You need only look at the last century of film and literature to see how deeply the road trip is embedded in the American imagination. Books like On the Road helped cement it as a coming-of-age trope, while movies like Planes, Trains and Automobiles capture the maddening logistics of long-distance travel — headaches that even self-driving cars are unlikely to fix.
Ask anyone who’s driven across the country (maybe for college, a job, or a relationship) and they’ll probably recall their road trips with equal parts frustration and fondness. The empty stretches of time, the unplanned stops. These are the very things that make the journey both painful and memorable.
Once upon a time, passing the hours meant conversation or flipping a cassette tape. Now, podcasts have become a road trip must-have alongside a map and spare tire. So, what podcasts are best suited for long distance travel? Crowd pleasers. Provocative subjects, but not the sort that start arguments. Great storytelling, of course.
The shows in this list are not travel podcasts. Rather, I selected them as podcasts that don’t merely help you pass time but really make the most of it. From true crime and dark fiction to heartfelt storytelling, these shows are perfectly suited to hours of solo or group listening.
From The New York Times and Serial Productions, The Trojan Horse Affair is an eight-part investigative series that our own Jake Greenberg called “furiously compelling.” It focuses on the authorship of an allegedly fraudulent letter that brought down the leadership of a group of predominantly Muslim public schools in Birmingham, England, in 2014. From episode one, the story is already unbelievable. By the end of the series, you may need a reminder to close your jaw. Frustrating, compelling, and utterly bingeable, The Trojan Horse Affair is an unmissable series.
The investigation is conducted by then-budding journalist Hamza Syed and S-Town creator Brian Reed, an unlikely duo who wrestle with journalistic ethics as much as with the mystery itself. As Greenberg writes, “The podcast’s momentum comes from the investigation’s expansiveness, the notion that the story is getting perpetually bigger one interview at a time. Without delivering any grand revelations, The Trojan Horse Affair pulls off its caper premise.”
The Trojan Horse Affair is a series that prompted a watershed moment for investigative podcasting, not least because of the different reactions it received from British and American journalists. While it was warmly received in the US, coverage in the UK was either hostile or non-existent. There is little doubt in my mind that we’ll return to this story in twenty years with fresh revelations. Let’s hope, given the backlash, Syed and Reed still have the enthusiasm for another series by then.
When I’m on a long journey in the car, my heart is often torn between listening to a playlist or putting on a podcast. With this next pick, Song Exploder, I don’t have choose between music or narrative. I can have both.
Song Exploder starts with a simple premise: behind every song is a story. That idea has proven so compelling that it’s become one of the most acclaimed music podcasts around, even landing a Netflix adaptation. Each episode pulls you into the creative process behind hit singles and hidden gems alike, told in the artists’ own words.
The show is the brainchild of Hrishikesh Hirway, a musician and producer whose other projects include beloved podcasts like The West Wing Weekly. But despite his musical background, Hirway rarely steps into the spotlight on Song Exploder. His distinctive editing style strips away rote narration, leaving space for immersive, atmospheric storytelling that transcends genre. Whether you’re dissecting an old favorite or discovering something new, diving into Song Exploder’s archive on a road trip is a deeply rewarding experience.
When I think of a classic road trip, I immediately picture Americana. Endless horizons, cowboys, cooking food on a grill. As an outsider, it’s easy to think of American culture through this simplistic lens. Just like the subject of this next podcast pick, culture can often become a caricature of itself — but what is the real story?
Few music icons evoke the sort of universal affection Dolly Parton commands. For more than just country music fans, Parton has become a symbol of grace, authenticity, and humor unlikely to be matched in our lifetime. Dolly Parton’s America is a seven-episode podcast about Parton’s unique brand of Americana that is still lauded as one of the best in the music genre.
The show’s success, which has been replicated but never matched, lies in its overthinking. Not many of us, other than the diehard Dolly fans, thought much about the country singer’s long and colorful career. Few personalities can convincingly warrant an entire podcast about their life – but Parton’s music, personal life, and politics make for fascinating listening.
Written and hosted by Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad, the show tells its story with masterful empathy and nuance. Coupled with an iconic soundtrack, there is little to fault in this ten-episode series — the perfect musical accompaniment to a long car journey. We dare you not to sing along.
Are you looking for a heartfelt podcast you can complete on your journey? My top choice is MOONFACE, a six-part series from James Kim that came out in 2019. The story follows Paul, a twenty-something stuck in that liminal space between who he is and who he wants to be. Living at home, working a job he doesn’t love, and struggling to come out to his Korean immigrant mother, Paul’s story is one of quiet tension and tender discovery.
The show brims with equal parts joy and ache, its emotional beats heightened by excellent dialogue, immersive sound design, and sharp, reflective writing. At its heart, MOONFACE is about communication, what’s said and left unsaid.
The series has been praised for its elegant meditation on the experience of second-generation identity, queerness, and the quiet grief of cultural distance. Touching and thoughtful without ever feeling heavy-handed, MOONFACE is the kind of story that makes a long solo car journey truly memorable.
If you want a story for your road trip with more bite, try this fiction podcast. Old Gods of Appalachia is a haunting anthology podcast that conjures the past — using horror, folklore, and gore to excavate the darkest corners of American history. The story begins with a mining explosion in the early 20th century, a catastrophe that rips through families and communities, while laying bare the brutal realities of labor struggles and racial violence.
Set in an alternate Appalachia, the series doesn’t shy away from the worst of humanity. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it’s not just about shock, either. Beneath the blood and brutality lies a thoughtful reckoning with real historical themes, rendered with precision and care. The writing is unflinching and deeply humane, allowing supernatural elements to enhance, rather than distract from, the emotional and political weight of the stories.
Compelling, eerie, and often deeply moving, Old Gods of Appalachia doesn’t take you to a dystopian future. It takes you somewhere much scarier: a past that feels all too familiar.
I recently became a fan of the NBA. Not exactly groundbreaking, and yet, this newfound fandom has clarified something for me: many of the most powerful stories are about sports. Not just the games themselves, but the people who devote their lives to them — the discipline, the obsession, the pursuit of constant improvement. Long before my basketball awakening, I was already a fan of Legacy of Speed, a well-crafted but somewhat overlooked podcast from Pushkin. It quietly has everything I love about audio: style, music, historical context, and a sense of real authenticity.
Legacy of Speed tells the story of Speed City, the 1960s San Jose State track and field program that began as a scrappy state college team and grew into a sprinting juggernaut. At the heart of it was legendary coach Bud Winter, whose unconventional training methods — deep relaxation, visualization, breathing exercises — helped athletes push beyond their physical limits. But this isn’t just a story about athletics. It’s about how runners like Tommie Smith, Lee Evans, and John Carlos transformed their success into protest, using their visibility to speak out against racial injustice, most famously at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.
Hosted by Malcolm Gladwell, Legacy of Speed is a sports podcast for people who think they don’t like sports podcasts. Unlike the breakneck game recaps of shows like The Zach Lowe Show, which can alienate casual fans or unlucky road trip companions, this series draws you in with narrative. It turns sport into something everyone can connect to: a story about belief, resistance, and achieving what once seemed impossible.
I couldn’t write a list about road trip podcasts without mentioning one of the most memorable cross-country journeys I’ve heard about in years. City of the Rails is a travel podcast unlike any I’ve heard before. When we talk about “travel,” we usually mean something at least somewhat curated — a European summer, a couple of weeks in Aspen, the kind of trip made for Instagram. But travel isn’t always a vacation, and it’s not always glamorous. For some, it becomes a way of life — messy, unpredictable, and often far from romantic. If you’ve ever seen Into the Wild, you know the type: someone who walks away from the stability of school, work, and home to chase something less tangible on the road.
That’s exactly what journalist Danelle Morton’s daughter did. She left behind her family and a comfortable life to hop freight trains across America. City of the Rails is the ten-part series that chronicles Morton’s attempt to understand why. Part investigation, part personal reckoning, the show follows her as she tracks her daughter through rail yards and boxcars, interviewing the community of travelers she meets along the way — people who’ve chosen to live outside the system, with all the danger, freedom, and hardship that comes with it.
What makes City of the Rails so compelling is that it never flattens these choices into easy answers. Instead, it listens. It gives space for complexity, for discomfort, for real stories. More memoir than travelogue, it’s a quiet marvel of a podcast; intimate, unexpected, and deeply human.
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Alice Florence Orr is a staff writer and managing editor for Podcast Review. She is a writer and freelance media strategist.