Lauren Passell is the founder of Tink Media, a podcast growth company. She is the author of Podcast the Newsletter and Podcast Marketing Magic, produces Feed the Queue, and writes about podcasts for Lifehacker. She has spoken about podcast marketing for Radio Bootcamp, SXSW, Podcast Movement, Podfest, London Podcast Festival and more. She is a judge for The Ambies, The Webbys, Signal Awards and the International Women’s Podcast Awards.
In 2024, I listened to 74 days, 19 hours, and 36 minutes of podcasts on my favorite app, Pocket Casts. (Which is lower than last year, blame my 10-month-old.) I write about the best things I listen to for my newsletter, Podcast the Newsletter. Here are a few of the shows that made me yell, “stop the presses!”
Because the Boss Belongs to Us
Jesse Lawson and Holly Casio have a hypothesis: that Bruce Springsteen deserves the queer icon stamp of approval. To prove it, in every episode of Because the Boss Belongs to Us, they are going down a list they made, asking: is Bruce camp? Does he have a narrative of struggle? Do his songs evoke feelings of deep sadness, loneliness, euphoria, or something else that queer people experience? Can you dance, cry, and have sex to Bruce? Listening to it I feel like I’m sitting on the floor in Holly’s room with her zines watching her and Jesse make this show by hand.
Cement City
Journalist Jeanne Marie Laskas moved into a tiny town in Pennsylvania called Denora to learn what it’s like to live there, and left with more than 850 hours of tape. (Denora! Population: 4,650. Denora has schools, no banks, no grocery stores, no gas stations, but there is a Smog Museum, and a mayor named Piglet.) The whole show is building up toward Denora’s general election and a Christmas celebration and along the way she makes us feel like we’re living there, too. This is an incredible piece of reporting and I could not tear myself away.
The Confessions of Anthony Raimondi
The Confessions of Anthony Raimondi introduces you to Anthony, a man from one of New York City’s crime families who claimed to have had a part in murdering the pope in 1978. He’s so chock-full of yarns, it would be hard to believe all of them. That’s the whole point of this podcast. Marc Smerling (of The Jinx) is fact-checking Anthony. Anthony is such an unforgettable subject and fantastic storyteller, and it’s often hard to separate truth from fiction in the stuff he’s weaving. But you know, I don’t care if the stories are true or false. Anthony is entertaining and the podcast is wonderfully made. Tell me a story, Anthony!
Tiny Dinos
On Tiny Dinos, improvisors Connor Ratliff and James III pose as scientists and best friends who revive dinosaurs in miniature form—but they’re trying to keep it a secret. The real jokes start pouring in when their famous, funny improv friends (like Lauren Lapkus) stop by. This show is ridiculous and cute and weird, and a great canvas for improv stars to get really silly. The chemistry between Connor and James is the best. I want to live inside their Tiny Dinos house.
The Telepathy Tapes
The Telepathy Tapes is one of the most mind-twisty things I’ve listened to in awhile. Inside is a theory—that non-speakers with autism are telepathic and have otherworldly perceptions—that is both unbelievable but when you really think about it, completely plausible and if true, changes everything science has told us about not just the capabilities of neurodivergent people, but also interconnectedness, communication, and whatever god is. It starts with host Ky Dickens toting her tape recorder to homes of autistic children all across the world (accompanied by a neuroscientist) for intimate conversations with their families to hear some incredible things. If you are to believe it…(and why shouldn’t you? How arrogant to think that we have this all figured out, that the quietest ones in the room don’t have something to say) you have to question everything you know about communication and understanding our greater reality. And the way we treat people with special gifts like autism.
Phonograph
Phonograph (formerly Before It Had a Theme) is a must-listen for anyone who has fallen in love with audio storytelling. Rob McGinley Myers and Britta Greene are looking at the origins of so many things we listen to today—the first-ever episodes of This American Life, StartUp—to figure out what these shows were setting out to do, if they were accomplishing it, and what impact all that stuff has on what’s being made today. It’s a celebration of the days when stuff sounded, and I’m stealing phrases they use, “up-close” and “homemade.” The quality of this show is “up-close” and “homemade,” too.
In the Dark
Season three of In the Dark, produced by The New Yorker, is one of the greatest investigative seasons of anything I’ve heard. Madeleine Baran is reporting on the 2005 Haditha massacre, where 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians were killed by U.S. Marines, with jaw-dropping tape and access to classified documents and photos that reconstruct everything we thought we knew what happened and go against nearly everything the marines told us. More than just explaining this terrible morning and the anguish of the family left behind and finally pinning down the people responsible for these war crimes, it’s letting us in on the callousness of the marines and how war made them see the people of Haditha as less than human.
Rebel Spirit
For her podcast Rebel Spirit, comedian/writer/actress Akilah Hughes went back, microphone in tow, to her small hometown of Florence, Kentucky to try to get them to change the high school mascot from the Boone County Rebels to a biscuit. It sounds silly, but it’s a serious mission and a great piece of journalism that points out how deeply entrenched racism is in our culture. We’re living the story with Akilah, she’s using original footage and interviews with people like the artist behind “Gritty,” The Philadelphia Flyers’ viral mascot. This story is bigger than the Boone County Rebels, it’s about change. It’s close to Akilah’s heart, and she’s a funny and curious host.
The Good Whale
The Good Whale is a podcast from Serial Productions about Keiko, the whale who played Willy in Free Willy. Keiko became the center of a controversy when the public, who loved Free Willy and the fact that Willy was free, realized that Keiko was not. Millions of dollars went into reintroducing Keiko back into the wild, and it’s an incredible story. This show has beautiful production, it is measured and slow paced, methodically taking us through the whole story. Episode five encompasses a time after Keiko had been released, when scientists did not know where he was. Instead of just skipping over what they do not know, they had famous writers for musicals take the little we know about where Keiko started and how he ended up, and for one song, imagine what might have happened to him in that time in between, and how it felt to him. It’s one of the most creative I’ve seen in audio this year.
