Top Arts Podcasts

Tough Cookie: The Wally “Famous” Amos Story, named the Tribeca Festival’s 2025 Nonfiction Audio Storytelling Award winner, tells the story of a Black pop-culture icon and cookie mogul, through his booms and busts spanning the American century, from the perspective of his daughter, Sarah Amos. 
 
Famous Amos was an overnight hit, leading to a life of glamour, prestige, and cookies for Wally and his family—for a while. But all the charisma and fame in the world couldn’t save Wally from a string of bad business decisions and a family fractured by his choices.  

From Vanity Fair, this six-part series unravels decades of family drama—alternately hilarious and heartbreaking—against a backdrop of ’70s and ’80s pop-culture nostalgia while asking the question: Can you ever really escape your family’s past?

In the final days before judgment, an angelic advocate named David visits the condemned to confront the truth of their lives—unearthing buried sins, lost hopes, and the choices that will decide their eternal fate.

Created by Johnny Galvan 3.

In a world that’s on fire, what is the role of art? What can music actually…do?

Can a song save a life? Change a law? Topple a president? Get you killed?

In Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, Jad Abumrad—creator of Radiolab, More Perfect, and Dolly Parton's America—tells the story of one of the great political awakenings in music: how a classically trained 'colonial boy' traveled to America, in search of Africa, only to return to Nigeria and transform his sound into a battering ram against the state—creating a new musical language of resistance called Afrobeat.

For years, the world’s biggest stars made pilgrimages to Nigeria to experience Fela’s Shrine, the epicenter of his musical revolution. But when the mix of art and activism got too hot, the state pulled out its guns, and literally opened fire.

Fela Kuti: Fear No Man is an uncategorizable mix of oral history, musicology, deep dive journalism, and cutting edge sound design that takes listeners deep inside Fela’s life, music, and legacy.

Drawing from over 200 interviews with Fela Kuti’s family, friends, as well as scholars, activists, and luminaries like Burna Boy, Paul McCartney, Questlove, Santigold, and former President Barack Obama (just to name a few), Fela Kuti: Fear No Man journeys deep into the soul of Afrobeat to explore the transformative power of art and the role artists can play in this current moment of global unrest.

An Audible Original presented by Audible and Higher Ground. Produced by Western Sound and Talkhouse.

©2025 Higher Ground, LLC (P)2025 Audible Originals, LLC.

From his late-night TV show to Carpool Karaoke, James Corden has become known globally as one of the most engaging and delightful interviewers in the entertainment world -- and with his breadth of work across TV, film and stage, he has met so many incredible people whom he now gets the opportunity to spend more time with. Featuring in-depth, richly produced conversations between Corden and a variety of prominent guests on the people, places, possessions, music, and memories that made them, This Life of Mine tells the never-before-heard stories that shaped the people at the top of their fields across film and television, sports, fashion, music, theater, business, and more. Now available on all podcast platforms for the first time!

Using broken refrigerators, mattresses, and dishwashers, residents of Union Point Park barricade their tent city. And they fight for an extraordinary idea: their own plot of land, where they could live in community and set their own rules.

A Tiny Plot is a new 5-part series from KQED’s Snap Studios. Host and Reporter Shaina Shealy takes listeners inside an encampment in Oakland for an against-all-odds story about scarcity, community, and the complexity of building something new from the margins of a broken system. What happens when people who’ve been shut out of a system that has failed them decide to take the lead? Disaster, and unexpected beauty. 

Huge love & thanks to the entire cast from A Tiny Plot for sharing your worlds with us at Snap Judgment!

Don’t Listen to Us is an advice show for advice-skeptics and wisdom-lovers, hosted by Mandy Patinkin, Kathryn Grody, and their son Gideon. Legendary actor Mandy (The Princess Bride, Homeland, Criminal Minds) is the consummate entertainer who shoots from the hip, stage actress Kathryn is the thoughtful connector who sees all the nuance, and Gideon is the brave soul keeping them on track (or at least trying). Together, Mandy and Kathryn have 40+ years of marriage, 140+ years of life experience, and a series of viral social media posts where Gideon interviews them and watches both chaos and wisdom ensue.

They don’t always agree on what advice to give—in fact, they rarely do. But they draw from their highs and lows as artists, parents, lovers, and humans, to give their unique take on real dilemmas submitted by you -- the listeners. Hang out with this family and you’ll walk away with insights you didn’t expect, stories you’ll want to repeat, and comfort knowing that you’re not alone in figuring out how to survive this fakakta world.

