The Best Radio of 2015

[Originally published January 2016]

I set out a couple of weeks ago to come up with my favorite radio and podcast episodes of the year to share with friends and fellow radio lovers. What began as an attempt to put together a top-10 or -25 list ballooned into a 2500 word review essay of sorts (oops!) about my favorite shows and exemplary episodes. In any case, it’s an amazing time for radio storytelling of all kinds, and this is some of the best audio I heard in 2015.

I have tried to select episodes and shows that I found most powerful, affecting, and memorable. These are in no particular order, and in a few cases I cheated, including shows from before 2015 if I didn’t hear them until this year, or if I simply couldn’t resist.

If you’re looking for something new to listen to, I hope you find something you like here.

Love + Radio, from Radiotopia, often takes unexpected twists and turns into the raw, the obscene, or the unknown. They’ve received — and deserved — tremendous acclaim for The Living Room, the story of an accidental voyeuristic encounter that veers into territory of deep feeling and tragedy.

Gimlet Media’s Reply All launched in late 2014, and quickly became indispensable listening. Though billed as “a show about the internet,” hosts PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman cover fascinating stories from every corner of our digitally saturated culture. Some of their most memorable excursions this year included the story of a Hasidic Jew whose internet use wrenched him from his family and community (Exit and Return, Parts I and II), a story on how NYT reporter Rukmini Callimachi follows ISIS on twitter (@ISIS — an episode that also features ‘the best hold music ever’), and a playful experiment with LSD micro-dosing (Shine On You Crazy Goldman)

This American Life continues to set the standard for top-notch radio storytelling, and their journalistic ambitions become loftier with each passing year. Two two-part episodes stood out in 2015. The Problem We All Live With, Parts I and II, tackled segregation, using stunningly frank audio from community meetings near Ferguson, Missouri. Likewise, Cops See It Differently, Parts I and II tackled race and policing, with some of the best reporting on the subject this year. That a show tackling such serious topics could also produce episodes of such great whimsy and humor (look no farther than last week’s Say Yes to Christmas) just goes to show that TAL’s range — in tone and subject matter — is still unparalleled

The Heart, which joined the Radiotopia collective in 2014, pushes the boundaries of stories about love, sex, and intimacy, and are responsible for some of the most meticulously crafted audio production I’ve heard, blending narrative nonfiction, interviews, and radio drama. Their 2014 episode Movies in Your Head is one of my favorite radio pieces of all time, and this year’s The Hurricane — an exploration of fleeting love during Hurricane Sandy — is nearly as good.

Lena Dunham’s mini-series for Buzzfeed, Women of the Hour, was funny, provocative, and and thoughtful throughout, featuring a variety of fascinating, funny, and brilliant women. But perhaps its most memorable moment was the mini episode First Love Lost, the story of a woman whose first love was killed in Iraq, which explored the complex feelings of grief and loss upon the death of a former lover.

After This American Life, no other show has had as much impact on the way people tell stories on the radio as Radiolab. This year, the show continued to branch out from the sciencey topics for which they are best known, producing a number of highly compelling stories on extremely varied topics. Birthstory, a collaboration with the fascinating Israeli program Israel Story, explored the politics and pitfalls of transnational surrogacy. In Mau Mau, they reported on the historical erasure of the violence committed by the British against the Mau Mau rebels and the legal battles that are bringing the suppressed contents of the colonial archives back into the light of day. Sight Unseen told the story of a photographer and a dying soldier in Iraq, exploring the politics of visibility and invisibility in contemporary warfare. In the past, hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich have sometimes been a bit off-putting in their desire to tie stories up just a bit too neatly, to arrive at conclusions that are just a bit too carefully constructed. This year they embraced stories with more ambiguity and left their conclusions a bit more open-ended, and the show is firing on all cylinders.

Radiotopia’s Radio Diaries team are wizards at constructing compelling stories from archival audio recordings. In the last year or so, two episodes blew me away: The View from the 79th Floor, which told the story of a plane that crashed into a NYC skyscraper in 1945, and Strange Fruit, featuring archival recordings of witnesses to the lynching that inspired the Billie Holiday song “Strange Fruit.”

