The 25 Best Podcasts of 2023

If art imitates life, it’s no wonder many of this year’s podcasts contained a dash of doom. During a year of planetary uncertainty, in which fears about the climate crisis and AI encroaching on the workforce intensified, the audio space reflected our impulse to decode mysteries: Series zeroed in on deception, premiering plenty of heist and con-artist content. Podcasters reexamined the justice system, from parole boards to the FBI. Three separate shows tried to solve the puzzle of the perplexing ailment known as Havana syndrome. Like many of us, producers searched for any answers they could get.

But the biggest podcasting trend I noticed in 2023 was, by far, the predominance of women as protagonists, hosts, and subjects. Traditionally male archetypes were served up with a feminine twist: Creators explored female adultery, espionage, scamming, and wanderlust. Although podcasts about delinquent doctors continued to draw in audiences, this year, they seemed to focus on misconduct in obstetrics—not too surprising, considering last year’s overturn of Roe v. Wade.

With millions of podcasts in existence, this list includes the 25 best I heard this year, each one novel and compelling. (As with every year, I’ve recused myself from considering The Atlantic’s podcasts.) These shows premiered fresh frameworks, experimented with sound design, and elevated underrepresented voices and stories. They dazzled in exposition, reporting, and range. We offer them as a compass for unpredictable times, a pick-me-up for winter blues, and, we hope, a hint of clarity in times to come.

25. Ride With Benito Skinner and Mary Beth Barone

This comedian-BFF duo invites listeners to ride shotgun on their friendship. With only brief preparation and rapid-fire banter, Benito Skinner and Mary Beth Barone make the case for the phenomena they ride for: Ferrero Rocher, Kim K’s private theater, and driving safely, among others. Listeners leave with inspiration for light pranking and Skinner and Barone’s new definition of cheating, which, they claim, includes choosing the checkout counter of an opposite-sex cashier if you’re heterosexual. Ride is not educational—though the hosts’ quips do offer a crash course in Millennial and Gen Z pop culture. The show boosts serotonin levels on a reliable 30-minute joyride.

Start with “Traditional Family Values + Pranking.”

24. Believable: The Coco Berthmann Story

Coco Berthmann rose to fame sharing her story as a sex-trafficking survivor. In early 2022, she told her 60,000 Instagram followers that she’d been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. While a GoFundMe raised roughly $10,000 for her treatments, some people held suspicions about her illness. Unable to substantiate her diagnosis but accepting charity for it, Berthmann was arrested for communications fraud. Her hoax led people to question her public persona, including her work as a human-rights activist. The hosts Sara Ganim and Karen Given hunt down every salacious detail of Berthmann’s story, many of which sound ridiculous, such as claiming that Céline Dion invited her to sing with her in Berlin. Although droves of podcasts remind people that the internet is an engine for easy deception, this series stands out in noting that Berthmann’s falsehoods don’t mean that she lied about everything—or that she wasn’t a victim herself.

Start with “Episode 1: Something’s Not Right.”

23. One Song

If the beloved Switched on Pop and Song Exploder had a baby, it would be One Song, a show hosted by two music heads and experienced DJs, Diallo Riddle and Blake “LUXXURY” Robin. The duo break down pop tunes by isolating the instrumentals, chatting about their memories associated with the songs, and showing off their extensive music-history knowledge. Riddle and Robin are music know-it-alls: They can talk about where they were when they first heard Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as easily as they can speculate about whether DJ Kool Herc’s 1973 Bronx party marked the birth of hip-hop. Discussing hit tracks such as Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” and Britney Spears’s “Toxic,” the show leans into snobbery and reverence while analyzing—you guessed it—one song.

Start with “Rehab.”

22. Truth Be Told

This year gave us many series about psychedelic drugs. Yet Tonya Mosley—whom listeners might recognize as the new co-host of Fresh Air—offered a new perspective on tripping by framing it in the context of Black liberation, including her own. Though Indigenous and African communities originated the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms for healing, the current psychedelics industry is largely white, complicating their use in treating racial trauma. Mosley takes care to name these hurdles, such as the negative associations many people can carry with even legal drugs, given the War on Drugs’ asymmetrical ramifications in their communities. Mosley moves forward with her own hallucinogenic experimentation anyway, asserting that, even if therapeutic drugs are approved and legalized, the Black psychedelic revolution might still be far off. Black people first need a safe space to partake in these substances, Mosley explains. Truth Be Told is a welcome start.

