Best podcasts 2024: from We Live Here Now to The Rest is Classified

The Madman's Hotel

In 1897, Julia Leonard was taken by police to a mental asylum in the Irish town of Mullingar, in County Westmeath. She had thrown a cup of tea at her husband, Christopher, during an argument, leading him to have her committed. Their children were sent to a workhouse, and Christopher remarried and had a second family. Julia spent the rest of her life at the St Loman's psychiatric hospital, finally dying there in 1919, said Fiona Sturges in the Financial Times. In a "powerful" new series, Niall Breslin – aided by Julia's great-granddaughter, Julie – investigates Julia's story, and explores the history of St Loman's (which officially closed in 2013) and the "egregious treatment" of the people who were committed to reside there. Without giving away spoilers, The Madman's Hotel becomes a "gripping mystery wrapped in a scandal and bound in a little-known yet deeply troubling chapter of Irish history".

Ruthie's Table 4

"As we enter the year's most convivial period, I have been hungrily consuming dining podcasts," said Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times. Ruthie's Table 4, an interview series hosted by River Café co-founder Ruth Rogers, weaves broader historical and cultural context into entertaining discussions of formative food experiences. Recent guests have included Elton John, Tony Blair and Kristin Scott Thomas. Hearing John speak about "how safe he felt in his maternal grandmother's postwar council house kitchen – where, despite rationing, she produced delicious bread puddings and fruit pies – felt more personal than anything in "Rocketman"."

The Rest Is Classified

The latest addition to Gary Lineker's Goalhanger stable of The Rest Is... podcasts is all about espionage, and it's "exactly what you’d expect", said Alexi Duggins in The Guardian. The Rest Is Classified is a "slick, info-packed chat between two hosts with sparkling rapport" and lots of side-banter – in this case the CIA analyst turned spy novelist David McCloskey and the author and BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera. To kick off, they look at the 1953 Iranian coup, when British and US intelligence helped overthrow the elected prime minister in favour of the autocratic Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

We Live Here Now

Podcasting had a "starring role" in the US election campaign, said Fiona Sturges in the Financial Times. Donald Trump is believed to have played a blinder by agreeing to appear on "The Joe Rogan Experience", America's most popular podcast. Kamala Harris declined. I, however, was "glued" to We Live Here Now, an absorbing new podcast made by two journalists, Lauren Ober and Hanna Rosin – a couple who live in a staunchly Democrat area of Washington DC. A year ago, new neighbours moved in, with stickers on their car reading "Free our Patriots" and "J4J6" (Justice for January 6). They turned out to be a woman whose daughter, Ashli Babbitt, had been shot dead while trying to storm the Capitol on 6 January, and two others whose male partners had been jailed for their involvement in the riots. Things started badly, with angry exchanges and abuse, but over time the households built bridges. We listen in as Ober and Rosin "hang out with these self-described patriots, and hear about their anxieties and how they have channelled their grief and rage". The journalists are not won over, but "the empathy, humanity and depth of their reporting reveals much about these febrile times".

Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club

"I'm not one for a real-life book club," said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer – but I've been enjoying "Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club". The hosts are the comedian Sara Pascoe and Cariad Lloyd, the writer and performer who created the "wonderful" "Griefcast" podcast. A new series has just kicked off, and I loved the first two episodes, despite not knowing either of the books discussed ("Standard Deviation" by Katherine Heiny and "The Whale Tattoo" by Jon Ransom). No one involved in the podcast is all that weird; "maybe Pascoe, a little bit". She and Lloyd have "funny and revealing" discussions – sometimes joined by guests – that are "punchily produced in terms of time and topic (no unnecessary rambling, swift at-the-top explanation without too many spoilers, straight into opinions)". All in all, it's "a really lovely way to spend 45 minutes".

The Wonder of Stevie

Between 1972 and 1976, Stevie Wonder released five albums – culminating in his "magnum opus" "Songs in the Key of Life" – that "turned him into a one-man pop colossus", said Fiona Sturges in the Financial Times. "The Wonder of Stevie" is a new podcast filled with glorious music from the albums, in which the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wesley Morris (a funny and authoritative host) discusses this purple patch, helped by Wonder's musical collaborators and famous fans including Smokey Robinson, Janelle Monáe and Barack Obama. This may sound like borderline "hagiography", and perhaps it is; but it works here. "This is an unabashed celebration of Wonder's music, joyful in mood and made with palpable love."

