A Great Book with Barack Obama to Intimacy: 18 of the best podcasts of 2026 so far

From the former US president discussing books to a provocative drama written by and starring Game of Thrones' Lena Headey – here's the best new podcasts for you to listen to and watch.

Fourteen years ago, the US marine-turned-journalist Austin Tice disappeared in Syria shortly after his 31st birthday. As the years went by many assumed he had been murdered, though new evidence suggests he might be alive. This co-production between NPR and the BBC finds journalists Josh Baker and Sara Obeidat going in search of Tice in Syria shortly after the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Taking in espionage, cover-ups and the barbaric activities of a ruthless regime, the series has the tension of a thriller, not least because the hosts frequently put themselves in danger in their quest for answers. 

Listen on BBC Sounds in the UK and NPR in the US

This new series unites two passions of the former president of the United States: books and audio. A Great Book features conversations with contemporary thinkers and writers including Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jill Lepore, Lauren Groff and Percival Everett. The opening episode brings star wattage in the form of Tom Hanks, with whom Obama discusses Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, about a dying pastor. It provides a springboard for warmly engaging reflections from host and guest on ageing, mortality and not taking things for granted when you've got "a finite number of sunsets left". 

Audio drama has come a long way since the days of creaking doors and nails-down-a-blackboard acting, as demonstrated by this topical drama starring Lena Headey, Maisie Williams, Hannah Waddingham and Alison Steadman. Written and directed by Headey, Intimacy follows Liza, an intimacy co-ordinator for film and TV, who takes on a last-minute and potentially career-changing job, only to encounter assorted red flags when she gets on set. Darkly funny but with serious themes, Intimacy brings nuance and compassion to discussions around consent and trauma.

Listen on BBC Sounds in the UK or BBC.com outside the UK

Paul Harrison is a charismatic criminal profiler and ex-police officer who worked with the FBI on the Jeffrey Dahmer and Charles Manson cases and had tête-à-têtes with the Yorkshire Ripper – or so he claims. Harrison's storied career has also led him to write a best-selling book and deliver talks to rapt true-crime enthusiasts. So intrigued were journalist Francisco Garcia and producer Brenna Daldorph by Harrison's story that they decided to do some digging. What they uncover in this twisty, madcap investigation goes to the heart of our dubious fascination with true crime and the flaws in today's publishing industry.

Listen on Audible

This is the latest instalment of the BBC's Legend series which has already examined the lives and legacies of Joni Mitchell and Bruce Springsteen. The Miles Davis Story is presented by The Wire actor Clarke Peters, whose life was changed by Davis's 1970 album Bitches Brew. Peters explores the many facets of Davis: the genius and jazz pioneer; the cruel lover and husband; the rebel who refused to stay in his lane; the addict. "For Miles, the only thing that mattered was the next note, the next era," says Peters.

Listen on BBC Sounds in the UK or BBC.com outside the UK

In 2024 the celebrated children's author Petra Mathers and her photographer husband Michael Mathers died in their home in Oregon in what appeared to be a meticulously planned double suicide. Days before their deaths, they sent out letters saying goodbye to friends and loved ones. In Death of the Artist, another married couple, journalists Alice Gregory and Leon Neyfakh, talk to the recipients of those letters. From this intimate testimony, they build a thoughtful and moving series about life, creativity and the impact of suicide on those left behind.

Listen on Pushkin

The long-distance dogsledder and adventurer Blair Braverman tells true stories of survival from history. We hear about a Frenchman who, having survived childhood poverty and cholera, was shipwrecked on an island in the South Pacific for 18 months; an Alaskan seamstress who joined an Arctic expedition and was stranded alone for eight months in Wrangel Island, north of Siberia; and a twentysomething artist and plane crash survivor who descended a mountain with a gash in her leg and a fractured arm and walked to safety. Braverman is a natural storyteller, and these epic tales of endurance are gripping and immersive.

Listen on Acast

Dan Taberski, the podcaster behind the excellent 9/12 and Missing Richard Simmons, investigates the chequered history of political manifestos. These written calls to arms sometimes promote violence and hatred (the Norwegian killer Anders Breivik and the Unabomber both penned manifestos) but they can also be documents of hope composed by dreamers and idealists. Taberski brings wryness and depth to this six-parter in which he meets leading lights of the Occupy movement, Riot Grrrl music scene and the New Hampshire free state movement. What binds them is their optimism, conviction and a desire to challenge the status quo.

Listen on Audible

This is the follow-up to 2024's award-winning podcast To Catch a Scorpion, which saw journalist Sue Mitchell and ex-soldier and aid worker Rob Lawrie investigating the traffickers who send dangerously overcrowded dinghies across the English Channel, often with tragic consequences. Their work led to the arrest of the "scorpion" in question: trafficking kingpin Barzan Majeed.

Now Mitchell and Lawrie have another smuggler in their sights, who operates under the false name Kardo Ranya. The presenting team are relentless and dogged, and their investigation is tense, difficult and full of surprises. But they also never lose sight of the stories of individuals undertaking dangerous journeys for the promise of a better life.

Listen on BBC Sounds in the UK or BBC.com outside the UK

This narrative series from Serial Productions – the company founded by the creators of true-crime behemoth Serial – tells the story of Allen, described by the series' host M Gessen as "a clown, a blowhard, a pompous ass".

Allen is Gessen's first cousin and, we learn, a world-class show-off given to bragging about his jet-setting lifestyle. But when he turns up at his uncle's house in Cape Cod with his five-year-old son in tow, Gessen suspects Allen has taken the boy from his mother against her wishes. What begins as a run-of-the-mill family drama turns into an in-depth and atmospheric character study of a man high on entitlement and a misplaced sense of injustice.

