Who are you and what’s Wyrd Woman about?

I’m the author of three books, and the co-creator of Broads and Books Productions. Wyrd Woman is a show that I wrote, produced, and performed.

It’s about a woman who’s isolated herself from an increasingly terrifying outside world, and who, over the course of nine nights, experiences visions and visitations of women throughout time.

What’s the first podcast you ever listened to?

My very first podcast was something like The Daily from the New York Times – just a news show. But my first audio fiction was The Bright Sessions. I was hooked, and so impressed! The ability to tell such a rich and full story via audio really stuck with me.

Why did you decide to start podcasting in the first place?

My friend Erin and I are book nerds. And in 2018, she had the idea that we should start a book podcast. We spent months researching our niche and teaching ourselves how to do it, and in early 2019, we launched our first show, Broads and Books. We gave book recommendations on a theme, and infused the show with our strange sense of humour, resulting in lots of offbeat stories, funny tangents, and more.

We ran that show for four years, then decided to expand. We formed Broads and Books Productions in 2023, with a number of new shows under our umbrella, including Wyrd Woman.

Which podcasts do you take inspiration from?

I love a good limited series with a narrative nonfiction thread. Classy was so well done from a content and technical perspective – thoughtful, explorative, kind, and truthful in how class impacts not only our lives and futures, but our sense of self. It really hit home, echoing some of my own experiences.

In fiction, I am so inspired by the epic, funny, dark, touching show that is Midnight Burger. I also find The Silt Verses so amazing – how they work with sound to create internal and external horror in a fully imagined world is so cool!

Where did the concept for Wyrd Woman come from?

In early 2023, I was making final edits for my memoir, A Grotesque Animal. The book is about class, gender, sex, generational trauma, and more, but was initially sparked by my discovery at age 43 that I’m autistic. In the process of writing that book, I dove deep into the feeling of being different and never understanding why until middle age. In one of the sections, I did some research into key historical moments, including today, where being different, or weird, was dangerous.

And then that summer of 2023, I was feeling really scared. In the U.S., Trump was back with a vengeance. My state, Iowa, was taking a hard right turn, banning books, outlawing abortion, and, like so many other states, criminalizing being LGBTQ. I was looking at a future where Trump won again, and how these dangers would only increase. I thought about history, all the times that people had a chance to run before they were captured, hurt, or killed, and wondered if this was the time. It was terrifying.

I’d been wanting to try my hand at audio fiction. And all of these things came together into a story that crosses time and connects women who are different. I brought in characters from Viking times, the Middle Ages, the Victorian era, the USSR in the 1930s, and more, all of whom were living through terror, and who were targeted for living outside the norm. I think more than anything I was writing this for myself, a queer, disabled, deeply weird woman, to give myself hope in a dark time. And I wanted to share that with all the others like me.

You’ve also written a short story collection – Exile in Guyville – how do you decide which of your writing should be a short story and which could go on to be an audio drama? What do you think that audio can add to the art of storytelling?

I wrote the stories of Exile in Guyville in 2019, and at the time I was not yet considering audio as a storytelling mechanism. So I threw everything I had into writing.

These days, I’m still figuring out when a story will be written and when it’s audio. There’s something ineffable about what divides and dictates the two. I’m finding that if something feels inert on the page, or it’s not working in some way, it might be needing a soundscape.

In addition to Wyrd Woman, you have two other podcasts, Fuzzy Memories, and Midwest Weird. Could you tell us more about those?

Midwest Weird is an audio literary magazine featuring strange stories. Like a traditional print literary magazine, writers submit their stories or essays, and we choose the best fit. But instead of putting that story in a print magazine or online, we turn it into a podcast episode with narration and soundscape. So a story like “36 Hours in the SPAM Museum”, which would be wonderful enough as a print story, is made even more rich and strange with the author’s intonations and music and sound to enhance and punctuate. I do the sound design, and it’s such a fun and intense experience, being able to bring another writer’s weird story to light in an equally weird way. We specifically feature writers from the American Midwest, as it’s a region that is often written off as backward or boring. But as our writers show, it’s also a region of hauntings, surprises, and the uncanny.