The Brighton Bomb

"Today we were unlucky. But remember, we have only to be lucky once, you will have to be lucky always." That was the IRA's infamous statement following its bombing of The Grand Hotel, Brighton, 40 years ago this month. The terrorists failed to assassinate their principal target, the prime minister Margaret Thatcher. But their long- delay 100lb bomb – hidden in a bathroom weeks earlier – did kill five people who had come to Brighton for the Tory party conference, and left many more with life- changing injuries. In the BBC's superb podcast "The Brighton Bomb", "events I thought I knew all about surprised me afresh like an unfolding thriller reverberating with what ifs", said Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times. Glenn Patterson's "transfixing script" and "gripping, unerringly well-timed narration" brilliantly evoke the period's "background thrum of nagging unease, while also offering compelling, concise historical context". The riveting sound design deserves plaudits too: "those ticking clocks, sirens and Beckettian pauses".

Young Again

Plenty of podcasts take the simple celebrity interview and jazz it up into "high-concept formats", said Chris Bennion in The Daily Telegraph. As "Desert Island Discs" has been proving for decades, it can work very well. Kirsty Young presided over that programme with aplomb for years, before ill-health intervened. Now she has made a welcome return with "Young Again" – in which she probes famous people about the advice they'd give their younger selves. She seems a "punchier presence" here, and in a recent episode she draws out the "funnier, earthier" side to Minnie Driver. There's "plenty of LA" in the actress, but also a British sense of humour: she discloses, for instance, that when she was in labour, she spent the last 45 minutes chanting the word "love", so that it would be the first word her baby heard. But she'd been convinced she was having a girl, and so what her son actually heard was a string of "astonished expletives".

Dealcraft

"Even for those of us who are clumsy and reluctant hagglers, the mechanics of striking a deal can be fascinating," said Jenny McCartney in The Spectator. There's a large body of literature that promises to school you in negotiation: the "performative mulling", tough-talking, use of the curveball, and so on. But you could start with the "Dealcraft" podcast, hosted by Jim Sebenius, a Harvard Business School professor with a "gravelly" voice, suggestive of "expensive Scotch and knowing observations in oak-panelled boardrooms". His podcast features "interviews with the world's greatest dealmakers" – ranging from Hillary Clinton and the late Henry Kissinger to Michael Jackson's lawyer John Branca – that distil "practical insights for listeners to apply".

Blood on the Dance Floor

Darren Bradshaw, an off-duty police officer, was just 24 and "waiting nervously for someone to join him at the bar of Belfast's first gay club, The Parliament", when republican gunmen stormed into the venue and shot him dead. His murder, in 1997, devastated a family already reeling from the recent death of Darren's soldier brother, said Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times. It also traumatised a "tightly drawn gay community" whose non- sectarian safe space had been violated by both the killing, "and the betrayal that allowed it". Blood on the Dance Floor is a "brilliantly produced" six-part BBC podcast about the case. It's a sad but "gripping" story, presented with empathy by Jordan Dunbar, a former drag performer. He deftly explains the social and political context, without losing the story's "beating heart".

Bloodsport

"I had no idea that the London 2012 Olympics is statistically the 'dirtiest games in history'," said Antonia Quirke in The New Statesman. That's the basis of the BBC's podcast "Bloodsport", which unpacks the alarming level of retrospective disqualifications of Olympians from those Games that have been "relegated to the back pages". None of this is a secret, and the "monstrously gripping ten-part podcast" makes that "meticulously clear" as it details the systemic doping of the London Olympics. The "whole thing is repulsively fascinating", although the "moral argument against doping is far less interesting than the macabre sci-fi-ish experiment of it all". With "spies in labs" and "huge injections of bent cash", the "athletes off their trees isn't the half of it".

Legend: The Joni Mitchell Story

"Forget Oasis," said Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times. The really "miraculous comeback of our times" is that of Joni Mitchell, who recently headlined two career-spanning concerts at the Hollywood Bowl to rapturous reviews. Mitchell just turned 81, and two separate podcast series – both terrific – are marking her return. "Legend: The Joni Mitchell Story", narrated by the American singer Jesca Hoop, offers an engrossing and moving biographical overview (BBC Sounds, six parts). For real Joni aficionados, "The Road to Joni" (from the Sheroes network) is a more freewheeling affair; a cross-country US road trip, exploring Mitchell's influence on Americana artists.

Extrasensory

"Podcasting isn't short of series about the paranormal," said Fiona Sturges in the Financial Times. "But last year brought one so addictive and ingenious, you could feel the big beasts of audio sit up and take note." "Ghost Story", about a real-life tragedy dating from the 1930s, was a haunting wrapped up in a murder mystery – and a deserved smash hit. "Extrasensory" – a tale of death, claimed reincarnation and psychiatric investigation – has the same spooky appeal.

