The best podcasts for summer: sizzling exposés, intelligent interviews and shameless escapism

Phoebe Luckhurst has this summer's podcast list sorted
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It’s mid-July and summer feels like it will stretch out to infinity, like a sun-drenched horizon.

Granted, you’ll be installed at your desk at passive-aggressive war with your colleagues over the air-con for most of it — happy holidays! — but you have a single week, near the tail-end of August, bookmarked for your own sojourn.

Poolside reading can be soporific — and hardbacks are heavy. Sometimes, you just want someone to read you a story. Or better yet: a podcast. From thrilling interviews to off-the-wall fiction or the sugar rush of a guilty pleasure, this is your round-up of the podcasts to download now.

The must-listen: The Dropout

45 minutes

When this juicy six-part exposé about Silicon Valley megalomania dropped in January it inspired a cultish following; Tube carriage after Tube carriage of wide-eyed commuters, willing a signal failure so they could squeeze in the end of the episode before they got to the office. It tells the extraordinary story of Elizabeth Holmes, who dropped out of Silicon Valley finishing school, Stanford, to found health tech company Theranos at 19.

Elizabeth Holmes was the founder and CEO of biotech firm Theranos
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She modelled herself on Steve Jobs (down to the expensive black roll necks); was crowned the world’s “youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire” by Forbes; and was profiled in The New Yorker. Spoiler alert: she’s a scam artist.

Economics reporter Rebecca Jarvis exhaustively charts her rise and her fall from grace, featuring testimonials from those with a front-seat view of the car crash.

The #emosh one: Heavyweight

30 minutes to one hour

Imagine Sliding Doors but in podcast form, and with the eloquent, eccentric Jonathan Goldstein at the helm. Heavy-weight is all about missed moments and unspoken declarations; every week, Goldstein returns a person to their own Sliding Doors moment, in order to explore how the past has shaped their future, from love affairs, to estranged parents, to childhood fall-outs, Heavyweight is a feat of storytelling: compassionate, human, moving and revelatory —but never gratuitous.

The celebrity one: Fresh Air

Around 50 minutes

It’s said so often it is virtually cliché, but is there a better interviewer than Terry Gross? The intelligent Fresh Air host, who has worked in the biz for well over 30 years and whose clear-as-glass lilt was made for radio, is an exacting but warm interviewer. She can conjure up a rapport with the most reluctant guest.

Other episodes take the form of investigations — recent focuses include the opioid crisis, and Emily Nussbaum, New Yorker TV critic and Pulitzer Prize-winner, on television’s revolution. My favourite episode is Gross’s interview with Lizzo: pure joy with the right amount of bite.

The fiction one: Forest 404

20 minutes

This experimental fiction podcast is set in a curious, futuristic dystopia, in which history lives on in haunting soundscapes and forests have been erased. Bear with: it’s nowhere near as wanky as it sounds, and stars the charismatic Doctor Who alum Pearl Mackie as an unexpected heroine on the run.

Moreover, the music and soundscapes are extraordinary and otherworldly (Bonobo did the theme tune), and episodes are bitesized. A neat way to fill that last 20 minutes of sunbathing before poolside sundowners.

The funny one: Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster

60 minutes

Gamble and Acaster’s podcast is a reliable chart-topper: the two comedians invite a guest to pick and mix their own dream meal, from starter through to main course, side dishes, dessert and drink. There are no rules, no smug epicures or oenophiles — are there any other types? — to sneer that Cab Sauv doesn’t go with baked beans on toast: just madcap meals and silly stories.

James Acaster and Ed Gamble, hosts of Off Menu 
Paul Gilbey

Food is emotive, and favourites (and dislikes) are rooted in myth and psychology. Guests so far have included comedians Dara Ó Briain, Nish Kumar and Lolly Adefope, as well as the delightful newsreader Krishnan Guru-Murthy.

The summer one: Love Island: The Morning After

30 minutes

If you’re supine on a sun lounger you might well want something that is joyously the lowest common denominator. Like the TV show, Love Island: The Morning After is a summer fling — there is no reason to listen to it after the show ends. But if you’re by a pool and missing your sugar hit of the screen show, this will keep you right. With ex-Islanders as well as comedians such as Russell Kane, it’s like being in a particularly boisterous, juicy WhatsApp group: gossip and filth, and absolutely #nofilter.

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