Each month, Podcast Review’s staff offers recommendations on the best new podcasts to listen to. Here are our favorites for February:
In our round-up of the best British podcasts you should be listening to right now, I recommended a show called Ghost Story that captivated me for a curious reason. The host, Tristan, didn’t merely report this spooky true crime story; his own family became involved. Ghost Story‘s twist made a saturated genre feel novel. At last, fresh material for true crime fans and weary podcast journalists alike. I was immediately reminded of Tristan’s tale when I heard the trailer for Crook County, a new co-production from iHeartPodcasts and TenderfootTV, but not because of any supernatural elements. This true crime podcast is about a hitman for the Chicago mafia, Ken “The Kid” Tekiela. Crook County isn’t just an eight-part series about Ken’s rise through the ranks of organized crime while living a double life as a firefighter. It is also hosted by Kyle Tekiela, his son. Listen to the first episode on February 11.
You may have seen Dan Rosen or Brian Park on one of your social media apps. The pair have made their names doing comedy skits about modern dating, the “culture”, and why big brands spell their names so weird. But deep down, Rosen and Park have slightly higher ambitions than taking constant swipes at the guys incapable of asking women questions on dates. No, they also want to talk about art. And fast-casual dining. And other “middlebrow” things that have become status symbols for younger millennials, like Aesop handwash and Sally Rooney novels.
Currently festering in my late twenties, I am the target market for this “pseudo-intellectual” podcast, and can thoroughly recommend it to other pretentious city-dwellers. We who audibly lament the Enlightenment split that forever separated high- and low-brow culture, though secretly thank the stars that it did, for what would we do without the chilled natural wine and Paul Mescal movies that fill the void in the middle? Middlebrow is a podcast for people like me. If this review made you feel seen, it’s probably a podcast for you, too.
History podcast Face-Off returns with a timely series about U.S/China relations, including how these two world leaders came to develop such a fraught relationship. This eight-part series is hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jane Perlez, a former New York Times Beijing bureau chief. With her co-host Rana Mitter of the Harvard Kennedy School, Perlez explores the cultural shifts taking place in both countries, and tries to predict the outcome of growing tensions between President Trump and President Xi Jinping. Face-Off will appeal to fans of quality journalism without sensationalism, the type of in-depth news stories reported by BBC World Service and PBS. The first episode launches on February 11.
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