The story starts with two sisters, aged six and 11, killed in a road accident in Hexham, Northumberland, in 1957. On the day they died, the girls' father, a milkman named John Pollock, made a "startling prophecy": that his daughters would be reborn. The next year, after his wife gave birth to twin girls, the claims attracted media coverage, and the long-term attention of an American professor of psychiatry. "Extrasensory builds to a climax that I won't spoil." What I can say is that it's absolutely "riveting" – and "I greedily binged all eight episodes in a day".

Cursed

New audible podcast "Cursed" sees British-Nigerian journalist Femi Oke track the police investigation that led to the arrest of human trafficker Josephine Iyamu. A British-Nigerian nurse from London, Iyamu had "struck fear" into the Nigerian women she trafficked to Germany to become sex workers, said Fiona Sturges in the Financial Times. While Iyamu is "central" to "Cursed", living a "scarcely believable double life" in a "modest flat" in South London and a "gated mansion" in Nigeria, Oke also "digs deep into Nigerian culture and belief systems" that contributed to Iyamu exerting control over her victims. A 10-episode series filled with "smart, sensitive and detailed storytelling", Oke's "remarkable access" to the police investigation means none of these episodes "feel like filler". Prepared to be "chilled to the bone".

What Did You Do Yesterday?

An oddity of podcasts is that most listeners are not just listening; they are also "eating dinner or commuting or taking out the bins", said James Marriott in The Times. As a result, there is a market for "amiable, low-stakes background chuntering". And though podcasters "talking about nothing" can be "ghastly" (e.g. "Shagged. Married. Annoyed."), it can also be "sublime" (e.g. "Catherine Carr's Where Are You Going?"). "What Did You Do Yesterday?", a "delightful" new series produced by broadcaster Max Rushden and comedian David O'Doherty, is in the latter camp. It is an audio equivalent to a "life in a day" newspaper feature: we hear from radio host Elis James on his pitiful attempts to get his children out of the house, and from comic Lou Sanders, who talks about a quiet day at home with her two cats. It is not actionpacked, but "the lack of excitement is charming", rather than banal. It turns out that when you "get a succession of really funny people" to talk about apparently mundane topics, you end up with an illuminating guide to "the different textures of people's lives".

Short Cuts

When it comes to literature, I am not a big fan of short stories, said Fiona Sturges in the FT. "I prefer to spend several days, rather than a lunch hour, in the company of my favourite authors." With audio, though, it's different – and for an inventive short-form podcast, I'd strongly recommend "Short Cuts", the Radio 4 strand that's fast approaching its 250th episode (all are available on Sounds). It consists of "beautifully crafted and curated micro-documentaries", on a wide range of subjects, introduced by the writer/comedian Josie Long. Roughly ten minutes long, they are billed as "brief encounters, true stories, radio adventures and found sound", and they have a "slightly woozy vibe". Listening late at night, I often find myself staying awake "just long enough to finish a story that will invariably float into my dreams".

No Worries if Not!

In spite of its apologetic title, "No Worries if Not!" is a "potent, even fiery examination of the damage wrought by internet culture", said Daisy Dunn in The Spectator. The presenter is the writer and cartoonist Lily O'Farrell; her target audience is presumably Gen Z women like herself, but "the topics discussed affect all of us". One recent episode explored the "hysteria over ageing that has prompted even children to use products containing peptides, retinol and other alleged youth-enhancing chemicals". Another looked at how dating apps are turning users into "human fruit-machines devoid of empathy". A third examined the vogue for 1950s-style "trad wife" domesticity. "Statistics, eloquent experts and deep research elevate this podcast above most others of its ilk." Each episode tells a "story of our times".

Tom Slick: Mystery Hunter

"Should you need evidence that fiction podcasts are no longer a niche interest, consider the megastars currently being tempted into the sound booth," said Fiona Sturges in the FT. One satisfying option is "Tom Slick: Mystery Hunter", starring Owen Wilson and Sissy Spacek. Wilson impresses in the title role, an "Indiana Jones-meets- Edmund Hillary figure bursting with charisma and derring-do", while Spacek is his more "down-to-earth" daughter, getting to know her father posthumously decades later via a series of rediscovered cassette recordings. "The soundscaping is excellent: ambitiously multi-layered and noisy in a way that is entirely fitting for a rollicking and bingeable action- adventure series."

Extreme: Muscle Men

Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is the American professor of history who co-produced and presented the "brilliant" "Welcome to Your Fantasy" podcast, said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. That series, which told the "unexpectedly gripping story of the Chippendales (Muscles! Money! Murder!), was one of my favourite shows of 2021". Petrzela, who specialises in the history of personal fitness, has made a highly entertaining new series about the rise of bodybuilding culture in the US from the late 1970s. "Extreme: Muscle Men" is a "fun, campy listen that moves from a sweaty 1980s California gym to some darker areas" – in particular, the role played by steroids. Petrzela's interviews are "wry without being mean-spirited – and there are some hilarious moments, including a clip from Arnold Schwarzenegger, who at the time said that bodybuilding was, to his mind, like 'having an orgasm over and over'."

