Picks of the week
Friends With Benefits
Widely available, episodes weekly
Chatty podcasts are a rite of passage for Made in Chelsea stars. Here, Sophie Hermann and Fredrik Ferrier give theirs a sex and dating spin. While episode one needs some serious shaping up, the fun chemistry is there, and they’ve got some genuinely interesting talking points that would be great to get into properly down the line: from Sophie’s porn addiction as a teenager to how vibrators can affect your sex life.
Hollie Richardson
Rubirosa
Stitcher, from Wednesday
Did Ian Fleming really draw inspiration from Dominican playboy Porfirio Rubirosa for James Bond? Christopher Rivas explores the idea in his new podcast, which asks a serious question about what life would have been like for “this awkward Dominican kid from Queens” if a role model like James Bond wasn’t white. Hannah Verdier
Broken Road
Widely available, from Monday
“What the hell are you doing in my barn?” So begins a dystopian podcast with Daredevil’s Peter Shinkoda setting out his stall as Sergeant Emmett Lee, a man on the lookout for obsolete military equipment. When he teams up with a farmer (Lana McKissack) and her daughter to free their town from corruption, much near-future drama follows. HV
Moment of Truth
BBC Sounds, available now
If you fancy yourself as a football manager, this podcast shows that there’s a whole lot more to the job than picking teams. James Nesbitt is on narrating duties while he follows Rotherham United’s manager Paul Warne and Oxford United’s Karl Robinson as they face the last three months of the season in all its high-pressured, hard-fought, sweary glory. HV
Blossom Trees and Burnt Out Cars
BBC Sounds, available now
Nature is everywhere, so why isn’t it for everyone? Talia Randall, a recent gardening convert who was brought up on “the road with the most burnt-out cars in London” chats with people opening up its appeal to underrepresented groups. Like the other two podcasts from BBC Sound’s Audio Lab, it’s refreshing and brilliant. HV
There’s a podcast for that
This week, Guardian video games editor Keza MacDonald chooses five of the best podcasts for gaming fanatics, from a throwback to vintage titles to a meandering chatshow that rises above the surfeit
Retro Asylum
Most video game podcasts of all stripes have a US focus. This is particularly annoying if you’re an 80s/90s gamer, because the US gaming scene at that time was dominated by Atari and Nintendo while the UK/European scene was all about the Spectrum, Amiga and C64. Retro Asylum episodes are usually focused on a particular game from that period history, and gladly it takes in a broad range. Plus, the occasional interviews with storied game creators are especially worth the listen.
Play, Watch, Listen
I’m not generally a fan of the “people sit in a room and have a meandering chat” podcast format, but the hosts are what makes this one interesting: Troy Baker is a video game voice actor who’s been in LITERALLY EVERYTHING, Austin Wintory is an exceptionally talented composer, Mike Bithell is a successful British indie game developer, and Alanah Pearce is a former games journalist and current narrative designer at Sony Santa Monica. Whichever of them is present, there’s a good dynamic and interesting discussions on everything from guilty pleasure games to VR porn.
8-4 Play
This is one for anybody who’s got a fondness for Japanese games – which is pretty much everyone who grew up with games in the 90s, when Nintendo and Sega dominated. Its hosts, Chris Ricciardi and Mark MacDonald, founded a company that localises Japanese games for western markets, and their perspective gives listeners an insight into life and gaming culture in Japan, as well as the Japanese games industry. The pair often talk about the process of translating a game (something that remains endlessly fascinating to me as both a gaming nerd and a language nerd) and they have really good taste in games.
Extra Life
Is it unbelievably gauche to suggest my own podcast? I’m gonna do it anyway. Extra Life is a comedy podcast that I hosted with my much funnier friend, comedian Ellie Gibson. We talked to people like TV writer Charlie Brooker, comedian Sooz Kempner and science writer Adam Rutherford about their lives with games, from childhood memories to GoldenEye in university through to the role they play in our lives now. It was intended to be un uplifting listen (especially during the pandemic, when it was recorded), and while we only got one season, it totally holds up. Even Ellie’s conspicuously dreadful impressions of video game executives.
The Back Page
Two very intelligent, very experienced and genuinely funny games journalists, Sam Roberts and Matthew Castle, talk about video games with a much broader remit than most podcasts of this genre, often taking in titles from 10 or 20 years ago as well as whatever’s hot right now. Both hosts were involved in making video games magazines for many years, as are most of their guests, who come from all corners of the video games media (if you ever read PC Gamer or other mags, there’s a cool peek-behind-the-curtain element to the chat about infamous reviews or terrible press trips). It’s got a real warm, welcoming feel to it.
Read more of Keza’s writing in the Guardian’s Pushing Buttons newsletter every Tuesday
Why not try …
Delve into Facebook’s Meta rebrand, and what’s next for the all-conquering company, in the new season of Vox’s Silicon Valley show Land of the Giants.
Comedian Jolyon Rubinstein and journalist James Ball investigate why conspiracy theories both “silly and serious” are so enticing in The New Conspiracist.
Formula One hit new levels of popularity thanks to shows like Netflix’s Drive to Survive. Race through the history of the teams, characters and controversies of the sport in Choosing Sides: F1.
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