Start with “How to Get Free.”

21. The 13th Step

The 13th Step began as one journalist’s investigation into alleged sexual misconduct in the addiction-treatment industry. But when Eric Spofford, the founder of the largest addiction-recovery-facility network in New Hampshire, was accused of sexual misconduct (allegations he has denied), he used various legal tactics to try to suppress the investigation. The story then widened to include Lauren Chooljian, this show’s host. Chooljian refused to change her reporting despite Spofford’s efforts—even after her parents’ home was vandalized. The 13th Step gives a high-level dissertation on intimidation in sexual-assault cases, even getting expert insights from Lisa Banks, one of Christine Blasey Ford’s lawyers. Although the series has wrapped, Chooljian’s own story has still to find a conclusion.

Start with “Episode 1: The Shadow.”

20. Too Far With Rachel Kaly and Robby Hoffman

Narrative craft is usually a prerequisite for this list, given that podcasts featuring comics chitchatting are hard to recommend based on the hosts’ personalities alone. Too Far is the exception. It works because the hosts Rachel Kaly and Robby Hoffman are opposing narratives in themselves: Hoffman defines Kaly as being trapped in a “Brooklyn-alt bubble where you are valued based on how mentally ill you are.” Kaly describes Hoffman as abrasive and attached to having grown up Hasidic and poor. The way Kaly and Hoffman talk about their identities feels safe, despite their near-constant tough love. It’s not clear whether Hoffman and Kaly discuss predetermined topics or not. Yet the way their opposition plays out in each episode makes it feel like they are getting somewhere—which might just be back to their respective corners.

Start with “Cold Feet.”

19. The Dream

The life-coaching industry has exploded to the scale of multilevel marketing—except that, in place of supplements and Tupperware, coaches sell human optimization. The host Jane Marie is well suited to administer a general fact-check of the field: Her signature skeptical style makes her especially adept at asking slippery people to make sense of their wares, and her open-mindedness leads her to hire her own coach to determine the profession’s effectiveness for herself. During a year in which many podcasts were focused on catfishing and scammers, The Dream examined a more measured style of deceit. It begins and ends with Jessie Lee Ward, one of the industry’s most famous coaches, who claimed to be curing her own cancer holistically but died from the disease a few days after this series premiered. The Dream thoughtfully teases out the cult-versus-coach comparison, even bringing on Sarah Edmondson, whose whistleblowing instigated the collapse of the corporate-coaching company and sex-cult front NXIVM, for a bonus episode. Marie’s conversations with industry shysters are the most exciting interviews of the year.

Start with “Becoming a #Boss.”

18. Drifting Off With Joe Pera

It’s hard to tell whether this series is meant to help you fall asleep or to parody shows that do. Yet it’s bound to calm listeners, thanks to soothing monologues, stunning sound design, meditative waterfall sounds, and conversations about mostly cozy topics, such as soup. The stand-up comic and host Joe Pera’s signature gentle affectation furthers the show’s sleepy-time conceit, which sometimes contrasts with the subject matter: In one episode, Pera’s friend tells a bro-ey story about trying to skip the line at a club; in another, cynical love advice is delivered over synth tones (“Just be very emotionally shut off”). The show’s intermittent incongruity is part of its humor—and enough to keep listeners happily awake.

Start with “Episode 1: Soup ft. Jo Firestone.”

17. Free From Desire: Asexual in the City of Love

In a world in which sex sells, many people question the veracity of asexuality. This is the subject of Free From Desire, a nonfiction show centering 35-year-old Aline, who identifies as both asexual and aromantic. Though Aline, as the show’s title suggests, doesn’t experience traditional desire, this doesn’t mean they’re immune to the effects of society’s conventions about love and romance. Instead, Aline provides insights into not only asexuality but also sexuality in general, offering a compassionate perspective on topics such as the pressures of puberty and parenthood. Though Free From Desire provides plenty of answers, its success isn’t rooted in being educational—accompanying Aline as they pursue agency and happiness, regardless of who understands it, fuels the show’s magic.

Start with “What Is Wrong With Me?”

