20 new podcasts to get hooked on: From conspiracies to Covid to a Dublin scandal

1. Elastic Bands

Artist, model and Women’s Aid ambassador Juliana Shiel brings us dark but essential listening in this newly dropped podcast, named for the snap-back resilience of the titular item. The podcast functions largely as a platform for Irish women to share their stories of abuse in intimate relationships: From warning signs to red flag moments to telling family and friends and healing, the women interviewed share their stories frankly and generously, allowing them to serve as a reminder that so many among us experience abuse in intimate relationships, and that there are ways to get out and reclaim your life. Listen here.

2. Everybody Is a Poem

An individual poem by Brierton serving as the jumping-off point for each episode of her podcast. Photograph: Frank Miller

Stylist and creative director Jan Brierton became the voice of every woman living through lockdown with a book of poems that spoke directly to the experience of pandemic parenting: Now she hosts her own podcast, each one a conversation with a guest, an individual poem by Brierton serving as the jumping off point each time. Listen here.

3. The Letter

When Sy Snarr’s son Zachary was murdered in 1996 by a suicidal 19-year-old, she thought of him as a monster. But 22 years later, Snarr received a letter from her son’s killer that changed everything. This thought-provoking and profound examination of the ripple effect of a violent act and the force of forgiveness is both exhaustive and deeply empathetic. Listen here.

4. Pig Iron

On August 26, 2017, 26-year-old Christopher Allen was killed while embedded with rebel troops in South Sudan. He had gone there to cover the civil war as a freelance journalist, but in this seven-part podcast, fellow journalist Basia Cummings asks thorough questions about the seduction of war and Allen’s objectivity as a reporter who was ultimately targeted by government forces. Listen here.

5. Sonic Symbolism

You could call this a “Bjork explains her ten studio albums” podcast, but “explains” would be overstating things. Here the Icelandic artist and self-described mother of her melodies chooses words that define and describe each album, and in conversation with friends and collaborators discusses how they came about. Any inclination to indulgence is offset by Bjorke’s ethereal loopiness and glorious alveolar trill. Listen here.

6. Catch Up With Louise McSharry

Louise McSharry's podcast pulls together a news digest, interview, and pop culture catch up over hour-long episodes that drop weekly

Louise McSharry’s response to her unceremonious dumping by 2FM is a similarly all-encompassing and highly successful talk show that pulls together a news digest (courtesy of Aoife Moore), interview, and pop culture catch up over hour-long episodes that drop weekly. Guests thus far have included Marian Keyes, Lily Higgins, and Emilie Pine. Listen here.

7. Hoaxed

From the creator of Sweet Bobby comes Hoaxed, the story of a couple of children who report their father is involved in a satanist cult. And then it turns out they had been told to make up this story by their mother and her new partner. It was all a fabrication. Which doesn’t stop the story growing conspiracist legs and running away so far from the truth that it beggars belief. This is gripping, grim stuff. Listen here.

[ ‘I think I wrote a poem,’ I told my husband. ‘Are you okay?’ he said ]

8. Fear of Missing Out

The hosts of Fear of Missing Out are not suffering from the FOMO we might more commonly associate with the phrase. Rather, these young people in their late teens and early twenties living in Britain and Northern Ireland are concerned about what their education missed out on, and here they talk about the things they wish they had learned from school, from the sectarian educations of Northern Ireland secondary schoolers to understanding the trans experience to British colonialism, and more. Listen here.

9. The Film We Can’t See

An almost uncharacterisable delight, this Adam Zmith creation imagines connections between historical queer filmmakers, and takes us on a charming and curious journey through a vibrant cinematic history with a lush audio landscape, accompanied at different stages by a film director, a sound artist, a researcher, and the ghosts of filmmakers past. Listen here.

10. The Loudest Girl in the World

Lauren Ober spent some time feeling like things were not “flowing right”. Then, in her forties, she was diagnosed with autism. The Loudest Girl in the World is a funny and frank exploration of what that means for her and those who know and love her. Ober is eloquent and incisive, but it’s her curiosity and humour that make this such compelling listening and an education in neurodiversity that explodes our stereotypes. Listen here.

