An Interview Lover’s Guide to Podcasts

Podcast's growing popularity have resulted in a vast range of programmes to choose from. So if you fancy a change from your trusty music playlist, and are a fan of people being subjected to an insightful inquisition, check out these top 10 interview podcasts to spice up your commute!

The most fascinating interviews in the world of podcasts

Love Stories

If you haven’t come across Dolly Alderton's debut novel, Everything I Know About Love, you must have been hiding under a rock. Please find a copy immediately. Love Stories is the podcast to coincide with the book’s release, and, as we know from The High-Low, Dolly’s original podcast with fellow journalist Pandora Sykes, Dolly is exceptionally eloquent and a terrific interviewer. She talks to people about the defining love stories that make up their lives: the passionate, heartbreaking, and the everlasting.

Image © Love Stories with Dolly Alderton via Soundcloud

Emma Freud

Desert Island Dishes

Presented by chef Margie Broadhead, this podcast follows a formula that has stood the test of time. Margie talks to guests about their life with food, and, of course, their seven Desert Island Dishes. From their favourite childhood dishes, to their favourite sandwich, to the dish they eat most often, we learn about the food that has shaped their lives. Margie then goes away and creates a recipe based on the dishes mentioned by her guests. It’s a winning formula, and great to hear from people in the food industry not often interviewed in the mainstream media.

Image © Desert Island Dishes via madebymargie.co.uk

Thomasina Meyers, Co-founder of Wahaca, Chef and Writer

Bryony Gordon’s Mad World

Telegraph columnist Bryony Gordon has a life story that is just waiting for a film producer to snap it up. She’s traced her dramatic life in her books: discussing her wildly hedonistic alcohol and cocaine-fuelled twenties in her debut memoir The Wrong Knickers: A Decade of Chaos, her obsessive-compulsive disorder and other mental illnesses in Mad Girl, and most recently her discovery of running and how running a marathon began to change her outlook on life in Eat, Drink, Run: How I Got Fit Without Going Too Mad. Her podcast, Mad World, is a culmination of all these themes. Gordon interviews guests about how their mental health has affected their lives, proving that feeling weird is actually entirely normal. Oh, and she interviewed Prince Harry in her very first episode.

Image © Bryony Gordon via Twitter

James Rhodes

Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin

Alec Baldwin may not be the first person you’d imagine to host an interview podcast, but it turns out he’s a dab hand at it. He is a completely enigmatic host, and he gets the guests entirely on his side. The guests range from Bernie Sanders, the Democratic presidential nominee who ran against Trump, to the deputy commissioner of New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection, who leads the city’s Bureau of Wastewater Treatment. The surprising guest choices are just as fascinating as the household names.

Image © Here's The Thing via Facebook

Tina Brown Was in the Room Where It Happened

How I Built This

In this NPR podcast, Guy Raz explores the stories behind the world’s biggest companies, interviewing their founders and finding out how they made their millions. The stories are always more surprising than you’d imagine, and in most cases, success did not come that easily. Raz interviews the founders of Vice, Airbnb, Zumba, Virgin, Kate Spade, Whole Foods Market, Five Guys, WeWork, Bumble, Chipotle, Instagram and Ben & Jerry’s, just to name a few…

Image © How I Built This via Facebook

Five Guys: Jerry Murrell

At Home With…

In At Home With…, bloggers Anna Newton and Lily Pebbles visit the homes of other bloggers, magazine editors and leading figures within the fashion and beauty industry. It’s super nosy and perfect for anyone who loves the idea of rifling through someone else’s drawers. Our homes say a lot about us, so it becomes a much more revealing interview than you may initially think. If you listen on Acast, you’re also able to view photos of their houses, focusing in on the specific items and features they draw attention to. Their second season is starting soon, so jump on board now.

Image © At Home With... via acast.com

Georgie Cleeve: Founder, OSKIA Skincare

Griefcast

Most people familiar with the world of podcasts should have heard of this one because it just swept the board in wins at the British Podcast Awards. In it, comedian Cariad Lloyd interviews guests (often other comedians) on the topic of grief and often a particularly momentous person in their life that they have lost. She herself lost her father at a young age. Although it doesn’t sound like an hour of rainbows and smiles, it is always funny and moving, and I have no doubt it has helped many people through difficult times.

Image © Griefcast

Deborah Frances-White

Where Should We Begin?

Where Should We Begin?, our third American entry, is a podcast that would quite literally never be made in the UK. Esther Perel is a therapist and relationship counsellor, and her podcasts are real-life recordings of meetings she has had with couples. It is completely fascinating. Each couple come with a different problem, from infidelity to sexual impotency to loss. “Patients” are revisited further down the line so we can discover that they have all dealt differently in the follow-up. You may not be sold by any synopsis of the podcast, but dive right in and I am sure you’ll be hooked in no time.

Image © lolaaskar via Twitter

Literally any of them. It’s a lucky dip.

Happy Place

Fearne Cotton is a newbie in the podcast world, but has got herself embedded in the top charts extremely quickly. The episode with diver Tom Daley and his husband Dustin Lance Black is something everyone should listen to. The first time we listened to it we found ourselves completely overcome, welling up within minutes. The interview takes place shortly after they announced to the public that their surrogate was expecting a baby, and the whole talk is so insightful and charming, and Fearne is such a warm host.

Image © fearnecotton via Instagram

Walking the Dog with Emily Dean

This podcast by The Times’ Emily Dean has an exceptionally simple format, and one that really works well. She takes her interview subjects on walks with their dogs, and the conversation that ensues varies from week to week. Some say you can have some of the best conversations on runs or dog walks, and it’s clear that Emily Dean feels the same. The interview subjects won’t set your world alight initially - they are all familiar comedians, but no-one that controversial or out there - but as the conversations progress, you realise that everyone has stories worth telling, and they’re a really lovely audio accompaniment to your own walk in the park.

Image © Walking the Dog with Emily Dean via acast.com

An Episode to Download: Larry and George Lamb