Fuzzy Memories is pure comedy and heart. I host the show with Erin and Heath, two of the funniest people ever. And we talk about pop culture from the 1980s and 90s. Whether it’s the utter inanity of 1987’s “Jaws: The Revenge”, 1989’s cutthroat world of fast food pizza, or 1997’s actual football jail, we find the best, worst, and just bizarre. It’s an excellent laugh, and we have so much fun doing it.

Across your work there is an emphasis on the concept of “weird” – could you tell us what being weird means to you?

When I was a kid, we didn’t have much reading material at home. But my mom subscribed to a few women’s magazines, and I tore through them. And at ten years old, I understood some of the tropes and the messages being sent. So I wrote a parody, called “Weird Woman Magazine.” It was about girls and women that don’t fit in the pages of “normal” magazines. I made little business reply cards, and ads for tonics, and quizzes testing your weirdness. I thought it was hilarious and true, but no one else seemed to get it. Or maybe they just didn’t like the idea that I could be proud of being a bit strange and different.

Then, and later, and now, I always felt different. I always felt weird. I found lots of words to help me understand that difference – feminist, queer, autistic – but it all boiled down to abnormal. Atypical. Odd. And in the grand tradition of retaking ownership of words used to denigrate, like the LGBTQ community reclaiming the old slur “queer,” I often summarized those identities into a word that had been an insult, and now I tried to wear proudly.

“Weird” means seeing things others don’t. “Weird” means creating things others won’t. “Weird” is perspective, and identity, and value. It’s content, and creation, and community.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far as a podcaster?

To just teach yourself the thing, and work at it, and fail and try again. In the past I often found myself waiting for some kind of permission to start a creative project. Nobody is going to grant that, and nobody should. Podcasting is such a unique and immediate art form, one that lets creators experiment without the gatekeepers of publishing. And that’s an incredible opportunity for people willing and ready to create!

Where can the Pod Bible readers find out more about you?

You can find my books and shows at www.amyleelillard.com!

Listen to Wyrd Woman on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other popular podcast apps >>

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You can see why: people still love true crime, scammers and freaky horror-thrillers about creepy people, and it’s very handy for TV producers and commissioners that podcasters have done some of the legwork for them. But there’s something about the intimacy of podcasting as a medium that can make the whole thing more satisfying to listen to. Often, interviewees on podcasts are talking about their experiences publicly for the first time, and there’s an immediacy and vulnerability to that, which makes it compelling listening. Podcasters get all the time they need to luxuriate in nuance and detail, and give the story they’re telling the space it needs to be told. So, we’ve pulled together seven of the best podcasts that have been adapted for TV right here.

Limetown

This scripted fiction pod was made into a show starring Stanley Tucci and Jessica Biel, which was perhaps unfairly cancelled after a single season, so if you want the full, creepy, atmospheric story of what’s going on at a neuroscience research centre in Tennessee. A 911 call draws police to the gates, but the facility stays locked – until three days later, when a pyre and a dead body are found, and 300 people are missing. Investigative reporter Lia Haddock goes on the hunt for clues. Listen now >>

Dr Death

The first series of this one was a proper blockbuster that told the story of Christopher Duntsch, a doctor who presented himself as a wunderkind of neurosurgery but who injured 31 people and killed two with his procedures. Later series looked at a chemotherapy-mad oncologist and a fraudulent thoracic surgeon who kept experimenting with synthetic tracheas. It’s properly nightmarish stuff, explored with a level of creeping dread and alarm which will stay with you. Listen now >>

Dirty John

If Dr Death was a blockbuster, the LA Times’ Dirty John was the Star Wars to its Jaws, the Avengers: Endgame to its Titanic. Debra Newell met John Michael Meehan on an online dating website, and he seemed like a catch: charming, good looking, had his life together. But Meehan was not the man he appeared to be. To say too much would ruin the whole thing, but it’s a twisty, deeply unpredictable story which reaches a wild climax which, depending on your view, will feel either like just desserts or a frustrating chance at justice missed. Listen now >>

