Ah, 2025 is another hell of a year! In audio, as elsewhere, ingenuity is essential in challenging times—so when video chat podcasts dominate, celebrity-hosted podcasts continue to proliferate, and our good old public radio is under attack, high-quality audio shows endure despite everything. A wonderful film by Jonathan Goldstein.Heavy weight“, done wrong Spotify returned to Pushkin at the end of 2023; NHPR's Lauren Chuljian is back with continuation of the series “Justice Has Prevailed” her superb 2023 investigative series The 13th Step; “This American Life“has remained an industry standard and achieved success with its new subscription program; 'Fresh Air' is fifty years old and going strong. And at the end of this year, two of the best series in the genre's history, 'WTF with Marc Maron,' and Melvin Bragg era “Nowadays– provided an opportunity to reflect on the sheer power of this medium of learning to educate, question and entertain, sometimes all at the same time. My selection of the ten most impressive shows of the year are presented below.
In an era of funding cuts following the podcast boom, two independent projects have boldly moved to the forefront of audio, fostering both community and surprising results. Audio Flux, an organization founded two years ago by veteran producers Julie Shapiro and John DeLore, regularly provides short, often experimental audio recordings, and also presents the best “flux work” online, at conferences and festivals. This fall, he debuted “The Audio Flux Podcast,” a “magazine for your ears” hosted by Amy Pearl to showcase highlights including “The Yovei Show.”To cry or not to cry“, inspired by her resignation meeting at NPR. Signal Hill, the audio magazine founded by Lisa Yeager and Jackson Roach, ran two issues this year (accompanied by reportedly good parties) and mixes long and short works, often beautifully done and sometimes truly special; my favorites included a message from a sheep farm near a military camp in France and a portrait of the friendship between an American entomologist and a brilliant ten-year-old fan from Japan.
Masterfully crafted “Sea of lies“, from the CBC Investigative Podcast “Expand“” begins off the coast of Brixham, Devon, in 1996 with a British father and son duo who make a grisly discovery in the net of their trawler: the body of a man wearing a Rolex watch. From here, series lead Sam Mullins unfurls a dizzying tale of meticulous detective work, mysterious clues, false identities, embezzlement schemes, naivety and murder, a tone that seems to struggle to keep from leaping up and down with narrative hubris. But this pride is justified, and the story is a stark reminder of the creative treachery of some types of crime and the importance of protecting against it.
A work of tender intimacy and subtle fun, Jonathan Goldstein's amazing podcast manages to maintain a high standard of greatness despite its complex conceit. Each episode features Goldstein or one of his fellow producers exploring a specific issue related to someone's past: an actor baffled by the inept director of his first film; A woman traumatized by a strange mix-up with her high school prom queen tries to help solve the problem. Often this involves finding someone who is difficult to track down and encouraging them to have a frank, honest conversation, which then becomes part of a satisfying narrative for the benefit of both subjects and listeners. Sometimes this process takes years; miraculously, Goldstein continues to achieve this. Its quirky storytelling, tactful yet dryly funny, is one of the show's strongest qualities.
Avery Trufelman's living cultural history of clothing, which explored such areas as preppy, punk, and luxury, recently returned with a new season, Gear, exploring military clothing (hunting wear, performance gear, khakis, and more) and its complex connections to civilian life. Trufelman shoots clay pigeons and learns surprising things about camouflage; delves into the use of military equipment by the counterculture of the sixties and seventies; and explores “gorpcore,” the “yuppification of the field jacket,” and the fact that military uniforms, for reasons of national security, must be produced in U.S. factories, thereby supporting the American apparel industry. As in all of his best work, including episodes of the design podcast 99% Invisible, Trufelman finds seemingly hidden meaning in ubiquitous everyday objects. She's also a great storyteller – laid-back but wise, curious but authoritative, friendly but respectful of our intelligence – with a velvety, easy-to-hear voice. Extra punchlines are hardly needed, but the drill sergeant-style introductions to each chapter (“This is not your mother's house!… You are now the property of the United States Army! Chapter… TWO!”) provide it.
