The best podcasts to listen to in 2026: 19 shows worth your time

Nobody needs another list of the most downloaded podcasts. What you need, if the commute is long and you have no idea what to put on, is a list where every show earns its place for a reason you can hear in the first ten minutes.

These nineteen do. Two friends who turned ghost stories and true crime into nine years of Sunday episodes. A reporter whose podcast changed how American schools teach reading. A history show that spends four hours on one battle and makes it fly. Pick the mood you are in and start there.

And That’s Why We Drink

A ghost story from Em, a true crime case from Christine, and nine years of friendship recorded in real time. Still the best Sunday night company in podcasting.

And That’s Why We Drink started in 2017 with a simple idea: Em Schulz tells a ghost story, Christine Schiefer tells a true crime story, and both of them have a drink while they do it, wine for Christine and a milkshake for Em. Em takes the first half, usually a haunted hotel, saloon or asylum, sometimes one they have just visited themselves, like the Pioneer Saloon in Nevada in episode 501, with the occasional UFO or urban legend thrown in. Christine takes the second half with a case, from the still unsolved disappearance of Angela Green to a two-part walk through the Idaho college murders. What made it work from the first episode is that they barely knew each other when they started, so you have heard a real friendship form, one Sunday at a time.

The jokes land on themselves, never on victims, which is why the show can go from a haunted saloon to the Murdaugh murders in the same episode without ever feeling cheap. Episode 500 arrived on September 27, 2026 with the Wolf Creek Inn in Oregon, and the one after it opened a multi-part look at the Murdaugh murders. Once a month the feed adds a Listener Stories volume (the 120th, in October 2026, was all ghost pets), and the show now lives on ParaPods, the network Em and Christine founded in 2025.

There is big news if you are picking the show up now. In September 2026 Christine announced she is stepping away from the microphone at the end of October, after nearly ten years, to work behind the scenes at ParaPods and to keep hosting Beach Too Sandy with her brother Xandy. Em carries on as host with a rotating line-up of guest hosts, and the early tries, Bethany Watson in episodes 493 and 499 and Xandy Schiefer on a Listener Stories volume, show the format holds up. Five hundred episodes of back catalog are not going anywhere either.

The awards back it up: the People’s Voice Webby for Best Comedy Podcast in 2019, 2021 and 2022, and People’s Choice Podcast Awards for comedy three years running from 2022 and for true crime in 2023 and 2024. There are also two books, ‘A Haunted Road Atlas’ (2022) and ‘A Haunted Road Atlas: Next Stop’ (2024), both road trip guides to the haunted and horrible places the show has covered.

Some of my favorite episodes:

• 500: Immortal Hallway Portals and Incriminating Insects
• 354: A Tarot Therapy Session and a Ghost Cat Pawty
• 278: A Birthday Demon and a Lunar Lemon
• 330: Psychic Grandma and Swimming in Jeans

America: A History

A British host explains the United States to the rest of the world, one idea at a time, with an academic in the chair every week.

America: A History, which now goes by America: The Story of the USA in most apps, is the history class you would actually turn up for. Host Liam Heffernan is a British podcaster, not an American, and that outsider’s position is the whole point: he asks the questions a non-American would ask and brings in a scholar each week to answer them properly. The show launched on July 4, 2023, is made with the British Association for American Studies, and sits on Heffernan’s own Mercury Podcasts label.

The main episodes run about an hour and work through a theme in parts. The current run is on democracy itself: what the founders actually meant by the word, and whether religion should have a vote. Between them come two shorter strands: Study Notes, ten-minute explainers on things like the Founding Fathers or President James K. Polk, and In the Making, a weekly look at the week’s American news with the history behind it, from Greenland’s status to a death row case.

It is smart without being stuffy, and it treats the listener as someone who wants to understand the country rather than be told what to think about it. If you want to get smarter about the U.S. without the bore, this is your show.

This American Life

A trip through the real, the funny, and the unexpected in about an hour, every week since 1995.

Every week Ira Glass and his team pick a theme, and then anything can happen. This American Life has been doing that since 1995 on public radio, produced with WBEZ Chicago, and the podcast is the same hour. The show’s own count is a little under three million listeners a week, and in 2020 it won the first Pulitzer Prize ever given to a radio show or podcast, for The Out Crowd, an episode about asylum seekers waiting at the Mexican border.

