Of all the famous faces that appeared in Celebrity Traitors last year, Joe Marler seems to have had the best result - he pops up on any and every television opportunity you can think of. But not only that, he created his own podcast as well: Joe Marler Will See You Now. It definitely falls into that category of celebrities just chatting to each other, but with Marler’s deadpan humour and the vague theme of psychology, it’s a lot of fun. Initially, the guests were quite predictable - Nick Mohammed, Cat Burns, Lucy Beaument, all familiar faces from that Traitors castle. But the guest list has expanded, with recent episodes featuring Sue Perkins, Tom Allen and Michael Ball!

Pluribus was an absolute treat of a TV show at the end of last year, and the kind of show it is - well crafted and entirely mysterious - lends itself very well to an accompanying podcast. This official show is hosted by Chris McCaleb, an editor on the TV show itself and has a roundtable discussion focusing on each episode of the show and featuring actors, crew, writers, editors, directors and anyone else who can weigh in on what it takes to make a series like this.

I’ve drifted far away from podcasts over the last few years, having previously been mildly obsessed with the format. I’m rectifying that by resurrecting this feature, and my first podcast for 2026 is Get a Grip. The show is a conversation between two good friends, covering recent pop culture news, things happening in their careers and personal lives, and new ways to look after yourself. Angela Scanlon and Vicky Pattison are done being told to pipe down, calm down… or “get a grip.” Instead, they’ve flipped the script – Get A Grip is their unapologetic podcast group chat where nothing’s off-limits. From the messy realities of womanhood to celeb gossip, wild headlines and the everyday dramas we’re all muddling through, Angela and Vicky are loud, proud and completely unfiltered. Every week, they’re laughing, oversharing and getting real, while dragging you, their beloved Gagglers, right into the chaos.

I previously wrote about the new feature in Apple Podcasts that auto-generates transcripts, with mixed feelings about it. A great improvement, and a step forward for accessability, obviously, but the accuracy and layout of it weren’t exactly what I would have gone for. I said at the time: As a creator, that’s all you actually have to do, read it and check it. You can opt out and provide your own transcripts if preferred, but this would at least be a great starting place to save some time. It’s not perfect, as you’d imagine, being a first release and relying on computer-generated text-to-speech that is so much better than it used to be but still has room for improvement. Because it is just transcribing the words, there is no differentiation between speakers, whereas I used to create my transcripts more like a script.

I haven’t made a podcast in a good few years now but one part of the process I had a love/hate relationship with has been made so much easier by a new Apple Podcasts feature - auto-generated transcripts. I loved creating the transcripts in collaboration with our incredible community because it was an accessibility feature, it meant we could refer back to the text rather than audio to settle future arguments, and it’s always good to see just how much we prattled on in a physical word count.

There have been a lot of changes to Apple products and softwares around my house recently and I have barely scratched the surface of any of them. I mean, let’s be fair, I barely ever manage to scratch the surface of updates before the next lot come out but I’m always determined to try and I think that counts for something.

One of the reasons I drifted away from podcasts in the last few years was due to the vast amount that were just celebrities interviewing other celebrities. It all got a bit circular, especially during lockdown when our favourite stars didn’t have much else to do. My podcast of the month this time is one of those though, because it’s too good not to mention. Alan Carr started a show called Life’s A Beach that talked to a different celebrity each week about their favourite travel destinations, tips and experiences. It was specifically launched in lockdown, revelling in the talk about holidays where real life wouldn’t allow the practicalities of actual travel.

With any new hobby that you get stuck into, you can probably find a podcast out there that will offer up help, tips and advice. My increasing obsession with veg growing and gardening means I was quickly searching for green-fingered podcasts and this one caught my attention quite quickly. Epic Gardening is a mission founded by Kevin Espiritu and with a host of expert collaborators to get people growing more plants.

Two years ago, to the very month, I wrote about my frustration on trying to follow news and blogs via RSS feed. It wasn’t hard to find great content that I wanted to keep on top of but finding the best way to actually subscribe and follow was really difficult. I think that problem has continued, particularly with the more fragmented world of newsletter subscriptions and paid for content.

I used to be an incredible podcast fanatic, but my interest has waned steadily over the past few years. The prevalance of celebrities picking a genre and talking to other celebrities about it got boring for me, so I moved on to audiobooks and music instead. The other trend that seemed to be a move in the wrong direction for podcasts was the silo effect - exclusive podcasts to various platforms, Audible being one of the main players in that space.