99% Invisible — Radiotopia’s flagship program — is the podcast I recommend to friends most frequently. Sometimes I feel like this guy. Every week, Roman Mars and his team explore some aspect of design, architecture, or the built environment, blending reporting, whimsy, and meticulous sound design. A few episodes that stood out this year: Atmospherians, on the real-life Central Casting for movie extras; The Devil’s Rope, on the history and meanings of barbed wire; Guerilla Public Service, telling the story of surreptitious and unauthorized improvements to LA’s transportation infrastructure; and Pagodas and Dragon Gates, on the distinctive architecture of Chinatowns in the US. (I’m also going to include the Structural Integrity, about a skyscraper in New York which narrowly avoided bad-design induced catastrophe. It’s an older episode, but it was rebroadcast recently ;)

Lea Thau, of KCRW’s Strangers, produces some of the most raw, intimate interviews on the radio. Some of her most compelling work to date, however, was the result of turning the microphone on herself. In an incredibly brave series of episodes entitled Love Hurts (Parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI), she explored what it meant to be single, and interviewed recent dates and lovers to ask them why they thought things hadn’t worked out with her. Some might find the whole enterprise self-indulgent, but I found it fascinating. (I’m cheating a bit here — most of these episodes came out in 2014, but the most recent update was this year, so I’m calling them fair game!)

Two new audio dramas came out in the last few months, both of which made me excited about the future of the genre. Both adopted the style of a Serial-like podcast, using narrative journalism to explore strange or mysterious (and of course, fictional) phenomena. GE Podcast Theater’s The Message reported on a team of cryptographers trying to crack the meaning an extraterrestrial audio transmission. Limetown was an investigation into a town-sized research facility whose inhabitants had mysteriously disappeared. Both shows featured beautiful audio production and great pacing, and they both had me eagerly waiting for each new episode.

Critics either loved or hated Starlee Kine’s Mystery Show, from Gimlet Media. At times, I found the premise — Kine’s noir-ish investigations into her friends’ trivial and mundane mysteries — a bit contrived. Yet there were moments, as when Kine engaged a ticketmaster call rep in an extended discussion about the meaning of life (Britney), that were true audio gold.

One of the many interesting shows that launched in 2015, Nocturne sometimes feels like the kind of deep conversation and reflection you can only have late at night. The episode that has stuck with me the most is Alter Hours, the story of one writer’s love of the night and the challenges she faces in maintaining a nocturnal schedule.

I first heard Another Round when hosts Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton interviewed Hillary Clinton in Madam Secretary, What’s Good? Covering topics ranging from race and gender to Charlie Brown, Heben and Tracy have a style of banter that can be both hilarious and serious. You should listen to this show. As Meg Cramer, the show’s producer, wrote in a letter to white audience members who write in asking how to be a better ally to black people, “Listen and amplify. Listen and amplify. These days, that means that I tell a lot of white people to listen to Another Round. Amplifying the opinions and ideas of other people is a way to participate without taking up space.” Word.

I was skeptical when Mortified joined Radiotopia — it seemed like a knockoff of the Moth, and I didn’t think that the show would live up to the Radiotopia standards for highly produced audio storytelling. But the show — featuring real people reading real writings from their childhood — is belly-achingly funny. Two episodes that I loved the most this year were Summer Camp Spectacular, featuring letters and diaries from camp, and Joan: 50 Shades of Awkward, featuring the hilarious attempts of a pre-teen to write erotic fiction.

The Leap is a promising new show from KQED about transitions and transformations. The Dinner Date tells a story of coincidence, tragedy, and friendship through shared grief.

I’m way behind in catching up to all the episodes in Israel Story’s first English language season. The show, an explicit knock-off of This American Life for Israeli radio, is surprisingly good. Love Syndrome tells a story with so many twists and turns that you can hardly believe it’s true, covering the the surprising growth of one woman’s family as she moved from New York to Alaska, and finally to a kibbutz. It’s an incredible story, and a beautiful reflection on the meanings of love and family.

Nothing on the radio sounds quite like Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything. Walker uses a blend of philosophical rumination, investigative journalism, memoir, and fiction to explore important changes in contemporary society. This year, he did three multi-part episodes that were vital and fascinating: Instaserfs (Parts I, II, and III), which examined the “sharing economy” through the eyes of someone who signed up to work for as many apps as he could; New York After Rent (Parts I, II, and III), which examined the rise of AirBnb and its impact on New York; and Art De Vivre (Parts I and II), on the rapidly growing Chinese market for French wine, and how wine consumption is linked to French notions of the good life.

Eric Molinsky’s Imaginary Worlds tells stories about science fiction, fantasy, and the place of these genres in the culture at large. 1977 kicked off a recent series of episodes on the cultural context and impact of Star Wars, with a fascinating look at the cultural milieu and sci-if zeitgeist on the eve of the premier of A New Hope.

In the abstract, I’m not that interested in stories about Hollywood, but Karina Longworth’s meticulously researched audio essays on the strange and forgotten stories of the “golden age” of twentieth-century cinema on You Must Remember This are almost always captivating. Her twelve part series (!!) on Charles Manson’s Hollywood was a tour de force, unearthing the myriad ways that the Manson cult murders were tied into, reflected, and influenced the Hollywood culture around 1970. True crime lovers, download and listen immediately.