Tested: The Choice

"Tested: The Choice", tells a more "intimate story" about the controversy surrounding a small number of elite female athletes who are no longer permitted to "race as women owing to their naturally high testosterone levels". Presenter Rose Eveleth speaks to Christine Mboma, a sprinter and Olympic silver medallist from Namibia "who faces a difficult choice – to undertake hormone therapy, fight the existing regulations or give up the sport that she loves".

Hysterical

A "gripping" seven-part series from Wondery, "Hysterical" is about a "mass psychogenic illness" that affected girls at a high school in upstate New York in 2011, said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. As is often the case with such outbreaks, it started with one person developing a "conversion disorder", in which individuals develop physical symptoms, such as a limp, or a tic, that have no obvious cause; and before long numerous teenagers were "tic-ing and shouting, making noises and twitching", as if they had Tourette's. "It's a fascinating story" of an episode that was at once "hugely public and strangely secret". Host Dan Taberski is a charming presenter who makes this complex story "clear, intriguing and fun". "The best writers pinpoint something you've felt for ages but haven't been able to articulate. This series is like that, every minute."

Cocaine Inc.

"Who goes to a pub with a machine gun on Christmas Eve?" That's the haunting question posed by the father of Elle Edwards, a 26-year-old beautician who was killed on 24 December 2022 when a low-level drug dealer involved in a local turf war opened fire outside a pub in the Wirral, said Jenny McCartney in The Spectator. Hers is one of several sobering human stories told in "Cocaine Inc.", an "absorbing" eight-part true-crime podcast (from The Times and News Corp Australia), which explores the global impact of the cocaine industry through different local examples. It's a "searing" series, packed with "compelling" stories.

Buried: The Last Witness

The first series of "Buried", a terrific investigative podcast made by the environmental reporters Dan Ashby and Lucy Taylor, was a hit last year, said Fiona Sturges in the Financial Times. For the second series, "Buried: The Last Witness", the pair have teamed up with the Welsh actor Michael Sheen, to explore the "shocking" story of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), toxic fire-retardant chemicals that were used in everything from paint to paper, until they were banned in most countries in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Back in 2017, Sheen was scrolling the internet when he saw a reference to Douglas Gowan, a former National Farmers' Union consultant who'd become concerned about the impact of PCBs leaking from a landfill site in South Wales in the late 1960s, and spent years trying, in vain, to blow the whistle. Sheen arranged to meet Gowan, who died in 2018, and recordings of some of their conversations are included in this disturbing podcast. "There is much here that will make you gasp, not just at the human and environmental impact of PCBs, but at the brazenness of those responsible."

Sonic Fields

Anyone heading to a music festival should tune in to "Sonic Fields", an "intimate" series exploring the history of festivals in the UK, said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. It is the work of the producer Sam Tyler, who made the "endearing" five-part series "There Are No Greater Heroes", about the "obscure psych-folk trio Tony, Caro and John". Gentle as well as curious, Tyler is an excellent interviewer. From Ray Foulk, one of the organisers of the original Isle of Wight festivals, he discovers how Bob Dylan was persuaded to play there in 1969, though he declined to perform at Woodstock that year – and we also get the inside story of the 1970 Isle of Wight festival, which attracted a crowd of up to 700,000, making it bigger than Woodstock. We hear about Glastonbury in the days when it still had a "free festival" vibe, and about the legendary (and free) Stonehenge music festival of 1974. Put aside your "capitalist breadhead cynicism" and "get your mind boggled".

Animal

In "Animal", an enjoyable new New York Times podcast, writer Sam Anderson focuses specifically on "human interactions with animals", said Fiona Sturges in the FT. In Florida, he achieves a long-held dream of swimming with manatees, only to find the marine mammals "disturbingly crowded out by humans and their boats". In Iceland, he learns that puffin chicks – "pufflings" – get disoriented by street lamps, because they mistake them for the Moon, and joins locals in taking them to the nearest clifftop and flinging them towards the sea. These are "sweet meditative" stories – which often uncover darker truths about humanity's impact on the natural world.

Afghan Star

Launched in 2004, three years after the fall of the Taliban, "Afghan Star" was a hugely popular TV talent show that became a symbol of Afghanistan's renewal, said Jenny McCartney in The Spectator. An "evocative" new podcast, also named "Afghan Star", describes the excitement the show caused in the country as it emerged from a "long period in which all forms of joy" had been suppressed, and it contains vivid accounts of what it was like to live through that era. Although we hear from winners and others involved, the podcast is more about the "suffering and resilience of ordinary Afghans" than the TV show itself; and narrator John Legend deserves praise for using his celebrity to shine a light on this "compelling story". The American musician explains that he was drawn to it by a photograph of a group of Taliban looking on approvingly as a pile of musical instruments is burnt to a crisp. But listening, you can't help but feel a "jolt of shame" as you remember the way the US and its allies "cut and ran in 2021", allowing all "that beauty and brightness to be entombed by vengeful clerics all over again".

