A gripping, maddening podcast episode. The story of how anti-vax conspiracy theorists terrorise a man who just lost his pregnant wife – all because of two innocuous words in her obituary.

I’m three episodes in, and to say I’m hooked is an understatement. «Lawless Planet» is true crime with 8 billion victims. Each episode features a crime on the frontline of the climate crisis – scams, cover-ups, murders – and «the life and death choices people are making to either protect our world – or destroy it.»

A new miniseries by the excellent The Rest Is Classified podcast. A detailed look at how in late 2021, Western intelligence services understood Putin was serious about invading Ukraine – but struggled to convince Zelensky that the threat was real and imminent.

If you – like me and many other – have grown tired of true podcasts, this is the one you’ll have to make an exception for. It’s the story of an investigative reporter who gains access to all the messages on a site on the dark web – where people place orders to have someone killed. So now the journalist has a list of hundreds of people in imminent danger, and they have no idea. What next?

A fascinating experiment turned binge-worthy podcast: Evan Ratliff has cloned his voice and has released countless AI-powered digital clones of himself into the wild. He has them talk to telemarketers and scammers, to his friends, and even to one another. It’s witty, nerdy, and leaves you with a looming feeling that a lot of crazy things are in store for the near future.

What is the most useful thing you could know about your own life? Thus begins this series of audio essays from the BBC. The answer Naomi Alderman suggests: the name of the era you’re living through. And she argues that we should think of our current era as the third great information crisis, brought about by digital communication. A joy to listen to, and inspiring all sorts of reflections.

A mysterious letter uncovers an Islamist conspiracy to infiltrate schools in Birmingham, UK. The story becomes a national scandal, with wide-ranging consequences. That was in 2014. A new investigation by Serial Productions (of the famous Serial podcast — now part of The New York Times) takes another look at that letter and everything it set in motion. Something just seems off. (Along with a lot of praise, the series has been criticised for being biased and one-sided in its reporting. I can see where this is coming from, but I think one strength of the series is that it makes bias and its reporting part of the story.)

Remember Sims, that computer game from the early 2000s that let you create virtual human beings and follow their everyday lives? Here’s a podcast episode on one aspect of the game I wasn’t aware of: Sims had their own made-up language, which soon turned into a phenomenon of its own, with pop songs being re-recorded in Simlish. What makes it especially interesting: Nobody has control over the rules of the language, it’s «a language from no one for everyone».

I didn’t know I’d find a podcast on the art market interesting. What I did know is that I can trust Freakonomics to make things interesting to me. I greatly enjoyed this three-part series on the peculiarities of the art market, and how it is changing. I recommend you give it a shot, even if you don’t think it’ll be for you.

It’s progress that in more and more contexts, people can opt out of stating their gender, or are given options beyond the traditional male/female dichotomy. But why do so many forms and documents ask for a gender in the first place? Good food for thought from a (somewhat older) episode of the Flash Forward podcast.