The 12 Best Podcasts of 2022

It was a big year for podcasts, and it takes a lot to stand out in the sea of fantastic storytelling, original reporting, and comedy delights — and I should know. I just received my Pocket Casts Wrapped report — I listened to 97 days and 17 hours of podcasts in 27 different categories. That’s 1,176 shows or 4,347 episodes. I can safely say that without podcasts my life would be meaningless, and that I listened to enough of them to report back on what’s worth checking out.

In all those days of podcast listening, in no particular order, here are the ones I advise, nay, demand you listen to. These babies made every one of those minutes worth spending.

Bone Valley

In 1989, Leo Schofield was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for killing his wife Michelle, who was found dead in Florida at age 18. (Pulitzer Prize winner) Gilbert King and his steady producer Kelsey Decker are sure he didn’t do it — and the investigation they undertake for Bone Valley is the explosive, perfectly constructed story about how they hunted for answers to questions nobody asked to confirm that their hunch was almost certainly right. They seem to have thrown out the “true crime podcast” rule book for this one — you’re along for the ride as the team follows their own instincts, does their own dirty work, and brings themselves emotionally into the story of Leo and Michelle. This podcast isn’t only entertaining, Gilbert and Kelsey do what other true crime podcasters wish they could do — they solve the murder, and get a confession on tape. It’s yet to be decided if the truths they expose in Bone Valley will have any impact on Leo’s case, but it’s something to watch out for.

Will Be Wild

Sometimes January 6, 2021 seems like a fever dream, a dystopian fantasy we never thought could happen in the United States and never saw coming. But with a little digging, we know we could have seen it coming. On Will Be Wild, Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz (of Trump, Inc.) interview people who warned officials about the attack and people who were there (and would go back again in a second) and even a guy who turned in his own father for participating. It’s a multi-perspective look at the Capital attacks that is smart enough to be taught at schools but exciting enough to keep you sitting on the edge of your seat. It not only reveals what we should have known but didn’t, but everything that went on behind the scenes leading up to the events on January 6 and beyond.

Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s

Award-winning investigative journalist Connie Walker followed up to her fantastic season of Stolen (The Search for Jermain) with Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s, a podcast that blows the lid off of the history of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools. It’s a personal journey — at the beginning of the series, Connie discovers details about her own father’s abuse at one of the schools that sets her on a heart-breaking adventure to connect with her past, pulling uncomfortable questions from ex-school administrators and the priest who abused her dad. Connie commits to not only telling her own story, but the stories of other people who endured torture and abuse at Residential Schools, and their decendents who are now dealing with generational trauma. Residential Schools have been in the news lately but this is the dive that goes so deep you feel the pain in your bones. It’s completely unforgettable.

Chameleon: Wild Boys

In the summer of 2003, two boys who went by the names William and Tom Green emerged from the woods and into the town of Vernon in British Columbia with quite a story. They claimed to have run away from their parents, who were living off the grid. And they appeared to be starving. (15-year-old Tom was 6’1 and 38 kg at the time.) The community took them in with open arms, providing them with shelter, care, and bringing them food. This was a story, known by everyone in the community, and on the podcast Chameleon: Wild Boys, host Sam Mullins returns to his hometown of Vernon to interview people about their memories about the boys and story, which turned out to be an absolute lie. Who were these boys and why did they lie to a town about where they came from? What’s up with one of the brother’s only-fruit diet? Sam Mullins has a personal connection to this story and brings us an investigation almost too wild to be true.

Alabama Astronaut

On Alabama Astronaut, Alabama songwriter Abe Partridge and podcast producer Ferrill Gibbs are telling a spell-binding story about the deadly practice of preachers and serpent handling, but the show is about music, and the search for the never-before heard songs of the Appalachians, which are as wild and unchained as the handling of snakes themselves. The storytelling here follows no playbook. It’s packed with the history, science, philosophy, and religion of serpent handling, plus travel, interviews, and audio of serpent handling services that seems so intimate it’s like we shouldn’t be allowed to hear it. It’s Abe’s journey to better understand the music and the people and places it came from, covering a taboo subject (Abe does not judge these believers) with a story that will surprise you every minute and some music (maybe the most punk rock music of all time) that has never been heard before. It’s not about religion, but about the services that birthed this genre and the belief it springs from, and how it was passed down church to church over the years, documented by the people making the music in the purest form.

Lizzy Cooperman’s In Your Hands

On Lizzy Cooperman’s In Your Hands, comedian Lizzy Cooperman has done something no one has ever done before — she’s created a choose her own adventure podcast, where every week, she gives listeners two options for things she should do with her own life (get a piercing, get a job at Victoria’s Secret, text all the guys in her phone and ask them to assemble a cabinet for her) and lets them vote on what she’ll do on her Instagram account. And then she does whatever wins. But that’s not all. She interviews experts in the fields of her wild activities (a professional organiser, an Uber driver, a hair artist) and her extremely funny friends to let them weigh in (like John Early and Jamie Loftus.) But in the end, it’s all up to you. Lizzy is a sharp comedian who is also a poet with an unforgettable way with words. The conversations you get to sit in on are funny, energised, and totally madcap, as is this adventure she’s on. We don’t know where this is going. Join the movement.