Just One Thing

"Just One Thing", the late Michael Mosley's hugely popular Radio 4 show and podcast about simple changes to improve your life and health, has long been a "favourite" for me and for people I know, said Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times. Friends have "swapped experiences of standing on one leg while cleaning their teeth to improve balance"; the episodes on swimming are shared on my lido WhatsApp group. The show is a "model of clarity and brevity" – and on BBC Sounds there are more than a hundred episodes for you to try if you've never had the pleasure. "Mosley will be greatly missed as a motivational broadcaster, but his positive impact will live on."

Thief at the British Museum

Hosted by Katie Razzall, and recently broadcast on Radio 4, "Thief at the British Museum" describes how hundreds of the museum's artefacts "went missing and were sold (on eBay!), but nobody at the institution noticed", said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. Although it's true crime, the tone of the podcast is more that of an Agatha Christie-style whodunnit, with an "eccentric foreign detective" – in this case the Dutch antiquities dealer Dr Ittai Gradel, who first alerted the museum authorities to the suspected inside job. It's a compelling and astonishing tale, with a "suspenseful orchestral soundtrack" – and makes for a "delightful" listen.

The John Dredge Nothing To Do With Anything Show

Great news for comedy fans, said Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times. John Dredge and his collaborators have returned, after a very long gap, for a sixth series of their "very funny and utterly bizarre comedy", "The John Dredge Nothing To Do With Anything Show". It's "well worth the wait, especially if you like your comedy daft and Pythonesque".

Fur and Loathing

The British journalist Nicky Woolf is a specialist in internet subcultures whose last two podcasts were "Finding Q", about the origins of the QAnon conspiracy theory, and "The Sound", about the phenomenon of Havana syndrome, said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. His excellent new six-parter "Fur & Loathing", is about the biggest chemical weapons attack on US soil in 50 years, for which no one has ever been charged.

In 2014, at a hotel in Illinois, potentially deadly chlorine gas was released at a convention of "furries" – people who like dressing up in cartoony animal costumes. Nineteen people were hospitalised, yet – in part because the victims were wearing silly costumes – the attack was treated by federal investigators more as a prank than a life-threatening criminal act. Woolf combines in-depth investigation with a light touch to create a "strangely gripping show that uncovers more than you might imagine (and, no, that's not a furry joke)".

The History of Bad Ideas

The intriguing premise of "The History of Bad Ideas", a new series of Professor David Runciman's podcast "Past Present Future", is "to take bad ideas seriously", said James Marriott in The Times. A century on, for example, the case for women's suffrage seems "logical, unanswerable and morally virtuous".

But at the time, as Helen Lewis shows in her fascinating episode on the "anti-suffragettes", the case against letting women vote had its own complex, if flawed, logic, and "attracted intelligent and civilised advocates, including many women". Some argued that women were "above political partisanship"; others that because women didn't serve in the military, they shouldn't vote on laws that had to be defended with force. The episode shows how a bad idea "can be quite easily decked out in sophisticated argument". Other instalments feature historian Christopher Clark on antisemitism, geneticist Adam Rutherford on eugenics, and economist Helen Thompson on the gold standard. The series is "gripping. A shadow history of the modern mind."

Split Screen: Kid Nation

Reality TV is "proving rich source material for podcasters in the market for wild stories and retrospective outrage", said Fiona Sturges in the FT. One of the most "disturbing" reality shows ever was "Kid Nation", a series from 2007 in which 40 children were thrown together for a "Lord of the Flies"-type experiment in New Mexico. As is made clear in a fascinating new podcast, "Split Screen: Kid Nation", many found the experience a "nightmare". Host Josh Gwynn paints a "grimly unsettling picture of naive parents, terrified children and ratings-hungry TV execs who are still trying to justify their decisions 17 years later".

The Bachelor of Buckingham Palace

A less obviously cruel reality TV show – but still crass and manipulative – was "I Wanna Marry 'Harry'", a 2014 TV show that "lured a gaggle of American women to a grotty hotel on the outskirts of Reading" and convinced them that they were competing for the affections of Prince Harry (a lookalike called Matt). Scott Bryan's excellent podcast, "The Bachelor of Buckingham Palace", takes the deception at the heart of the show seriously, while also having enormous fun with its "myriad WTF moments".

