Picks of the week
Brown Girls Do It Too: Big Boy Energy
BBC Sounds, episodes weekly
While Rubina Pabani’s on maternity leave, Poppy Jay invites men to open up about what is going on in their heads. First up is Asim “Chabuddy G” Chaudhry, who talks death, rejection and swapping Curly Wurlies for kisses. Jay challenges his assumptions about women, and there’s an illuminating discussion about how he feels sorry for his little brothers growing up at a time when labels for men include “simp” and “sigma”. Hannah Verdier
Inside McKamey Manor
Widely available, episodes fortnightly
From the outside, McKamey Manor looks like your bog-standard haunted house, but Elizabeth McCafferty uncovers a darker side in this fascinating podcast. Is the owner a Halloween prankster or a torturer who locks people in a freezer? McCafferty explores the psychology of the scare industry and discovers what it’s really like inside. HV
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The Art of Deciding
Widely available, episodes weekly
If you can’t decide what to have for lunch, Bruce Whitfield has the podcast for you. His guests talk about the biggest decisions they’ve ever made, starting with Lee Child, who ditched security for writing after being made redundant from Granada TV at 40 – and created Jack Reacher. Proper inspiration. HV
Heaven’s Helpline
Widely available, episodes weekly
No tea and coffee, no swearing, no TV on Sunday: the Mormon church plays by its own rules. But when Murray Jones investigates how it operates in New Zealand, he uncovers dark behaviour. It’s difficult listening to a young woman talk about how she was pressured into marriage and motherhood, then controlled by her husband. HV
Harry and Paul’s Guide to Life
Widely available, episodes weekly
Who better to teach you how to get ahead in life than The Traitors’ chief villains Harry Clark and Paul Gorton? In this second series (their first one looked at famous crimes that went wrong), they are “getting more sensible” as agony uncles who give advice, such as how to deal with a shocking family secret, unbearable in-laws, living with a new partner and knockbacks at work. Hollie Richardson
In last week’s newsletter we included an incorrect link for Adam Buxton’s true crime drama, Up in Smoke. You can listen to that here.
There’s a podcast for that
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This week, Graeme Virtue chooses five of the creepiest podcasts, from one with vintage short stories to a 10-part metaphysical chiller.
The NoSleep Podcast
This horror fiction anthology was inspired by a Reddit page where posters share their scariest personal experiences. Over 13 years, it has evolved into a slickly produced buffet of nightmare fuel. Each episode features multiple stories – two or three in the standard free feed but more if you subscribe – that range from twisted 10-minute shockers to sprawling serial-killer thrillers. Veteran host David Cummings frames each tale with a macabre jauntiness that offsets the sometimes graphic violence (checking the content warnings is advised). A backlist of more than 600 episodes may also sound pretty terrifying but luckily the team behind the show have put together this starter’s guide.
Uncanny Halloween
There is a tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas, so why not a Halloween Advent calendar? That’s what Danny Robins – the Louis Theroux of things that go “boo!” – has been unveiling every day this month, sharing spooky encounters sent in by fans of his popular supernatural investigation podcast. Compared to the detailed analysis of the previous four seasons of Uncanny, these disquieting two-minute case studies fly past rather quickly. But there are some more substantial treats, too: a recent surprise episode with comedian Stewart Lee as a deeply knowledgable guest witness and, launching on Halloween itself, a two-part investigation into sinister events at a 200-year-old Lake District cottage.
EnCrypted: The Classic Horror Podcast
Since 2021 this hellishly good UK podcast has offered immersive readings of vintage short stories by MR James, Hugh Walpole, Marjorie Bowen and dozens more. Proprietor and host Jasper L’Estrange has a gift for navigating the sometimes archaic language, smoothing out even the starchiest of 1920s sentences with a suave vocal delivery that has an appealingly old-fashioned rasp. EnCrypted has amassed a library of about 180 classics and L’Estrange sporadically drops in a more contemporary self-penned tale. His Halloween 2022 episode Ghost Walk, narrated by an exasperated tour guide struggling with contactless payments, is by turns wickedly funny and deeply disconcerting.
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Podcast recommendations for unexpected audio pleasures. Our reviewers and audio producers pick the week's top shows
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Dream Sequence
Whatever metaphysical veil separates our world from the other side, it seems to be most permeable when we are asleep. That’s the premise of this recent 10-part chiller, co-produced by the TV arm of horror movie specialists Blumhouse. It combines relatable family friction with a harrowing unearthly threat. Years after a tragedy, Kay (Jessi Case) reluctantly reunites with her frosty sister Sadie (Alice Kremelberg) to observe her research into sleep disorders. But has Sadie’s device for analysing nightmares woken something ancient and malevolent? Dream Sequence’s empathetic performances, nimble pacing and sophisticated sound design puts it in the top tier of original horror audio dramas.
Knifepoint Horror
From Hellraiser to The Ring, plenty of cautionary tales begin with someone discovering an artefact that feels uncanny and dangerous because it seems to exist outside contemporary norms. Knifepoint Horror – a cult podcast dating to 2010 – has a similarly unnerving vibe. You will not find any ingratiating preamble, ad reads or appeals for five-star reviews. New episodes, featuring stories written and read by Soren Narnia, simply appear unexpectedly in the feed and begin. These are American gothic tales of obsession, possession and transgression, narrated in a naturalistic, almost halting style that over time becomes hypnotic and eerily addictive.
Why not try …
Crime Next Door: The Salisbury Poisoning, a BBC investigation into that famous trip to see Salisbury cathedral.
Even more poison-centric podcasting with Dangerous Plants, which explores all the flora that’s out to get us.
The latest series of Against the Rules with star author Michael Lewis, which examines how American sports has fallen into the thrall of gambling companies.
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