Each month, Podcast Review’s staff offers recommendations on the best new podcasts to listen to. Here are our favorites for January:
We became fans of The Dream after listening to its startlingly good first season about the dangers of pyramid schemes and MLMs. We stuck with them through a shaky second outing about the wellness industry, and enjoyed their third, a indictment of the life coaching industry. But after a long break, host Jane Marie has returned to reinvent her own format. The Dream will now be a weekly interview show about the bad actors sabotaging aspiration in the United States, and will no doubt develop on the themes set out in previous seasons. The show’s gradual shift in tone makes it clear that Marie felt constrained by the documentary series format. This reinvention — very fitting for a show about the ‘American Dream’ — should give her new creative freedom that may breathe life into this fan favorite.
Since April 20, 2023, every Sherlock Holmes story has been in the public domain. While we’ve had numerous adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle’s masterwork over the years, including several films and a cult television show, it’s about time that podcasting got a taste of the action. Noiser recently launched a series of Sherlock Holmes short stories, narrated by Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville. Each story is split into three 30-minute episodes, complete with gentle sound production and excellent narration from Bonneville.
Many first-time readers of Sherlock Holmes stories are surprised to find them a little spooky, even scary; “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” for instance, could easily be filed under H for Horror. Compact and effective, these tales are perfect for a chilly winter night after a long day. Try “The Red-Headed League” for a story that’s a bit easier to digest before bed. With a fantastic narrator and legendary source material, it’s little surprise this podcast already has fans ravenous for the next episode to drop.
From The Real Carrie Jade to Blood on the Dance Floor, there’s been plenty of fantastic Irish true crime released in the last few years. The trend continues with the latest season of the BBC’s Cover, hosted by Mark Horgan. The series investigates the actions of an undercover British Army Agent, the infamous “Stakeknife,” during the so-called Troubles in Ireland.
Stakeknife’s mission was to find and kill alleged informers for the IRA, but he turned out to be an informer himself and destroyed dozens of lives during his deception. Horgan is joined by Séamus Kearney, a man from Belfast, whose brother Michael was murdered by Stakeknife for revealing a small piece of information about weaponry. The irony of this death — a non-informant killed for informing by a real informer pretending to be an IRA asset — is the painful heart of this multi-part series. That these events are only a generation past is chilling to consider. Listen to Stakeknife for a sad and complicated audio documentary that charts a part of history highly relevant to current events.
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