Top Society & Culture Podcasts

For years, Lauren Ober wasn’t all that jazzed about herself. She was always getting in trouble, she had weird sensory issues and her anxiety felt off the charts. Plus, socially she kind of sucked. Life for Lauren just seemed harder than it should have been at 42. And then, in the middle of a global pandemic, she found out why — she was autistic. The Loudest Girl in the World is a new podcast that tells the story of Lauren’s journey to understand what the hell it means to be on the autism spectrum and how to live life as a newly diagnosed autistic person. It's about finding yourself broken in a place you never expected to be and emerging from that place a mostly glued back together person.

Drawing on archive material, interviews with historians, friends and leading public figures, James Naughtie presents a special podcast marking the life of Her Majesty the Queen.

A hundred and fifty years ago, the Osage Nation bought a stretch of prairie the size of Delaware, in what's now Oklahoma. The Osage owned the land and everything beneath it. Today, much of present-day Osage County has left Osage hands. In some cases, appropriation was swift and brutal: Dozens of Osages were murdered for their share of lucrative mineral rights to this oil-rich land, a period often referred to as the Reign of Terror. But other transfers of wealth played out more subtly—dollar by dollar and acre by acre, over decades—helped along by policies created by the US government.

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Introducing... Hoaxed, the new series from Alexi Mostrous and Tortoise, who brought you Sweet Bobby.

Sisters of the Underground is an 8-episode scripted series by Executive Producers Eva Longoria and Dania Ramirez. It follows the true story of three courageous women, known as the Mirabal sisters, who changed the world. Their lifelong activism in the Dominican Republic and state-orchestrated assassination ignited outrage that led to the downfall of one of the most brutal and enduring dictators of the 20th Century, Rafael Trujillo (aka El Jefe). This series takes us back to a period when the Mirabal Sisters inspired an entire nation to emancipate themselves from a tyrannical regime that lasted for more than 30 years. While the martyrdom of the Mirabal Sisters is the stuff of legend in the DR, Sisters of the Underground brings these hidden figures to life for a global audience in a vivid, immersive, audio drama. 

Every mess has a move behind it. Crisis communication expert Molly McPherson takes apart the viral scandals, celebrity meltdowns, and corporate disasters dominating the headlines, showing you exactly where they went wrong so you never do. She's the historian of the moves, and once you can name the play, you can see it coming.

For more than a decade two mugshots of fugitive environmentalists have sat amongst airplane hijackers, bombers and murders on the FBI’s Most Wanted Domestic Terrorists list. One of the photos is of a tall, hipster looking engineer from Seattle. He’s wearing a red shirt, has a light shadowy beard. His name: Joseph Mahmoud Dibee. The other photo is of a young white woman with thick eyebrows, piercing brown eyes and long brown hair. Across her back is a large tattoo: a bird with its wings outstretched, soaring. Her name: Josephine Sunshine Overaker. To the authorities, Joseph Mahmoud Dibee and Josephine Sunshine Overaker are dangerous, violent extremists, part of an eco-terrorist movement that in 2005 the then Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI called the number one domestic terror threat in America. And now one of them - Joseph Dibee - has been caught. For the past eighteen months journalist Leah Sottile has been recording with Joe Dibee as his case progresses through the courts and as she works to understand the truth behind the mugshots and how they ended up here. Burn Wild is a story of radical environmentalism and morality that journeys into one of the most thorny and murky questions of our time: How far is too far to go to stop the planet burning? Answering this will take Leah and producer Georgia Catt into radical activist communities past and present on both sides of the Atlantic, amongst people who’ve spent their lives running from the authorities, and those who carry the weight of that word - terrorist - on their shoulders. In this story people will take away very different things on what they hear, but where you sit isn’t a question of the past. It’s a question of right now. CREDITS Presenter: Leah Sottile Producer: Georgia Catt Written by: Leah Sottile and Georgia Catt Fact Checking: Rob Byrne Music and Sound Design: Phil Channell Music including theme music by Echo Collective, composed performed and produced by Neil Leiter & Margaret Hermant; recorded, mixed and produced by Fabien Leseure Artwork by Danny Crossley with Art Direction by Amy Fullalove Script recorded and mixed by Slater Swan at Anjuna Recording Studio Series Mixing and Studio Engineer: Sarah Hockley Editor: Philip Sellars Assistant Commissioner: Natasha Johansson Commissioner: Dylan Haskins Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 5 Live.

What makes someone a “true legend”? Untold Legends gives legendary status to those who deserve it – and tells their story.

NEW season: You may well have heard of the Austrian-born US actress Hedy Lamarr - a Jewish refugee who escaped the Nazis to become a Hollywood star. However, for most of her life, she didn’t receive proper recognition for her role as an inventor. She was known for starring in dozens of films, including Algiers, Samson and Delilah, Ecstasy, Boom Town and My Favourite Spy. But few people knew Hedy was also a gifted inventor. One of the technologies she co-invented laid a key foundation for future communication systems, including GPS, Bluetooth and WiFi. Presented by inventor and model Andini, and featuring special guest, Hollywood actor, AnnaSophia Robb, Untold Legends: Hedy Lamarr, explores the life of a woman whose intellect was often overshadowed by her image.

Untold Legends: Hedy Lamarr is an 8-part series.

Previously, from Untold Legends: Ora Washington was the champion the world ignored. You might know this tennis and basketball star, were it not for the colour of her skin. Former US basketball star and vice president of Atlanta Dream, Renee Montgomery, investigates Ora’s story. Ora dominated black women’s tennis, which was segregated in the 1920s and 1930s.

Untold Legends is from the BBC World Service, Radio 5 Live and BBC Sounds.