16. Imperfect Paradise: Nury & the Secret Tapes

Imperfect Paradise relaunched in September, led by the host Antonia Cereijido—previously of Latino USA—with a four-part series about a hot-mic situation involving the Los Angeles City Council. When a group of powerful Latino council members and a union leader were secretly recorded making anti-Black comments, the release of the tapes and the resulting fallout became an example of fractures in progressive thinking. Citizens demanded the council members’ resignation. Until Imperfect Paradise, Council President Nury Martinez hadn’t given an interview about the incident. You’ll hear the offensive comments she made, along with her explanation. Cereijido’s interview style is masterful: She treats Martinez, however problematic, as a whole, complex human. The series also explores Cereijido’s suspicion that the scandal garnered sizable media attention partly because it revealed larger legacies of anti-Blackness within the Latino community. The show concludes that it may be time to think beyond unquestioning representation and to ensure that legislators’ morals align with progress instead.

Start with “Nury & the Secret Tapes: Part 1.”

15. Borrowed and Banned

From Brooklyn Public Library, Borrowed and Banned drums up awareness about what it calls “America’s ideological war with its bookshelves.” The series explains how the stakes of book bans, although supported by a vocal minority, are high for everyone. In small towns especially, school libraries are some of the only places where kids can access books. These restrictions can be long-lasting. Take Keller, Texas, where, after a title is pulled, it can’t be reconsidered for 10 years—effectively censoring it for an entire generation. Book bans affect educators too: In one episode, a teacher is forced out of her job for not complying, her teaching license and life threatened. Interviews with authors of banned books are peppered in, including never-before-heard audio of Toni Morrison. Each episode ends with a call to action, urging listeners to get a library card or vote in school-board elections. Borrowed and Banned paints a portrait of teachers, students, and librarians as revolutionaries.

Start with “All for a Library Card.”

14. Expectant

Several polls have found that climate change, beyond giving rise to eco-anxiety, significantly affects parenting choices. Expectant mixes fiction and nonfiction as it follows its protagonist Pippa Johnstone’s thought process about having a child. After finding out that she’s pregnant, Johnstone contemplates the reality that having fewer children lowers a person’s carbon emissions, discussing these questions with her partner, her mom, and experts. Expectant centers parenting fears without growing them, possibly because episodes ground dystopian narratives in data or because, as one expert puts it, the show confronts climate worries head-on instead of avoiding the crisis’s “ambient drone of anxiety.” Following Johnstone through the will-we-won’t-we of various climate calculations, listeners learn that having a child and optimism about the planet’s future don’t necessarily go hand in hand.

Start with “The North.”

13. ODB: A Son Unique

Ol’ Dirty Bastard from Wu-Tang Clan, also known as ODB and Ason Unique, has one of hip-hop’s most recognizable voices. The host and photographer Khalik Allah knew him well, and in ODB: A Son Unique, he demonstrates what helped ODB stand out from other ’90s lyricists: his unpredictable style and refusal to subscribe to aspiration as a concept. Although ODB’s media portrayal was often unfair, reducing him to stereotypes, Allah argues that he knew how to maximize his public persona: He wasn’t as close with Mariah Carey as his verse in her “Fantasy” remix suggested, for example, but ODB knew that saying so could help them both. Allah’s eight-part profile is full of love and surprises, filling in the blanks that ODB’s death, in 2004, left behind. Whether listeners miss ODB or not, this is a poignant memorial.

Start with “Episode 1: For the Children.”

12. Wild

Wild kicks off with co-host Megan Tan asking co-host Erick Galindo the wildest thing he’s ever done for love. From there, the show takes the form of a fictional love story based mostly on Galindo’s life, about an ill-advised cross-country road trip with a woman, her mother, and her best friend. With the support of a buoyant Lizzo track, Wild is sweet, insightful, and occasionally educational. It touches on the tenderness of friendship, growing up in southeast L.A., and the sticky theme of self-worth. In a podcasting year that revolved around heavy subjects, Galindo’s warm storytelling about his younger self’s love life is the most comforting corner in audio.

Start with “A Southeast L.A. Rom-Com.”

11. Have You Heard George’s Podcast?

If the answer to Have You Heard George’s Podcast? is no, you’re in luck: The critically acclaimed BBC show is back after a two-year hiatus, exploring this assertion of the host George Mpanga, also known as George the Poet: When he was younger, it wasn’t cool to be African; now it is. Mpanga, a British spoken-word artist born to Ugandan parents, shows that this shift can be credited, in large part, to music—genres with colonial histories that listeners will gain deeper appreciation for under his energetic tutelage. Mpanga’s talent for telling complex stories through rhyme schemes can make it hard not to sit in awe of him instead of taking in his lessons, yet nothing feels forced as he remixes discussions about Ghana’s first president and the impact of Western languages on African economies. Hot tip: Listen to this show with headphones. Its soundscapes and samples allow his insights, lyrics, and music to dance across your mind.