Earsay: The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club is the ultimate book club for audiobook lovers. Hosted by Ed Helms and Kal Penn, each episode invites you into the club, where iHeartPodcast hosts, celebrated authors, and very special guests get together to nerd out about the Audible titles they can’t stop listening to. From thrillers and comedy to reimagined classics and exclusive Audible Originals — you’ve heard the books, now hear the Earsay!

A podcast for people who don’t get out much and can’t handle it when they do.

A refuge for the clumsy and the awkward.

Join Bill Nighy to squander some time as he attempts to answer your questions and dilemmas without actually making things worse.

If you have questions about anything – from choosing the right shirt to how to hide at parties, please send us a voice-note via Instagram @illadvisedbybillnighy

There will also be a recommended book and a ‘playlist of the week’ and given that Bill is making this up as he goes along, who knows what other features might develop.

He would further like to add that he knows you have busy lives and wants you to feel free to ignore this podcast

Stay loose

Produced by Alice Williams & Ciara Gregory with assistant production by Angelique Somers.

Cover image by Charlie Gray.

Artwork by Anna Davie.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jane Austen Stories is the new show from the Noiser podcast network, narrated by Dame Julie Andrews.

Season One begins with Julie reading an all-time classic of English literature, Pride and Prejudice, in its original masterful form.

Join us twice a week as we walk grand estates, take tea with well-dressed gentlewomen, and enter ballrooms to dance with the great and good of the county. But in this tranquil corner of England, not everything is quite as it appears... Can our heroine Elizabeth navigate a world of secrets and simmering passions? Can the Bennet family avoid scandal and destitution? And is the mysterious Mr Darcy as dastardly as he seems?

Hit follow to get new episodes of Jane Austen Stories every Tuesday and Friday.

For ad-free listening and early access to two new episodes each week, join Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started, or head to noiser.com/subscriptions 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind?
 
Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies.
 
Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.

Free (0.00$) Audiobook on Audible (with membership trial) : https://amzn.to/4nsVaJG

or Buy the book on Amazon : https://amzn.to/4nsVaJG

What if the key to happiness, success, and love was as simple as two words?

If you've ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or frustrated with where you are, the problem isn't you. The problem is the power you give to other people. Two simple words—Let Them—will set you free. Free from the opinions, drama, and judgments of others. Free from the exhausting cycle of trying to manage everything and everyone around you. The Let Them Theory puts the power to create a life you love back in your hands—and this book will show you exactly how to do it.

In her latest groundbreaking book, The Let Them Theory, Mel Robbins—New York Times bestselling author and one of the world's most respected experts on motivation, confidence, and mindset—teaches you how to stop wasting energy on what you can't control and start focusing on what truly matters: YOU. Your happiness. Your goals. Your life.

Using the same no-nonsense, science-backed approach that's made The Mel Robbins Podcast a global sensation, Robbins explains why The Let Them Theory is already loved by millions and how you can apply it in eight key areas of your life to make the biggest impact. As you listen, you'll realize how much energy and time you've been wasting trying to control the wrong things—at work, in relationships, and in pursuing your goals—and how this is keeping you from the happiness and success you deserve.

When America’s Next Top Model premiered in the early 2000s, it looked like a golden ticket: a glamorous TV show that could catapult aspiring models into fame. But two decades later, many contestants describe its aftermath as a curse. Hosted by pop-culture journalist Bridget Armstrong, Curse of: America’s Next Top Model is a deep investigation into the hidden costs of reality television, and what the show’s legacy reveals about beauty, power, and the culture that cheered it on. 

Through conversations with dozens of former contestants, producers and crew members, Curse of: America’s Next Top Model explores what happened behind the scenes on one of the most iconic and problematic reality shows of our generation.  

The series starts off by exploring how ANTM almost didn’t get made. You’ll get the real story behind the show’s most infamous controversies. Then, the models and producers pull back the curtain and talk about how the most outrageous photoshoots and runaways came together. You’ll hear from contestants who say ANTM saved their lives and from those who say it ruined theirs. The contestants also talk about how the body shaming they experienced on the show caused lifelong scars. Finally, we try to answer the question, is Tyra Banks the ultimate reality television villain?  

Curse of: America’s Next Top Model takes you on an investigative journey to figure out if the so-called curse is real? And if so, what was the toll on the models, and us, the audience?