The BBC's History Podcast is essentially a series of mini-series hosted by a variety of people. This year it features at least three exemplary works. I was unexpectedly delighted by Invisible Hands, in which the insightful and entertaining broadcaster David Dimbleby, now eighty-seven, tells us the story of free-market capitalism, a narrative that includes a Sussex chicken farmer, a wartime parachute tragedy and the vomiting of a Conservative MP; in a year when economic philosophy has dominated the headlines, it's especially refreshing to hear. “House No. 48” is a twisted story about family secrets; it all starts with a mysterious suitcase and turns into a meditation on whether past betrayals can ever be healed. Another family chronicle, “Half-Life,” had me hooked from the first line: “My grandmother grew up brushing her teeth with radioactive toothpaste.”
Wall Street Journal Reporter Valerie Bauerlein covers national events from Raleigh, North Carolina, and here she presents, with an appealing hint of a Southern accent, the stunning story of the fatal shooting of a man named Scott Spivey on a country road near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in 2023. This is far from a detective story; the shooter admits to the murder and was on the phone with a 911 dispatcher when he committed it, and there are witnesses. The question is whether the shooting was justified self-defense under the state's “Stand Your Ground” law. The answer seems simple, but thanks to a slew of revealing audio recordings detailing police corruption, the killer's intentions and more, it turns out to be anything but. The often confusing nature of Stand Your Ground laws and the loose interpretation of them by citizens is the context in which it all floats, and Bauerlein does an exemplary job of introducing the characters, including the gunman and the justice-seeking Sister Spivey, and their circumstances. Both the podcast and the court case are based on hours of secretly recorded phone conversations, which are all the more incredible because they were recorded by the shooter.
“Quick Judgment” from KQED in San Francisco have done a lot of great work over the years, and this five-part series from producer Shayna Shealy is a standout. Shealy takes us to Union Point Park, where a community of highly organized homeless people in Oakland, California, is fighting for something “extraordinary”: the right to live together, by their own rules, in a city-sanctioned outdoor encampment. We meet some of the group's leaders, such as President Matt, a former DJ, who now lives in a “styrofoam mansion,” and Mama D, who plants mint to repel rats, and city officials, including Dariel Dunston, who climbs through piles of trash to negotiate a model of “co-governance.”
This year Boston Globe The Searchlight investigation team headed to the docks of New Bedford, Massachusetts to deliver us “Snitch City“, is a gripping expose of police corruption. The series, narrated by reporter Dugan Arnett, begins on a summer night in 2018 with the sound of a 911 call from a fisherman on a boat called the Little Tootie, where a frantic man with bloodshot eyes and a gun has boarded in search of drugs. “He says he's a cop, but he doesn't have a warrant,” says the caller. The cop claims to act on a tip from a confidential informant and This is just the tip of the iceberg of bad behavior. Arnett presents stories of New Bedford cops lying, intimidating, stealing, inflating crime-solving statistics, and informants feeling trapped and afraid of retribution. Audio recordings of the pier's atmosphere, as well as poignant, sometimes darkly funny interviews with former informants, dealers and cops, make the listening experience particularly special. bright.
Like the 2023 Michael Jackson series Think Twice, superb producer and presenter Leon Neyfakh creates a work that resonates far beyond the biography of one flawed man. The late Jerry Springer, who created the circus-like “The Jerry Springer Show” and hosted it from 1991 to 2018, began his career as a talented political thinker and news analyst and later served as mayor of Cincinnati, host and host of a chat program about progressive politics on Air America. But he is rightly best known as the creator of a genre of cheap, exploitative talk television, filled with fist fights and flying folding chairs, that has helped give birth to even more violent media today. With his usual knack for good storytelling and brilliant audio production, Neyfakh traces the history of the genre alongside the history of Springer's own professional choices. We come away wondering what could have been if Springer had used his gifts better.
This fall, Jud Abumrad, the creator of Radiolab, More Perfect, and Dolly Parton's America, released a powerful album. Biographical podcast about Fela kutilegendary Nigerian musician and Afrobeat pioneer. The show took three years to create. Abumrad and his team traveled to London, Paris, Los Angeles and Lagos, interviewing Fela Kuti's loved ones; interacting with musicians and fans, from Obama to Flea; and exploring the context of Nigerian art, politics and social history. The result is life, humor, pain, interesting ideas and, of course, poignant, memorable, hypnotic music. Abumrad, who has a penchant for deep grooves, effortlessly recreates the textures of Kuti's sonic and quasi-meditative grandeur; a recurring metaphor about cycles appears throughout the series, as does one of the long, looping riffs on its plot. Kuti was also an outspoken dissenter during Nigeria's repressive regime and was often the target of government retaliation; I can't think of another show that was both danceable and ultimately heartbreaking. ♦