The stories are about real people, with the twists and the quiet moments left in. Episode 899, Reaching Out, is built on the work of Sayre Quevedo, who has recorded nearly all of his conversations for years and uses them to capture a life in a way that feels new. Between new hours the feed brings back classics such as Middle School, which came back this September as the school year started.

What gets me every time is how it mixes the heavy and the funny inside one episode. This American Life shows life’s big and small moments like no one else, and after thirty years it is still a weekly reminder of how strange and wonderful ordinary people are.

The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka

A former mortality analyst on how to live longer, with long interviews and seven-minute how-to episodes.

Gary Brecka spent more than twenty years in the life insurance business predicting how long people would live from their medical records. The Ultimate Human, which started in October 2023 with UFC boss Dana White as the first guest, is his attempt to turn that around and help people live longer instead. More than 300 episodes later the format is settled: a long interview with a doctor, athlete or scientist, such as neurologist David Perlmutter on the early signs of Alzheimer’s or wildlife biologist Forrest Galante on why comfort ages us, and in between, short solo episodes of seven or eight minutes on one practical thing, like how to measure your waist-to-height ratio.

Brecka’s confidence is a big part of the appeal, and his claims are not uncontested, so treat it as a conversation starter rather than medical advice. What keeps me listening is that every episode leaves you with one small change you can actually make this week.

The Daily

Your daily news digest. Michael Barbaro, Rachel Abrams and Natalie Kitroeff make one big story make sense in about half an hour. A modern classic.

The Daily is the news podcast that turned the format into a habit. The New York Times launched it on February 1, 2017 with Michael Barbaro, and he is still there. Sabrina Tavernise, who co-hosted from 2022, left at the start of 2025, and Rachel Abrams and Natalie Kitroeff, both Times reporters, joined the rotation in April and June of that year.

The method has not changed: one story a day, told by the reporter who covered it, with the host asking the questions you would ask. In a single week in October 2026 that meant new polling on the midterms, the hack of the F.B.I., and why Washington wants to rein in college sports. It is ready by six in the morning and done in twenty to thirty minutes, which is exactly why it became a commute.

• Not to miss: Saturdays carry The Interview, the Times’ long sit-down with one person (Chris Rock on forgiveness, in October 2026), and Sundays bring a longer feature.

I find myself regularly sharing information I’ve learned from this podcast. It’s a must listen for anyone who wants to stay informed on the most current issues. The hosts ask relevant questions in a style that makes complicated topics understandable and always interesting.

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Handsome

Tig, Fortune, and Mae answer one question from a famous friend each week and turn it into the funniest hour on your phone.

Handsome is three comedians, Tig Notaro, Fortune Feimster and Mae Martin, and one question. Every week a friend of the show sends one in, and the hosts try to answer it and mostly end up telling stories instead. Jimmy Fallon asked about bootlegging, Jamie Lee Curtis about spooky stuff, Elliot Page about ghosts and Lance Bass about clones. Lately Luke Wilson asked about big breaks, Elizabeth Banks about love affairs and the musician Peaches about pets.

The questions are the excuse. The real show is the chemistry: Tig’s deadpan, Fortune’s full-body storytelling and Mae’s gentle way of steering the other two off a cliff. Since 2024 there is also a shorter Pretty Little Episode later in the week, built on listener questions, which is where the running bits live.

It is published by Headgum, it has been nominated for best comedy podcast at the iHeartPodcast Awards two years in a row, and one episode took a People’s Voice Webby in 2026. None of that explains it as well as the fact that people plan their Tuesday mornings around it.

When I found Handsome I binged all the episodes one after the other. Now, I cannot wait for Tuesday mornings when a new show arrives in my podcast inbox. I listen as I am getting ready for work, driving to work and sometimes driving home. Thank you for being the funny and true to life humans you are!!

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Empire

William Dalrymple and Anita Anand on how empires rise, fall and leave their mark. Four hundred episodes in and still twice a week.