Have you missed the biggest news of the week? Or the stories that will shape our lives in years to come, when the passing hype of the day's headlines have faded from memory. That's what we explore on The Week's own award-winning podcast, "The Week Unwrapped", which seeks out under-reported stories with unexpected consequences. Listen on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you find podcasts

Long Shadow: In Guns We Trust

"How did we get here, and how do we get ourselves out?" That's the question posed by "Long Shadow: In Guns We Trust", a compelling podcast about the "painfully intense" love affair between so many Americans and their guns, said Jenny McCartney in The Spectator. The host, Garrett Graff, is a gun owner himself, and "grew up in the hunting grounds of Vermont, where 'the first day of deer season was almost like a state holiday'". But he's uneasy about "the gradual sanctification of the right to bear arms", and worried about its consequences: the highest levels of gun ownership in US history and the highest recorded number of mass shootings. "Thus far this is a gripping podcast, providing a map for the evolution of a grim status quo."

To Catch a Scorpion

Barzan Majeed, aka Scorpion, is the man behind a major cross-Channel people-smuggling operation, said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. By all accounts he's a "highly scary, money- obsessed scumbag", who has been happy to fleece desperate people for whatever he can get. And that is a lot. Charging £8,000 for a single place in an overcrowded dinghy, he has been able to net £500,000 from a single trip. The "riveting" BBC podcast "To Catch a Scorpion" is about a quest to track Majeed down, and tells the stories of some of those who have been desperate enough to use his services, and those of smugglers like him. It is made by the award-winning documentary-maker Sue Mitchell, with Rob Lawrie, a former soldier with contacts everywhere from Calais to Iraq, and thanks to their efforts, Majeed was arrested in Kurdistan.

Serial

There's "exciting news for audiophiles", said Fiona Sturges in the FT. "Serial", which kicked off the boom in true-crime podcasts ten years ago, is back for a fourth series. The show made its name with a "whodunnit" – the story of the murder of a Baltimore high-school student and the potentially unsafe conviction of her ex-boyfriend. Since then, "Serial" has broadened its range to examine other aspects of the US criminal justice system. The new series is about Guantánamo Bay, the US naval base in Cuba where hundreds of suspected terrorists have been detained. The subject has been covered by other podcasts, not least Radiolab's "The Other Latif". What "Serial" brings to it is many gripping new interviews with former employees – including interrogators, guards and chaplains, as well as several one-time detainees. Their accounts are sometimes "raw and shocking". Serial covers it all with "methodical reporting" and a "thoughtful observational tone". "It's good to have it back."

History's Secret Heroes

A second ten-part edition of the stylish Second World War espionage series "History's Secret Heroes" "parachuted" onto BBC Sounds last week, said Tristram Fane Saunders in The Telegraph. As before, the show – which follows a "one spy per episode" format – is scripted by historian Alex von Tunzelmann, and narrated with "characteristic intelligence" by Helena Bonham Carter. The opening episode is "a corker", featuring clips of a 1981 interview with Ida Cook, the author of more than 100 Mills & Boon novels, who (with her sister Louise) helped dozens of Jewish families to escape Nazi Germany in the 1930s. "I never had a husband," she says. "I never had a car, I never had a television set, I never even had a washing machine, but it's been a marvellous life."

Who Replaced Avril Lavigne?

Celebrity-hosted podcasts are often a bit flat because "the stars involved don't do the behind-the-scenes work on their presenting, and are too cautious about their careers to do anything other than gush", said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. But "Miss Me?", by lifelong friends Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver, is not one of these. Their show is relaxed, super-honest – and "laugh-out-loud funny". Oliver, a London-based TV presenter, takes on more of the hosting role, while pop star Allen, who lives in Brooklyn, supplies "intimate and hilarious" anecdotes. (Sample: once, when a rapper she was sleeping with asked her about her liposuction scars, she was so embarrassed, she told him they were the result of a hip replacement.) It's really two shows in one: on Mondays the pair chat about what's on their minds or in the news, then on Thursdays they answer listeners' questions. "Topics arrive and are dismissed, talked around, then recalled; huge diversions are made into other areas." It’s a bit messy and a "complete hoot".

Finally! A Show About Women That Isn't Just a Thinly Veiled Aspirational Nightmare

When launching a new podcast, you need to come up with a memorable title that also trips off the tongue, said Fiona Sturges in the FT. It seems the creators of "Finally! A Show About Women That Isn't Just a Thinly Veiled Aspirational Nightmare" "didn't get the memo – or, more likely, they ignored it". But never mind, because the podcast itself has an "understated yet distinctive charm". Produced by Jane Marie, of "This American Life", and Joanna Solotaroff, of "2 Dope Queens", it is comprised of half-hour episodes that follow a day in the life of various American women. We hear from sky-diving octogenarian Jean Ketcham from Minnesota; Valerie June, a "velvet-voiced" country-soul singer from Memphis; and Hillary Branyik, from Seattle, who gets "up with the lark" each day to work at a fish market, among others. "It's a series of sweet, funny and fascinating self-portraits", and is warmly recommended.

