What’s new to listen to

Ximena Smith rounds up the best of recent podcasts.

HBO’S The Last of Us Podcast

If you haven’t started this postapocalyptic drama yet, then please take a moment to reorganise your streaming priorities. Once you’ve done that, make sure the show’s companion podcast series gets high priority too. Showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann – and host Troy Baker – offer a behind-thescenes look at the show, which is an adaptation of a videogame set in a world ravaged by a fungal pandemic. Mazin and Druckmann talk through the decisions they made for each episode and offer highly interesting insights – notably around what they decided to drop from the original video game and why they chose to deviate from the source material. New episodes at the same time as the television episodes (usually every Monday).

Stolen Hearts

This six-part series from Wondery tells the hectic true story of a Welsh police sergeant who falls in love with a very bad bloke. Jill meets a charming businessman called Dean but he isn’t quite who he claims to be and there are a few (major) secrets that he is keeping from her – until it all begins to unravel after one fateful Halloween evening in 2006. Coupled with actor and comedian Kerry Godliman’s witty narration, the snappy scripting by Kim MacAskill drives the story forward swiftly via jaw-dropping twists and turns. New episodes every Monday or early and adfree on Wondery+.

Love, Janessa

The BBC World Service and the CBC are behind this new sevenpart podcast, which investigates what seems to be the mother of all catfishing scams. Hosted by journalist Hannah Ajala, the show tells the story of an adult entertainment star – Janessa Brazil – whose photos have repeatedly been used to scam people. Ajala speaks to numerous victims, who all believed at some point that they were speaking to the ‘‘real’’ Janessa (and got swindled out of thousands of dollars in the process). Love, Janessa follows Ajala’s quest to figure out who’s behind it all and determine whether Janessa Brazil herself has any involvement. Three episodes in, it doesn’t have quite the same level of intrigue as Sweet Bobby (the stellar catfish podcast series from a few years back); however, enough breadcrumbs have been laid to give the listener plenty of reasons to want to continue following the trail. New episodes every Monday.