis. Hobbes has since left the podcast, however his and Marshall’s take a look at Princess Diana is a five-part deep-dive on the folks’s princess – and it’s completely sensible. He reads out the entire transcript of Prince Charles’s Tampongate dialog with Camilla – the place he tells her he needs to be her tampon. It’s truly a candy, daft dialog the place he’s going “I actually want I used to be with you now. I’m actually lusting for you.” On account of that podcast, I’ll defend Charles when folks use Tampongate to say he’s bizarre and revolting. I’ve no allegiance to the monarchy by any means, particularly as a Welsh individual, however that present has for ever modified my outlook.
Mattress set … Poppy Jay and Rubina Pabani from Brown Women Do It Too. {Photograph}: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
Rubina Pabani, host of Brown Women Do It Too
There are such a lot of Sliding Doorways moments in podcasts the place if an individual had achieved one thing completely different they might have utterly modified the narrative. Candy Bobby, which follows radio presenter Kirat being catfished into pondering she’s in a relationship with heart specialist Bobby, has an unimaginable second like that. Kirat bumps into Bobby in a Brighton nightclub, it’s darkish, she sees him, and it appears like he’s ignoring her – however he simply doesn’t know her. You’re like “What are you doing, you fool? Go and converse to him!” I used to be principally shouting at my headphones.
Grace Dent, host of Consolation Consuming
I beloved this present concerning the web again within the day. It was so intelligent – and nailed the sensation of being on-line. My favorite episode is a couple of meme: {a photograph} used to characterize the agony of being at a celebration you’re not having fun with. The photograph is only a boy on a mattress trying depressing, and so they attempt to discover him. At first it’s like: “He’s lifeless!” Then it seems that isn’t true, there are twists, turns and finally they discover him. It’s about web folklore, and the obsessions that ship us down rabbit holes in the course of the night time – it’s simply sensible.
Ed Gamble, host of Off Menu
There’s one episode of this interview podcast the place he interviews Gallagher, the well-known US watermelon-smashing comic, and it goes very fallacious. Marc Maron says one thing Gallagher misinterprets and he begins ranting and raving – till he storms out. I have no idea how Gallagher’s folks didn’t get in the best way of it being launched. As soon as he’s left, Maron is completely baffled – sitting within the studio alone, attempting to choose up the items. I’ve listened to it numerous instances. It’s an unimaginable piece of podcasting. It’s so tense – like a drama and a horror movie .
Alexi Mostrous, host of Candy Bobby and Hoaxed
This podcast has a formulaic set-up. A man within the US obtained convicted of his spouse’s homicide. He’s been in jail for 30 years. He says he didn’t do it. Has there been injustice? However the man who investigates it’s this ridiculously good Pulitzer prize-winning journalist referred to as Gilbert King. By episode 4, Canine with a Bone, King has satisfied us that Leo, the principle character, was most likely wrongfully convicted. Fifteen years after Leo’s conviction, his supporters persuade police to check a fingerprint present in Leo’s spouse’s purple Mazda – which she had been driving shortly earlier than her homicide. The police anticipate finding nothing. They do certainly get a match – to somebody who has gone to jail for homicide earlier than.