5 reflective podcasts you may have missed this fall

This fall brought a bounty of funny, educational and insightful podcasts that helped podcast fans power through the autumn season. They include hilarious expert advice on life's strangest questions and exposes on both New York's finest and American college campuses.

'How to Do Everything' (NPR)

In September, NPR launched a new season of "How to Do Everything," a podcast hosted by Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag of "Wait, Wait…Don't Tell Me!". The show initially ran as a segment from 2011 to 2016, where the pair hilariously answered some of their fans' strange but pressing questions with help from experts. Chillag and Danforth aimed to "answer mundane questions with the most overqualified people possible," said NPR. This season included "memorization tips from a soap opera legend, a mayor in Italy bringing sunlight to his town for the first time in centuries and something called The Nasal Ranger." (Listen on NPR, Apple Podcasts or Spotify)

'Empire City: The Untold Origin Story of the NYPD' (Wondery, Crooked Media and PushBlack)

Audio documentarian, professor and activist Chenjerai Kumanyika hosts this deep dive into the "rise of modern American policing" through the lens of the New York Police Department. That enforcement arm has the "distinction of being the largest and among the oldest municipal law enforcement agencies in the United States," said Vulture. In the eight-part series, Kumanyika shares personal stories and historical facts to interrogate the "deeply checkered history" of the institution, "threaded together in his signature propulsive oratory style." When the NYPD does something oppressive, "a lot of people on my side of the political spectrum will say it's working as designed," Kumanyika said to The New York Times. "But I think that's actually letting power off the hook." (Listen on iHeart, Apple Podcasts or Spotify)

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'Noble' (Wavland and Campside Media)

The recent crime mystery podcast "unfolds like just such a horror movie — but a tasteful one, driven by the curiosity and respect of its reporter-host," the Atlanta-based journalist Shaun Raviv said The New Yorker. The show returns to the scene of a shocking discovery at a family-run crematorium in small-town Noble, Georgia, in 2002: "Dozens of dead bodies, unburned and unburied, scattered around a sixteen-acre property like scrap lumber." The story of what unfolded at the crematorium is as "compelling as it is repulsive." The host "sets the right tone — direct and devoid of melodrama, with just the right amount of narrative context and perspective." (Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify)

'Groupies: Women of the Sunset Strip From the Pill to Punk' (KCRW and Golden Teapot Productions)

The new season of the music podcast series "Lost Notes" highlights Hollywood's rock scene during the '60s and '70s through the "perspective of three successive generations of superfans," Vulture said. The eight-part series follows when the "freewheeling counterculture scene met the widespread availability of the birth-control pill" and how that "transitioned into glam rock and punk."

Dylan Tupper Rupert, part of the founding team of the Bandsplain podcast, hosts this season, with critic and journalist Jessica Hopper, who led Lost Notes's second season, returning as an executive producer. The point of "Lost Notes: Groupies" is to "center the stories of these women, of their own teen ambitions and their dreams of having a place in the music they loved and lived for," Hopper wrote on her Substack. Expect to hear from figures who lived through the scene, like "Pamela Des Barres, Courtney Love, Kid Congo Powers and Creem co-founder Jaan Uhelszki," said Vulture. (Listen on NPR, Apple Podcasts or Spotify)

'College Uncovered' (GBH)

The latest season of this college expose was released this fall. In a "world focused on getting in," this collaboration between GBH News and The Hechinger Report "pulls back the ivy on American higher education, exposing the problems, pitfalls and risks," said NPR. The first episode of the season homes in on the political tensions ramping up on college campuses over the last few years. "Divisive protests, police crackdowns and a chilling backlash against free speech are among the reasons that a growing number of students say they don't feel welcome on some college campuses," said The Hechinger Report. (Listen on NPR, Apple Podcasts or Spotify)