Planet Money is often fun and informative, using creative avenues to explore complicated or potentially boring economic topics. In The Tale of the Onion King, they explain the concept of “cornering the market” through the colorful tale of the man who bought virtually all of the onions in America.

I was shocked when WNYC dropped Hilary Frank’s The Longest Shortest Time, a show featuring stories about parenting and early childhood. Not surprisingly, given its quality, the show quickly found a new home at Earwolf. Probably the best show Frank did this year was The Accidental Gay Parents, Parts I and II, telling from each partner’s perspective the story of a gay couple who, without warning, took responsibility for a family member’s young children.

I am way behind on listening to Gravy, Tina Antolini’s show about southern food and culture, but a couple of episodes were really memorable this year. Hip Hop to Bibimbap tells the story of a long time Atlanta food writer and her explorations of the changing international foodscape of the south. Combat Ready Kitchen, which was also featured on 99% Invisible, sheds light on the military origins of many contemporary processed foodstuffs.

Another food show that I need to catch up on is Gastropod, a show that blends food history, culture, and science. The United States of Chinese Food was a lovely episode looking at the changing position and connotations of Chinese food at different points in American history

Criminal has been another welcome addition to the Radiotopia family of podcasts. The episode that has most stuck with me is 695BGK, the story of a police shooting by a black man who was lucky enough to survive the encounter.

My interest in The Longform Podcast, which interviews working journalists about their reporting and writing processes, is usually dependant on whether I’ve read the work of the particular journalist being interviewed. But whether you’ve read her work or not, the interview with NY Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi (Parts I and II) was utterly fascinating. Callimachi covers the ISIS beat at the Times, and her perspective on — and access to interesting material about — the terrorist group is unique.

I usually only listen to Mark Maron’s show WTF when he’s interviewing people I’m interested in. This year, there were at least three episodes that were fascinating to hear, including his interviews with Sir Ian McKellen, Terry Gross, and, of course, Barack Obama.

Speaking of Terry Gross, she did some wonderful (as always!) interviews on Fresh Air this year. Perhaps not surprisingly, Carrie Brownstein was fascinating, self-reflective, and deeply articulate, and Gloria Steinem was as vivid and charismatic as ever.

One of the most fascinating and poignant shows I’ve heard in the past two years is How to Be a Girl, a mother’s documentary about her transgender child. Marlo Mack hasn’t released any new episodes in her own podcast feed recently, but the show ARRVLS aired a version of one of her stories Mama, I’m a Girl. Seriously, this one’s worth a listen.

Startup began as a self-reflexive documentary about Alex Blumberg’s efforts to start the podcast company that would become Gimlet Media. Startup’s first season, last fall, tackled the process of finding investors, coming up with a company name, and the strains that the startup lifestyle puts on both business and personal relationships. Blumberg’s documentary chops, and the unfettered access that he had in documenting the formation of his own company, led to moments of pure audio goal. There was also something fascinating about a podcast that was both a documentary and an advertisement for a podcasting company. Meta, I know. In its second season this year, Startup took on the story of another company — Dating Ring. These episodes were interesting, but lacked the drama and stakes of season one. Which is why this fall’s mini-season, featuring updates on what’s going on at Gimlet, was a welcome return to form. Married to Your Business, about whether Blumberg’s wife should quit her job at MSNBC and come to work for Gimlet, was particularly interesting.

Andrea Silenzi’s brilliant show Why Oh Why?, about love, sex, technology, and dating, went on indefinite hiatus earlier this year, but that gave me a lot of time in 2015 to listen to the bulk of her back catalog of episodes. One that really stood out was an early show, Down the Rabbit Hole, about the strange places that curiosity led two different women. Silenzi’s show is hard to put a finger on genre-wise; it blends personal narrative, interviews, reporting, and fiction. But she’s a captivating presence on the airwaves, and her show takes up topics that would be hard to imagine covering successfully in less capable hands.

I’ve left two behemoths to the end of the list. Invisibilia had a great first season, with tens of millions of listeners. Though I enjoyed listening to the show while it was on, the better part of a year later the individual episodes haven’t really stuck with me. Your mileage may vary. And finally, Serial, which, if you haven’t already heard of it, there’s no way you’ve read this far anyway. I thought Season 1 was tremendous, and I’m excited so far by Season 2’s exploration of the Bowe Bergdahl case. But it’s too early in the story to form a critical judgment, other than to say that the production values and storytelling live up to what you’d expect from such an experienced and acclaimed team.