A Muslim & A Jew Go There

It has become a podcasting cliché to have hosts from "opposite sides of the fence creating a safe space for civil discussion", said Fiona Sturges in the FT. The newest offering in this vein is "A Muslim & A Jew Go There", featuring the comedian and author of "Jews Don't Count", David Baddiel, and Sayeeda Warsi, the Tory peer and author of "The Enemy Within: A Tale of Muslim Britain". Rather than the last squeeze of a "close to exhausted formula", their podcast feels like "a necessary show of friendship and understanding" in febrile times. In the first episode, the pair discuss the language of racism, from the words "Islamophobia" and "antisemitism" to the slogan "From the river to the sea". What's striking so far is "how much Warsi and Baddiel agree on; the test will be what happens when their opinions diverge".

Three Million

Kavita Puri's "Three Million" is "the most thought-provoking history series I have heard in months, possibly years", said Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times. In Britain, the Bengal famine is remembered – if at all – as a stain on the reputation of Winston Churchill. The wartime prime minister was slow to take the crisis seriously, and refused requests for food aid from the British colonial government. However, the focus of Puri's series (on BBC Sounds and Radio 4) is not on the failed response to the famine, and the ways in which that worsened the crisis, but on the three million killed by it. "Eighty years on, there is no museum, memorial or monument to those mostly impoverished, nameless dead." Thanks to vivid accounts from people who were children at the time, the period "emerges not as something distant and dusty but vital living history". This is an "intellectually rigorous, emotionally resonant and elegantly made series. I wholeheartedly recommend it."

Law and Disorder

"I always enjoy hearing lawyers argue because the world is becoming ever more chaotically disputatious anyway – and at least they're trained to do it properly," said Jenny McCartney in The Spectator. "Law and Disorder" is a lively new podcast from three of Britain's legal luminaries, Helena Kennedy, Charlie Falconer and Nicholas Mostyn (don't confuse their podcast with a US series with the same name). The trio review the news (such as the war in Gaza, the Rwanda Bill and the latest from the Post Office scandal) through a legal lens, engaging in "feisty debate" rather than seeking "ponderous consensus". Listeners will certainly leave "better informed than when they started. They may also be more worried about Britain's direction of travel."

Close Readings: On Satire

I have been "completely beguiled" by "Close Readings: On Satire", from the London Review of Books, said James Marriott in The Times. The podcast, which kicks off with an exploration of Erasmus's "In Praise of Folly", is hosted by Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell. Both are fellows of All Souls who "generally speak English rather than academic gobbledegook", and they have "a lovely chemistry. The younger Bucknell is teasingly withering. Burrow is self-deprecating and silly. Both are unpompous and winningly alive to the absurdity of academic life" – and together they've made a "fascinating" series.

June: Voice of a Silent Twin

The strange and harrowing case of the "silent twins" has long fascinated the public, said Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times. Born to Barbadian parents who moved to west Wales in the 1970s, identical twins June and Jennifer Gibbons had speech impediments which led them, ultimately, to refuse to talk to anyone except each other. They retreated into a private world, writing novels together and dreaming of becoming authors. In their teens, however, they went on a crime spree; they were convicted of petty theft and arson (for setting an empty building on fire), and, aged 19, they were committed to Broadmoor. There they remained for 11 years. Their story – and that of the "staggering miscarriage of justice" they suffered – has been told many times before. What sets apart the new BBC Sounds podcast "June: Voice of a Silent Twin" is that it features the surviving twin, June, "falteringly" telling her own "desperately sad story" for the first time. "The result is a compassionate, deftly made and gripping" nine-part series. Even if you think you already know all about the Gibbons twins, "give this a listen".

Untold: The Retreat

"Many of us have the vague idea that meditation is, if not the lifechanging path that its biggest fans claim, then at least nothing worse than benign woo-woo," said James Marriott in The Times. But "Untold: The Retreat", a superb new Financial Times podcast, presents evidence that it can actually be very dangerous, if taken to obsessive excess. The series, made by the "wonderfully named Madison Marriage, whose haunting RP tones are well fitted to these unhappy tales of upper-middle-class seekers gone awry", includes harrowing accounts of hallucinations, psychosis – and worse. "I was gripped."