Song Exploder

For a podcast that felt like the kind of thing only podcasting could do justice to – musicians breaking down the process of writing and recording their biggest hits, stripping down a song to its bare bones before putting it back together again – the TV version that turned up on Netflix did it great justice. Whereas the Netflix series has two seasons, pretty much everyone’s been on the podcast over more than 250 podcast episodes, from Foo Fighters to Sampha and Paramore to New Order. Listen now >>

Lore

Another one that tickles whatever part of your brain it is that likes sitting around a campfire listening to spooky stories, Lore tells true tales which lean toward the unsettling, the inexplicable and the mordaunt. There’s a delicacy and strange power to host Aaron Mahnke’s coolly underplayed narration, which makes the stranger-than-fiction stories all the more bone-chilling. The Amazon Prime series based on it looked at lobotomies, werewolves and haunted houses. Listen now >>

The Shrink Next Door

Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd and Kathryn Hahn all starred in the Apple TV+ adaptation of this psychological thriller of a true story about a psychiatrist who manages to inveigle his way into his clients’ lives and help himself to anything he likes. The tone isn’t quite true crime; it’s more like a relationship drama, with celebrity shrink ‘Ike’ Herschkopf and his biddable subject Marty Markowitz becoming bound tighter and tighter together over years of manipulation. Listen now >>

Can I Tell You a Secret?

Netflix has just announced an adaptation of Sirin Kale’s investigation into a mystery that gripped Northwich in the mid-noughties. Over a decade, dozens of apparently random women were sent the same message: “can I tell you a secret?” This mysterious person would then spread rumours of infidelities, which spiralled into real life fights and fall-outs. Kale tries to find the cyberstalker at the centre of it all, and speaks to the women whose lives he made a misery. In the end, things are far more complicated than they seem. Listen now >>

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Whilst you could get them some equipment – microphones or headphones – but you always run the risk of getting the wrong one. So my suggestion is to follow the lovely Icelandic tradition, and give them a podcast-related book. There are loads of books based on podcasts or by podcasters, and the best thing is – they are super simple to wrap too!

So if you’re after books based on podcasts, here are eleven of the best.

Sh**ged. Married. Annoyed.
by Chris & Rosie Ramsey

The husband and wife have been chatting about almost everything on their chart-topping podcast for nearly five years now, and they’ve committed their conversations to paper too. Sh**ged. Married. Annoyed by Chris & Rosie Ramsey goes through “the ups and downs and ins and outs of love, sex and relationships”. Author Daisy May Cooper said she “Laughed ’til I cried reading this. An absolute triumph!”. Find out more >>

The Rest Is History: The Official Book from the Makers of the Hit Podcast
By Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook

Released earlier this year, The Rest Is History is a great addition to the podcast from historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. It gives you a whistle-stop tour through the past by answering questions such as ‘did the Trojan War actually happen?’ and ‘how did a hair appointment almost blow Churchill’s cover?’. This is also a great present for history fans! Find out more >>

Diary of a CEO
by Steven Barlett

Steven Barlett’s podcast is consistently one of the most popular podcasts in the UK, so when he released his companion book earlier this year it was big news. The Diary of a CEO: The 33 Laws of Business, Marketing and Life is partly based on interviews from his show, and promises to teach the reader principles ‘rooted in psychology and behavioral science’ that can apply to any industry. Find out more >>

What’s That Lady Doing?
by Lou Sanders

The host of Cuddle Club is a regular face on television and a regular voice on podcasts, but this step into literature is a new medium for her. And it’s worth saying that What’s That Lady Doing? shows a new side of Lou in an incredibly sincere memoir. As one review said “A memoir with this much rape and alcoholism in it has absolutely no business being so funny. But it is fucking hilarious.” Find out more >>

From Gay to Ze
By Lotte Jeffs and Stu Oakley

Lotte Jeffs and Stu Oakley broke new audio-ground with their first podcast, Some Families, which talked about the logistics of LGBTQ+ parenting. Their book The Queer Parent: Everything You Need to Know From Gay to Ze breaks literary ground as the first LGBTQ+ parenting book to ever be published by a major author. As the writers said to us earlier this year “Isn’t that insane?”. Find out more >>

