Quality narrative podcasts experienced a downturn this year, with industry layoffs in key networks including Pineapple Street Studios and Wondery. But commercial cutbacks have reinvigorated the artistic spirit of the genre.
In a class of its own is a soaring audio biography of Fela Kuti, the brilliant Nigerian artist who invented Afrobeat and asserted his country’s cultural and political independence. It could only have been made by Jad Abumrad, legendary inventor of Radiolab, with his trademark mash-up of music, social history and searing critique.