Empire pairs two people who could each carry a show alone. William Dalrymple is the historian, author of The Anarchy and The Golden Road, who has lived in India for decades. Anita Anand is the BBC broadcaster who wrote The Patient Assassin. He brings the sources, she brings the questions and the jokes, and the result is history told as conversation rather than lecture. Goalhanger publishes it, and it has run since August 2022.

The first series was the British in India, from the East India Company to Partition, and it set the pattern: a theme over a dozen or so episodes, with the best writers on the subject invited in. Since then the show has covered the Ottomans, slavery, and much more. In September 2026 it reached episode 400 with a six-part series on Stalin, with Antony Beevor on Stalingrad and Fiona Hill on what Stalin’s legacy means for Putin.

The new series, which began on October 4, 2026, reads the Norman Conquest through the Bayeux Tapestry, stitch by stitch. Episodes run around fifty minutes, land on Sundays and Wednesdays, and are just the right depth for a weekly habit. The hosts’ enthusiasm for their subject is the engine, and it is catching.

No punches pulled, no stone unturned. This podcast is brilliantly presented and the passion from all involved pours out of my earpieces. I’m enraptured each episode, learn new details and about new characters. What a fantastic piece of work to bring more world history to light.

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Your Stupid Opinions

The most absurd online reviews make for an hour of brilliant comedy.

James Pietragallo and Jimmie Whisman are the pair behind Small Town Murder and Crime in Sports, and Your Stupid Opinions, which they started in September 2023 on their own Shut Up and Give Me Murder network, is what they do to relax. Every Monday they read the angriest, strangest reviews on the internet out loud and take them apart: a toddler on a pogo stick, a meat stick with metal shavings in it, a man furious about cowboy hats, a parent livid about a child’s haircut.

Recent episodes have covered a McDonald’s known locally as the Murder McDonald’s, a tourist buffet where the water costs airport prices, and a national park whose reviewers complain both that there are not enough bears and that there are too many. Nothing about this should sustain seventy minutes a week, and somehow it does, because the two of them have the timing of people who have been on the road together for years. It is the podcast equivalent of two very funny friends reading you their phone.

I look forward to this show constantly. It’s one of the best things to listen to for a laugh. Easy to shut your brain off and enjoy.

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Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers

Seth and Josh Meyers ask famous people about the vacations that went wrong. Nostalgia with a laugh track you provide yourself.

Every Tuesday, Seth and Josh Meyers ask a guest to relive their childhood holidays, the road trips, the campsites and the airport disasters, and compare notes with their own. The show is made by Seth’s company, Rabbit Grin Productions, and the brothers’ parents, Larry and Hilary, drop in often enough to count as cast.

The guest list is strong, Dax Shepard, John Oliver and Tom Holland all came through in the first season, but the best episodes are the ones where someone famous turns back into a kid: Tim Robbins on growing up in a tiny Greenwich Village apartment in the 1960s, or Lauren Lapkus on discovering improv while still in high school. Once a month the brothers hand the microphone to listeners, and the stories (a Grand Canyon trip to honor a late father, a rained-out Ireland) are just as good. There are live shows now too, including a night in Boston with Tiffany Haddish describing four days in a pitch-dark cave retreat.

It is a warm, unhurried hour about the kind of family chaos everyone has survived, and it works just as well on a long drive with the whole car listening.

This is an amazing escape podcast so you can laugh while walking your dog and while trying not to worry about what’s going on in the world. Absolutely sweet and funny and enjoyable. I was already a big Seth fan but the Meyers are the cutest family.

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Bad Dates

Joel Kim Booster’s dating-disaster show grew up. Since June 2026 the same feed is called Intimacy Coordinator, and it is funnier than ever.

Bad Dates began with Jameela Jamil in the chair and comedians trading their worst real-life dates, and comedian Joel Kim Booster took it over and made it his own. In June 2026 he relaunched the feed as Intimacy Coordinator, produced by SmartLess Media for SiriusXM. The format is now a panel of three guests and one topic: lying on Grindr, with Bob the Drag Queen putting her own profile on trial; whether you can really stay friends with an ex, with Johnny Pemberton and Beth Stelling; what changes in the bedroom once you have kids, with Natasha Leggero and Sabrina Jalees.

