MF DOOM to OnlyFantasy: 16 of the best podcasts of 2026 so far
From a docuseries about enigmatic hip-hop artist MF Doom to an investigation into OnlyFans – here’s the best new podcasts for you to listen to and watch.
1. Intrigue: To Catch a King
This is the follow-up to 2024’s award-winning podcast To Catch a Scorpion, which saw journalist Sue Mitchell and ex-soldier and aid worker Rob Lawrie investigating the traffickers who send dangerously overcrowded dinghies across the English Channel, often with tragic consequences. Their work led to the arrest of the “scorpion” in question: trafficking kingpin Barzan Majeed.
Now Mitchell and Lawrie have another smuggler in their sights, who operates under the false name Kardo Ranya. The presenting team are relentless and dogged, and their investigation is tense, difficult and full of surprises. But they also never lose sight of the stories of individuals undertaking dangerous journeys for the promise of a better life.
2. OnlyFantasy
A thoughtful and compelling investigation into the rise of the online subscription site OnlyFans, OnlyFantasy tells a thoroughly modern story of the changing nature of sex work, pornography and human intimacy.
The seven-parter is hosted by Brooklyn-based journalist and podcaster Leon Neyfakh, and Gracie Canaan, a comic, writer and sometime OnlyFans creator. They make a terrific double act: Canaan is open-minded and empathetic while Neyfakh is analytical yet amusingly awkward. The pair examine what they broadly see as a mirage being peddled to subscribers and creators: while creators are told they can build a lucrative business on their own terms, subscribers get to form make-believe relationships away from prying eyes.
3. Sisters of Defiance
Podcasting has yet to tire of the celebrity interview format, even though lots of shows seem to have the same guests on rotation. Sisters of Defiance, hosted by Anita Rani – also presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour – aims higher as it focuses on women who have faced obstacles or taken risks to get where they are.
Rani’s first guest is Meera Syal – British-Asian screenwriter, novelist and star of BBC Television’s Goodness Gracious Me – who reveals how, as a youngster, she felt invisible, and was a product of both her “mother culture and this new culture we were forming”. Future guests include Gisèle Pelicot and musician Anoushka Shankar.
4. Hit That Perfect Beat: The London Records Story
Hit That Perfect Beat is the story of London Records, a British label which launched The Communards, Bananarama, Shakespears Sister, Fine Young Cannibals, Goldie, Orbital, All Saints and many more. But it’s really the story of the wider music industry in the 1980s and 90s, and a culture of hedonism, money and chart domination that flourished until streaming devastated the business.
Presented by former Smash Hits journalist Siân Pattenden, the podcast is a delightful, nostalgia-soaked hopscotch through the history of this once overachieving company and its biggest signings. Wild stories of egotism and excess abound.
5. The Idiot
This narrative series from Serial Productions – the company founded by the creators of true-crime behemoth Serial – tells the story of Allen, described by the series’ host M Gessen as “a clown, a blowhard, a pompous ass”.
Allen is Gessen’s first cousin and, we learn, a world-class show-off given to bragging about his jet-setting lifestyle. But when he turns up at his uncle’s house in Cape Cod with his five-year-old son in tow, Gessen suspects Allen has taken the boy from his mother against her wishes. What begins as a run-of-the-mill family drama turns into an in-depth and atmospheric character study of a man high on entitlement and a misplaced sense of injustice.
6. The Girlfriends: Trust Me Babe
Never underestimate the power of women talking amongst themselves. This is the main takeaway from The Girlfriends: Trust Me Babe. Hosted by the reporter Anna Sinfeld, the series tracks the case built against the Minnesotan romance scammer Derek Alldred by the women he conned out of thousands of dollars.
The crimes recounted in Trust Me Babe are unsettling, but this is ultimately a feel-good tale and a rousing paean to female solidarity. It shows women overcoming their trauma and police indifference to stop others from enduring the same nightmare.
7. History’s Greatest Fails
A mash-up of two already-popular podcasts, Elizabeth Day’s How to Fail and This is History with Dan Jones, this limited series finds Day and Jones pondering the great debacles of the past and how they have shaped the course of history. The hosts, who are old university pals, have a clear chemistry and storytelling flair.
But that’s not to say they agree on what constitutes failure. In the opening episode they look at Richard III, the 15th-Century monarch who ruled for just under three years. While Jones believes he made one terrible decision after another – including the probable murders of the princes in the tower – Day takes a more sympathetic view.
8. A History of the United States in 100 Objects
Fans of the US podcast 99% Invisible, about the hidden inventions that help the world run smoothly, will know the concept behind this podcast, which aims to document the seemingly innocuous artefacts that tell the story of the US as it reaches its 250th birthday.
As with 99% Invisible, the host is Roman Mars, the journalist and podcaster known for his gently quizzical style. Rather than examining museum pieces, he focuses on lesser-known items such as a screw thread – the spiral groove on the outside of screws that became standardised during World War Two – and the Century Safe, a time capsule that was sealed in 1876 and opened a century later.
9. Get Birding with Sean Bean
Birdwatching podcast Get Birding has been around for several years, capitalising on the vogue for slow radio: gentle and meditative audio that is the antidote to our often hectic and noisy lives. Now the series has relaunched with a new host, the Yorkshire-based actor Sean Bean, star of Game of Thrones. Bean has been a keen birdwatcher since childhood and now spends many happy hours in his garden gazing at the wildlife.
Each episode has a loose theme, from bird-friendly gardening to the joy of nest boxes. There are also assorted guests including folk singer Sam Lee, Elbow’s Guy Garvey and YouTuber Kwesia aka City Girl in Nature. But the greatest delight lies in hearing Bean waxing lyrical about our feathered friends. His reading of Blackbird, the poem by John Drinkwater, is truly a balm for the soul.