Self Help

"Podcasts aimed at self-improvement, whether through meditation techniques, diets or new exercise regimes, are ten-a-penny and, for this grouchy listener, frequently irritating," said Fiona Sturges in the Financial Times. So it was good to discover that "Self Help", a new five-parter from the audio artist, writer and presenter Scottee, is (despite its title) emphatically "not one of those". "Self Help" is a "delightful" series in which Scottee discusses his long experience of mental illness. The podcast is billed as "a collection of thoughts, feelings, intuitions and ideas from a life spent clinically mad", and experienced through the lens of Scottee's "class, queerness and neurodiversity". The listener joins him on long walks around rural Scotland, sometimes in thunder and rain, as he delivers compelling monologues with "thoughtfulness, candour and lots of laughter". It's a "warmly intimate" and "absorbing" experience.

Child

India Rakusen is the journalist behind two well-received podcast series: "28ish Days Later" (about the menstrual cycle) and "Witch" (about witches). Now she's back, said Anna Leszkiewicz in The New Statesman, with a third "interesting, meandering" series – titled "Child". She talks to cell biologist Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz about the earliest days of life, when a jumble of cells known as the embryoblast divides into the "epiblast" ("good word!") and the "hypoblast". And she talks to the child psychotherapist Graham Music, who likens a foetus to a cosmonaut that takes over the spaceship of the mother's body. "It isn't like the mother is building the foetus – they're building each other." Rakusen is "guided by sheer curiosity, and has a magpie-like instinct for interesting details". The series (on Radio 4 and as a podcast on BBC Sounds) is a "delightful mosaic of trivia. Lean in close to each fact, thought and observation. Then step back, and see the picture that emerges."

Things Fell Apart

The first season of Jon Ronson's podcast "Things Fell Apart" – exploring the history of various culture wars – was "superb", said James Marriott in The Times. Yet I was sceptical about the prospect of a second. Is there really anything more to add? The answer, of course, is yes. In these episodes, Ronson focuses less on the background and more on "real people's stories" – those of the victims and perpetrators of the culture wars as well as "bystanders" caught in the crossfire. We hear from an ordinary family who went on a camping holiday only to be mistaken for dangerous left-wing activists; from a student disciplined for causing "emotional harm" after asking another student to leave a party. Ronson is "sympathetic, wise and funny" – but combative and forensic when he needs to be. It's an "exhilarating" listen.

Classy

Jonathan Menjivar's eight-part podcast "Classy" is a "witty exploratory tour of the unease and shame provoked by differences in social status", said Jenny McCartney in The Spectator. Menjivar grew up in a working-class Latino family in Southern California, the son of factory workers. But now "the cultural water in which he swims has changed": he lives on the East Coast, has a job in media, and fears that his taste for expensive cashmere socks makes him look like a "rich asshole".

His "riveting and occasionally moving" podcast examines how "class discomfort" leads so many of us – rich and poor – to "expend energy on evading negative judgements". In one episode, Jarvis Cocker, who famously skewered "posh people slumming it" in Pulp's song "Common People", turns up to "talk with endearing honesty about the culture shock of transforming from unemployed Sheffield songwriter to London pop star".

The Pirate of Prague

Podcasting has become "almost dementedly preoccupied" with scammers, catfishers and the like, said James Marriott in The Times. But even if you feel as if you've had enough of the genre, I'd suggest making an exception for "The Pirate of Prague", about the Czech-born financial fraudster Viktor Kožený.

As a teenager, Kožený faked a talent for physics and "charmed a visiting professor into inviting him to live in America". He then seduced the professor's wife, lied his way into Harvard, and schmoozed a job at a London investment bank – the springboard for a career, back in the Czech Republic, in espionage, politics and international financial scams. It's a gripping tale, told with wit and brio. "Nobody is more jaded by tales of outlandish scams than I am, but 'The Pirate of Prague' revived my failing stamina."

The Second Victim: Daisy's Story

"I am only alive because a man made the decision to rape a child in his home, and therefore I have lost everything," explains Daisy, the pseudonymous narrator of "The Second Victim: Daisy's Story". We are never told Daisy's real identity – for good reason, said Fiona Sturges in the Financial Times. But her "powerful" podcast is both a "triumph of storytelling and of one woman's efforts to come to terms with her own story".

In the eight-part series, Daisy describes her early life as a black child growing up with adoptive white parents in an English village; we then follow her on her quest to find her birth mother, Grace, who was raped, aged 13, by a man whose children she was babysitting. Their first meeting unleashes a torrent of emotions – "anxiety, confusion, validation, isolation" – and signals a switch in the series' focus from Daisy's life story to her quest for justice, as the "second victim" of that crime. It is rare to find a podcast "so visceral, intimate and full of emotional complexity".

Looking for more podcast recommendations? Take your pick from our round-up of the best true crime and political shows.