Best podcasts to enjoy in 2025

Threshold

"Threshold" is a terrific podcast about the natural world, notable for its "exquisite and imaginative sound design", said James Marriott in The Times. Host Amy Martin explores questions such as: 'What sound does a frozen lake make on a sunny day?" (The answer, to my ears, is a "sort of squeaky, bloopy, howling noise like the ghost of a sad spaniel trapped in a tunnel".) Elsewhere, we meet the treehopper, which communicates by sending "waves of vibrations through its legs into the stems and leaves of plants", and listen to the sound of a coral reef: a static crackle of "claw clicks" made by snapping shrimp. This is a "commendably imaginative" series – and if it "gets a little precious" at times, "well, sometimes whimsy is the price you pay for interesting thoughts".

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics

At this time of year, when the days are cold and the evenings dark, "I resort to comfort listening", said Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman; and lately, I have been snuggling up with "Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics" (currently being given a re-run on Radio 4, with all episodes available on BBC Sounds). Like "the history teacher you wish you'd had", Haynes brings "the classical world to life with a mix of close textual analysis and irreverent comedy". Each episode examines a single figure from antiquity, either real or mythological, from the familiar (Cleopatra, Homer) to the lesser-known (Martial, the satirical poet whose work "blends lofty musings on the state of Rome with filthy jokes"). Aided by assorted guests, Haynes "unravels what the ancient sources actually tell us, and makes her audience fall in love with her subjects – and with classics in general".

Cement City

If you are in the market for a documentary podcast, check out last year's excellent "Cement City", said Reggie Ugwu in The New York Times. In an effort to find out what is "ailing small towns in America's one-time manufacturing hubs", journalist Jeanne Marie Laskas and producer Erin Anderson moved to one – "as in bought a house and made friends with the neighbours". Their series, based on their three years of living in and reporting from Donora, Pennsylvania, is an "extraordinarily immersive portrait of day-to- day life in a troubled but irreducibly vibrant community".

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At Your Own Peril

Lucy Easthope spent more than two decades working in emergency planning and disaster management – plane crashes, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, fires, the Covid pandemic – and in 2022 she wrote a well-received book ("When the Dust Settles") about what she'd learnt, said Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman. Now, she has made an excellent series for Radio 4, "At Your Own Peril" (available on BBC Sounds), which explores the history of risk: "what it is, how humans calculate and respond to it, and what we can do to manage it in the face of existential threats such as climate change, nuclear war and the rise of artificial intelligence". It's not the sunniest of subject matters, but Easthope counters the bleakness with "fascinating forays" into related areas. She invites Mary Beard to discuss Roman gambling games, for example, and Nate Silver shares his insights on predicting elections. "Yes, this series will terrify you. But isn't it better to understand what we're facing?"

The Spy Who

The appetite for tales of espionage shows no signs of waning, said Fiona Sturges in the FT, with "Slow Horses", "Black Doves" and "The Day of the Jackal" all hits on TV. Fans of those shows should try "The Spy Who", hosted by actors Indira Varma and Raza Jaffrey, which is now in its 11th series. Its subjects include Klaus Fuchs, who sold US secrets to the Soviets; Willie Carlin, MI5's top spy inside Sinn Féin; and Ian Fleming's wartime exploits in Norway. I normally recoil from dramatised segments in podcasts, owing to their "often overzealous acting"; here, though, the hosts do all the voices, and the "result is a show that makes you feel as if you're being read a particularly action- packed bedtime story, albeit one with immersive sound design" (headphones recommended) and "an elegantly understated score".

Human Intelligence

"Human Intelligence", a new series on Radio 4 by the novelist Naomi Alderman, is shaping up to be a landmark piece of audio, said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. Made with the Open University, there will eventually be 50 episodes – each 15 minutes long and dedicated to a single brilliant thinker and their ideas. The series kicked off with five people whom Alderman terms "disruptors": Socrates, George Washington, Martin Luther, Malcolm X, Mary Wollstonecraft. Next up, it's "teachers", from Diogenes to Michael Faraday. The script is "packed with information without being too dense, and her full-of-smiles delivery ensures our engagement". To my taste, Alderman's series is "far more stimulating than Neil MacGregor's A History of the World in 100 Objects, but poised to become just as seminal".

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.

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."

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".

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."

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.

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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)".

Miss Me?

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".

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