Personal Best
I rejoiced when I saw that Personal Best was back after a five year hiatus. In each episode, Rob Norman and Andrew Norton help ordinary people get a little better at little things like dining alone at a fancy restaurant or shaking hands. But they go about this in the most ridiculous, roundabout ways. (One episode includes a long-winded, adorable, absurd, Tolkienesque quest that turned a participant into a blindfolded hobbit trying to return a shawarma to Mount Doom, all while being chased by Nazgûls…you know what? It’s too complicated for me to get into right now.) This show has a sense of silliness, sweetness, sincerity, and fun I think is rare. I don’t know or care if this stuff is working. It’s about the journey. And our amusement, as we get to sit shotgun for the ride. Personal Best is full of entertaining sound and multi-dimensional elements that make every episode memorable. It was great before, it’s still great. Time has passed but some things in podcasting haven’t changed.
Panic World
Ryan Broderick worked for Buzzfeed in peak Buzzfeed days, and I love his internety newsletter Garbage Day. He launched Panic World this year, which is all about trends that started on the internet and somehow sprung to life in the real world. Think: NyQuil Chicken, something that started as a joke on 4chan and ended with the FDA having to make statements about it. That’s on the first episode, a great place to start, with guest Katie Notopoulos. This is a never-miss for me. Ryan is a natural host, it seems like he’s having a lot of fun, the guests are great, and the conversations always make me see the world in a totally new way.
GIRL v. HORSE (on 30 for 30 Podcasts)
Nicole Teeny is a documentarian and a long-distance runner with epilepsy, which is very scary. After reading Born to Run she was inspired to cope with her epilepsy, outrunning it if you will, by setting out to outrun a horse. When those seizures rumble in her body, she pictures the animal spirits inside her stampeding. For GIRL v. HORSE, Nicole is preparing for her race, which you actually get to hear, and sharing a personal story about Nicole, her epilepsy, her upbringing, and her adorable partnership with her girlfriend. The sound on this one is incredible. This entire series was an athletic event, full of so many of my favorite elements in storytelling.
Chess Piece
Chess Piece is the story of Elián González, who became the center of a highly publicized international custody and immigration dispute in 2000 when, as a six-year-old, he was rescued off the Florida coast after his mother died during their attempt to flee Cuba. Peniley Ramirez is able to beautifully, poetically tell us this complicated story, weaving in her own, illustrating how Elián became a symbol of something for Cuban people so much bigger than himself.
Empire City
Chenjerai Kumanyika is the host of Empire City, a show about the NYPD’s complicated history. I hate to sound all tag liney, but it’s the history the cops don’t want us to know. Chenjerai is an amazing storyteller, he transports you back through time. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t put a lot of faith into policing, Empire City will confirm that maybe you shouldn’t, and that it goes back to the roots of the NYPD.
Dodger Blue Dream
I am not a baseball fan but I will listen to anything Richard Parks III makes, and his new podcast Dodger Blue Dream, a documentary of the Dodger’s 2024 season made in real time, is proof that he can dazzle me no matter the topic. On this show he covered things like Shohei Ohtani’s translator, Ippei Mizuhara, stealing millions of dollars from Shohei to pay down illegal gambling debts and the five sides of Freddie Freeman and what makes him such a paradox. That is nuanced and character driven and baseball I can get behind.
Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
I would follow Jamie Loftus to the end of the earth, and this year she launched something weekly, Sixteenth Minute (of Fame), which interviews internet main characters who have, whether they wanted to or not, gone completely viral, to find out what happens once the fifteen minutes of fame are over. Some of these stories are ridiculous (she talked to the guy who ate 40 rotisserie chickens) but Jamie interviews everyone with so much empathy, she’s really trying to get their side of the story and understand what it felt like to be the internet’s main character. She also gets to flex her journalistic muscles, trying to figure out the context and societal roots of these internet stories.
Beyond All Repair
Beyond All Repair, Amory Sivertson’s true-crime series about a woman accused of murdering her mother-in-law, never missed a beat. Every episode of the series thickened the plot, made me second guess everything, and ended on a cliffhanger. I was so nervous it would have an “I don’t know, what do you think?” ending. It did not. The last episode has a mic drop moment that won’t soon be forgotten.
The Competition
For The Competition, Shima Oliaee went to Mobile, Alabama to record hours and hours of tape of 50 high school seniors competing for the Distinguished Young Women crown. It’s a competition Shima participated in when she was a teenager. You get to know the girls (these girls! so different but united in their quest for this crown!) and become invested in the competition. But this is an amazing audio documentary about so much more. Like how women, whether they go through this particular competition or not, have been trained to make themselves palatable to people in power.
Everyone Knows That
Everyone Knows That: The Search for Ulterior Motives unravels the mystery around the internet’s favorite missing song: “Ulterior Motives,” known online as “Everyone Knows That,” which was finally sourced earlier this year…in porn from the ‘80s. In five episodes, Josh Chapdelaine finds out the true story behind the search for the song, and its creation, with plenty of fun detours and cultural analysis along the way.
Never Post
Never Post, a new podcast hosted by Mike Rugnetta, is such an insightful and entertaining exploration of the web. (Which Mike calls his home.) The show feels like a zine full of fascinating pieces and explorations into internet culture, from a variety of people on the Never Post team. I never thought a podcast about the internet could feel like a warm hug, but that’s the tone here. Even when Mike is talking about moral panics, digital privacy, and the bizarre world of internet trends both huuuuuge and teensy tiny.
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