It’s been a pretty rough year for the podcast world. When 2023 began, there were serious anxieties about the state of the biz, and much of those worries ultimately came to be. Layoffs rippled throughout the scene, talk of contractions is now pervasive, and some of the celebrity talent megadeals that defined podcasting over the past few years exploded in very public fashion. In case it wasn’t abundantly clear, the Speculative Podcast Boom is over. But there is the business — and then there’s the actual stuff. And the thing is: There are still really interesting, fun, and memorable podcasts being made by talented teams and individuals, from powerful investigative pieces and portraits of malls to ongoing projects of media critiques that operate at a very high level. We’ll come out of the other end of this industrial slump at some point, but for now, there’s hope.

All podcast picks are listed from newest to oldest.