Normal Gossip

I don’t think you can write about the best podcasts of 2022 without mentioning Normal Gossip, a show that has swept the United States with its comedic storytelling and unique premise — the gossip stories on Normal Gossip don’t include celebrities or people in the news, it’s about everyday people who live in small towns. It’s the story about the cross-stitching grifter or serial-cheating fitness trainer your mum told you that she overheard someone else talking about at the beauty salon in Hudson, Ohio. Host Kelsey McKinney brings on hilarious guests to go through the stories with such detail it feels like we are there, asking along the way…what would you do? It’s proof that we are all more interesting than celebrities, and the local, low-stakes goss being whispered and texted all across America is more compelling than fiction.

Things Fell Apart

On Things Fell Apart, Jon Ronson (author of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and the host of The Butterly Effect and The Last Days of August) is our investigator into some of American’s biggest culture wars, from legal abortion to curriculum in schools. With curiosity and a sly sense of humour, he delicately unfolds the stories that led up to the things we’re all arguing about with our families over Facebook of the Thanksgiving dinner table (or wherever) by tracing things back to one person, one misunderstanding, one accident, one spark that sets a fiery cultural movement into motion. If there is beauty to be found in the most polarising topics we face, they are here. Poetic, surprising, and delightful, they’ll put a twist on the American history you thought you knew.

In The Scenes Behind Plain Sight

Re-watch podcasts are in the zeitgeist (there are versions for The Office, Parks & Rec, New Girl, Always Sunny, Saved By the Bell, to name a few) but audio legends Ian Chillag and Mike Danforth (Ian’s the guy behind Everything Is Alive, and they are the co-creators of How to Do Everything) are putting a twist on the genre with a hilarious fake rewatch show, based on a fake television show (Behind Plain Sight, which followed a man in hiding at a nudist colony in Florida) that they were not on because it does not and never did exist. The unique format allows Ian and Mike to spoof the genre that’s a wink to rewatch shows and podcasting in general. At the end, when podcasters usually read the credits, they tell us that the production team has actually asked not to be named. They’re committed to the bit. It’s a meta improv comedy project that podcast nerds will appreciate.

Into the Depths

National Geographic Explorer Tara Roberts quit her job and upended her life to became a certified scuba diver so she could join forces with a group of Black divers Diving With a Purpose (DWP) to make Into the Depths, which quite literally brings us to the depths of the ocean to document some of the thousand slave ships that wrecked in the Atlantic Ocean during the transatlantic slave trade. In discovering ships such as the São José Paquete d’Africa in South Africa, the Fredericus Quartus and Christianus Quintus in Costa Rica, and the Clotilda in the United States, Tara and the DWP team find bricks, anchors, bottles and pipes — missing pieces to the puzzle that is the history of slavery. 1.8 million Africans died when they were forced to make the Middle Passage, and Into the Depths is an audio memorial for them, a personal documentary of Roberts and her own family history, and the stories that have been buried underwater for hundreds of years.

Burn Wild

Leah Sotille is known for reporting on right-wing extremism, and Burn Wild is her chance to expose extremism on the right by telling the story of two of America’s most wanted environmental activist-fugitives: Joseph Mahmoud Dibee and Josephine Sunshine Overaker. The podcast is full of original reporting and interviews with people across the spectrum, including Joseph, who has been sentenced to prison and was ordered to pay a portion of the $US1.3 ($2) million in restitution. His crimes? Setting fire to a slaughterhouse in central Oregon and a wild horse corral in Litchfield, California. Josephine is still on the run. Burn Wild is the story of present-day eco-activism and will twist your belief system into knots. How far is too far when it comes to protecting the environment?

A Tradition of Violence

There are at least 18 gangs within the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department — real organised gangs that have been demonizing the community in plain sight for 50 years. Cerise Castle adopted a piece she wrote for Knock LA into the podcast A Tradition of Violence, which investigates these gangs in a way nobody has done before, identifying murders, gang members, and lawsuits related to the department (that cost Los Angeles County more than $US100 ($139) million over a 30-year period) and a kind of police brutality we aren’t seeing in mainstream media. This is dangerous territory to be wading in. Meet the real and broken LASD, full of villains who paint a picture of what fuels policing in the US. The reporting is thorough and fearless, and the stories are almost too unbelievable to be true. It’s stuff of nightmares and the podcast is crucial listening. Cerise’s reporting led to an investigation into the LASD, and the series earned her a Courage in Journalism Award issued by the International Women’s Media Foundation.