Listen at the New York Times

Hit That Perfect Beat is the story of London Records, a British label which launched The Communards, Bananarama, Shakespears Sister, Fine Young Cannibals, Goldie, Orbital, All Saints and many more. But it's really the story of the wider music industry in the 1980s and 90s, and a culture of hedonism, money and chart domination that flourished until streaming devastated the business.

Presented by former Smash Hits journalist Siân Pattenden, the podcast is a delightful, nostalgia-soaked hopscotch through the history of this once overachieving company and its biggest signings. Wild stories of egotism and excess abound.

Listen on Acast

Never underestimate the power of women talking amongst themselves. This is the main takeaway from The Girlfriends: Trust Me Babe. Hosted by the reporter Anna Sinfeld, the series tracks the case built against the Minnesotan romance scammer Derek Alldred by the women he conned out of thousands of dollars.

The crimes recounted in Trust Me Babe are unsettling, but this is ultimately a feel-good tale and a rousing paean to female solidarity. It shows women overcoming their trauma and police indifference to stop others from enduring the same nightmare.

Listen on Apple podcasts

Fans of the US podcast 99% Invisible, about the hidden inventions that help the world run smoothly, will know the concept behind this podcast, which aims to document the seemingly innocuous artefacts that tell the story of the US as it reaches its 250th birthday.

As with 99% Invisible, the host is Roman Mars, the journalist and podcaster known for his gently quizzical style. Rather than examining museum pieces, he focuses on lesser-known items such as a screw thread – the spiral groove on the outside of screws that became standardised during World War Two – and the Century Safe, a time capsule that was sealed in 1876 and opened a century later.

Listen on BBC Sounds in the UK and BBC.com outside the UK

Birdwatching podcast Get Birding has been around for several years, capitalising on the vogue for slow radio: gentle and meditative audio that is the antidote to our often hectic and noisy lives. Now the series has relaunched with a new host, the Yorkshire-based actor Sean Bean, star of Game of Thrones. Bean has been a keen birdwatcher since childhood and now spends many happy hours in his garden gazing at the wildlife.

Each episode has a loose theme, from bird-friendly gardening to the joy of nest boxes. There are also assorted guests including folk singer Sam Lee, Elbow's Guy Garvey and YouTuber Kwesia aka City Girl in Nature. But the greatest delight lies in hearing Bean waxing lyrical about our feathered friends. His reading of Blackbird, the poem by John Drinkwater, is truly a balm for the soul.

Listen on Acast and watch on YouTube

It might seem a tall order to ask listeners to empathise with people afflicted by urges that are harmful to themselves and others. But in Impulsive, the latest in the BBC's Shadow World strand, which shines a light on hidden or untold stories, Noel Titheradge does just that. The series reveals how dopamine agonist drugs, a medication prescribed for people living with Parkinson's, can cause impulse control disorders and lead users to compulsively shop, gamble, steal or fixate about sex.

It's a reflection of Titheradge's careful reporting and interviewing style that he has managed to persuade those affected to put aside any shame and tell their stories. We meet Steve, who began staying up all night talking to cam girls; Freddie, whose father suddenly blew his life savings on overseas property; and Lucy, who began an affair with a stranger she met online. 

Listen on BBC Sounds in the UK or BBC.com outside the UK

While serving a life sentence for double murder, Californian Michael Lynne Thompson joined the neo-Nazi prison gang Aryan Brotherhood, though later left and testified against its members. He remains one of the few to have done so who has lived to tell the tale. Blood Memory finds Thompson telling his story almost uninterrupted, save for the testimony of a prosecutor and court mitigator.

This intimate, detailed and richly sound-designed mini-series features on Nick van der Kolk's Love + Radio, a podcast about the vastness of human experience and featuring in-depth conversations with unusual people. Van der Kolk is the interviewer, though he keeps his interjections to a minimum. Thompson is a complex figure: a man of rare charisma who was born into a life of neglect and poverty and claims to have lived a life of violence as a means of survival. Is he a victim of circumstance or a skilled self-publicist and master manipulator?

Listen at loveandradio.org

When the Belgian audio producer Helena de Groot got together with her American partner, David, she told him emphatically that she didn't want children. She told him again just before they got married in San Francisco. David seemed to accept her decision, saying he wanted to be with her more than he wanted a baby. But as the years went by, he began trying to change her mind.

In Creation Myth, De Groot ponders the question: to breed or not to breed? A compellingly raw audio memoir, it moves from present to past and back again as it documents its creator's innermost anxieties about motherhood. Now, from the vantage point of her forties, De Groot finds herself questioning her own convictions and weighing the impact of her decision on herself, her friendships and her marriage.

Listen at cbc.ca

In 2002, in Aurora, Illinois, Al and Mary Ann Signorelli's 21-year-old son Jeff was shot dead at a social gathering in what seemed a random act of violence. No arrests were made and the case remains unsolved, but this podcast which is written, produced and hosted by Willy Nast, isn't a whodunnit. Decades in the making, City of Lights is a thoughtful and empathetic account of the aftermath of a murder and what happens to those left behind.

For the Signorellis, coming to terms with their grief meant trying to fix the apathetic political and social systems that had allowed violent crime to flourish in their city. Nast is no impartial observer: he grew up in Aurora and knew Jeff Signorelli, albeit vaguely. That he is so embroiled in the story makes for a heartfelt portrait of a city and a couple whose determination and resilience take your breath away.

Listen at willynast.com

This story was updated on 20 Mar to reflect details about Michael Lynne Thompson's case from the Blood Memory podcast.

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