It’s that time of year when Nashville Public Radio staffers give listeners a peak into what we’re listening to, right in time for the Thanksgiving holiday and travels. Our annual podcast playlist features more than 11 hours of recommendations!
Some of the newsroom folks recommended exactly what you might expect: hard news series looking into topics ranging from incarceration to sex testing in the Olympic games.
But the Nashville Public Radio family includes our cool cousin, WNXP, whose new Music Citizens podcast gets a shoutout. Plus, the responsible eldest child, our Development team, leaned into longer, conversational-style podcasts featuring national names and familiar Nashvillians, like author and Parnassus Books owner Ann Patchett.
All to say, like a good Thanksgiving spread, there’s something for everyone in our offerings this year.
To listen, you can follow each link below, or check them out in this Spotify playlist. You can also search them out in any podcasting app on a smartphone. And since the best stories never get old, you can revisit our past lists from 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019 and 2018.
Search Engine
Search Engine is the new podcast from PJ Voght, who co-hosted the beloved Reply All podcast, which very publicly and very dramatically went down in flames. It is sad to hear him without lovable buddy Alex Goldman, but when you hear him on his own, you understand what he brought to Reply All — which was great reporting done in a personal way.
Voght’s strength as a reporter is his writing. It’s so casual and uncomplicated that it can feel as if he is speaking off the top of his head. But you know that he isn’t because the episodes are so well-edited and structured.
This episode unfolds. I actually heard several podcasts about this same story — which is so much fun as a reporter because you hear the different story possibilities — and PJ’s version was the best. I hope you enjoy it too.
— Justin Barney
The Paris Review
S4 E5: “Scenes from an Open Marriage”
This recommendation is maybe more of a personal journey than a true podcast recommendation, but I stand by it. One late-night reading rabbit hole led me to a NYT profile on the “Publishing Twins,” which led me to devouring the writing of both twins — essayist Jean Garnett and poet Callie Garnett. I spent about a week incessantly gabbing about Jean’s essay, “Scenes from an Open Marriage,” to anyone that would listen, and, actually, I didn’t stop until I heard this podcast episode. Listening to a writer read and talk about their work is really the only way to loosen the grasp a good essay or novel can have on my mind. And, thus, I recommend The Paris Review podcast.
— Cynthia Abrams
Fire Escape
“Ringing a bell is like the opposite of shame.” This six-part series gently listens to a woman’s experience as part of an incarcerated fire brigade. It’s part cautionary addiction tragedy and survival, part reentry, part parental disaster and familial rebuilding — and part restorative justice tale without ever using those words. We hardly ever get to take this much time with one person’s story. It’s worth it.
— Tasha A.F. Lemley
Music Citizens
There are at least two twists in this episode of Music Citizens. (Don’t worry, no spoilers.) The first surprise is big and bold and hits basically right away. Justin and Jason reveal that the story they expected to be telling about the vinyl record industry ended up not matching the facts that were turning up in interviews. It’s a funny and honest moment — and a great hook that makes me want to hear what they actually did discover. From there, they deliver an authoritative and entertaining dive into how records get made and the major inflection point the industry finds itself in now.
— Tony Gonzalez
Question Everything with Brian Reed
S1 E4: “Can Journalism Save a Marriage?”
Should you trust the media? And what is journalism even, really, anyway? These are some of the questions that Brian Reed, the host of the podcast S-Town, grapples with on his new podcast from member station KCRW. (They are also questions that I ask myself when experiencing my weekly existential crisis.) You might want to start with Episode 1 in which Brian faces down S-Town‘s harshest critic. But it was Episode 4 that hit close to home for me. It’s about a couple who fall on vastly different sides of the political spectrum during an intensely divisive election season and their search to try to find news they both can trust somewhere in the middle.
