Each month, Podcast Review’s staff offers recommendations on the best new podcasts to listen to. Here are our favorites for May:
Some people don’t care about money stuff. This podcast isn’t for them. Bloomberg’s Matt Levine and Katie Greifeld have teamed up to launch an audio version of Levine’s popular column. Money Stuff is a weekly podcast that covers markets, finance and hot gossip. Wait — stock gossip. Anyway.
It’s lazy to call too many shows “essential listening.” Do we really need another business podcast in our lives? But Money Stuff is just what the genre needed. The show is smart, funny and topical. Levine and Greifeld know their bonds from their options — and you can’t say that about everyone. Add it to your workday playlist.
When The New York Times launches a new podcast, we listen. Their latest, The Interview, needs little explanation but perhaps a bit of context. While the Gray Lady has made audio waves in news, culture, and the arts, The Times had yet to tap into two of the biggest draws in podcasting: celebrities and great interviews. So they launched The Interview, a weekly forty-five minute show that probes famous people who are actually quite interesting, such as Anne Hathaway. There’s always the risk that formats like these might descend into naval gazing. But in the hands of accomplished journalists David Marchese and Lulu Garcia-Navarro, we see great potential.
Death of An Artist returns with a new season hosted by writer and podcaster Katy Hessel. Hessel became known for The Great Women Artists, a show about the women who have been erased from art history. It’s a fitting resume. The excellent first season of Death of an Artist explored the life and fate of Ana Mendeita, a radical artist who was largely forgotten after her tragic death in 1985.
Season two of the show is all about Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock. The artists were darlings of the post-war art world, until Pollock’s death in 1956. The story of their relationship — and Krasner’s career after losing her husband — is a compelling story of love, alcoholism, and what it means to cement legacy.
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