Top Society & Culture Podcasts

Welcome to "Similarly Different," the podcast where host Yanina Oyarzo takes you on a journey of self-discovery, resilience, and growth. In this introspective and candid series, Yanina shares her personal experiences and invites guests from diverse backgrounds to explore how we are all - similarly different.

Joy is essential.

And it's also elusive. You can't order it, borrow it, or simply hope it into life.

But now, there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence: The Joy 101 Podcast with Hoda!

Best known for her Emmy-winning work and co-anchoring Today, Hoda Kotb infuses her authenticity, curiosity, and warmth into conversations with the world’s most fascinating people. Entertainment legends, sport icons, wellness experts, and everyday folks will share how they find, allow, and experience joy. Hoda will offer her own tips and takes on seeking a more balanced, harmonious life. 

If you're craving inspiration, support, and useful tools to maximize your joy, tune in to these candid, uplifting, and moving on-air chats.

Joy after a breakup, joy as an empty-nester, joy after loss, joy as a caretaker — Hoda's new podcast will speak to you.

Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb, an iHeartPodcast.

What I Survived is a true survival podcast featuring extraordinary first-hand stories from people who survived kidnapping, hostage situations, disasters, accidents and other extreme life-or-death ordeals.

Each story takes you back to who these people were before everything changed, then inside the moment their lives were pushed to the edge — shipwrecked at sea for weeks, held captive by terrorists, falling 15,000 feet from a plane after a parachute failure, and other extraordinary fights for survival.

Through intimate first-hand accounts, we follow the ordeal as it happened, the decisions made under unimaginable pressure, and the resilience and will it took to survive.

Then we explore what came after — the physical and psychological recovery, the impact of trauma, and the process of rebuilding a life forever altered.

What I Survived is hosted by Australian podcaster Jack Laurence, creator of the award-winning podcasts One Minute Remaining, Wanted and more.

Follow What I Survived for remarkable true stories of survival, resilience and the human instinct to stay alive.

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

You know Roald Dahl as the writer who thought up Willy Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? "The Secret World of Roald Dahl" is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. How did this secret agent and struggling screenwriter wind up as the most successful children’s author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids? A dark, twisty, fascinating true story from creator and host Aaron Tracy.

What if you could hypnotize yourself into a better you? Or…. secretly hypnotize others into giving you anything you want?

That’s the promise of NLP, which emerged in 1970s California and then took over self-help… in spite of its connection to a gruesome unsolved murder in the late 1980s . 

NLP is the secret sauce connecting life coach Tony Robbins, Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort, pick-up artist Ross Jeffries, as well as NXIVM, the most infamous sex cult of the 21st century.

Journalists and best friends Zoë Lescaze and Alice Hines investigate the controversies behind NLP, put the techniques to the test on themselves, and ask the ultimate question: is mind control real?

Mind Games tells the story of NLP and its crazy cast of disciples, including the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune, took it to Fortune 500 boardrooms, and whose gruesome murder trial did little to stop its rise. The biggest mind game of all? NLP may actually work.

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A Whole Other Country is a new podcast from the award-winning Marfa Public Radio Studios.

Back in the ‘90s, in an off-the-grid neighborhood in the mountains of Far West Texas, a wannabe vintner started his own Wild West nation. Reporter and host Zoe Kurland drives the long, bumpy roads of the Davis Mountains to talk to a cast of neighbors and onlookers who watched the story of the standoff unfold in real time -- the myths of the frontier crashing violently into reality. 

The Brothers Ortiz is the story of two brothers–both successful, but in very different ways. Gabe Ortiz becomes a third-highest ranking officer in all of Texas while his younger brother Larry climbs the ranks in Puro Tango Blast, a notorious Texas Prison gang. 

Gabe doesn’t know all the details of his brother’s nefarious dealings, and he’s made a point not to ask, to protect their relationship. But when Larry is murdered during a home invasion in a rented beach house, Gabe has no choice but to look into what happened that night. To solve Larry’s murder, Gabe, and the whole Ortiz family, must ask each other tough questions. 

It’s the early 1970s, and a young British family is attempting to sail around the world when catastrophe strikes.p>

The Robertsons have sold everything they own to embark on this trip. But their epic odyssey soon turns into a desperate fight for their lives in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. 

Dougal and Lyn, their teenage son Douglas, 12-year-old twins Sandy and Neil, and young hitchhiker Robin find themselves hundreds of miles from land, with few supplies, no radio contact, and surrounded by sharks. 

Drifting in the vast emptiness, they must rely on their instincts and harness the elements to survive. Yet even with deadly predators circling, they discover that sometimes their worst enemy is...themselves. 

Adrift is an Apple Original podcast, produced by Blanchard House. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

apple.co/Adrift

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.

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?  

“It only takes one moment to change the trajectory of your life.”

Some moments change everything. They ignite transformation, spark momentum, and define who we become.

Hosted by Brant Menswar, best-selling author, acclaimed keynote speaker, and personal development coach, Just a Moment is a 30-minute podcast that uncovers the extraordinary, life-changing moments that shape who we are. Every episode brings you into the lives of world-class guests—entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, actors, entertainers, and high-achievers—as they share two pivotal stories from their incredible journeys:

1. The breakthrough moment that changed everything and catapulted them forward in their career or life.

2. The missed moment—a failure, regret, or challenge they wish they could revisit, and the lessons that came with it.

These raw, honest stories are brought to life through masterful storytelling, captivating sound design, and thoughtful narration to create an unforgettable listening experience that immerses listeners in the gravity of each moment.