The bad date stories have not gone away. Short Background Check bonus episodes replay the best ones from the archive, and the two hundred or so Bad Dates episodes are still in the feed if you want to start at the beginning. What carries both eras is Booster himself, who can get a room of comedians to say the thing they would not say anywhere else and keep it kind.

Are there truly any words to describe such a wonder? I mean there are words to describe your happiest moment in life, but this is different, it shows that in truth we are all untitled by one thing, bad dates. Everyone’s been on one side of that, and their experiences are just gold! Backed with the hosts glorious sense of comedy it’s made relatable and comedic! I’d give it seven stars but it only goes to five soooo, keep making great episodes!

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Cup of Justice

Mandy Matney and Liz Farrell, the journalists who broke the Murdaugh story, on how justice actually gets made, and who gets in its way.

Cup of Justice grew out of the Murdaugh Murders Podcast, the show Mandy Matney built while reporting the Alex Murdaugh case in South Carolina. It started in January 2023 as bonus episodes analyzing the trial and became its own weekly show from Matney’s company, Luna Shark, with fellow investigative journalist Liz Farrell. Matney’s book on the case, ‘Blood on Their Hands’, came out in 2023.

For three years attorney Eric Bland sat in the third chair. He stepped back in July 2026, after episode 188, to focus on his law practice, and is now billed as co-host emeritus. In his place the hosts bring in a rotating bench of lawyers: Atlanta attorney Noah Pines on a South Carolina judge finally facing a public discipline hearing, former prosecutor Katie Phang on suing the Justice Department over the Epstein files.

Episodes run about an hour and move between the week’s court filings, the state of local news, and the question underneath all of it: who holds officials accountable when the system will not. The hosts are good at being angry and precise at the same time, and they explain the legal mechanics in a way you keep.

I don’t know if others will agree with me on this but when a podcast makes me question things I’ve thought and/or accepted, helps me identify my own biases AND educates me on a topic I’m unfamiliar with, I have to give it 5 stars. Thank you for keeping me curious and reminding me to stay pesky 

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Sold a Story

Emily Hanford’s investigation into how American schools teach reading did what almost no podcast ever does: it changed the law.

Sold a Story is the rare podcast with a measurable result. In October 2022 Emily Hanford, a correspondent at APM Reports since 2008 who had already spent years reporting on reading instruction, released six episodes on a method called three-cueing: teaching children to guess words from pictures and context instead of sounding them out. The series follows the idea from the New Zealand researcher who popularized it to Lucy Calkins, Fountas and Pinnell and the publisher Heinemann, who built it into curricula used in classrooms across the country, long after cognitive scientists had shown it does not work.

What happened next is the story. By APM’s own count at least 26 states have passed laws on reading instruction since the podcast began, and legislators in Indiana and Minnesota have said on the record that the series is why they acted. It won the duPont-Columbia Award and a national Edward R. Murrow Award and was a Peabody nominee. Follow-up episodes in 2024 and 2025 checked on the aftermath: a Rust Belt district in Steubenville, Ohio where almost every third grader passes the state reading test, the program it has quietly used for 25 years, and what the 2025 cuts to federal education research mean for all of it.

Episodes run about half an hour, Hanford narrates in a calm, plain voice, and every claim is documented on the show’s site. The trailer for season two, What Happened to Teaching, landed on October 1, 2026: it widens the lens from reading to teaching itself and an approach with decades of evidence behind it that schools have largely ignored. There is also a condensed Spanish adaptation, Sold a Story en español, presented by Valeria Fernández. If you have ever wondered how a whole system can ignore its own research, start here.

Open, transparent & insightful. Thank you for the affirmation of science and data over political influence and money. The state of our education system is criminal.

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If Books Could Kill 

Michael Hobbes & Peter Shamshiri dissect airport bestsellers, unpacking their cultural and ethical implications.

Michael Hobbes, of You’re Wrong About and Maintenance Phase, and Peter Shamshiri, of the Supreme Court podcast 5-4, take one airport bestseller per episode and read it so you do not have to. Since November 2022 they have worked through the self-help, pop psychology and business canon: Think and Grow Rich (written, as they put it, by a lifelong fraudster), Grit, Three Cups of Tea, and in June 2026 The Body Keeps the Score, the trauma book your friend recommended, which they argue does not do what it says it does.