It’s A Continent
by Chinny Ukata and Astrid Madimba

Chinny Ukata and Astrid Madimba educate and entertain listeners about the history of Africa with their podcast It’s A Continent. The book follows in its footsteps, appreciating the identity of each nation and exploring key historical moments that have shaped the continent, in an easily digestible, satirical (and shady) format. I was super excited to see the mention of Pod Bible in the bio at the start because we featured the podcast as a great women’s history podcast way back in 2021! Find out more >>

Adnan’s Story: The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial
By Rabia Chaudry

Serial is often credited with starting the first podcast boom – it has won every major award for broadcasting, including the first-ever Peabody awarded to a podcast. The epitome of the true crime genre, it is steeped in its own controversy. Rabia Chaudry’s book delves into the case on a much wider level, offers new content and evidence, and questions aspects that were only touched on – or not even reported – in the podcast. Find out more >>

How To Fail
By Elizabeth Day

Another hugely popular podcast, there are twelve whole seasons of How To Fail to catch up on. Elizabeth Day has spoken to hundreds of people about their failures and what it taught them. The book shines the light more on the author and is described as ‘part memoir, part manifesto’. This is a great one to give someone so they can start their new year on a positive – or learn to embrace the negative. Find out more >>

Welcome to Night Vale
by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor

Whilst the Welcome To Night Vale podcast is in the style of a radio show, the book is a more traditional narrative. There are three book tie-ins to the series, and in this first, nineteen-year-old pawn shop owner Jackie Fierro is determined to uncover the mystery of “King City”. Other books in the series are It Devours! and The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home. Find out more >>

Women vs Hollywood: The Fall and Rise of Women in Film
By Helen O’Hara

Empire magazine’s ‘geek queen’, Helen O’Hara, explores women’s roles – both in front of and behind the camera – since the birth of Hollywood, how those roles are reflected within wider society and what we can do to level the playing field. The podcast and book were released as a joint venture and therefore feed into each other really well.  This book ticks the boxes for anyone who likes cinema, podcasts or books. Find out more >>

The Breakup Monologues: The Unexpected Joy of Heartbreak
By Rosie Wilby

One of our regular writers, Rosie has done the full circle from writing her book, to making her podcast, and back to writing books. The Breakup Monologues is the book that came out of her podcast of the same name, and Rosie explore the psychology of love and heartbreak by drawing on her own and others’ experiences. You can read more about the journey in our interview with her. Find out more >>

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Fiction podcasts are having a bit of a golden age! From independent podcasters creating their own stories, to the behemoths of television stepping into the game, there’s a wealth of scripted shows right now. At first look, the most popular fiction podcast lists can seem dominated by U.S. companies like QCODE and Wondery, who bring A-List celebrity names and big budgets to their Blockbuster-style show. But we also have some fantastic fiction podcasts produced in the UK and Republic of Ireland that are making waves worldwide, and setting trends that other shows are closely following.

So here are nine of the best UK and ROI fiction podcasts, that I think are definitely worth your listening time:

The Magnus Archives

Probably the biggest fiction podcast to come out of the UK, The Magnus Archives is a horror/paranormal extravaganza, centring on the mysterious Magnus Institute and the eerie, inexplicable investigations they’ve uncovered. The central character, The Archivist, takes us through these cases with his audio statements, but as the seasons progress, the story develops into a much wider narrative tale. The main show ended in 2021 after five seasons, but there’s plenty to sink your teeth into – and now is the best time to listen as audio drama stalwarts, Rusty Quill, have raised a whopping £700,000 on Kickstarter for their follow up show, The Magnus Protocol. Listen now on your podcast app >>

Holy Sh!t

In a sea of horror/sci-fi/fantasy fiction podcasts, Holy Sh!t is a breath of fresh air. A young adult, comedy-drama from Hat Trick Productions (the producers of Derry Girls) about two friends, Meg and Lydia, navigating life at separate Uni’s, where one of the freshers may, or may not, be the second coming of Christ. The story is told in an unique way through WhatsApp voice notes and is a light-hearted take on religion, but at its core deals with female friendship and, most aptly, forgiveness. Fans of TV shows like Sex Education and Euphoria will definitely enjoy this one! Listen now on your podcast app >>