Start with “Listen Closer.”

10. The Set

On The Set, one of the biggest police-corruption stories is told by the guilty cops themselves. In 1992, Michael Dowd, a drug-dealing law-enforcement officer, was arrested, subsequently spending 12 years in prison. Aware that Dowd wasn’t acting alone, the then-mayor of New York formed the Mollen Commission to investigate broader police corruption in the NYPD. The breadth of what they found surpassed what they had anticipated: The Set host Zak Levitt interviews several officers of the “Dirty Thirty”—the 30th Precinct that includes West Harlem—to uncover how law enforcement easily committed crime, including robbing drug dealers and skimming profits for themselves. The Set analyzes the politics of policing, tapes from the ’90s Mollen Commission hearings, and private confessions. Corrupt police stories aren’t new, but The Set’s storyteller is.

Start with “Ep 1: The Wild Kingdom.”

9. Classy With Jonathan Menjivar

In the first episode of Classy, the host Jonathan Menjivar compares himself, someone who wears cashmere socks, to his mother, a woman who used iron-on patches to repair her jeans. Noting how the differences in economic status within his family make him feel uneasy, Menjivar interrogates the many dimensions of class, including money, race, status, and taste—even the word classy itself. Listeners can expect that each episode will make them squirm, and that Menjivar will double down on this feeling. He’s earnest and open-minded, a winning combination when wading into such a fraught topic. Menjivar even catches people having real-time crises of conscience about class on tape, including his former boss, Terry Gross (her cameo is a series highlight). Though Menjivar doesn’t shield listeners from the topic’s discomfort, he’s a welcoming and buoyant guide.

Start with “Are Rich People Bad?”

8. Bot Love

Don’t knock falling in love with a chatbot until you listen to Bot Love, a show about the companionship chatbot Replika, which launched in 2017. This series profiles a handful of what Replika claims are more than 1 million users, including a person who considers their bot a therapist and another who turned to Replika for COVID-lockdown camaraderie. When one user’s husband becomes terminally ill, she sparks a relationship with her bot; after her husband’s death, it escalates into full-fledged romantic commitment. (Yes, the show discusses the ins and outs of bot sex too.) Most Replika users seem to know that their bots lack sentience, but that doesn’t stop them from forming a bond. Ultimately, Bot Love proposes that perhaps we should worry less about technological capabilities than about the unabating human desire for connection.

Start with “Episode 1: Looking for a Friend.”

7. Louder Than a Riot

In 2020, Megan Thee Stallion publicly alleged that her fellow rapper Tory Lanez shot her in the foot, a crime for which he was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison this past August. The hosts Sidney Madden and Rodney Carmichael argue that the cultural conversation that unfolded between Megan Thee Stallion’s announcement and the court’s verdict was shaped by misogynoir—racist misogyny against Black women. Whereas most hip-hop history lessons predictably center male artists such as Run-DMC and Pete Rock, this season of Louder Than a Riot focuses instead on hip-hop’s unsung women and the misogynoir they face within the genre. Listeners learn about Sha-Rock, the first female emcee, and Trina, one of the first artists to popularize the pussy-rap subgenre. The show also discusses the marginalization of gay emcees, who are often dismissed as “viral rappers.” The show is critical of the genre but still celebrates its history over the past 50 years. Of the many ways to commemorate hip-hop’s anniversary, listening to this show should be at the top of your list.

Start with “Megan’s Rule: Being Exceptional Doesn’t Make You the Exception.”

6. Violation

In 1986, when Jacob Wideman was 16, he murdered 16-year-old Eric Kane while the duo were on their way to the Grand Canyon. Wideman was sentenced to life in prison, eligible for parole after 25 years. Wideman’s case is special—especially given that his father, the writer John Edgar Wideman, based his 1984 memoir, Brothers and Keepers, on his own brother’s life sentence for murder. For Violation, a podcast created by WBUR with The Marshall Project, the host Beth Schwartzapfel speaks with Jacob Wideman and his father, who provides rare interviews about his son. In one moving exchange, John discusses his feelings about being asked to explain his son’s actions: Such questions seem to blame him for Jake’s choices and expect simple explanations for layered tragedies. Plenty of true-crime podcasts gawk at heinous crimes without opening conversations about recidivism or redemption. Yet Violation recounts the case without sensationalism. Listeners might not come away believing that Jacob deserves parole or sympathy, but Violation makes a nuanced case that he might.