The pleasure is in the method. They are fair about what each book gets right before they get to what it gets wrong, and along the way you learn how publishing works, how a four-page idea becomes a three-hundred-page book, and why the same bad studies keep coming back in new covers.

Episodes arrive once or twice a month and run over an hour, which is about right for a book you no longer have to read. If Books Could Kill helps you choose your next read wisely and makes you a harder person to sell to.

I love that they are able to be very fair with each book and still absolutely tear them to shreds. Saves me a lot of time reading books that would surely infuriate me.

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Happy Place 

Fearne Cotton explores the human quest for happiness through intimate conversations. A weekly soul-stirring journey.

Every Monday since 2018, Fearne Cotton has sat down with someone for about an hour to talk about what happiness means to them, and about the harder things, life, love and loss, that get in its way. The guest list runs from Robbie Williams, Brené Brown and Mel Robbins to Ian Wright. In October 2026 it was Stephen Graham, of Adolescence, with researcher Orly Klein on how to raise boys with empathy, and the week before, Miquita Oliver on a twenty-year rivalry that turned out to be two women scared of each other.

Cotton is a good interviewer because she goes first. She talks openly about her own anxiety and the lows of a life lived on television, and guests answer in kind. The podcast has grown into a small world: Happy Place Book Club episodes with authors, a festival that ran in Richmond and at Tatton Park in 2026, and, new this year, a short Thursday episode of Fearne on her own, ten minutes on whatever is on her mind, from running in your forties to ignoring the trolls.

If you want an inspiring, honest podcast that does not pretend happiness is a destination, Happy Place is a very good choice. 

I always feel so much lighter after every episode! There is always a great take-away from every episode. Fearne’s authentic engagement and enthusiasm are so magnetic. It really inspires me to learn and grow.

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American Greed

Stacy Keach narrates true stories of people who would do anything for money. The darker side of the American dream, every two weeks.

American Greed is the audio of CNBC’s longest-running primetime series, which has been on air since 2007, and it turns out the show loses nothing without the pictures. Stacy Keach’s narration is the whole mood: dry, unhurried, faintly amused at how far people will go. The cases range from the famous, Elizabeth Holmes on trial, the couple accused of laundering billions in stolen Bitcoin, the COVID relief con artists, to the obscure, like a crooked New York City cop who protected a high-tech burglary crew, or a chain of Florida rehab clinics that kept patients hooked to keep billing their insurers.

Each episode is a complete forty-minute story with a beginning, a scheme and a reckoning, and a new one lands every two weeks. It is true crime without the gore, and the greed is the horror. 

Stacey Keech is the man. Great story writing and subject matter.

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Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History

History on steroids. Dan Carlin tells stories about historical figures and events like no one else.

Dan Carlin is a broadcaster, not a historian, and he says so in the first minute. What he does instead is take a period, read everything, and tell it as drama, with the questions a curious outsider would ask: was Alexander the Great as bad a person as Hitler? What would the Apaches have done with modern weapons? His current series, Mania for Subjugation, has followed Alexander from his upbringing to the Battle of Issus over four parts between June 2024 and July 2026, each around four hours long.

That is the deal with Hardcore History: a new show arrives once or twice a year and then eats a whole weekend. Carlin’s “theater of the mind” style, long pauses included, is the opposite of a tidy audiobook, and that is why people re-listen. His earlier series on the First World War and the Mongols are still in the paid archive, and the newer ones stay free in the feed.

He was inducted into the Podcast Hall of Fame in January 2026, which felt overdue. If you have ever thought history was boring, this is the show that proves it was the teaching.

Why didn’t they teach history like this in school? Carlin makes the story relevant and meaningful like I’ve never heard or read. I’m not a history buff or generally even been that interested. This is way different. 

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Ologies with Alie Ward

Alie Ward asks one expert the questions you were too embarrassed to ask, one -ology at a time. Nine years in and still the most fun you can have learning something.