— Paige Pfleger
Tested
Like many people this summer, I was completely obsessed with the Summer Olympics in Paris. What can I say? I love a sports moment! But you know what else I love? Complexity. And that’s what Tested brought to my obsession. The podcast details the long and complicated history of sex testing in the games, pulling in scientists, former Olympians and hopefuls for a journey through one of the most controversial practices in sports. In the first episode, host Rose Eveleth lays out the problem: The powers that be in sports say they want to create a fair playing field for women’s Olympic events. That’s where sex testing comes into play. But, of course, the science is way more complicated than anyone bargained for, leading to exclusionary practices that aren’t evidence-based. Rose spent years reporting this podcast, and it shows in their deep knowledge and passion for the subject. (And just as an aside, this series was released by NPR’s Embedded right after Meribah Knight’s Supermajority podcast, so there’s a very fun exchange between Rose and Meribah as a baton handoff in Supermajority’s final episode.)
— Miriam Kramer
Keys To The Kingdom
I love a podcast that makes me laugh and, at times, gasp with surprise. This year, I found that in a limited-run series about the truly bonkers world of theme park entertainers. Keys to the Kingdom came out in 2023, but I promise it’s timeless. Both hosts worked at a Disney park: She was a princess; he voiced the talking trash can. Each episode is a sound-rich storytelling trip into folks’ wildest memories of performing for sometimes obsessive park guests. I honestly recommend all eight episodes, but my favorite is “Breaking the Rules,” about the guests — and workers — who go too far.
— Nina Cardona
Rumble Strip
“What Class Are You? A Conversation with Garret Keizer”
“What class are you?” — how would you answer this taboo question? Rumble Strip host Erica Heilman poses it to several people in her ongoing series with Vermont Public. In this episode, the host speaks with writer Garret Keizer, a man she describes as “one of the best thinkers I know.” It is mostly just a conversation. But that conversation, accompanied by the hum of a drive through Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom and a touch of John Coltrane, highlights the quiet power of audio as an art form, even in its simplest applications. We listen from the backseat as Keizer reflects on America’s glaring class inequalities and its perceptions of working class people — ponderings that may be familiar, revelatory, or somewhere in between. Wherever you fall on that spectrum, the discussion will surely leave you wondering: Why are we, still now, so rarely talking about any of this?
— Jesse Strauss
The Girlfriends
S1 E1: “The Good Jewish Doctor”
I used to be a true crime junkie — so much so it came up in my Q&A when I came to Nashville Public Radio. But the more saturated the market became, the more voyeuristic (and paranoid) I felt watching and listening to series after series about others’ untimely deaths. Still, the premise of this series intrigued me: a cold case solved by a group of women — some longtime friends and others new to one another — long after law enforcement had moved on. It is girl code to the extreme of “What do I owe other women? What do I owe a, likely dead, stranger?” The solidarity, plus the familiar (to me) New York accents, the gorgeous scoring, and the fact that it remained so victim-centered that I can name her and not the perpetrator a year after listening has put this in my top examples of well-done true crime. (It’s Dirty John for the listener who wanted to hear more about the daughter’s heroism than the man himself.) The second season of The Girlfriends came out this year as an answer to a big question — a whole other missing person — discovered in the initial investigation. But start at the beginning for the full experience.
— Rachel Iacovone
Proxy
S1 E2: “The Layoff Trilogy: Danger Day”
In newsrooms like ours, reporters often have beats. That means we each focus on a certain subject, like the environment, or education, or politics, and we become an expert in that thing. The amazing Yowei Shaw has decided that her beat is going to be emotions — why we feel them, and how to deal with them in these uncertain times.
The result is her new podcast, Proxy. It features people who’ve faced challenges that leave them with complicated feelings and lots of questions. Then, it pairs them with someone who’s had a similar experience and can help sort things out. The first few episodes focus on Elliot, who gets laid off from his tech job in the coldest, most inhumane way imaginable. Yowei finds an HR professional who’s willing to answer Elliot’s questions about how layoffs work and why his hurt so much.
Incidentally, Yowei got curious about this topic because of her own layoff from NPR’s Invisibilia. Our industry is suffering financially, and lots of news outlets are responding by cutting their longform journalism projects. While this is sad and scary for podcast-lovers like me, I’m hoping that others will follow Yowei’s lead and create a new wave of imaginative, deeply empathetic independent shows like Proxy.