If you’re any kind of space nut you’ll have heard of this podcast already - it’s been around for two series now and is an outstanding piece of production that drags you right into the heart of space missions and doesn’t let you go until they’re over. 13 Minutes to the Moon is a BBC podcast that started with the story of Apollo 11, and specifically centred on that descent from the Apollo craft to the lunar surface.

The US version of The Office has been off air for over six years, but it is barely out of the public consciousness and rarely a day goes by that I don’t see an Office gif fly by on my Twitter stream. The success of the Office didn’t diminish the brilliance of the original UK version but it certainly dwarfed it in popularity – spreading its wings to be much more of an ensemble piece, and covering far more ground than the original two series ever could.

I recently discovered the podcast Robot or Not which is an audio show where: “Jason Snell asks John Siracusa to rule on the meaning of various words and concepts. It’s not just about robots anymore.” I have been listening to the entire back catalogue, partly because the episodes are so short but also because they’re so fascinating. As the title suggests, the concept started out solely about robots but has branched out to food, ethics, religion and actually quite a lot about food. One of the older episodes I listened to was all about how to distinguish between movies and television these days.

I’ve been a podcast listener for a long time and have talked often about them, from my evolving listening habits, to being a bit of a hoarder, and even picking out some of my favourites on occasion. Recently, I’ve been more obsessed with Beats 1 and streaming music and letting my podcast backlog creep up and up, but that has all changed. My podcast app of choice has previously been Downcast. It’s a sturdy product that collects and plays podcasts well, but it’s not perfect, and if I’m honest I had got into that slightly stale place where you just keep using an app even though it crashes quite a lot, because laziness is keeping you there.

The best kind of podcasts are those that have a simple premise that can run and run. Encyclopedia Womannica is exactly one of those. Hoping to give some attention to those women from history that have either been overlooked completely or have not had the attention they should have had. Over the course of a year, the hosts aim to feature the profile of a historical icon, as the podcast blurb explains:

You’d probably have to have been living under a rock to have missed that there was a docu-drama programme telling the story of the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor disaster and what happened afterwards. It has been very well received and widely considered one of the best things on TV so far. I’m not going to add too much to the overwhelming level of support this TV series has got, because I too thought it was incredible. It’s grim viewing, and you can’t really say you enjoyed it after seeing the whole thing, but there’s something about it that grabs you and won’t let you go. The acting is incredible, the visuals astounding and the story is something else.

Just a bit of inspiration from an old episode of Radio 1’s Screen Time podcast with Ali Plumb. As I’ve said to people on Instagram and Twitter quite a lot lately, don’t be ashamed of your opinions. If you happen to, for example, not like The Favourite, and everyone’s saying how amazing it is, but you’re like, I don’t like it. Don’t feel ashamed, don’t be like, oh I’ve got to watch it again so I can teach myself to like it.

Whilst I am up to date with The Good Place (makes a change!), I hadn’t realised there was a podcast from the makers that dated back to the end of series one. Recently I heard some chatter about how good the podcast was, and so I quickly subscribed and started catching up. The chatter was right, this show is really good. Obviously you should only listen if you have watched the show they are talking about, but once you’re in the know, the extra insight you gain from this podcast is incredible. Hosted by actor Marc Evan Jackson, who is in the show, the podcast gathers a rotating guest list of other actors (including stars Ted Danson and Kristen Bell), as well as creators, writers, directors, producers, wardrobe, set designers, visual effects, anyone who is involved in making The Good Place as good as it sounds.

I can’t remember how I stumbled upon the podcast Everything is Alive but I know I listened to the first episode about a can of cola and found myself oddly moved and disturbed at the same time. It’s not often something has that effect on you. The premise of the show is simple but weird. Our host interviews inanimate objects, except they are not as inanimate as you might think. They have voices, thoughts, past histories and philosophies, insights into the human condition as seen from a point of view I can guarantee you won’t have thought of.

An interesting piece about film credits aired on Marketplace last week, discussing why the in- and out- credits on films have gotten so much longer than previously. It explained why this has occurred and started with a look at the closing scroll on Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. “The credits last a whopping nine minutes and thirty seconds, that’s an addition of more than three minutes over the original 1993 Jurassic Park…

I’ll admit, my podcast listening habits these days are like a rollercoaster. Some weeks I listen to barely anything, other weeks I am re-subscribing to shows and listening non-stop. It’s an adventure. One show that has been with me for a while, though, is NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour. I’m a little way behind on it, but actually that works in my favour, because I’m also quite far behind on the culture they are covering.

Yesterday, I talked about the concept of diving headfirst into a new subject of your choosing and just going for the learning ride. This is something I’ve struggled with before, and particularly when it comes to history. I didn’t enjoy history that much at school, but have since found a fondness for finding out how the world has come to be in the position it is in today. The trouble with history is it is a HUGE SUBJECT. Almost like it encompasses everything that has ever happened or something.