The Chronicles of Wild Hollow

Here’s one if you have younger listeners in your family looking to get into fiction podcasts! Wild Hollow is a high-concept, fantasy series featuring a colourful cast of anthropomorphic animal characters ranging from outlaws to pirates and bourgeois city magnates. If you’re used to fantasy books, you’ll enjoy the fact that you can explore the interactive map of Wild Hollow on the company’s website, which features the locations from episodes. Plus there’s lots of further artwork, and info, of the cute and cuddly characters. Created by a group of Drama School graduates, and with plenty more episodes from this imaginative world to come, this is a franchise worth keeping an eye on! Listen now on your podcast app >>

Wooden Overcoats

Ask a fiction podcast fan to name a British audio drama, and they’ll without doubt mention Wooden Overcoats. It centres on a family-run funeral parlour in the tiny, fictional village of Piffling Vale, and the lengths the family will go to sabotage a rival undertaker who sets up a competing, well-resourced, business across the street. This beloved sitcom is much in the vein of TV shows like Fawlty Towers or The Vicar of Dibley. Filled with the dry humour and eccentric characters you’d expect from a traditional British sitcom, it should be on every fiction podcast fan’s download list. Listen now on your podcast app >>

Forest 404

We couldn’t complete this list without mentioning the BBC. They have been champions of audio dramas for decades, first with Radio 4 and now also with the fiction podcasts created by BBC Sounds. One of their best offerings is Forest 404, a futuristic, dystopian thriller starring Pearl Mackie (Doctor Who) playing a 24th Century sound archivist, whose job is to sift through ‘ancient’ 21st Century soundscapes. Most of the sounds she’s archiving are foreign to her – especially those depicting natural and organic life. This is a clever use of sound design to tell a unique story, something many fiction podcasts have been experimenting with ever since! Listen now on your podcast app >>

The Dial-Up

With only four episodes of ten minutes, anyone looking for a quick fiction-podcast-fix should check-out this time-travel tale. The Dial-Up tells the story of two lonely men, both from Glasgow, who encounter each other randomly on an internet voice call. But they soon realise that one of them is speaking from modern day and the other is talking from late 1999… This bitesize podcast was featured on a Buzzfeed ‘best of’ list in 2022, and was also written and produced by me! Our second season is set to be released August 2023. Listen now on your podcast app >>

Whistle Through The Shamrocks

From the creative mind of Irish starlet Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton, Derry Girls) this is a tongue-in-cheek, scripted retrospective of Irish history covering everything from the Potato Famine to The Easter Rising. Told through the voices of the O’Flanerhyn family, listen as they struggle to deal with their unscrupulous British landlord, who comes over to lay claim to ‘his’ land! The highlight of this show is the repeated meta interruptions from Nicola and her co-writer, Camilla Whitehill. It’s great to hear them ‘argue’ with the actors about the cliché-ridden and borderline offensive Irish stereotypes in the script. Listen now on your podcast app >>

HAUNTED: The Audio Drama

Since launching their first season in 2022, this is one of the fastest growing indie horror podcasts to come out of the UK and has topped Spotify charts worldwide. A satisfying mix of X-Files and Doctor Who, HAUNTED tells the story of a retired paranormal investigator, and the enthusiastic podcast host who propels him out of retirement into a series of adventures, battling monsters of mythical origin. Now on their second season, and just off the back of recording their first ever live episode in their home county of Essex, HAUNTED is only going to keep getting bigger and better! Listen now on your podcast app >>

Eliza: A Robot Story

For those of you hooked on stories dealing with AI or ChatGPT, Eliza is the fiction podcast for you. Its central character is a robot played by Tanya Reynolds (Sex Education) who starts experiencing emotions and feelings. She falls in love with a human, and works together with him to make her even more sentient, but very soon her new relationship turns abusive and controlling. More than just a sci-fi, robot tale, Eliza was made in partnership with The Pankhurst Trust/Manchester Women’s Aid, and deals with a number of topics including domestic abuse, and women’s rights. Listen now on your podcast app >>

—

Philip is a Northern Irish writer, living in London, who writes for screen, theatre and audio. He is the creator of the fiction podcast, The Dial-Up, and is currently a personal assistant to a BAFTA Award winning film producer. Follow him @pip_writes and @DialUpPod.

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New Pods

Gay Pride & Prejudice

This Spotify Original is a modern interpretation of – you guessed it – Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Set in the United States, it’s 2015 and same-sex marriage is finally legal. Whilst his friends are excited to get married, Bennett is more exited about the future drama of gay divorces. But when the hottest pop star alive, Carlos Bingley arrives in Bennett’s small town, things are about to change. Starring Modern Family’s Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Rosie O’Donnell this is a lot of fun – my personal favourite moment so far is when the Adderall kicks in. Listen now >>

Burnout

Levels of burnout are reaching an all-time high and the pandemic has only made things worse. In this show from Mindful and Lemonada Media, YouTube star Connor Franta explores the story of burnout. As a show from a company that’s dedicated to ‘sharing the gifts of mindfulness’, I expected this to be a fairly standard offering. But Connor is an engaging host and brings his own story into the mix. The first episode goes deep and looks at the history of burnout, and an emotional case study recorded from the hospital. Listen now >>

The Spying Game

Broadcaster, satirist and impressionist Rory Bremner is hosting a brand new podcast, The Spying Game, packed with fictional Hollywood spy tales and real-life espionage. With guests from Hollywood, literary figures and even real-life espionage experts, this tries to separate the facts from the fiction. As a spy enthusiast and someone who makes a living pretending to be other people, Rory is a great choice of host. The podcast really utilises Rory’s impressionist talents. Don’t skip the teaser trailers for this one – you get something a little bit different! Listen now >>

Square Hole

Square Hole is a podcast about neurodiversity, employment and the creative industries, and aims to be an audio narrative of what it means to be neurodiverse in the industry. Through conversations with guests from various areas of the arts, it guides listeners through the whole journey of leaving university, finding out a diagnosis, getting creative work, and working out the creative process. All episodes dropped in one go and listeners can use them as a resource for their own journey. Listen now >>

Looking For Esther

One of the much-awaited podcasts to come out of Spotify’s 2019 Sound Up Programme, Looking for Esther is something of an investigative memoir. Esther Robertson, a Scottish woman of colour, had three different names before she was three years old. After a difficult couple of years that included a cancer diagnosis, Esther decided she wanted to know more about her parents and past. Through chats with her partner and talks with professionals, we get to see some of her journey unfold. You can hear the creators talk about making the show on the Pod Bible Podcast. Looking For Esther is a Spotify exclusive. Listen now >> 

The Superhero Complex

This podcast has been out since April, but it made me want to watch Kickass again so I thought it was worthy of highlighting. It documents the rise and fall of a real-life crime-fighting vigilante. Phoenix Jones was the leader of The Rain City Superhero Movement in Seattle. It began with helping to catch petty criminals and defusing public nuisances, but it led to a charge of selling MDMA to undercover cops. Host David Weinberg enters the unbelievable universe of real superheroes and costumed crusaders. The story takes him from Buenos Aires to Tokyo as he asks – was Phoenix a super villain all along? Listen now >>

Quite Unsuitable for Females

To mark this summer’s UEFA Women’s Championship, this five-part series from the UK’s National Football Museum tackles the myths and busts the stereotypes about women in football. Working with MIC Media, the podcast has been put together with a host of young community producers to bring to the surface some of the secrets of the women’s game. This is a great podcast for football fans and history fans. Listen now >>

Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

The first episode of this show features Robert Evans from Behind The Bastards as a guest, and it sets the tone for the type of show you’re in for. But this is the opposite of Evans’ show. A Ronseal name, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff looks at the people from history who made change, the ones we should be celebrating more. Listen now >> 

Other podcasts for your list:

Deliver Us From Ervil – Deliver Us From Ervil is a stylistic true crime show about a crime family at the centre of a religious safe haven for Mormon fundamentalists. At the centre of the story is Ervil LeBaron, the maniacal cult leader who instigated the infamous “4 O’Clock Murders” in the 1980s. Listen now >> 

Kermode & Mayo’s Take – They’re back, and it’s bigger, and better and larger-er and more-er. Film reviews, TV reviews, and all your conversation around movie and non-movie related stuff. It feels slightly redundant to recommend this given their profile, but for anyone dubious about their move from the BBC, this is worth a follow. Listen now >> 

Run, Bambi, Run – Another 1980s crime investigation, Run, Bambi, Run is an Apple TV podcast that looks into the story of Laurie Bembenek. There’s a lot to unpack in her story: a Playboy bunny-turned-Milwaukee police officer; arrested for the murder of her husband’s ex-wife; and escape from prison. It’s no wonder she became the subject of a Garbage song.  Listen now >>

Not Lost – This travel podcast was born out of heartbreak and a redundancy. Brendan Francis Newman finds solace in travel, and vows to get asked to a stranger’s dinner party in every destination he visits. Listen now >> 

Abuse of Power: State of North Carolina vs. Charles Ray Finch (Audible) – This six-part true crime series from Audible takes us back to 1976 North Carolina. A white country store owner is gunned down in a robbery, and the police jump to arrest Charles Ray Finch, a Black American who protests his innocence. Listen now >> 

Spectre – A swashbuckling space opera, Spectre follows Rho as she escapes from a facility that has been holding her hostage, only to land in the hands of space pirates. Created by Stef Howerton, who also voices the main character, this indy podcast has big production values. Listen now >> 

’93 Women – Another big Audible production looking into a powerful story, ‘93 Women investigates how US law enforcement failed to stop the country’s most dangerous serial killer, Samuel Little, who confessed to murdering 93 women. Listen now >>

The Co-Founder – Valerie and Juliet are best friends and business partners with a video game startup on the verge of failure. They’re being treated like dirt during their fundraising meetings with big-deal finance bros, so they ask a random white guy (Toby Johnson, local barista) to pretend to be a co-founder to clinch the investment cash. Listen now >> 

New Seasons:

Code Switch presents ‘School Colors’

NPR’s flagship show, Code Switch, is one of my go-to shows on race and identity in America. Whilst it usually tackles one topic an episode, this month it’s dropping episodes in collaboration with Brooklyn Deep to cover one story in greater depth. School Colours looks at how race, class, and power shape American cities and schools. In 2019, there was a controversy when a “diversity plan” for a school district in New York was met with anger from local parents. Hosts Mark Winston Griffith and Max Freedman investigate – why would a school district in the middle of Queens – described as the most racially diverse demographics in America –  need a diversity plan? And why would that potential plan be met with such intense opposition? Listen now >> 

Coupledom

Coupledom 2 brings back Idris and Sabrina Elba for another 6 episodes to explore the partnerships of iconic duos from the worlds of sport, film, music, and beyond. With a line-up including Olympic gold medallist Tom Daley and his husband, Rita Ora and her sister/manager Elena Ora and author George R.R. Martin with House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal, this is an insight into the cogs of well-oiled couples. Listen now >> 

Soul Music

After a break of a few months, the show asking people to bare their soul through a single song is back. If you haven’t listened to the show before, now is the time to dive in – why not check out our Where To Start? article to help you attack the immense back catalogue.
Listen now >> 

The Skewer – Series 6

Described by host Jon Holmes as a “satirical river of sound”, this season of The Skewer sees Jon incorporate the impassioned voices, sketches and ideas (however big or small) of NHS frontline staff, primary school teachers, railway workers, and even a Track & Trace worker – all who have experienced first-hand the rollercoaster of despair, optimism, and frustration from these turbulent times. Listen now >> 

We Can Be Heroes

Glyn Fussell – King of the London night scene and an LGBTQ+ icon – speaks to other extraordinary misfits who have harnessed the power of being different. Series one snagged interviews with the likes of Beverly Knight and lead singer of Skunk Anasie, Skin. Series Two’s future guests will include Paloma Faith, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and lot’s more! Listen now >> 

The post 21 New podcasts to add to your queue this June appeared first on POD BIBLE.

February has been an exciting month for Stak and podcast enthusiasts, as Stak prepares to launch two brand new shows and signs a deal for a Jackie the Ripper adaptation with The Number 44, Goldfinch’s genre label.

Jackie the Ripper is a five-part dark comedy podcast following the investigations of lead Scotland Yard detective, Frederick Abberline, as he hunts down a female serial killer targeting men 150 years after Whitechapel’s infamous ripper. After just its first season, Stak and Goldfinch announced on February 15th that the chart-topping podcast has been optioned for an on-screen adaptation.

Elsewhere, Stak has also announced the launch of brand new speculative science show, Where’s My Jetpack? Hosted by space journalist, presenter and author Sarah Cruddas alongside Stak’s COO and Football Ramble presenter Luke Moore, Where’s My Jetpack? explores different pieces of retrofuturistic technology that never came to be: from jetpacks, to flying cars, to space hotels and colonies on Mars. Across 10 episodes, Sarah and Luke are joined by those at the very forefront of science academia and industry to find out what happened to these space age dreams, including current and former NASA astronauts, world-renowned physicists. The show takes listeners to the very limits of scientific discovery and pushes the envelope on what’s possible. Episode one was released on the 24th February, and subsequent episodes will follow weekly.

“Where’s My Jetpack? is a passion project of mine,” Sarah enthuses. “To not only help showcase why space exploration matters, but to also help inspire as many as possible about all the exciting inventions and innovations that are just around the corner. The reality is this: Science Fiction should be renamed Science Prediction, and the best is yet to come. Who wouldn’t want to take a ride into the space age future we were promised?”

Finally, Planet Weirdo with Holly H is Stak’s first collaboration with Amazon Music. Available exclusively on Amazon Music and hosted by social media star Holly H and Georgina Rivell, Planet Weirdo is a podcast all about celebrating what’s weird and unique in each and every one of us! Boasting an expressive array of celebrity guests such as Olympic diver Tom Daley, music producer Benny Blanco, and High School Musical actress Kaycee Stroh – Planet Weirdo is a delightful and light-hearted weekly romp through the weird and the wonderful. The first episode was released on the 25th of February, exclusively on Amazon Music.

“It’s been incredible working with Amazon Music on the Planet Weirdo podcast,” says Holly. “After so many epic years on social media, it’s been great to finally bring my voice to a whole new format with the help of Stak especially. We’ve had a blast recording the series and hanging out with some very cool friends and familiar faces, so I’m beyond excited for everyone to hear the first episode this Friday!”

You can listen to Where’s My Jetpack? wherever you get your podcasts. Planet Weirdo with Holly H is exclusive to Amazon Music and is available to listen via Apple Music or Audible.

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New York — October 22, 2021 — Acast, the world’s leading independent podcast company, is launching Acast Audio Fiction Week from October 25-30 to celebrate the vibrant world of fiction podcasts. With roots in radio dramas, fiction podcasts have been around as long as podcasting itself. They make up a small but growing genre in the podcast space and are increasingly popular among audiences. Audio dramas offer varied possibilities for creators and provide a rich, immersive format for storytelling.

During Acast Audio Fiction Week, Acast will showcase the works of fiction podcasters, provide an array of resources for up-and-coming creators, launch new scripted programming from series that are part of the Acast Creator Network, and raise awareness for the numerous sub-genres that audio dramas span — all in a lead-up to World Audio Drama Day on October 30.“Acast Audio Fiction Week is a love letter to the time, expense, and passion that fiction podcasters dedicate to creating truly cinematic experiences for listeners. Made in partnership with audio fiction creators, the week recognizes their groundbreaking work in pushing the boundaries of the podcasting medium and crafting stories that transport us to a different world – all via our earbuds,” said Becky Celestina, Partner Manager at Acast. “Join us in centering the talented storytellers who all too often are forgotten in mainstream discourse about podcasting.”

Creators and fans can stay up-to-date on all the week’s happenings at acast.com/audiofictionweek.

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