Julia Louis-Dreyfus returns with more words of wisdom from women

The Seinfeld star hears from female friends like Sally Field and Billie Jean King in the return of Wiser Than Me. Plus: five of the best paranormal podcasts

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Thought you’d heard it all when it comes to podcasts’ obsession with the unexplained? You may want to think again. Forget the likes of Ghost Story – in recent weeks a show has launched featuring a pet psychic. Creature Preacher features “animal communicator” Nancy Mello giving animal owners an in-depth personality reading of their pet, based entirely on looking into their eyes. It is a wild, baffling listen that raises more questions than it answers.

But if you like your pods’ noumenal delvings to be a little more trad, this week we’re bringing you a roundup of five of the best paranormal podcasts out there (yes, including Ghost Story). We’re also highlighting the excellent Lolly Adefope satire on sports shows, the return of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s brilliant Wiser Than Me and a lively new chatshow from Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver. Plus, we have a stirring, personal take on the 40th anniversary of the miners’ strikes and a nuanced look at a woman who was jailed for allegedly falsely claiming to have been raped.

Podcasts: a broad church. It doesn’t take a psychic to figure that out.

Alexi Duggins
Deputy TV editor

Picks of the week

Dial F for Football
Widely available, weekly from Wednesday
Listeners of Total Sport FM are used to hosts being white and blokey, so what happens when management bring in a young YouTuber? Lolly Adefope (above) plays Lisa, the new recruit who is battling for airtime when she’s paired with Des (Fergus Craig). The fast-talking, banteresque satire of sport radio is spot-on and every character is a little bit clueless and awful. As the producer says: “Hate equals clicks, equals views, equals ad money.” Hannah Verdier

Miss Me?
BBC Sounds, episodes twice weekly
Lifelong friends Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver have plenty of chemistry and material for a twice-weekly catchup. Funny stories, 90s memories involving A-listers, debates on hot topics and musings on the Princess of Wales’ whereabouts are all here, along with an insider’s perspective of how the celebrity world works. HV

Wiser Than Me
Widely available, episodes weekly
Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s superlative podcast where she talks to older (and wiser) women returns for a second season. Billie Jean King, Patti Smith and Sally Field are among the sensational subjects offering pure inspiration this time. Louis-Dreyfus says it has “unbrainwashed” her thoughts on ageing and made it something to look forward to. You can see why. HV

Unreliable Witness
Widely available, episodes weekly
Who is Ellie Williams? The 22-year-old was jailed in 2022 for making false rape allegations, but this nuanced podcast proves that there’s a lot the public don’t know. Sky News home editor Jason Farrell and producer Liz Lane talk to her family and friends, who paint her as an intelligent, outgoing woman who displayed signs of abuse. HV

Strike
BBC Sounds, episodes weekly
There’s no shortage of reflections about the miners’ strike on its 40th anniversary, but it’s the personal memories that really stir emotion. Merthyr Tydfil-born film-maker Jonny Owen, who was 13 at the time, describes the divide between miners who went on strike and those who didn’t – and how it split friendships and communities. HV

There’s a podcast for that

This week, Rachel Aroesti chooses five of the best paranormal podcasts, from a guide to American spiritualism to a BBC investigation into the truth about a 1950s London poltergeist.

Ghost Story
What starts out as a vague anecdote about a potentially haunted attic room in south-west London unfurls into a mesmerising, profound and rather beautiful meditation on memory and the past in this truly superb podcast from journalist Tristan Redman. The trigger for the series is a crazy coincidence: as a child, Redman experienced odd occurrences in his bedroom – years later, he discovered that his wife’s great-grandmother was killed next door. What follows is a riveting investigation into a very strange murder case and a spine-tingling investigation into the prospective ghost. Might Redman have lived his entire adult life under the influence of supernatural forces? His conclusion was never going to be definitive – but it is revelatory and moving to boot.

The Battersea Poltergeist
As host of the excellent BBC audio series turned TV show Uncanny, Danny Robins is the king of paranormal podcasting in the UK – but it was actually his 2021 series, The Battersea Poltergeist, that first got the ball rolling on the comedy writer’s late stage career switch. In an incredibly thorough examination of the ghostly goings-on in Wycliffe Road in the 1950s, Robins leaves no stone unturned to provide a rational explanation for the noises and flying objects that plagued the Hitchings family and preoccupied the press during the decade and beyond. But try as he might, our host is unable to completely dismiss the idea that something scientifically inexplicable happened there – and, by the end of the series, you will be too.

Ghost Church
Podcaster and comedian Jamie Loftus (best known as co-host of the long-running The Bechdel Cast) is our trusty and often hilarious guide to American spiritualism – a Christianity-adjacent religion defined by its belief that the dead don’t actually die – in this fascinating, funny and heartfelt series. In order to dig into spiritualism’s shaky foundations, as well as its less ludicrous modern aspects, Loftus pitches up in the tiny, uber-insular Florida community of Cassadaga, hoping to interview the mediums that have dedicated their lives to communing with spirits. She arrives with an open mind – but soon discovers it would take supernatural levels of seriousness not to laugh at all the mind-bogglingly bizarre details.

Radio Rental
Having made his name with a series of cold case investigations, podcaster Payne Lindsey subsequently switched his attention to the kind of hair-raising stories that don’t quite qualify as true crime, but still revolve around something incredibly sinister. After scouring forums for suitably chilling tales – from the story of a girlfriend doppelganger to the evil babysitter that apparently never existed – Lindsey tracked down the posters and recorded all the horrifying details of their experiences. The paranormal is only a possibility in these accounts, but for once it’s often the preferable option – human wickedness being a far more scary prospect. Oh, and if it all gets a bit too much, Rainn Wilson (AKA Dwight from The Office US) is on hand to break the tension, MCing the whole shebang in the guise of video store owner Terry Carnation.

Ghosts in the Burbs
Wellesley, Massachusetts is a real place – but it’s not quite the poltergeist-packed community this podcast would have you believe. Ghosts in the Burbs doesn’t initially appear to be a work of fiction; our host is a seemingly real person called Liz Sower, a member of the community who has decided to start collating local ghost stories from her neighbours into a (genuine) blog. Yet it soon becomes clear that Sower is actually narrating a sophisticated soap opera about a town plagued by paranormal activity. The tone is both cosy – Sower and her acquaintances give off yummy mummy vibes – and deeply unsettling: after a while, our host gains the ability to see ghosts, spirits and demons; not exactly the sort of skillset that helps you sleep at night.

Why not try …

• After Broad and Market examines the 2003 murder of 15-year-old student Sakia Gunn, who was young, black and queer in downtown Newark. Her killing galvanized LGBTQ+ activism in New Jersey.

• In The Y Matters, nutritionist Arina Kuzmina and her expert guests discuss a wide range of health topics, including overeating, work-life balance and the connection between mind and body.

• Serpentine Podcast: Intimacies asks how we can expand and evolve our connection with ourselves, others, and the world around us.