With the year almost behind us, our editorial team is starting to think about our favorite podcasts of the last twelve months. Some of our top picks include shows from our monthly recommendation lists – and based on the response we get from these articles, some of your favorite shows were discovered here, too. If you have an opinion on what shows we should include next month, don't hesitate to comment on our new Instagram page.
Pleasure People
Who would have ever guessed that our third most popular article is our Best Sex Podcasts list? Well, maybe that doesn't come as much of a surprise. Everyone wants to know how to have more intimacy, more pleasure. Why not find the answer to better lovemaking in a podcast? (Just make sure to plug your headphones in...)
A new sex podcast on our radar is Pleasure People, hosted by veteran sex educator Danielle Bezalel. The 6-part audio series is a groundbreaking study about pleasure involving a thousand people over a three week period. Pleasure People follows eight participants of a first-of-its-kind intervention study that tracked pleasure's impact on sleep, stress, relationship satisfaction, and other key markers of happiness.
Heart
Apple Originals have a pattern. They either explore scammers and true crime, like in the cases of Unicorn Girl, Scamtown, and Easy Money, or they delve into compelling family mysteries, like in Extrasensory, Adrift, and Magnificent Jerk. Their latest podcast, Heart, falls into the latter category. The series tells the story of Sonny and Terry, two strangers who shared the same heart. But despite being different people, with different histories, they died the same way. Even more strangely, they shared the same wife. Confused yet?
Sonny Graham’s fate changed when he reached out to the widow of his heart donor. For a while, things seemed better. Miraculous, even. But after his death, Sonny's family are still reeling about the strange circumstances that led to the end. We'll publish a full review of the series next month.
abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast
This Signal Award-winning independent podcast recently wrapped its final season, and just in time for the Midterm Elections. abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast has, for the last for seasons, guided listeners through immersive audio fantasies that recreate host Blake Pfeil's stories of exploring abandoned places across the country. We've been fans of the show for a long time; the way that these highly-crafted stories weave questions about history and economics into imaginative sonic landscapes.
Season four opened with a live recording that won Gold for 'Best Live Podcast Recording of an Individual Episode' at the Signal Awards. In addition to celebrating hyper-local audio craft, abandoned expanded its scope for the last season by including guest hosts like Atlas Obscura co-founder Dylan Thuras, Appalachian storyteller Stev Hull-Allen, and astrologist Isabel Wilder. This is a show that will appeal to fans of storytelling and experimental audio, so don't let its departure from regular programming prevent you from tuning in.