There’s something brilliantly wonderful and overwhelming about diving into a subject you don’t really know a lot about. I’ve done this a few times: with films, with music and most recently with sport – getting fully involved with tennis, and this month, jumping feet first into Formula E with a new podcast and everything. At first, it seems totally overwhelming. There’s so much you don’t know, an entire history that you’ve missed out on (not so much with Formula E, being just a baby motorsport series), and so many connections you’re going to miss. What you have to do is push that to one side, ignore all the voices telling you it’s too big a subject, it’s too late, you might as well just watch re-runs of The Big Bang Theory instead.

This podcast first came to my attention as one of the episodes featured the rather marvellous Simona de Silvestro - race car driver and generally all round good egg. Once I listened to that episode, I very quickly downloaded all the preceding shows and subscribed so I wouldn’t miss any future publications either. In Her Court comes out of Australia and features sports journalist Sam Squiers interviewing a variety of sporting names regarding all things “women in sport”. Topics have included overcoming difficult events, changing sports mid-career, getting a leg up, fighting for equality with men, and sporting injuries. The focus of the most recent episode, which actually ended the first season of the show, was about whether women are more susceptible to injuries than their male counterparts, and delving deeper into that taboo topic of menstruation.

The format of visiting a subject through a certain number of tangential objects has been done a few times, but I’ve found this recent iteration from the BBC fascinating. Tim Harford, one of the Beeb’s resident economists, covers fifty things that have, in some way, shaped the economy that we know and live with today. If you had to list some things, you’d probably say credit cards, interest rates, banks, etc, etc, but there’s a lot more to it than that.

A recent episode of Back to Work featured a brilliant quote from Merlin Mann. The conversation was actually about sending spam-like emails to people hoping they will promote your business in some way. But I actually think it’s an interesting idea to consider in all aspects of your life. I want everybody out there who is a listener to think about this. What if everybody was doing what I was doing? Or, put slightly differently, what if ten times more people did this than currently do this.

At first glance, The Pandolly Podcast doesn’t seem like it would be a good fit for me. Pandora Sykes and Dolly Alderton, fashion and dating experts from The Sunday Times Style, get together once a week to review some of the big and little stories of the week. They recommend fashion items from sponsor River Island and Instagram accounts to follow, chat about celebrities, odd stories and bigger worldwide news, plus often get into all manner of feminist issues.

I’m not an American citizen, so am interested in their election only so far as what happens over there seems to affect us anyway. I’m not usually one to talk about politics either, because it always seems to be to be a topic that causes arguments and resolves little. Even so, I think it’s worth highlighting a presidential candidate who has set up her own podcast, called With Her, to cover the last few months of the campaign.

Criminal is part of the Radiotopia network, a selection of well-produced shows from hosts that all have wonderfully smooth and captivating voices. I have listened to a few of them over the weeks and months, and Criminal is one of the few that has stuck. They describe themselves as a podcast with a different take on crime. This, from the about page: Criminal is a podcast about crime. Not so much the “if it bleeds, it leads,” kind of crime, but something a little more complex. Stories of people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle.

The 2016 Wimbledon Championships drew to a close this past weekend with Williams and Murray taking their respective crowns and bringing to an end two weeks of spectacular tennis. I’ve never felt quite so on top of all the Wimbledon action as I have this year, well not since I once took a whole week off to watch nothing but the tennis. There are two reasons why I’ve managed to stay so informed. One is the brilliant Live at Wimbledon radio, which provided all day every day coverage either of everything going on across the grounds, or more specific channels for Centre Court and Court One. The other weapon in my knowledge arsenal was the fantastic Tennis Podcast.

This podcast popped up out of nowhere but instantly became a regular part of my audio entertainment. It’s a simple concept - Anna invites over her Hollywood friends, has a bit of a chat with them, and then takes calls from listeners with relationship and other problems. Anna and the guest attempt to dispense advice, but make sure to point out they’re unqualified to do so.

A recent episode of Note to Self highlighted a really interesting concept that they’re unfortunately calling the ‘Lonely Web.’ The idea is that for all the popular social media posts that get hundreds of views every day, there are those that don’t get any visits at all. It’s an interesting listen, if a little hamfisted at times - you sort of get the feeling that it’s not a huge issue, particularly as not everyone is out there to be famous, and there’s an awkward moment at the beginning where Manoush only just manages to remember there’s a world outside of America. Nevertheless, it’s a thought-provoking podcast with great production values.

