Thanks to time’s relentless march forward, we’re midway through 2024. So it feels like as good a time as any to check in with ourselves and see how our ambitious plans from January are doing. For example: Am I still keeping up with that lofty New Year’s resolution to become semi-conversational in Spanish by the end of this year? To put it en Español: No.
Maybe it’s a better idea to set some reasonable goals. How about taking the time to learn a little something every day, or at least improve your knowledge of things you’re already interested in? That’s easy enough, right? Well, thanks to the vast array of podcasts at your fingertips, you can do that while you take the garbage out or just decompress on a little mental health walk.
Even if you’re crushing it at the 2024 halftime, check out the best podcasts of the year (so far) for some easy entertainment while you continue to make the rest of us look bad.
Varnamtown
In this, the year of Dune: Part Two and Fallout, Kyle MacLachlan is once again on our radar (as he always should be). Rather than getting in front of the camera, though, MacLachlan put together a serial podcast about a tiny (like, really tiny) coastal North Carolina town that once found itself mixed up with Pablo Escobar’s drug trade. You’d never know this town existed if you didn’t specifically look for it, and that’s probably what appealed to arguably the most famous drug kingpin of all time. MacLachlan’s voice lends itself nicely to this format, so it’s such a joy to listen to him from the ground in North Carolina, talking to the people who remember the town’s coke-runner heyday.
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The Recipe
I love cooking at home, but the real pain of looking up a recipe online is that you have to wade through roughly 10,000 words to get to the part where they tell you how many cloves of garlic you need. J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and Deb Perelman’s new podcast not only gets to the heart of how they make their recipes—but the why behind each decision, too. You won’t find any fanfare about how a recipe for stovetop mac and cheese reminds them of their grandparents. Instead, they discuss their cheese choices and how they got there. The Recipe is accessible to the common person who doesn’t yet have an extensive (and expensive) collection of knives but has plenty of them saved in an online shopping cart along with a nice apron or two. The podcast is still in its very early days, so now’s the time to jump in and Julie & Julia your way along with them each week.
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WikiHole with D’Arcy Carden
I use Wikipedia more than any other website and it’s not even close. My friends and I used to play a game in high school where we’d pick two unrelated topics—say, sharks and the Vatican 2 movement—and go from point A to point B using only the links in Wikipedia articles. I was so good at it. So when actor/comedian D’Arcy Carden introduced WikiHole, I knew it was for me. It’s essentially a quiz show, featuring great comedians, actors, and musicians (all described as Carden’s very best friends), to answer trivia questions across a slippery slope of topics as they slide deeper into the Wikihole. D’Arcy, I am begging you: Please email your best friend Brendan to come on the show.
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Ripple
We all remember the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but how much do we actually know about it? In Ripple, Dan Leone gets on the ground (and in the water) in Louisiana and other states on the Gulf to talk to the people who have been most affected by the spill. He listens to their memories of that day and learns about how the spill’s lingering effects: friends and family members lost on the rig, waterways that people depended on dying in front of their eyes. Like any great serial podcast, there are characters and motives. Even more, Leone uncovers evidence from archival interviews, which come from the likes of BP executives, government agencies, and much more.
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We’re Here to Help
We’re in a weird era right now where podcasters and guys dressed as lizards serve as therapists. Shows like Stavvy’s World are centered on people calling in and seeking guidance from some unlikely sources—but actually leaving with sound advice. Thankfully, comedian-actors Jake Johnson and Gareth Reynolds bring some levity to the self-help pod in We’re Here to Help. They impart real advice—such as telling someone in no uncertain terms to stop feeding their cat ear wax because it’s bizarre. The show’s live-call format allows for fun back-and-forth, plus some callers get a chance to follow up later on, so we can see how the advice played out.
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Hard Feelings
Jennette McCurdy became a powerful voice in the mental health world after the release of her brutal memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died. After showing how gifted she is at talking about heavy topics with humor and humanity, her limited-series podcast, Hard Feelings, feels like catching up with a friend. It’s not a companion piece to her book. It’s not a lecture series. Hard Feelings is simply a podcast from someone who has been through certain things talking about things that you might be going through right now. It’s not preachy. It’s not flashy. It often feels like an audio blog post. You can picture McCurdy wandering around her house, mindlessly picking up objects and putting them back down, while telling a story of overcoming eating disorders or battling with social media. It’s pretty real, which is reassuring. And rather than milk the medium for the sake of sponsorship dollars, she ends each show with a story about self-esteem and confidence.
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A Game of No Halves
Honestly, one of the most entertaining sports podcasts right now is about a soccer team that doesn’t even exist. Well, that’s not entirely true—it just exists in the mind of English broadcasting legend Bob Harris. In A Game of No Halves, Harris and his son, Miles, go deep on North London FC—the team Bob created and for which he played out season upon season in his mind. He borrows real-life players from across the globe, plus his sons and their friends. He “signs” exceptionally tall neighbors to serve as Peter Crouch-esque strikers, as well as stunt performers he’s met in real life.
No, Harris doesn’t always tell these people they’re part of a decades-spanning soccer dynasty. He also goes into his own rules for this bizarre experiment—which he typically creates in his head as he kicks around a toy soccer ball in the living room after a few glasses of wine and a joint while his kids are asleep. Above all, the podcast is simply a fun listen between father and son, who reminisce over childhood friends and laugh about a dad’s goofy yet harmless hobby.
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Keys to the Kingdom
Even though I’ve never been to any Disney property, I can relate to the mouse’s employees. It’s probably why I enjoy listening to Matt Gourley and Amanda Lund—a married couple who not only used to work at Disney resorts in various capacities (RC trash can! Various Princesses!), but also met and fell in love there.
In Keys to the Kingdom, they reveal what Disneyfied life is like behind the curtain. They interview former and current employees to show just how deep the level of commitment is from Disney’s point of view, talk to members of roving Disney “gangs,” and introduce people who sneak family members’ ashes into the park for one last ride. Just when you think you’re sold on the idea that Disney is a deeply weird place, they swing it back in the other direction and tell stories of the human connections that are made there—often with children. I have to admit that I felt a sense of the magic, even as a Disney-cynical adult.
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