Every episode of Ologies takes one field of study, finds the person who has spent their life on it, and lets Alie Ward ask the dumb questions on your behalf. The first, in September 2017, was volcanology with Jess Phoenix. Since then she has done skunks (two parts with Jerry Dragoo, who has been sprayed in the face nine times), opals with a University of Sydney geophysicist, hyenas, sleep procrastination, and the psychology of why we throw parties. Ward is a science correspondent on CBS’s Innovation Nation with Mo Rocca and a former Los Angeles Times writer, and it shows: she can keep a Harvard deep sea microbiologist talking about tube worms for nearly an hour and a half and leave you sorry it ended.

The trick is that she is on your side. Ward is a comedian as much as a correspondent, so the episodes swing between real wonder and bits, and the guests relax into it; the moment a serious scientist starts gushing about their subject is the best part of every episode. Time put the show on its list of the 100 best podcasts of all time in 2025, and in 2026 it took the People’s Voice Webby for science and education shows.

Two things make it unusually generous. A slice of each episode’s ad revenue goes to a charity chosen by the guest, and since 2021 there have been Smologies, shorter, swearing-free edits of the classics that are safe for kids in the car and now have their own feed. The ninth anniversary episode in September 2026 was on willows and the sculptor Patrick Dougherty, which tells you how far an -ology can stretch. Start with Thanatology, the death and grief episode with Cole Imperi, and you will understand why people stay for years.

No matter the topic, this show is always so fascinating and immersive. There’s so much genuine enthusiasm and vulnerability. My favorite part of every episode is the point where Alie has put the scientist so at ease that they start fangirl/guy-ing about their field.

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The Mixed Reviews

Gavin Mevius and Louie Rendon take one film topic a month, an actor, a director, a genre, and watch everything. Expect guests and strong opinions.

The Mixed Reviews is two friends, Gavin Mevius and Louie Rendon, working through film history one subject at a time. Each episode takes a single topic and goes through the filmography: in 2026 alone that has meant Wes Craven, Penélope Cruz, Ethan Hawke, Julie Andrews, Joel Schumacher, Emily Blunt, a summer of shark movies, and, in September, Shirley MacLaine. Every October there is a Halloween tradition, and 2025’s was aliens on film.

The episodes land on the last Friday of the month and run well over two hours, which sounds like a lot until you realize they have watched a whole filmography to make it. Guests drop in for the subjects they love, and the hosts are generous with newcomers: if you only know one film by the person being covered, that is where they start you.

So whether you are a die-hard cinema buff or a casual movie-goer looking for what to watch next, The Mixed Reviews turns into a watchlist faster than any algorithm.

Gavin and Louie host an incredible podcast where they dive in deep, but don’t let that intimidate you because these hosts make it accessible for one and all. If you like any of the topics covered, start there, but know that you are going to get hooked and these folks will hold your hand while you discover something new!

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We Can Do Hard Things

Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach and Amanda Doyle on the hard parts of being a person, twice a week, with the kind of guests who tell the truth.

We Can Do Hard Things is Glennon Doyle, the author of Untamed, her wife Abby Wambach, the former U.S. soccer captain, and her sister Amanda Doyle, a lawyer, and the three of them are the point. New episodes land on Tuesdays, with a Best Of on Thursdays, and they now make it through their own company, Treat Media. By the show’s own count it has passed half a billion plays and its listeners, the Pod Squad, have raised 56 million dollars in aid.

Glennon has talked openly for years about eating disorders, addiction and recovery, and that candor sets the terms for everyone else. Recent episodes have had Stacey Abrams six weeks out from the midterms, Anand Giridharadas on the Jordan Neely subway case, Cher on starting over, and Amanda’s own breast surgeon, Lucy De La Cruz, on the screenings women are not offered. The three hosts also wrote a book together, ‘We Can Do Hard Things: Answers to Life’s 20 Questions’, published in May 2025.

It is a show about getting through the week honestly, and it is funnier than its title suggests. Tune in and you will find that, like Glennon, we can all do hard things.

Every episode is relatable and brings a new insight into this weird, wild, challenging experience that is life. It is basically women telling their truths and being honest about their experiences but it works a healing magic on you. 

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That is the list. Nineteen shows, no two alike, each one the best of its kind at the thing it does. Start with whichever one matches your week, and come back for the others.

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