If you listen to podcasts in any capacity, you’re unlikely to have missed hearing about the new spin-off from This American Life called Serial. It’s a documentary series focusing on one story and following it for as long as it takes, rather than the multi-storied This American Life style episodes. And whereas TAL is all about the radio with podcasts attached on the side, Serial is designed to be a podcast first and foremost - variable lengths, both in individual episodes and potentially seasons as well.

I was listening to an episode of Current Geek recently, when a fascinating conversation emerged regarding the structure of television shows and their series’. Current Geek features Scott Johnson and Tom Merritt with guests, discussing pop culture topics. At the end of each episode, they have a feature where they predict what will happen in the future. I’ll be honest, I usually skip past this section because there’s no way it can live up to the fun of the quiz before it, but this time I listened to the scenario and was intrigued. The episode is available to listen here, with the specific section at about 49 minutes in, but I’ve transcribed the bits that interested me below.

I’ve been following the recent tumultuous times at TWiT with interest. As one of the mainstays of podcasting, and one of the few able to create a business from the process, Leo Laporte has always been something of an inspiration. When he hired Tom Merritt to create a daily news show and step into his shoes whenever necessary, I thought they were on to a very good thing. Unfortunately that all fell apart at the end of last year, and Tom departed from the TWiT shores. I have many thoughts about this, some are wildly speculative, some are opinionated about Leo’s choice of replacement, but most of them are just sad that the magic partnership didn’t deliver.

I’ve always managed to get a lot of use out of my iPad. There are two main dilemmas around Apple’s tablet device (aside from price, etc) with one being “What would I use it for?” and the other being “It’s only good for consuming, not creating.” My iPad has always been kept busy, but I would admit that it’s mostly for consumption. Watching TV, videos, listening to music, browsing the web, playing games, the usual kind of thing. I upgraded to the new iPad Air, and wanted to try it out and see how much of my day to day desktop activities it could replace.

I stayed with the Apple podcast app for much longer than I should have done. For a while, I couldn’t really abandon it - having far too many podcasts to listen to, limited space available on the phone, and a need to manage which episodes synced to my device. But a while back, I got over my obsessive compulsion to listen to every single thing in the right order from the very beginning, and that has allowed me a good deal of freedom when it comes to sorting podcasts on the phone directly.

Really enjoyed this quote from a not-so-recent episode of the Frank Skinner radio show. On the subject of the Tom Cruise film Oblivion, Frank was less impressed with one of the romance scenes. There’s love scenes in it. Why do they have to have love scenes in films like that? And they’re really cheesy, ooh baby type. I hate love scenes. Here’s the thing, if you like love scenes go see a romantic movie and enjoy. But you know what? When you’re watching that romantic movie, don’t blame me if two aliens come in and blow the couple to pieces…

I’ve been joyously listening to the new podcast from Molly Wood and Tom Merritt, called It’s a Thing. They were so good together on Buzz Out Loud and it was a shame when they went their separate ways, but onwards and upwards, the glorious duo are back together! This time, it’s not specifically technology topics, they just talk about whatever they deem to be an up and coming trend, or thing!

I recently wrote about the cyclical nature of my feelings towards podcasting and how I am currently losing interest in many of the subscriptions I used to listen to. (As an aside, after years of listening to Leo Laporte talk about it, I finally signed up to Audible. The new-member special of £3.99 a month is great but when that goes away and it heads up to £7.95, I’m going to be less enthusiastic, I think.)

Something odd is happening to my taste in audio entertainment. Since the dawn of podcasting, I have stockpiled episodes - subscribing to everything I might take an interest in, listening to make sure it’s my kind of thing, and then not worrying if I don’t get round to listening again for months. For me, the content had to be good, it didn’t necessarily have to be timely. My life has gone through cycles of having lots of time to listen, to very little time, and where sometimes the list of unlistened to shows would stack up, occasionally I’d catch up and be searching for potential new subscriptions.

With Leo being something of a podcasting hero of ours, we always like to see what’s going on behind the scenes in TWiT land. Given how much of the day is spent live streaming, it’s not hard to see behind each of the shows, but Leo and team have taken it one step further. On the Inside TWiT blog, they’ve posted an hour long chat with Leo and CEO Lisa talking about the state of TWiT itself.

