Each month, Podcast Review’s staff offers recommendations on the best new podcasts to listen to. Here are our favorites for September:
The idea behind Strike Force Five is for the major late night hosts to generate ad revenue to donate to their striking writers and crew members. Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver chat, with Kimmel seemingly functioning as the first mic. They tell stories and have coded conversations where they try not to reveal whatever celebrity they’re talking about. It’s probably the most famous people who have ever hosted a podcast together, and features ad reads mostly for celebrity liquors.
Brendan James and Noah Kulwin return for the fourth season of their acclaimed deep history project. After covering the war in Iraq, U.S.-Cuba relations, and the war in Korea, the podcast turns its attention to Afghanistan, with the ambitious goal of covering the 50 years between early CIA activity in the country to the “end” of the war in Afghanistan two years ago. As always, the series is enormous, propulsive, and rage-inducing. It also intersects nicely with Blowback’s first season, offering a comprehensive history of the multi-decade supposed war on terror.
Chameleon is back with its latest season, Gallery of Lies, a six-episode romp into a world of deceit, fraud, and the potential for redemption. In the first episode, host Bijan Stephen obtains unprecedented access to Helge Achenbach, a disgraced art dealer who was once the toast of the Swiss and German art scenes. Achenbach seemed like the real deal, and had the ears of renowned artists like Richter, Koons, and Chipperfield. But after defrauding several clients of millions, he was sentenced to six years in 2015. Gallery of Lies attempts to untangle the riddle of Auchenbach, one of the “most famous criminals you’ve never heard of.” From the creators of Wild Boys and Dr. Dante, the series is a glimpse into the darker side of the art world and is sure to enthrall.
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