The very best voices I heard in my head throughout the year:
Shell Game, hosted by Evan Ratliff is, without question, the standout podcast of 2024. While it flirts with untapped Kaufmanesque potential - hinting at layers of meta-narrative that never fully materialize - it remains a brilliant exploration of its subject. Sharp, engrossing, and expertly crafted, it’s a masterclass in AI storytelling.
Hysterical, hosted by Dan Taberski. As is typical with Taberski, the storytelling proves more compelling than the story itself.
Question Everything hosted by Brian Reed. There's a lot of soul searching in these episodes. Soul searching is good.
Things Fell Apart Season 2, Jon Ronson, BBC 4: Every bit as compelling as Season 1, this series practically begs for a companion book in the vein of So, You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. Ronson’s talent for connecting the dots and weaving seemingly disparate threads into a coherent, insightful narrative remains unmatched. By the way, I feel that things will keep falling apart at faster speed starting Jan 20 2025.
The Gatekeepers, Jamie Bartlett, BBC 4: Though it treads familiar ground, the presentation is polished, and Bartlett shines in his takedown of Silicon Valley’s edgelords, deftly exposing their horrific ideologies with clarity and precision.
Best limited series
Ted DeLay, Future of Denial. A sharp, no-nonsense companion to one of the most incisive books on the rhetoric of climate change I’ve come across in years. With just four biting episodes, it’s short, sour, and brilliantly effective - cutting straight to the heart of the issue without an ounce of unnecessary padding.
Katy Shields and Vegard Beyer’s Tipping Point: The True Story of The Limits to Growth explores why the influential 1972 book The Limits to Growth was largely ignored by most and what lessons it holds today. Drawing on Dana Meadows’ unpublished memoirs and rare audio recordings, it recounts the efforts of Meadows, Dennis Meadows, and their team to raise awareness of ecological crises and potential solutions. Excellent.
NPR, Embedded: Supermajority Hosted by Meribah Knight In which a group of Tennessee Republican women discover the terrifying politics of their own party.
The Harvard Plan. The ideological battle over America’s universities, hosted by Ilya Marritz and Jazmin Aguilera, is a tight, three episode exploration of the cultural and political struggles shaping higher education in the United States. A co-production of The Boston Globe and On The Media, the series pairs sharp investigative reporting with nuanced storytelling, unpacking the layers of ideology and power influencing the nation’s most prestigious institutions.
Dehumidified, hosted by Polly Weston, BBC Sounds, March 2024, takes the crown for the dullest scam story ever told, yet somehow transforms that tedium into a fascinating exploration of disinformation at scale. It’s an eerily post-human examination of how deceit operates in an age of algorithmic amplification, proving that even the driest tales can illuminate unsettling truths about our collective hallucination we call reality. The perfect companion to Shell Game.
The Kids Are Alt Right?, hosted by James Tilley, BBC 4, January 2024, doesn’t dance around the question: it delivers a resounding YEP! With sharp analysis and unsettling clarity, Tilley unpacks how and why younger generations are gravitating toward alt-right ideologies.
Standout episodes (selection)
Los Angeles Review of Books, Writing Climate Futures, September 9 2024. On July 18th, Los Angeles Review of Books and The Berggruen Institute hosted a panel discussion titled "Writing Climate Futures," featuring David Wallace-Wells, Jenny Offill, Bharat Venkat, and Jonathan Blake. This was so, so prescient. Read more
The Missing Cryptoqueen, hosted by Jamie Bartlett, Episode 12: Wanted: Dead or Alive, June 3 2024. This is going to be a movie, right?
Soul Music, BBC Sounds: I Can See Clearly Now, April 20 2014
This is Hell!, hosted by Chuck Mertz. A conversation with Ted DeLay. Ideologies of Climate Change, episode 1749.
99% Invisible, hosted by Roman Mars. The Los Angeles Leaf Blower Wars, June 12 2024. Simply epic. Even Wonder Woman gets involved.
This American Life, episode 833, hosted by Ira Glass. Come Retribution, June 10 2024,
This American Life, episode 821, hosted by Ira Glass, Embrace the Suck, January 22 2024.
The Daily, in which the one and only Uncle Bernie completely schooled the increasingly insufferable and pedantic Michael Barbaro. November 15 2024
Longform, hosted by Aaron Lammer, Max Linsky, Evan Ratliff, Episode 577, P.J. Vogt, May 2024.
The Dig, hosted by Daniel Danvir. MAGA 2.0 with Quinn Slobodian & Wendy Brown. Slobodian’s tidbits are priceless, November 24 2024.