The new Apple operating system, Lion, was released last week and I volunteered to be the test pilot for our house. At first, I wasn’t that fussed about it but gradually, the more I use it, the more I notice, and there are some bits and bobs that have caught my attention. Here are five of them: Natural scrolling. I turned off the natural scrolling straight away. They can call it natural all they like, but it doesn’t feel natural to me. Thankfully, this is something they give you a preference option for, so it was easy to switch back. Missing buttons. I was busy editing a podcast and thought I was going crazy when I kept moving my mouse in search of some left and right buttons on the scrollbar and they weren’t there. After too many muscle memory moments, I checked with Mr C and he quickly ascertained that I wasn’t mad, they were gone. I hadn’t even updated the software but lo and behold, something had been changed without telling me. Apparently, the idea is that everything in Lion is geared towards gestures on the trackpad, so who needs buttons when you can swipe two fingers left or right? I can’t stand the trackpad. Autosave. At first, I was mildly concerned about the concept of autosaving. It’s been gradually more prevalent in software, but usually with the control still ultimately resting with the user to save. The way it has been done in Lion seems interesting, and it’s not that often I need to go back on a version anyway, so I can’t see it being a huge problem. It does annoy me that sometimes a document can be a bit sticky as it’s working out where it is in terms of saving, and I opened up something that said it was locked because I hadn’t used it for two weeks. Like it’s my operating software’s business how often I open my files. Launchpad. I do love the new little Launchpad icon. It’s like a Windows Start button but for my Mac. That is something I’ve missed since switching, and having it right back is excellent. Accessing the Applications folder at the click of a button is brillo, although it may take me a while to organise the stuff within it into groups I like. Little upgrades. There are nice little features tucked away that don’t get shouted about, like the way folders unfurl when you open them within finder, or the preview that appears when you search for something in Spotlight. Any way of making Spotlight more useful is good in my book. Plenty more still to learn, I’m sure, and I envisage getting angry and being pleasantly surprised in equal measures as I continue to uncover new stuff. For now, it’s a pretty smooth transition to Lion, but I do think the heavy emphasis on gestures is going to get annoying.

I’ve been catching up with some episodes of The 404 and they mentioned this relatively new website that lets you create a social environment for listening to music. Outloud.fm allows you to create a chatroom with the added bonus of anyone invited able to upload music to a collaborative playlist. The queue of music then plays out for everyone at the same time. I love this concept. I’m no music afficionado. I like what I like and that’s pretty much the end of it. However, Mr C and I have been known to have the odd Friday night conversation about music, the kind that starts with Glastonbury and ends with the knowledge that Sergeant Wilson was the father of one of the Wombles.

Joining David Mitchell in the ChannelFlip stable of celebrity podcast videos is one Richard Hammond. Mitchell has a Soapbox upon which he rants about life, and I’ve discussed my favourite episodes of that before. Hammond embraces the tech geek with his show Tech Head. In it, he talks gadgets and future technologies, with an overabundance of CGI around him. Whilst less angry than Mitchell, he still has room for a rant or two as well. I’m highlighting this particular episode as it just encapsulates everything Mr C has been trying to argue.

I just wanted to write a quick post to say that the BBC have only gone and created a podcast feed for the Desert Island Discs archive. They said a while back that they’d be releasing a whole host of shows for indefinite download, but it wasn’t clear how they were going to do it. I discovered the podcast feed, which is a great way of looking through the ones you may or may not want.

A while ago, Mr C compiled a list of things you cannot podcast near to, and they are (including but not limited to): near train stations in windy locations anywhere close to police or fire stations next door to noisy neighbours in an owl sanctuary Owls are a surprisingly common problem. A week or so ago, I offered a throwaway comment on Sidepodcast, suggesting if we had the funding, we would build a bunker and never come out. I think that was actually a reaction to some traffic based issues, but the more I think about it, the more this seems like a good idea for noise issues as well.

(Note: I really wanted to call this post ‘Don’t Cross the Streams’ but I knew people would be mad it wasn’t about Ghostbusters.) I am so very up to date with TWiT podcasts now that I have even impressed myself! I was just listening to this weekend’s episode of This Week in Google, and there was a section of it I found really interesting. About half an hour in, they started on the topic of the Library of Congress creating an archive of all Twitter streams. That led on to some fascinating conversation.

I found this video on the Inside TWiT TV blog, posted by Dane Golden, who is unfortunately credited as Dave in the video itself. It’s a 20 minute look inside the TWiT cottage including chats with Leo, Dane and Colleen - the engineering genius behind it all. Well worth a watch, particularly if you are crazy Leo fans like us. The video builds on something I wrote about previously - whether watching live streams is the future.

Behold! I am back with another podcast, and in a relatively reasonable timeframe as well! I had planned to do this a few days earlier, but a sore throat kept me from my microphone. Hopefully all the stories are still relevant! I’m sure there are budgetary reasons for this as well On episode seven of Media. Future. Change. we investigate the buzz behind Google Buzz, who is living in a box, why there are cutbacks at the BBC, and how you can keep track of your dog.