11. Being Trans

Four trans people document their everyday lives in Los Angeles in a format they call “audio reality,” navigating relationships post-transition, hormone shots, dating, surgery, sports, and more. The podcast is culled from three months when a documentary crew followed the four individuals – Jeffrey, Sy, Mariana, and Chloe – around as they lived their lives, all unscripted, and the resulting six episodes are emotionally real and revealing despite a particularly slick production. Listen here.

12. We Were Three

One night at midnight, Rachel McKibbens got a text from her brother Peter telling her that her father had died. It turned out her dad, who was unvaccinated, had had Covid, though Peter continued to deny it. He didn’t take their father to the hospital or a doctor, and he didn’t tell Rachel about the illness. He himself died of Covid soon after. So how did a family of three come to land on two different sides of pandemic politics? In the three revealing episodes of We Were Three, McKibbens starts piecing it all together. Listen here.

13. Obscene: The Dublin Scandal

BBC podcast features Adrian Dunbar’s smooth narration of the scandalous and brutal events that took place in 1982

Even four decades on, the twists and turns of the Gubu scandal and the murders of Malcolm McArthur hold the same lurid fascination. Here they get the BBC treatment, with actor Adrian Dunbar’s smooth narration of the scandalous and brutal events that took place in 1982 that ended up causing the resignation of the Attorney General and marked a turning point for then taoiseach Charles Haughey. Listen here.

14. Can I Tell You a Secret

Journalist Sirin Kale takes on cyberstalker Matthew Hardy, infamous in his hometown of Norwich for befriending people on social media and then threatening them over text and harassing them on social media until they lived in fear of their lives. Kale interviews victims and even Hardy’s own mother, examining how he earned their trust, and taking a complete and unsettling look at the lasting effects of his crimes on those whom he victimised. Listen here.

15. Conversations on the Margins

Recorded in Wheatfield Prison, Conversations on the Margins is a series of interviews with the people inside by Senator Lynn Ruane, a limited nine-episode series that dives into the lives of her interview subjects. From their younger days to parenthood from prison to addiction to forgiveness, the interviews talk candidly and volulably about their personal experience from behind bars.

16. Keeping Up With the Dirtbirds

Sinead Culbert and Sue Collins bring their, delightful Dirtbird duo to the airwaves with discussions of pressing topics such as how to break up with your hairdresser, why one could never move to Amsterdam, and what ten minutes actually means in Ireland. (Spoiler: Not ten minutes). Listen here.

17. Catherine the Fake

Was Catherine O’Brien the Mr Ripley of Clare? The Frank Abagnale of Buttevant? Either way, this “florist to fraudster” has clearly left a trail of damage to people across the south of the country – not to mention animals. Charming, evil, a genius – everyone got a different impression of O’Brien as the Irish Examiner’s Ann Murphy documents. Listen here.

[ Laura Dowling: ‘I tend to place much more value on my time than on money’ ]

18. Case 63

Adapted from a popular Chilean audio series, this tale told at a fine clip is the fictional account of a man from the future (played by Oscar Isaac) who teams up with an initially sceptical psychiatrist from the present (Julianne Moore) to prevent the next global pandemic (too soon?) and save humanity. Listen here.

19. Let me Explain with Sean Defoe

Brevity is the soul of Sean Defoe’s pithy podcasts, which clock in around 10 to 15 minutes to give listeners a quick “why you should care about this” overview of sundry news items of the moment: from the Iranian protests to Paschal Donohoe’s Eurogroup, to Rishi Sunak. Listen here.

20. The Laura Dowling Experience

The self-titled fabulous pharmacist foregrounds health concerns, particularly among women, introducing experts in their fields to talk through everything from prolapse to urinary incontinence to freezing your eggs to sexual intimacy. Episode lengths vary – some clock in at over two hours – but transmit a wealth of information in that time in a straight up, unvarnished transfer that’s refreshingly bald and helpfully detailed. Listen here.