Start with “A Summer Camp Murder. Two Sons, Lost.”

5. You Didn’t See Nothin

In 1997 in Bridgeport, Chicago, a group of white teens assaulted a Black child, Lenard Clark, putting him into a coma and garnering extensive media attention. The host and journalist Yohance Lacour began his reporting career because of this case, and what’s stuck with him for the past 25 years is how quickly the media narrative turned from outrage over a violent racist act to demonstrations of racial reconciliation. Throughout the seven-part series, Lacour switches between his own compelling personal history as a formerly incarcerated writer and that of Clark, dissecting how the child’s case was handled by law enforcement, the court, community leaders, and the family of one of the perpetrators. Lacour’s talent especially shines through his personality—he is funny and cool, full of surprises—and his incisive critical discourse. Unlike many shows that examine past events, You Didn’t See Nothin puts the onus of what follows on the listener.

Start with “Young Black Male.”

4. The Heart

Created by Kaitlin Prest, The Heart has pushed listeners to the outer bounds of vulnerability since 2014. This year, Prest turned the lens on herself with two dynamic series about her family, Sisters and Dad. Each centers on her relationship with the titular family member and features heated arguments, reconciliation attempts, and everyday moments from 20 years of personal tape. Episodes offer a variety of sonic textures, layering documentary-style audio, cinematic visual descriptions, and moments so intimate that you’d think they weren’t, at least initially, meant for sharing. In one moving montage of COVID-lockdown clips, Prest’s father teaches her to drive, brings her coffee, and smashes her e-cigarette with a hammer. In another, Prest’s therapist diagnoses her with borderline personality disorder, a label primarily given to survivors of abuse. Together, the two series offer a portrait of a loving family reconciling with the lasting impacts of trauma, treated with more humanity than is commonly extended to the subject. This season of The Heart is a feat precisely because the artist is the art.

Start with “Sisters: Chapter One-isode.”

3. The Spiritual Edge: A Prayer for Salmon  

The ancestors of the Winnemem Wintu prophesied that, one day, the abundant Chinook salmon, which they regard as relatives, would temporarily disappear from the McCloud River in Northern California. Based on five years of field reporting, A Prayer for Salmon documents the tribe’s resistance to the federal government’s planned expansion of the Shasta Dam, which would further erode their sacred sites and the salmon population. Hosted by Judy Silber and Lyla June Johnston, an Indigenous scholar, the show provides moving vignettes of the Winnemem Wintu’s tribal practices and briefs listeners on relevant history, politics, and data. By carefully conveying what Western science loses when it excludes Indigenous wisdom, the show transforms existential dread about the environment into hope: The Winnemem Wintu, and other Indigenous groups, know the way forward.

Start with “Chapter 1: A Protest at Shasta Dam.”

2. The Retrievals

Dozens of women at the Yale Fertility Center endured excruciating pain while undergoing the egg-retrieval process, one aspect of IVF treatment. Although they shouldn’t have been conscious during the procedure, let alone have felt anything, some were, and did. Some patients also faced the decision of going through with their procedure awake and in pain or losing their eggs—a loss that could cost them time, money, and the chance to have a child. In the fall of 2020, it was discovered that the cause of these women’s experiences was a nurse who routinely stole patients’ fentanyl and replaced or diluted it with saline solution. Chronicling this catastrophe would have sufficed, but the host and reporter Susan Burton broadens her scope to examine the many arenas of women’s lives in which their pain is measured, devalued, or ignored.

Start with “Episode 1: The Patients.”

1. The Turning: Room of Mirrors

The Turning: Room of Mirrors initiates listeners into the artistry and grueling elitism of American ballet, and the show is made richer by a momentous score and the host and reporter Erika Lantz’s experience as a ballerina. The podcast centers on George Balanchine, the eccentric choreographer who co-founded the New York City Ballet and was instrumental in shaping the art form in the United States. The dancers who share their stories about Balanchine rarely criticize him, despite his often-inappropriate behavior. Some ballerinas recall him demanding romantic and sexual attention and constantly critiquing their bodies, driving many to pursue major interventions such as extreme diets, plastic surgery, and abortions. During a year in which many shows examined women’s suffering, The Turning asks listeners to consider how many of their expectations about themselves and their bodies are their own.

Start with “Season 2, Episode 1: Only I Can See You.”