— Char Daston
5-4
“The Federalist Society, part 1: Immodest Origins”
Curious about the rise of the conservative legal movement? This podcast is all about that very subject, and this episode serves as a great introduction to the series. Rhiannon, Michael and Peter are phenomenal at deciphering legal jargon and making learning about law and the history of our federal courts approachable and accessible (dare I say, entertaining). After all, knowing “how we got here” is certainly empowering at a time when it can feel like we the people don’t have much power at all. (Note that this is the first episode in a three-part series — four if you include a Patreon-exclusive coda.)
— Ray Curenton-Dillinger
Pivot
“Trump’s Controversial Picks, Bluesky’s Pop, and Spotify’s Subscriber Jump”
My go-to podcast in 2024 has been Pivot with hosts Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. I love their banter. I love that they bicker. I love that they are both incredibly smart. And, most of all, I love that they take this old guy (me!) and usher me into the world of better understanding technology and business. Just as importantly, they make that journey enjoyable and uncomplicated.
Kara is one of the smartest tech reporters I’ve ever followed. And Scott’s marketing and business acumen are such a nice complement to Kara’s perspective. You can tell they enjoy each other even though they often are on different sides of an issue. And both are willing to give the other brownie points when their argument makes sense.
They enjoy their privilege but are unafraid to own up to it. And they both enjoy “name dropping.” But none of it feels icky. They come up to the line of sounding arrogant and elitist. However, they usually don’t cross the line because they are pretty self-aware.
The podcast is newsy, analytical, opinionated, and always includes an interesting guest segment with great questions and answers.
Make 2025 the year you pivot… to Pivot with Kara and Scott!
— Steve Swenson
The Female Bob Dylan
“Episode 1: Connie Converse’s Long Wandering”
What a refreshing podcast. Writer, researcher and producer Sophie Abramowitz; artist and musician Sarah Bachman; and folklorist, writer and SPINSTER co-owner Emily Hilliard explore the tendency to label women folk musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries as “the female Bob Dylan” — often with mixed implications and questionable accuracy. With good humor and insightful contextual analysis, they challenge this reductive comparison, breaking up the notion that women musicians must be framed in relation to their male counterparts. The first episode explores the life and work of musician, writer and political activist Connie Converse, who has remained a mystery after her disappearance in 1974.
Added bonus: The theme music for this podcast is written by the beloved Nashville songwriter, Lou Turner!
— Kate Teague
Wiser Than Me
“Julia Gets Wise with Bonnie Raitt”
Whether it’s a face–to–face chat or just being a fly on the wall, I love to hear from people who are at least a decade or two ahead of me in life, which makes Wiser Than Me — in which Julia Louis-Dreyfus interviews women who are 70+ years old — a great companion for walks around my neighborhood. In the podcast, she prefaces each interview with a personal essay and wraps up each one with a quick Zoom call with her 90-year-old mother, Judy. While there are several episodes I could highlight from this year (interviews with Anne Lamott and Alice Waters come to mind), one that stood out to me was with musician Bonnie Raitt. From the first moments of introduction to the closing thank yous, Louis-Dreyfus, one of the greatest comedic actresses of the past 50 years, was in tears reflecting on what Raitt’s music has meant to her throughout her life. In her introduction, she explains, “She is the one singer who I feel like she’s mine. Do you know what I mean?” In addition to talking about music, the two women dig into the plus sides and the harder realities of aging, grief, societal expectations and Raitt’s sobriety. While the conversation was clearly a life highlight for Julia Louis-Dreyfus, what lingered with me was witnessing Bonnie Raitt gratefully receive the compliments she was showered with and sincerely appreciate that her life’s work has made a soul connection with another human being.
— Molly Nicholas
Wild Card with Rachel Martin
“Ann Patchett wants to be wrong”
I enjoy the premise of Rachel Martin’s Wild Card podcast. Podcast guests are given the opportunity to select from random question cards which leads to unexpected, authentic conversations. And I appreciate Ann Patchett’s description of her rural background, how it has shaped her today and, most importantly, her comfortability with being wrong. The humor, tenderness and truthfulness that Ann Patchett brings to this conversation is delightful and inspiring.
— Kenda Lovecchio
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM