If you want to know what the ingredients for a great podcast are, ask the people who make them.
“All of [my favourite podcasts] were not the ones where I felt like I learned something, or on my favourite topics,” says Victoria Devine, host of personal finance podcast She’s on the Money and author of an upcoming book about investing. “They’re all podcasts where I as the listener feel genuinely engaged.”
Devine thinks it’s this X factor that makes a podcast connect on a deeper level and stick with us after the episode is done. She likes to come away from a podcast feeling empowered. But other great podcasts can move us to tears, to laughter – or even both in the same episode. Some touch us in a way we didn’t expect or resonate with a relatable truth.
So what are some of the most moving podcasts out there? For a stack of quality-assured recommendations, we asked two interesting people – and podcast hosts to boot – to tell us about the listens they’ll never forget.
Brodie Lancaster
Dead Eyes
For a podcast that will take you somewhere unexpected, Brodie Lancaster, writer and host of the See Also podcast, recommends Dead Eyes.
“The premise of the podcast seems deceptively simple,” Lancaster says. Dead Eyes is hosted by Connor Ratliff, a comedian and actor you might have seen in shows such as Search Party and The Marvellous Mrs Maisel. Early in his career, Ratliff was cast in a very small role in the HBO series Band of Brothers. Then, Tom Hanks, who was directing the episode he was set to appear in, fired and replaced Ratliff – because he felt the actor had “dead eyes”. The podcast is three seasons of Ratliff investigating exactly why Hanks gave him the boot all those years ago.
It comes with a big payoff: “After 30 episodes, where he dug into career failures, fear and celebrity and all of these things, he finally had Tom Hanks on the podcast,” Lancaster says. “[When] you hear the audio of Tom Hanks walking into the room, there’s nothing like it. It’s so good.”
Dead Eyes expanded out from its original premise in a way Lancaster found rewarding.
“By the time he got in front of Tom Hanks, I think his purpose had changed,” she says. “It was less about, why did Tom Hanks the actor make this decision about me? And it was more about the decisions that set our careers off on these tangents.
“It’s really touching, and surprisingly so. You go in thinking you know what it’s going to be – a funny showbiz anecdote – and then as the series went on it became so much more about finding connections between people. It was just really very human stories that came from a very specific, extreme situation that celebrities and actors go through.”
Poog
“You don’t often think about crying listening to a comedy skincare podcast,” Lancaster laughs. But that’s exactly what happened in one episode of Poog, hosted by comedians Kate Berlant and Jacqueline Novak.
“It’s a very funny podcast,” Lancaster says. “It’s a free-form conversation and occasionally they talk about beauty products and skincare and treatments and things. They describe the show as a blatant request for free products.”
But there’s one episode – which has become known as ‘the ice cream episode’ – that goes in a different direction.
“I’m gonna cry just describing it,” Lancaster says. “You basically hear Jacqueline Novak trying to get out this anecdote about an ice cream cone and it’s just not working. She and Kate are very close friends, but Kate’s just not picking up what she’s putting down … and Jacqueline’s getting frustrated and disappointed with herself and getting emotional.
“And then you hear their producer come in, and basically be like, we can’t use this. This is not a thing that people can listen to. So it has that fun, fourth-wall break moment. Then Jacqueline starts crying and starts talking about the frustration of not being understood, and the frustration of your brain and your mouth working at different speeds.”
It was an authentic, “really emotional” moment in a podcast that is usually all about laughs. And that’s made it a cult hit among Poog fans.
Maintenance Phase
Lancaster loves every episode of Maintenance Phase, a podcast in which hosts Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes set out to debunk weight loss pseudoscience and fads. But there’s one in particular that has stuck with her.
“In a recent episode, they talked about Belle Gibson and her vague health food cancer-curing ideas that became very dangerous,” Lancaster says. “It’s something that I thought I knew a lot about but the structure of the podcast is that one of the hosts explains a story to the other. So as I was listening, I was learning new information about Belle Gibson and reacting along with the hosts.
“And the way the story ends up is interesting because what Belle Gibson did was shocking, and at points you can do very little else but laugh because it’s so ridiculous, the claims that she was making … But then it ends on this note, where they quote someone whose loved one believed Belle Gibson’s claims, and they lost that person.”
Suddenly, Lancaster says: “You’re not laughing about Belle Gibson being a cancer faker any more. You’re really struck by the consequences of her lies and deception, and the people whose lives were affected by the trust that they put in her.”
Victoria Devine
Oprah’s Super Soul
Victoria Devine loves to come away from a podcast feeling inspired and a little heartwarmed. That’s why she tunes into Oprah’s Super Soul.
“I guess you love it or hate it,” she laughs. “But I feel like it’s really wholesome. It’s basically just about the catalyst for human connection and what makes our lives more meaningful.”
Devine’s favourite episodes are the ones in which Oprah interviews author Brené Brown about backing yourself and the power in vulnerability.
“[It’s] an empowering listen. It’s beautifully worded, beautifully edited, and makes me feel empowered to live a more peaceful, happy and contented life – to be more happy with the here and now and our circumstances. And I think that’s what we all need, right?”
Ms Represented
For a podcast that will take you on a roller-coaster ride of emotion, Devine recommends Ms Represented. It’s hosted by journalist Annabell Crabb and comedian Steph Tisdell, a combination that allows the pod to tackle the serious issues facing women in politics in an entertaining way. Her favourite episode is Are You Even a Real Woman?, which is about the first woman to sit in the House of Representatives.
“I binged this obviously because we’ve just gone through an election and I feel like it was really good content,” Devine says. “It just really talks about the rise of female politicians in Australian politics … but also the impact women can have and the ridiculous expectations and questions we get as women in positions of leadership.
“And as a woman in a position of leadership, so much of it is like, yeah, it’s ridiculous. It was really relatable at the same time as being absolutely insane to think about … I found it was, at times, unbelievable. At other times, it was really inspiring. And sometimes it was really heartbreaking because some of the stuff is just a joke and you’re like, how are we still here in 2022?”
Anonymous Was a Woman
Anonymous Was a Woman, hosted by Jamila Rizvi and Astrid Edwards, is a podcast on books by and about women. It may be a straightforward premise, but to Devine, it’s the show that makes her feel warm, fuzzy and like she’s hanging out with friends.
“It is just two really powerful women talking about really good books,” she says. “I feel like it’s a really beautiful virtual book club, in a way. They weave their own experiences through the podcast as well – so the books kind of come to life, and then you just feel like you’re having a chat with some really smart, really empowered women.”
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