Search Engine, hosted by PJ Vojgt, Why didn’t Chris and Dan get into Berghain? (Part 1, June 21 2024), (Part 2, June 27 2024).
Search Engine, hosted by PJ Vojgt, What Do Trigger Warnings actually do? (May 3 3024).
Search Engine, hosted by PJ Vojgt, How do we survive the media apocalypse? (March 15 2024).
Intelligence Squared, hosted by Adam McCauley. Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet with Kohei Saito, April 7 2024.
The Grey Area, hosted by Sean Illing, The World After Nuclear War with Anna Jacobsen, June 17 2024.
Joshua Citarella podcast, hosted by Joshua Citarella, Doomscrolling #2 with Catherine Liu. Catherine Liu is a Goddess. October 23 2024.
Joshua Citarella podcast, hosted by Joshua Citarella, Alex Hochuli on the End of History, August 1 2024. A stellar crossover episode delivers a thorough recap of The End of the End of History, perfectly timed as Bungacast undergoes its metamorphosis into… well, whatever it is now.
The Guardian Long Read, Super cute please like: the unstoppable rise of Shein, May 17 2024. Shein - like Temu - is pure evil. This podcast episode is based on Nicole Lipman’s terrific article for N+1.
The Run Up hosted by Astead W. Herndon is my go-to show whenever I feel the need to punish myself. Let’s be honest: willingly subjecting oneself to hours of everyday folks calmly justifying their cozy relationship with fascism is an unparalleled exercise in masochism. It’s like watching a slow-motion car crash, except the wreckage is your dwindling faith in humanity. Every time I somehow make it through an episode - surviving on sheer grim determination - I’m left teetering on the edge of sanity, wanting to scream into the void. This episode, released on November 7 2024, was especially horrifying.
There’s a fleeting yet chilling moment in Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York - my favorite film of the decade (2000–2010, that is) - when the backdrop of the story reveals itself to be a full-scale coup d’état. Military trucks haul away civilians, and society crumbles into chaos. But Kaufman, ever the master of oblique storytelling, relegates this seismic upheaval to the periphery, barely hinting at the country falling apart. Instead, the protagonist’s spiraling obsessions monopolize the narrative, reflecting a grim truth: even in the face of societal collapse, personal neuroses reign supreme. This is just one of the anecdotes discussed by Rico Gagliano in the Dec 12 2024 episode of the MUBI Podcast. Priceless.
Drilled, Season 11, episode 7, hosted by Amy Westerveld. Genevieve Guenther digs into six key rhetorical devices that are being used to slow or block climate action by both Right and so-called Progressive parties, think tanks, and corporations. Essential.
The War on Cars, hosted by Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon. Favorite episode of the year: the conversation with filmmaker Adam McKay, Cars are done, November 12 2024. I’m a huge fan of McKay’s Yellowdot Studios and I approve his messages.
Radio Atlantic, The Last Days of the Barcode, Saahil Desai in conversation with Hanna Rosin, January 18 2024.
ACFM, hosted by Nadia Idle, Jeremy Gilbert and Keir Milburn. 17 November 2024. Disruption.
Miscellaneous
Tomorrow, hosted by Joshua Topolski and Rani Molla is a weekly exercise in free-flowing, improvised rants about Big Tech: Apple, X, OpenAI, Zuck, nuclear tech... the usual suspects. Topolski’s commentary may lack depth, but it’s nothing if not consistent. Each episode feels like a slight variation of the last, iterations of a single sprawling ongoing monologue rather than distinct entries. Adding a layer of irony, the patronage comes courtesy of Robinhood Markets, lending an intriguing undertone to the show’s tech and crypto and fintech relentless critiques.
Jeff Entman is back! Live from Berlin, Germany. Ten years on! Season 10! I miss those dérives... Parasocial psychogeography: at its best, Here Be Monsters is a masterclass in wandering through both cityscapes and the mind, blending personal introspection with urban exploration in a way few others can match.
Alex Goldman is also back with Hyperfixed (Radiotopia), an evolved, solo take on Reply All, or rather, on a single feature of the previous show. The tech assistance format has grown into something unapologetically didactic, weaving together macro and micro perspectives with a deft hand. By mixing personal anecdotes with broader collective narratives, the show strikes a balance between intimate storytelling and incisive cultural analysis, proving Goldman hasn’t lost his touch (and performative laughter). So, what’s up with open refrigerators in grocery stores?
Mental note
You know the end is nigh when Brooke Gladstone began reading ads. The days of On The Media podcast are numbered.
Previously