11 New Podcasts You Should Be Listening To Right Now
Exhausted all your friends’ and family’s recommendations? These are the podcasts worth adding to your rotation.
If you've already listened to every episode of your favourite podcasts and are desperately seeking some fresh audio content, then you've come to the right place. Podcasts are the perfect medium to consume on your daily commute, while exercising, and even before you drift off at night.
Some are informative, or entertaining, and others are simply inspiring, but no matter your taste, these brand-new podcasts will fill your ears with stories, facts and interviews that you'll be chatting about at the office this week.
1. Serial: The Idiot
If we can be candid, other people’s family dramas are the kind of gossip we live for. Which is why The Idiot – the latest joint venture from Serial Productions and the New York Times scratches our content itch deliciously. NYT reporter M Gessen hosts The Idiot, taking listeners inside his own family for the bingeable, offbeat five-part series, which follows the demise of his braggart “idiot” cousin Allen’s marriage and subsequent court trial. The charge? Allen put a hit out on his ex-wife, Priscilla. The intimacy of M’s access to the story’s protagonists makes this one of the most exciting new podcast releases this year.
2. Project Mind Control
Listener beware: Project Mind Control – hosted by criminal psychologist Dr Julia Shaw – is not for the faint of heart. The (sometimes disturbing) series takes audiences inside the notorious Allan Memorial Institute – a Canadian psychiatric hospital that preyed upon vulnerable patients to conduct secretive and unethical CIA brainwashing experiments.
3. Jacob Reed and Me
Fan of Jonathan Goldstein’s Heavyweight? Jacob Reed and Me might be the next listen for you. As he explains in his primer for the series, in 2020 the comedy writer Jacob Reed was having a midlife crisis. “He started compiling a spreadsheet of other people named Jacob Reed,” the website reads. “He catalogued over 700… and started calling each and every one.” The first season of this “investigative comedy” introduces listeners to a porn star, a teacher, a jazz drummer, an Italian impresario, a teenage crooner, and a waitress at a greasy spoon – all named Jacob Reed. It’s hilarious and moving and unpredictable, and makes you wonder about the lives of all your own personal namesakes across the globe.
4. Matt and Mollie’s Novel Idea
Remember that game in primary school where you’d write down a word or sentence, pass it to the student next to you, and they’d write the next line, and so on and so forth, until you had a hilarious and unhinged tale to tell the class? Matt and Mollie’s Novel Idea follows a similar format, albeit in audio form. In this new series, the best friends decide to team up and pen a fictional murder mystery novel – alternating the writing one chapter at a time. With different narrative agendas, the results are hilarious, read each week by Steffan Powell, while Matt and Mollie “critique, celebrate and mercilessly tear down each other’s work”. Good, easy fun (and who knows how the story’s going to end?).
5. Friends Keep Secrets
You probably haven’t heard an interview show like this before. In fact, the creators and hosts (best friends Benny Blanco, Dave Burd, and Dave’s wife, Kristin Batalucco) don’t even refer to it as an interview show. The premise of Friends Keep Secrets is this: 18 hidden cameras have been rigged throughout Dave and Kristin’s LA home, and each episode brings the listener (or viewer – these are available to watch on film) inside an “intimate hang with the hosts' real-life friendships and the guests that pop in”. The blend of podcast, livestream and sitcom makes Friends Keep Secrets pretty addictive, not to mention the calibre of guests (did someone say Selena Gomez and Ed Sheeran?).
6. The Business of Being an Author
Doing pretty much what it says on the tin (and we thank host and writer Andrew Griffiths for that!) – The Business of Being an Author is a straight-talking dive into the world of building and releasing a book. With episodes that include Your 10-Year Book Plan, Multiply Your Credibility Through the Media, and Treat Your Book as a Serious Commercial Product, this is less a show and more a step-by-step guide for anyone who’s harboured dreams of making it in the publishing world.
7. Funny You Should Ask
You’d recognise Ike Barinholtz on sight, if not by name – he’s the off-kilter support in so many of our favourite shows (The Mindy Project, The Studio, etc). And now, he’s in our headphones with a new weekly podcast: Funny You Should Ask. Where Ike could have easily ventured down the classic interview format that so many of his peers have, he frames each episode around a game of trivia. “Soup? Sure, why not. The Mets? Duh. Roman Empire? You got it, Caesar. It’s part conversation, part pop quiz, and full of knowledge you didn’t know you needed – until now.”
8. Always Here
Ever been in the thick of a hilarious, meaningful, expansive conversation with your sister and thought, “Wait, should we have a podcast?”. Well, sister-in-law’s Abby Howard and Abby Howard (you’re not misreading that) did exactly that, launching Always Here earlier this year as a place to talk all things relationships, parenting, body image, and pop culture gold. Nothing better than feeling like you’re eavesdropping on two really great friends (family!) over a wine or cup of tea.
9. Dead Famous
From the team behind Seeing Red A True Crime Podcast comes Dead Famous – a series exploring the scandals, mysteries, and tragedies behind famous celebrity deaths. From Matthew Perry to Kurt Cobain, Brittany Murphy, Marilyn Monroe and John Lennon, each episode delves into the life and (often untimely) death of a key popular culture figure. As fascinating as it is sobering.
10. On Hold
What does it mean to live in a state of suspension? On Hold explores the emotional terrain of waiting – for change, for clarity, for life to begin again. Across many intimate, deeply personal stories, host Katy Davis traces the tension of anticipation and the ways uncertainty reshapes identity. Think: a couple sustaining connection across a 213-year prison sentence, a woman awaiting a second lung transplant, or a late-life coming out at 69. If you’re comfortable lingering in the fragile, transformative space between what is and what might be (or if you’d like to be better at it), this is the series for you.
Safe to Drink
Most of us have heard of microplastics – but few are familiar with PFAS, a group of so-called “forever chemicals” now found in water systems around the world. Safe to Drink investigates the largest contamination case in New Hampshire’s history, tracing how a local community discovered its drinking water had been affected by industrial pollution linked to the nearby Saint-Gobain plant. Reported by the Pulitzer Prize–finalist Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio, the four-part series follows one resident’s search for answers, revealing the human consequences of regulatory gaps, corporate responsibility and the invisible substances shaping public health.
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