The best podcasts to stream right now
Immersive travelogues, conversations with Kiwi immigrants, a screenwriting crash course and slow listening are among the subjects worth tuning in to.
Script Apart
Film buffs will find their new addiction right here – an interview podcast which invites screenwriters to reveal the secrets behind some of the most iconic film scripts, and unpack how a perfect script is often the culmination of countless imperfect drafts.
Episodes include interviews with the screenwriters of A Quiet Place, John Wick and 10 Things I Hate About You.
Conversations With My Immigrant Parents
You’d be hard-pressed to find a podcast that better represents modern-day Aotearoa than this, created and hosted by multi-hyphenate creatives Saraid de Silva and Julie Zhu.
The series invites Kiwis to take the title literally and invites listeners into conversations that might not normally be had over dinner; the nitty-gritty, emotionally exposing conversations about ‘‘love, disappointment, what home means to them’’, per the podcast’s synopsis.
Take my mum’s word for it: it’ll leave you in tears, so maybe save this one for the commute home.
Appearances
This is a stunning example of the boundless potential of the audio format.
Created by Sharon Mashihi, this documentary-fiction hybrid explores questions of family, immigration and culture that packs an enormous emotional punch over its nine episodes.
The story is pulled from Mashihi’s own life; she wishes to have a child, but this lands her in direct conflict with her Iranian-American family, who expect people to be traditionally coupled before they have kids.
In Appearances, she explores that conflict by creating a fictionalised version of herself and her family, and exploring how the scenario might play out.
It’s unusual, jarring and thoughtprovoking – and, ultimately, devastating.
The First Mile
The idea of international travel is sadly a faraway dream in 2020, and the best we can do is do it virtually for now.
The First Mile is your audio ticket abroad: presented by travel journalists Ash Bhardwaj and Pip Stewart, the podcast takes listeners on an immersive journey around the world, with guests recounting their travels – one episode follows a man who ditched his corporate London job for a cycling trip around the world, and others look into the ethics of tourism and how to make a living while travelling.
Kiwis take note: the latest episode is a dispatch from New Zealand.
Field Recordings
Podcasting now has its own answer to slow TV.
If you’re having trouble sleeping, or you need something to calm yourself on the way to work, try Field Recordings, which does exactly what it says on the tin.
Sound artists are asked to go out into the world and record their surroundings and submit them for the podcast, and there’s no narration or introduction – just real, organic, recorded sound.
Episodes include the sounds of cooking and someone playing piano in a house in Sussex, England, or the sounds of a lake in the Louga region of Senegal.